THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP:

FREEDOM OF THE SEAS: China Enraged After US Sails Two Destroyers Through Taiwan Strait.

Any nation opposed to free passage in open waters ought not engage in maritime trade.

WELL, GOOD — NOW PICK UP THE TRASH: LA Mayor Garcetti Not Apologizing for Supporting U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

(Depressingly modern reference in the headline.)

HEH: McConnell Campaign’s ‘Cocaine Mitch’ T-Shirts Raise over $70,000, Mostly From New Donors.

IT’S ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Construction workers find dinosaur fossils in Denver suburb.

THE (RE-)RISE OF THE NATION-STATE: India election results 2019: Modi claims landslide victory. “The hugely popular BJP Hindu nationalist leader brushes aside economic woes to claim another term.”

PROCUREMENT: Putin orders 76 new Su-57 stealth fighters in a desperate attempt to rival the US.

Desperate is right. The Su-57 isn’t very stealthy, the engines are years out of date by Western standards, the order won’t be completed until 2028 (if ever), and Russian maintenance standards probably aren’t high enough to keep that many fifth-generation fighters flying. And even neighboring Poland is seeking to buy nearly three dozen superior F-35s starting in 2026.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: The (Almost) Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier. “If China has made the carrier obsolete, then why is China embarked on a huge carrier-building program?”

FLOPPING ACES: Bill Maher And The Democrats’ Anti-Catholic Bigotry.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AT VOA? VOA Fires Two More Reporters for Chinese Dissident Interview. “Critics say official U.S. radio caved to Chinese pressure.”

YOU DON’T SAY: Lawmaker Who Helped Write Obamacare: ‘What We Have Now Is Not Working.’

The fix for a failed government program is always a bigger government program.

LIVING HISTORY: Holocaust Survivors in Same Line at Auschwitz Meet 72 Years Later.

LARRY ELDER: The Left’s Battle Against ‘Inequality’ Leaves Out One Critical Factor. “In his book Discrimination and Disparities, economist Thomas Sowell notes that a disproportionate percentage of first-born siblings become National Merit scholars compared to siblings born later, presumably because the first-born starts life with no sibling competition for parental attention. This, says Sowell, illustrates the absurdities of expecting equal results when equal results do not even occur within the same family among siblings raised under the same roof with the same parents.”

PAULA BOLYARD: Is the Swamp Trying to Sneak an Anti-Catholic Bigot onto the Federal Bench? Sen. Josh Hawley Has Some Questions.

FLASHBACK: Ana Navarro Compares Stormy Daniels’ Lawyer to the Holy Spirit.

“Lately, to me, you’re like the Holy Spirit. You are all places at all times. Right. I mean, I do — I see you all over cable news, I see — there’s a seat available if you want to be a co-host at ‘The View.’ There’s people here you can pitch. He’d be a great lady around the table” Navarro ranted.

“[Avenatti] has a bigger calling here. Being a lawyer is minimal compared to what he’s doing,” Joy Behar said.

Navarro interrupted, “The priesthood?”

Behar continued, “He’s out there saving the country.”

That was maybe not entirely accurate.

PRIVACY: The future of AT&T is an ad-tracking nightmare hellworld.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump Nopes Out of Chuck & Nancy Meeting, Nadler’s Booster Seat Inside. “So Speaker of the House Pelosi talks to the press before her scheduled meeting with President Trump on infrastructure, insults him and accuses him of a “cover up” and obstructing justice and everyone gets the vapors when Trump has no interest in making deals with the Democrats.”

WELL, THAT’S A TAKE: Meghan McCain Says Instead Of Working For Trump, Ben Carson Should’ve Helped People With Cancer Like My Dad.

MAYBE EUROPE NEEDS TO TAKE AN APPROACH TO CHINA MORE LIKE TRUMP’S: Forced Tech Transfers Are on the Rise in China, European Firms Say.

WHAT I REALLY WANT IS THE AIR FORCE FLYING THINGS SO ADVANCED EVERYONE WOULD MISTAKE THEM FOR UFOs: The Pentagon finally admits it investigates UFOs.

HMM: China’s Tariff List Advertises Its Trade War Weakness.

What’s even more revealing about China’s choices are the U.S.-made products that haven’t made any tariff list. They include civilian aircraft and their engines and parts, which had a 2018 export total of $17.73 billion. They include semiconductors and their components, which last year had China shipments that totaled several billion additional dollars. They include the equipment needed to manufacture and inspect semiconductors and their parts, which racked up at least $850 million in 2018 exports to China; devices for conducting chemical and physical analyses (with $912 million in China exports last year); laser equipment ($304 million), motor vehicles, auto parts, and plastics resins and polymers (which each produced billions in exports to China); and billions of dollars’ worth of other products that the Chinese either can’t (yet) make or can’t make in the amounts that they need—or that consist of goods preferred by Chinese consumers over their Made in China counterparts.

America’s tariff lists for Chinese goods have contained any number of obscure, exotic products as well. But from the start, they’ve been dominated by products valued highly by China’s leaders for their industrial and technological importance—especially those covered by the Made in China 2025 program aimed at achieving Chinese global dominance throughout advanced manufacturing and information technology sectors. Subsequently, the Trump administration has added the kinds of consumer products on which the PRC relies heavily for both export earnings and its own domestic employment.

Xi made China’s bid for hegemon status too soon, probably having assumed continued American acquiescence or a President Hillary Clinton — which amounts to the same thing.

DUPES: Democrats Overwhelmingly Believe U.S. Has Only 12 Years to Fight Climate Change.

JOSH KRAUSHAAR: Kamala Harris Is Undermining Her Campaign.

If there was a primary for the most self-destructive presidential candidate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California would be the front-runner of the 2020 field. Instead of leveraging her profile as a pragmatic prosecutor who has distinguished herself in the Senate as a tough litigator of top Trump officials, she’s run a campaign that has embraced seemingly every half-baked idea from the party’s left wing.

Supporting Medicare-for-all legislation that would all but eliminate private health insurance? Check. Decriminalize sex work? On it. Reparations for the descendants of slaves? Let’s study it. Criticize Rep. Ilhan Omar for invoking anti-Semitic tropes that even the Democratic party leadership condemned? Hard pass. Voting rights for the Boston bomber? Let’s talk about it, at least before backtracking the next day.

Her latest policy proposal would penalize businesses that fail to demonstrate gender pay equity, but without contextualizing salary data for merit and experience. “Companies would also be required to report the share of women who are among the company’s top earners, the total pay and total compensation gap that exists between men and women, regardless of job titles, experience and performance,” according to the Associated Press.

The plan combines the heavy hand of government with a mission that’s near-impossible to implement effectively.

The point isn’t to fix a problem, the point is to create more opportunities for corruption and graft. At that, Harris’s idea would prove a huge success I’m sure.

Getting elected though, as Will Collier noted, is “Harris’s Achilles Heel: she’s spent her political life in the Bay Area, where there’s no penalty for going another step further to the Left of your opponents. It’s her go-to tactic, and she has no idea how to modulate it, or what to do outside that bubble.”

KRUISER: Quinnipiac 2020 Poll: Top Three Dems Are White and Seventy-ish.

BYRON YORK: Republicans seek release of secret Papadopoulos transcripts.

The reason Papadopoulos’ experience is so important is because the FBI has cited it as the reason the bureau officially began the Trump-Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, on July 31, 2016. The FBI said that Australian diplomats, who talked with Papadopoulos in London, told U.S. government officials that Papadopoulos said Russia had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. After that, the FBI reportedly sent “Azra Turk” to London and also used other resources to find out what was going on with Papadopoulos. They created a record of their work, according to Gowdy.

“If the bureau is going to send an informant in, the informant is going to be wired,” Gowdy said. “And if the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there’s going to be a transcript of that.”

Gowdy cast his statement as a hypothetical, but it did not veil much of anything. “Some of us have been fortunate to know whether or not those transcripts exist, but they haven’t been made public,” he said.

Gowdy strongly suggested at least one of the transcripts has information that would be exculpatory for Papadopoulos.

“Very little in this Russia probe, I’m afraid, is going to persuade people who hate Trump or who love Trump,” he said. “But there is some information in these transcripts that I think has the potential to be a game-changer, if it’s ever made public.”

“You say there’s exculpatory evidence,” replied Bartiromo, “and when people see that, they’re going to say, wait, why wasn’t this presented to the court earlier?”

As a guess, precisely because it was exculpatory.