CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why Hollywood Can’t Quit The Mueller Report.

It’s also worth pointing out that many of Saddam Hussien’s generals were convinced that his regime was holding weapons of mass destruction. Of course, he had an active weapons program, and used them on his own people as well as the Iranian military. But that program ended in the 1990s. Afterward, Saddam relied on a policyof “deterrence by doubt” that was crafted to keep international foes and Iraqis alike guessing.

That’s not the cry that came from the Left and Hollywood, though. Their line of attack? Bush lied, people died. So the film’s screenwriters tinkered with reality, big time, to give liberals the ending they craved. It was all Bush’s fault.

Something similar is happening right now regarding The Mueller Report.

Once the narrative is established, it’s difficult to dislodge. And progressive Hollywood is the Terminator of establishing narratives — they never quit.

BOTH ARE WORTH CELEBRATING: Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday Replaced With Slave Liberation Day in Charlottesville.

BREAKING: Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher found not guilty on murder and attempted murder charges.

DENNIS PRAGER: D Is for Damaged, Dangerous and Delusional.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Austin Goes from Harmlessly Weird to Dangerously Stupid by Legalizing Camping on City Streets.

TRAVEL: “Stick with Beer”: Why Counterfeit Booze Might Be Killing People in the Dominican Republic.

NEWS YOU CAN USE:

I hope that clears things up for you.

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Ocasio-Cortez Admits Illegal Aliens Are Given Shampoo in Migrant Shelters.

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Anti-Extremism Expert Loses Jobs, Twitter Account After Antifa Smears.

YES. NEXT QUESTION?

And Newsbusters’ Dan Gainor replies, “This is like reading a crap police reporter talking about the clothes a rape victim wore.”

ROBERT GOLDBERG: Vaper Madness.

E-cigarettes, while not a cure for nicotine dependence, can help reduce the death and disease caused by combustible tobacco. Public Health England (PHE), the United States equivalent of the CDC, concluded best estimates show e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful to your health than normal cigarettes, and when supported by a smoking cessation service, help most smokers to quit tobacco altogether. The most recent studies show that e-cigarettes are more effective in reducing smoking than any other device or approach., and yet almost two thirds of Americans believe vaping is deadlier than cigarette smoking. This is no accident. Just as the anti-vaccine zealots have turned vaccine hesitancy into one of the World Health Organization’s top global health challenges, anti-vaping groups such as the Truth Initiative and Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids have spread warnings about the hidden dangers of e-cigarettes to reduce consumption and spread uncertainty.

The two movements are alike in many other ways. Anti-vaxxers want to reduce use of vaccines because they claim it benefits the public health and yet have no problem holding measles or chicken pox parties to provide their kids “natural immunity.” Anti-vapers want to ban e-cigarettes while leaving cigarettes and other tobacco products on the market.

The fact San Francisco’s Herrera wants to prohibit both retail and on-line sales of e-cigarettes while doing nothing about tobacco is an artifact of the anti-vaping movement’s application of the precautionary principle: the belief that no new technology should be used and, in fact, should be considered deadly unless every possible safety risk, no matter how unfounded, is addressed.

Neo-Puritans with a body count.

BRITAIN: Sales in beer fall by a third in 10 years as young people drive popularity in alcohol free drinks, report reveals.

I wonder how much of that can be attributed to the country’s influx of Muslim non-drinkers.

KICK BACK TWICE AS HARD: Arizona Gov. Slam-Dunks Nike: ‘We Don’t Need to Suck Up to Companies’ That Denigrate Our History.

BRIAN MIN: Tucker Carlson on ‘Monstrous’ North Korean Regime: Leading a Country ‘Means Killing People.’

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s Teachers And Students Skip School For Survival.

School staff are resigning in droves. Legions of students and teachers are among the 4 million Venezuelans who have fled the country in recent years. Those still going to school in the country often find that classes have been canceled due to power outages, water shortages and other breakdowns.

Some school buildings are falling apart, have been taken over by homeless squatters or are used by pro-government militias for training, says Nancy Hernández, a founder and board member of FENASOPADRES, a national association of PTAs.

In 2016, the last year the Venezuelan government released enrollment figures, about 8.5 million Venezuelan children were attending K-12 schools. Now, that figure may have dropped to about 6.5 million, according to rough estimates provided by Hernández.

One independent education group in Aragua state, just west of Caracas, reported that at the start of the current school year more than half of all students were no longer going to classes.

In a TV interview in May, Education Minister Aristóbulo Istúriz acknowledged problems but blamed them on U.S. economic sanctions and pointed out that, in spite of the government’s challenges, public school remains free.

Just like medical care in Cuba: It’s free, if you can get it.

CHANGE: Center for American Progress Puts ThinkProgress Up for Sale.

Launched 14 years ago during the height of the Bush administration, ThinkProgress made a name for itself over time as an unapologetically progressive source of news and a launching pad for several major progressive luminaries. But the site, which is editorially independent from CAP, has struggled in recent years as advertising revenues have dried up and traffic has dipped. According to internal documents previously reviewed by The Daily Beast, the site was facing a $3 million gulf between revenues and expenses in 2019, with $350,000 of it made up by a shortfall in ad revenue and nearly $180,000 of it coming from a drop in expected online contributions.

ThinkProgress has never been profitable. In the past, it has made up its shortfalls with contributions from CAP and CAP donors. Several ThinkProgress alums told The Daily Beast that they believed that CAP could continue covering the deficit but had concluded that the site was too much of an editorial headache and too big a financial drain for them to rationalize doing so.

Having the opposition party in power is usually good for partisan websites and news networks, but ThinkProgress could never seem to capitalize. I blame the site’s nasty tone.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: AOC Reports Migrants Forced to Drink Toilet Cocktails at Border. “A congressional delegation went to visit the border facilities yesterday. ‘Tense’ is how The Hill describes it. This is not the first congressional delegation to visit the border, but it’s the first time we’ve heard the kinds of reports that were delivered by #resistance politicians. Even the Doctors’ Caucus did not return with such reports. This was a stunt straight up, it was obvious what AOC et al. were going to “report” before she even entered Texas.”

HMM: An Unlikely Solution to Germany’s East-West Divide.

Regional disparities have propelled populists elsewhere in Europe: In Italy, the League party has built a huge bastion of support in the north, and in Sweden, the Sweden Democrats enjoy widespread backing in the deep south. In Germany, though, regionalism is magnified by the political, social, and economic consequences of living as separate countries for more than four decades. In the weeks after European Parliament elections in May, #WirimOsten, or “Us in the east,” exploded on Twitter as East Germans endeavored to explain their region and its people.

In Massen, Hildebrandt took a seat at the head of the table to make her case for a quota. “We can’t just pretend that east and west don’t exist, that it’s all the same now—it’s just not true,” she said, gesturing emphatically over a cup of steaming coffee. “Where the power, money, and influence are—that’s where East Germans are massively underrepresented.”

The gap between east and west has narrowed over the past 30 years, and Angela Merkel, the country’s chancellor and arguably the most powerful woman in the world, is an East German. Yet with three key state elections in the east this fall, the region’s political disaffection has sparked a growing discussion on both sides of the divide to understand why the fault lines appear to be deepening. The quota is part of that debate.

An easier solution — and I think I might only be half-kidding about this — would be to split the country back in two. Reunification hasn’t exactly worked out as well as had been hoped.

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL; SO IS THORIUM: How going small may fuel nuclear power’s comeback.

HORSERACE: Kamala Cruises in Post-Debate Poll.

Post-debate polling appears to confirm the conventional wisdom, with Biden and Harris suffering/enjoying the biggest momentum swings in their respective, opposite directions.

Post-Debate Politico/Morning Consult poll shows support for Kamala Harris doubling since the last Politico/Morning Consult poll from 6% to 12%.

RELATED: Biden leads among African-Americans, but Harris gains significantly.

I haven’t been calling Biden “the evitable nominee” for nothing. He’s always better on paper than he is on the campaign trail, and he isn’t all that great on paper.

CHANGE? Hong Kong police fire tear gas in running battles after protesters trash legislature.

“One country, two systems” was always just a temporary patch until Beijing felt it could impose full control over Hong Kong. Xi, again, might have moved too early.

THEY’RE JUST MORE OPEN ABOUT BREAKING IT: To No One’s Surprise, Iran Breaches Limits on Enriched Uranium, Violating Obama’s Nuclear Deal.

‘MERICA: Trump Wants Tanks on the Nation Mall for July 4th Celebration—and He Should Get Them.

HEH: Thanks, HGTV: Americans VASTLY Overestimate the Gay Population in U.S., Gallup Finds.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Clown Car Update for July 1, 2019. “Post-debate analysis, Biden is down a little, Harris is up a little, Buttigieg banks big Benjamins, Yang rises, and Williamson beams love into the cosmos.”