CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Illinois House approves fingerprinting gun owners.

THESE ARE THEIR PRINCIPLES. AND IF YOU DON’T LIKE THEM… WELL, THEY HAVE OTHERS: Netflix Continues Production In Egypt, Where Abortion Is Illegal, While Considering Georgia Boycott Over ‘Heartbeat’ Bill.

ON THE OTHER SIDE: Bernie Sanders campaigned for Marxist party in Reagan era.

Bernie Sanders campaigned for the Socialist Workers Party in the 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns and was investigated by the FBI for his ties to the Marxist group.

Sanders has always played down the extent of his involvement with the party, which included radicals who praised the Soviet Union and Cuban communists, and has denied ever being a member. Asked in 1988 about his role as an SWP elector in 1980, he said: “I was asked to put my name on the ballot and I did, that’s true.” In fact, his ties to the party are deep and enduring.

The 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate and United States senator from Vermont, now 77, often scoffs at comparisons between his brand of self-described “democratic socialism” and communism. In recent years, he has said he is merely interested in having the United States look more like Sweden, a social democracy with a broad welfare state but a well-functioning private sector.

But his personal files from his time as mayor of Burlington, from 1981 to 1989, archived at the University of Vermont, show that he supported and campaigned for the communist SWP and maintained a close relationship with its senior members.

Pure evil.

SPENGLER: The Stock Market Is Sending a Message to Trump: This Is the Wrong Kind of Tech War. “As things stand, America is likely to lose the tech war with China. The stock market should be sending a message to President Trump. U.S. semiconductor stocks are down 20% in the past month, and the broad market has been in freefall for a week. This is a war we can win, by mobilizing American ingenuity to produce technology that will crush the competition. No-one ever won a war by trying to stop someone else from doing something. I’m an Always Trumper, and I want the president to win another term. But he’s risking the U.S. economy and his re-election chances on a poorly-conceived offensive.”

Spengler makes some interesting points, but I’m not convinced. Over the long term the stock market hews closely to reality, but over the short term, the almost any new element of uncertainty can create a panicked herd mentality.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? House to Hold Statehood Hearings for Democratic Stranglehold Washington, D.C.

DAVID HARSANYI: Sorry, Alarmists, Climate Chaos Is Not Here. “Despite Democrats’ cataclysmal framing of every weather event, Americans are safer than ever.”

It’s true that 2019 has seen a spike in tornadoes, but mostly because 2018 was the first year recorded without a single violent tornado in the United States. Tornadoes killed 10 Americans in 2018, the fewest since we started keeping track of these things in 1875, only four years after the nefarious combustion engine was invented.

There has also been a long-term decline in the cost of tornado damage. In 2018, we experienced near-lows in this regard. The only better years were 2017, 2016, and 2015.

After a few devastating hurricanes around a decade ago, we were similarly warned that it was a prelude to endless storms and ecological disaster. This was followed by nine years without a single major hurricane in the United States. Or, in other words, six fewer hurricanes than we experienced in 1908 alone.

According to the U.S. Natural Hazard Statistics, in fact, 2018 saw below the 30-year average in deaths not only by tornadoes and hurricanes (way under average) but also from heat, flooding, and lighting. We did experience a slight rise in deaths due to cold.

Pointing out these sort of things usually elicits the same reaction: Why do you knuckle-dragging troglodytes hate science? Well, because science’s predictive abilities on most things, but especially climate, have been atrocious. But mostly because science is being used as a cudgel to push leftist policy prescriptions without considering economic tradeoffs, societal reality, or morality.

It’s always about power, except when it’s about money, unless it’s about both.

OK, CHIEF: Trump Would Be ‘In Handcuffs’ If Not President, Says Democrat Warren.

Also: The audience at ‘The View’ goes wild as @SenWarren rattles off all the things she’ll make “free” via a “2 cent” tax. Not even many Democrats are usually this transparent in their attempted vote-buying, but Warren isn’t going to beat Biden by just sitting there Indian-style.

Video at the second link, but not exactly must-see TV.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: AG Barr Strikes Backs with a CBS Interview. “Barr says he thought Mueller could’ve made a decision on obstruction. I want to point out here Mueller did made a decision on the RUSSIA conspiracy issue, so why not on obstruction? What is the difference? My guess is that Mueller’s prosecutors couldn’t meet the threshold of reasonable doubt. Can you imagine the freakout if Mueller came back and announced straight up he couldn’t bring any charges against the president at all? The left’s ritual defamation game would have been over. A report with “no charges” would defeat the purpose of the entire special counsel affair, which was to cripple and soil the Trump administration with the charge of ambiguous criminal activity lurking around it.”

Yep.

GEORGE LOGAN, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Team Obama Tells Iran: Don’t Escalate, Don’t Take Trump’s Bait. “Former Obama officials have been working with Iran and friends on the Hill to isolate the Trump admin. Their most recent contacts were a couple weeks ago. They told @thedailybeast that them secretly talking to Iran is ‘normal’.”

ABORT, RETRY, FAIL? Mueller Delivered a Message. Washington Couldn’t Agree on What It Was.

WORST. ANTISEMITE. EVER.

IF YOU AREN’T SERIOUS ABOUT NUCLEAR, YOU AREN’T SERIOUS ABOUT CARBON REDUCTION: Nuke retirements could lead to 4 billion metric tons of extra CO2 emissions.

NIALL FERGUSON: The outbreak of the second Cold War. “1648, not 1989, is our destination: a Cyber Westphalia, not the fall of the Great Firewall of China.”

Because the Internet and smartphones have enlarged, accelerated, and empowered social networks in the same way that the printing press did in the 16th and 17th centuries, today’s strategic rivalry is being played out in a near-borderless world, altogether different from the world of early John le Carré.

The 17th century had it all: climate change (the Little Ice Age that regularly froze the Thames), refugee crises (as Protestant zealots crossed the Atlantic), extreme views (as Catholics and Protestants sought to smear one another), and fake news (as witch-finders condemned hundreds of innocent women to death). But its most familiar feature to our eyes was the erosion of state sovereignty. The war of religion had no respect for borders: Jesuits infiltrated Protestant England just as Russian trolls now meddle in Western democracies.

The Thirty Years’ War was as much about power as it was about religion, however. Unlike the Cold War, which was waged by two superpowers, the Thirty Years’ War was a multiplayer game. The Holy Roman Emperor sought to reimpose Catholicism on Bohemia. Spain wanted to bring the rebellious Dutch back under Habsburg rule. Despite being Catholic, France sought to challenge the power of both Spain and Austria.

In the same way, today’s world is not bipolar. The United States may tell others to boycott Huawei, but not all Europeans will comply. China is the biggest economy in Asia, but it does not control India.

The Cold War created vast tank armies and nuclear arsenals, pointed at each other but never used. The Thirty Years’ War was quite different. It was a time of terrorism and gruesome violence, with no clear distinction between soldiers and civilians. (Think Syria.) Then, as now, the worst-affected areas suffered death and depopulation. There was no deterrence then, just as there is none now in cyberwarfare. Indeed, states tended to underestimate the costs of getting involved in the conflict. Both Britain and France did so — only to slide into civil war themselves.

The implications of this analogy are not cheering. The sole consolation I can offer is that, thanks to technology, most things nowadays happen roughly 10 times faster than they did 400 years ago. So we may be heading for a Three Years’ War rather than a Thirty Years’ War. Either way, we need to learn how to end such a war.

Fascinating piece. Read the whole thing.

HEADLINES FROM 1968-2016 INCLUSIVE: Democrats 2020: The Grievance Party.

SKY PENIS II: US Air Force F-35s drew an accidental sky penis with their contrails in a stealth fighter dogfight.

OOF: Georgia Should Tell Disney’s CEO to Go Home if His Actresses Can’t Get Through a Month Without an Abortion.

EGADS! AOC caught flashing notorious white power symbol during Instagram livestream.

That’s not OK.

AND THEY DIDN’T HAVE MUCH TO BEGIN WITH: Study: ‘White Privilege’ Lessons Make Liberals Less Empathetic to Poor Whites.

DON’T GET COCKY: Trump Finally Has the Wind at his Back.

BREAKING: Nevada Democratic governor vetoes bill to decide presidential elections by popular vote, not Electoral College.

Good.

State governments have the constitutional power to get up to all kinds of stupid mischief, but as a collection of semi-sovereign states, I fail to see how any state has the authority to turn its sovereignty over to the voters of other states.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Maddow Ratings Nosedive in Post-Mueller Era. “If you’re in possession of a gently used copy of Coding for Dummies, now would be a good time to put it on eBay.”

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: New compound which kills antibiotic-resistant superbugs discovered.

WOW: Rare Color Footage Brings D-Day Memories Alive, 75 Years On.

YES IT DOES: Mueller’s Final Statement Turns Jurisprudence On Its Head.

BUT… YOU CAN CERTAINLY GARNER A LOT OF PRESS ATTENTION TALKING ABOUT IT? Amash on Impeachment: You Can’t ‘Criminally Indict a Sitting President’ But…