CHRISTIAN TOTO: Critics Weaponize ‘Loudest Voice’ Against Fox News. “The Showtime miniseries lets critics savage the only media outlet that gives conservatives a fair shake.”

RAYMOND IBRAHIM: Sign Now: Open Letter to Trump on War College’s Surrender to Terror-Linked CAIR.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: It Isn’t Friday Unless It’s Florida Man Friday.

UGH: Fourth NYPD Officer Commits Suicide This Month.

GOVERNMENT IS JUST A WORD WE USE FOR THE THINGS WE DO TOGETHER: Valley growers sue over high-speed rail disruptions.

California’s high-speed rail route cuts a four-mile long gash in Tim Raven’s 2,500 acres of almond, and grape orchards near Selma.

He has already sold the authority the land and has been paid, but Raven says he has not been compensated for the disruption of dividing his property.

“On one property, a year and a half ago, they cut through an almond orchard, took out a 100-acre almond orchard, took our pump out, I spent $500,000 on two pumps and redoing the drip system, and I haven’t got a dime yet.”

That is just one example of disruption.

Attorney Mark Wasser is representing Raven and a total of 70 farmers with similar claims, totaling millions of dollars against the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

But don’t worry — the consultants all got paid.

MORE THAN GOTCHA: Kamala’s Busing Blunder.

As I write this, the consensus opinion among GOP analysts (Jonah Goldberg being the only demurrer I’ve seen) is that Harris poleaxed Biden when she said, “There was a little girl in California who was bussed to school. That little girl was me.”

Clearly, her team had planned this carefully, up to and including using an altered image that makes her look like a black child of poverty.

But more to the point, why wasn’t every GOP analyst and every conservative reporter up in her face about it?

Harris lied, for one thing.

Read the whole thing.

YEP:

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Debate Night 2 Electric Boogaloo, the Woke-Off Beat Goes On. “There was no Spanish but mucho loco. During the first debate, the candidates were just trying to get some attention because many of them were unknown. On night two, the candidates attacked the president more explicitly and attacked one another because they are jockeying for a bump in the polls. G-d help us.”

DAVID HARSANYI: Sorry If You’re Offended, but Socialism Leads to Misery and Destitution.

Socialism is perhaps the only ideology that Americans are asked to judge solely based on its piddling “successes.” Don’t you dare mention Albania or Algeria or Angola or Burma or Congo or Cuba or Ethiopia or Laos or Somalia or Vietnam or Yemen or, well, any other of the dozens of other inconvenient places socialism has been tried. Not when there are a handful of Scandinavian countries operating generous welfare state programs propped up by underlying vibrant capitalism and natural resources.

Of course, socialism exists on a spectrum, and even if we accept that the Nordic social program experiments are the most benign iteration of collectivism, they are certainly not the only version. Pretending otherwise would be like saying, “The police state of Singapore is more successful than Denmark. Let’s give it a spin.”

It turns out, though, that the “Denmark is awesome!” talking point is only the second-most preposterous one used by socialists. It goes something like this: If you’re a fan of “roads, schools, libraries, and such,” although you may not even be aware of it, you are also a supporter of socialism.

To be fair, socialists will tell any lie to gain power.

YOU DON’T SAY: New Warning Reveals Gmail’s Major Privacy Problem.

Privacy advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have hit out at Gmail’s “confidential mode” warning that it is not secure or private.

It comes after Google turned confidential mode on by default for business users this week (June 25). The feature adds more control by allowing senders to create expiration dates and revoke previously sent messages. Meanwhile, confidential mode prevents recipients from forwarding, copying, printing, or downloading their content or attachments.

But experts have criticised the feature for not being as secure as it sounds. Calling the feature “confidential” mode “creates privacy and security expectations that the product just doesn’t meet,” says Gennie Gebhart, associate director of research at the EFF.

“Confidential mode emails are not end-to-end encrypted, for example, which means that Google can see the contents of your messages,” she says.

At the same time, Google can technically even store them indefinitely, regardless of whether you use the ‘expiration date’ feature, Gebhart points out.

PLUS: Google accused of inappropriate access to medical data in potential class-action lawsuit.

COMMUNIST FRONT CORPORATION: Huawei Technologies loses trade secrets case against U.S. chip designer.

RELATED: On China: We Won’t Be Fooled Again.

The reality of Chinese law is that even if Chinese companies wish to act in good faith, they are compelled to cooperate with the military and intelligence services. Suffice it to say, there is no Fourth Amendment nor FISA Court in China.

After years of U.S. concerns, the Administration ultimately added Huawei to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Entity List, which effectively blocks any U.S. companies from selling or transferring them U.S. technology. President Trump simultaneously issued an Executive Order that will likely lead to a banning of telecommunications equipment imports from Huawei, ZTE, and others posing a national security risk.

Unfortunately, this playbook is also all too familiar when dealing with the CCP—the ultimate power behind the throne of these two “National Champions.”

The long-held hope was that Western wealth and technology in Chinese people’s hands would eventually force Beijing to liberalize along something more like the Western model. Instead, Beijing is using Silicon Valley’s tools to create history’s most efficient police state.

It’s time to decouple.

LOREN THOMPSON: Five Sobering Lessons From Iran’s Downing Of America’s Most Capable Drone.

Here’s one:

Lesser military powers are acquiring potent air defenses. The weapon used by Iranian forces to down the Global Hawk was an indigenously-developed Khordad 3 surface-to-air missile. Khordad 3 is a road-mobile air defense system capable of attacking up to four targets simultaneously to ranges of 50 miles and altitudes of 90,000 feet—higher than any U.S. military aircraft flies. The fact that a country as isolated as Iran could develop such a system speaks to the global proliferation of anti-aircraft technology. The Russian S-400 air defense system that China began testing last year and Turkey will soon field is far more capable, and a threat to any aircraft within 200 miles that is not stealthy.

I’m reminded a bit of the A-10, which was designed in the ’70s to rip open Soviet tanks. It’s a brilliant plane, but the A-10 is overkill for taking out jihadi Land Cruisers, yet isn’t survivable in a modern A2/AD environment. Stealth is rapidly becoming the baseline trim for dealing with even second-rate adversaries.

YOU MIGHT NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOU: Leftists Hound MasterCard, Demanding It Put Conservative ‘Hate Groups Out of Business.’

IT’S ON: Drunkblogging the First Democratic Debate: Night Two.

Here’s the lineup if you’re just tuning in:

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont (Democratic Socialist)

Sen. Kamala Harris of California (People’s Democratic Socialist)

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana (Socialist Democratic People’s Party)

Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado (Progressive Socialist-Democrat)

Author Marianne Williamson (Progressive Democrat-Socialist)

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York (Democratic Progressive-Socialist)

Rep. Eric Swalwell of California (Bolshevik)

Former Vice President Joe Biden (Menshevik)

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang (Filthy Running Dog Capitalist Pig, But Possibly LGBTQ-Friendly)

Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado. (Democrat, Not Socialist, He Swears)

I’ve been carbo-loading all day, so the odds of passing out at my desk are… pretty good, probably.

WINNING: Dems Agree to Emergency Funding for Border Crisis They Once Called ‘Fake.’

KRUISER: It’s Official: Selfies Are More Dangerous Than Sharks.

THEY NEVER MISS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MISS AN OPPORTUNITY: What if They Offered the Palestinians $50 Billion and No One Showed Up?

HMM: ‘Dark patterns’ are steering many internet users into making bad decisions.

Classic example: You encounter a prompt asking if you want to sign up for some program or service, and the box is already checked. If you don’t uncheck it — that is, if you do nothing — you’re enrolled.

A bipartisan bill has been introduced in Congress that would prohibit websites and online platforms (hi, Facebook!) from employing such deliberately deceptive tactics, and would empower the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on sites that keep trying to fool people.

The Deceptive Experiences to Online User Reduction Act (a.k.a. the DETOUR Act) is the brainchild of Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.). They’re hoping the legislation will be included as part of sweeping privacy regulations now under consideration in the Senate Commerce Committee.

Warner and Fischer will be hosting tech and privacy experts on Tuesday for a Capitol Hill seminar on the various ways consumers can be hoodwinked online.

“For years, social media platforms have been relying on all sorts of tricks and tools to convince users to hand over their personal data without really understanding what exactly it is that they’re handing over,” Warner told me.

He says website developers aren’t stupid. They closely study behavioral psychology to understand how internet users can be most easily misled.

“Our bill is pretty simple,” Warner said. “We just want consumers to be able to make more informed choices about how and when to share their personal information.”

I’d settle for a 30% cut of the action instead.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Dalai Lama warns that the whole of Europe could become ‘Muslim or African’ if migrants are not returned to their home countries.

VIEW FROM THE PORCH: Island of Misfit Toys…

I hadn’t intended to watch Wednesday night’s session, since Thursday (featuring Harris, Sanders, Biden, and Buttigieg) looked more interesting. I’m glad I did, though, because there was at least one moment that was like Tumblr Come To Life.

For the most part, there weren’t many surprises. Klobuchar was composed but bland and staked out the Sensible Centrist position (Delaney kept trying to, but his inability to shut up didn’t help him) while most of the rest of the stage galloped hard to the left. Gabbard came across as very genuine, which unfortunately tends to translate as “bad on television”. Beto took a beating at the hands of Castro.

But the mayor of NYFC managed to come across as a stereotype of a New York F#&@ing City mayor.

Click on over for… the rest of the story.

LARRY ELDER: Reparations: How Not to Foster Racial Harmony.

LAWRENCE PERSON: More NRA Troubles: Wayne LaPierre And The Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

OF COURSE SHE DID: ‘Unmasker in Chief’ Samantha Power spewed anti-Trump bias in government emails.

Fired agent Peter Strzok and ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page are infamous today for texting on FBI phones their anti-Trump sentiments while allegedly having an affair. They played key roles in the now-debunked Russia collusion investigation.

It turns out that Power — the diplomat whose authority inexplicably was used to unmask hundreds of Americans’ names in secret intelligence reports during the 2016 election — engaged in similar Trump-bashing on her official government email, according to documents unearthed by an American Center for Law and Justice lawsuit. The conservative legal group is run by Trump defense attorney Jay Sekulow.

The discovery could add a new dimension — a question of political bias — to a long-running congressional investigation into why Power’s authority was used to unmask hundreds of Americans’ names in secret National Security Agency intercepts during the 2016 election. That practice of unmasking continues to grow today.

Not one more word about that “surprisingly scandal-free” administration.

CHANGE? Asian parents call for Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza’s firing. “Branding him a ‘dangerous’ anti-Asian racist, a group of some 80 protesters gathered Wednesday outside the Department of Education headquarters in Manhattan to call for Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza’s ouster.”

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AT BOEING? Lightning Strikes Boeing Once Too Often. “Critical design flaws in passenger aircraft ought to be non-existent, so it’s alarming that regulators have discovered a second in the 737 Max.”

Two corporate mainstays, Boeing and Intel, have seriously dropped the ball in recent years.