YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for March 18, 2019.

THANKS, I GUESS: Ex-DNC Chair Donna Brazile Says She’s Giving Up Hypocrisy for Lent.

ARMY OF GEEKS: Ohio Seeks to Create a Civilian Cyber Militia to Protect Elections.

It’s Glenn’s world — we just live in it.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Beto Takes a Beating (Except where it counts).

UNTIL HE FOUND A MORE PROFITABLE SCHTICK: Bernie Sanders in the 1970s urged nationalization of most major industries.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM: Judge Jeanine Pirro Is Right: The Hijab Reflects ‘Adherence to Sharia Law.’

HMM: Joint Chiefs chairman denies report that US is planning to keep 1K troops in Syria.

COLD WAR II: Xi’s South China Sea ‘fishermen’ risk hooking US into conflict.

Tensions are also rising to the west, around the Paracel Islands. Two days before Wang’s comments, a Chinese vessel rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat near Discovery Reef in the Paracels, according to Hanoi. The Paracels are home to overlapping claims by Vietnam, China and Taiwan. The five fishermen on the Vietnamese boat were eventually rescued, Hanoi said.

In early March, Philippine media reported that China had effectively asserted control over sandbars near the Philippine-administered Thitu Island, in the Spratlys. The sandbars, which are adjacent to bountiful fish stocks, had previously been frequented by Philippine fishing boats, which are now being turned away by what are effectively Chinese paramilitary boats posing as fishing vessels.

Worries in the Philippines over the fate of Thitu are growing. The mayor of the town of Kalayaan, which is responsible for Thitu told local media he personally witnessed a Chinese helicopter fly over the island before returning to Subi Reef in late January. In 2012, China dislodged the Philippines from Subi Reef, just 24 km away, subsequently militarizing it and building a runway there.

Filipino defense officials “are naturally wary of the Chinese fishing vessels around Pag-asa Island,” said Jay Batongbacal, director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea in Manila. “The possibility that China might seize control of the island through unarmed militiamen has been on their minds.”

Those Chinese “fishing vessels” are engaging in acts of war, despite not flying navy colors, which fits the legal definition of terrorism.

YOUNG ADULT INFOTAINMENT SITE VOX: Why are millennials burned out? Capitalism.

I’ll take the Scourge of Plenty over the alternative any day.

Slightly more seriously, it’s sad — but not unexpected — to see young socialists sell out their peers to statism.

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF: The evil that men do.

Terrible news from Christchurch in New Zealand, with (at this moment) 49 Muslim worshipers at Friday prayers in two mosques gunned down in a well organised terrorist attack that was streamed live on social media. The shooter is a 28-year old fitness trainer from Grafton in Australia, a seemingly ordinary young man from small-town regional Australia who have become radicalised in the course of a seven-year trip around the world after his father’s death in 2010.

What makes a man apparently plan in cold blood for two years mass murder of his fellow human beings – in this case based on their religion and their status as immigrants in a Western country?

Clearly you are not a normal, well-balanced human being – there are no indications so far the shooter is mentally ill in any way – but it’s for psychologists to debate what parts of your humanity must be sufficiently broken, and why, to enable you to commit an atrocity like this.

But the mass shooting is also a political act, though politics, even extreme politics, turns only a small minority into killers and terrorists.

What are the politics here?

Read the whole thing.

EXPECT ANOTHER ROUND OF “BAD LUCK”: New York City’s War on Entry-Level Jobs continues.

THIS: Raise Your Own Damn Taxes! “They don’t really want to pay more taxes. They want to raise your taxes.”

WELL, THAT’S ONE WAY TO SPIN SOCIALISM’S ABJECT FAILURES: US sanctions hurting Venezuela’s most vulnerable.

Take Alfredo Felix for example. The 60-year-old suffers from diabetes and needs dialysis three times a week. But the power outages of the past few days have been difficult for people like him.

“Because of the blackout I couldn’t do my dialysis and I felt dizzy and weak. I don’t know what is going to happen in this country. Sometimes I feel we are at a point of no return,” he says with tears in his eyes.

The acute shortage of medicines has added to the misery of patients like Felix.

Venezuela’s cash-strapped government is struggling with an economic crisis that has forced the country to reduce imports. This combined with hyperinflation is making it difficult for people to buy or even find the medication they need. Hospitals are struggling to find basic items to help those in need.

The situation is difficult for the Venezuelan government. Most economists say United States sanctions were implemented four years ago when the damage to the economy was already done.

“The first sanctions that prevented Venezuela from negotiating its debt came after Venezuela already had one of the highest risks in the world and the risk was because of the drop in oil prices and with a government that did not want to modify its budget or the controls on exchange rate,” said Ronald Balza an economist in the capital, Caracas.

“Venezuela continued spending when it already owed billions of dollars in debt,” said Balza.

As to how Venezuela found itself in such a difficult position remains a mystery.

BLUE ON BLUE: Beto O’Rourke Is the Candidate For Vapid Morons.

O’Rourke is careful to pay homage to progressive icons, crediting Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren with advancing the national conversation on health care and consumer protections, but sells himself as something slightly different: a youthful uniter, willing to listen and learn from the most recalcitrant right-wing voters and work with Republicans. “If I bring something to this,” he says, “I think it is my ability to listen to people, to help bring people together to do something that is thought to be impossible.

“My sense is, following some success that I had in Congress, and working with Republicans to actually get things signed into law, including both President Obama and President Trump’s administrations, that I may have an ability to work with people who think differently than I do, come to a different conclusion that I’ve come to on a given issue, and yet find enough common ground to do something better than what we have right now.”

If you finish that passage and think you’ve just read something positive about a Democratic presidential candidate, then—to warp the old Jeff Foxworthy bit—you might be Beto O’Rourke’s constituency.

If, on the other hand, you shuddered in something like horror, get ready for a nightmarish year of watching this candidate attract the most superficial, issue-ignorant, aesthetically inclined simpletons disguised as thoughtful voters.

It’s easy to forget just how much Progressives hate everybody.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump’s a white nationalist redux and much, much more. “So predictable. This time, the shooter who I will not name cited Trump in his manifesto giving the left more ammunition for their favorite issue. The gunman wanted the media to go after the individuals he singled out in his rantings and the media has delivered right on cue! They always take the bait.”

It’s “RUSSIA!” all over again.

THIS AIN’T NO PARTY: Thousands believed still inside last IS pocket.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been trying to flush jihadists from their last desert holdout in the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border since January.

At the time, Mazloum Kobani, the SDF’s top commander, estimated that the operation would take one month.

Thousands of men, women and children, as well as suspected jihadists, have poured out of Baghouz in recent weeks.

The numbers have baffled the SDF and prompted them to pause the operation several times.

SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel told a news conference Sunday that according to the latest group that quit the pocket, “an estimated 5,000 people” are still holed up inside.

He cautioned, however, that the SDF has not been able to verify that figure.

Those fleeing the enclave have previously reported widely inconsistent figures on the number of people still inside, ranging from thousands to a few hundred.

Gabriel said there was no clear timeline for the end of the operation, but estimated that it may take several more days before IS is driven from its last pocket.

The real tragedy is that none of this would have been necessary if Obama hadn’t dismissed ISIS as “the jayvee” when the group was still small enough to be dealt with quickly.

Related: US planning to leave 1K troops in Syria.

RUN ALL THE CANDIDATES! As the Dem Field Grows, Stacey Abrams Weighs a Bid.

IT’S NOT ABOUT ME, THIS THING I MYSELF DID WHICH I’M TELLING YOU ABOUT BECAUSE YOU CAME TO HEAR ME:

CLOSED COURSE, BAKED DRIVER: Colorado marijuana and driving study: Volunteers get paid to get high.

“The goal is to better understand impaired driving so that we can prevent impaired driving,” said Ashley Brooks-Russell, an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

She is co-directing a study to find out how marijuana affects people who use it every day, people who use it once or twice a week and people who don’t use it at all.

“We know that certain drugs really deteriorate people’s performance behind the wheel. Alcohol is the classic example for that,” said Micahel Kosnett, an Associate Clinical Professor and Medical Toxicologist who is co-directing the study. “Our understanding of how cannabis affects driving is less well developed.”

Oh, I think we understand it well enough.

YES: Plan To Retire USS Truman Early Makes No Sense, Which Is Why The Navy Doesn’t Really Want To Do It.

So why would the sea service propose a move that will reduce the number of carriers to ten for decades to come? The reason is that it was under pressure from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to free up money for other activities, especially development of unmanned warships and other advanced weapons deemed necessary to cope with the growing military power of China. Skipping Truman’s mid-life refueling and complex overhaul would save billions of dollars, not to mention the billions of dollars in additional savings over 20+ years that comes from operating one less carrier.

However, here’s what gets lost in the bargain. The number of carriers that can be kept forward-deployed in places like the Persian Gulf on a typical day falls to three, and all the remaining carriers get overworked—so they wear out sooner. It was not so long ago that trying to meet all the demands of U.S. combatant commanders with only ten carriers resulted in half the carriers stuck in maintenance due to over-use. Just because you cut the number of carriers doesn’t mean you cut U.S. overseas commitments.

Penny wise, pound foolish.

RICK MORAN: Meghan McCain to Trump: ‘No One Will Ever Love You the Way They Loved My Dad.’ “Ms. McCain has a high opinion of her father. Many of the rest of us — not so much.”

“Loved” isn’t a word I hear associated very often with McCain, if that.

FEELZ, NOTHING MORE THAN FEELZ: Disney Director James Gunn Gets Reprieve from Roaming Outrage Mob. “Why do you need to get people fired for hurting your feelings?”

HMM: Two-thirds of all Android antivirus apps are frauds.

The report, published by Austrian antivirus testing outfit AV-Comparatives, was the result of a grueling testing process that took place in January this year and during which the organization’s staff looked at 250 Android antivirus apps available on the official Google Play Store.

The report’s results are tragicomical –with antivirus apps detecting themselves as malware– and come to show the sorry state of Android antivirus industry, which appears to be filled with more snake-oilers than actual cyber-security vendors.

The AV-Comparatives team said that out of the 250 apps they’ve tested, only 80 detected more than 30 percent of the malware they threw at each app during individual tests.

The tests weren’t even that complicated. Researchers installed each antivirus app on a separate device (no emulator involved) and automated the device to open a browser, download a malicious app, and then install it.

Be careful out there.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM: Just War vs. Just Plain-Old Jihad. “The West and the Islamic world consider far different justifications for deadly conflict.”

ANDREW KLAVAN: My Thoughts And Prayers.

When tragedy or atrocity strikes — as it just did with the mosque shootings in New Zealand — thoughts and prayers are not just an expression of compassion. They are, more importantly and more wisely, an expression of humility and helplessness. They are a way of saying: “There is nothing we can do in the face of this wickedness but we stand in solidarity with the victims and ask God to comfort their families in their sorrow.”

Almost every other reaction is absurd. To suggest you have the solution to the eternal problem of evil in the form of addressing your pet peeve or of blaming and attacking your political opponents is disgraceful. It is to use the bodies of the slain for a soap box. It degrades you and insults the victims.

Yes.