BE CAREFUL OUT THERE: STDs in American reach a record high for the fourth year in a row, CDC reveals.

BOOM: South Africa Calls for 300,000 Gun Owners to Turn Over Their Weapons.

Though South Africa witnessed rising levels of economic freedom shortly after Apartheid ended in 1994, the country has taken a more interventionist path to economic development in recent years.

This situation is becoming more pronounced with the South African National Assembly recently voting 241-83 to amend the South African constitution to allow for land expropriation without compensation.

The socialist-leaning African National Congress (ANC) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) parties are leading the charge for expropriation under the banner of fixing racial disparities that have supposedly remained intact since Apartheid’s conclusion.

While land confiscation has not been officially finalized, South Africans should worry about the direction their country is going.

And how does gun control fit into this equation?

I think you know the answer to that.

THAT’S ON A STRICTLY NEED-TO-KNOW BASIS, JOHN: Brennan ‘Uncertain’ Whether His Security Clearance Actually Has Been Revoked.

HEH: Trump on McCain: “I like people who don’t die, OK?”

FASTER, PLEASE: Senators Wants President to Designate ‘Critical Cyber Threat Actors’ with Mandatory Sanctions.

China and Russia still harbor many of the same ambitions they held during the Cold War, only having dropped all the Communist ideological window dressing. That one simple trick seems to have blinded our foreign policy establishment for the last couple of decades.

HMM: Tesla’s ‘Affordable’ Model 3 Costs a Bundle to Insure, Study Claims.

The contributing factors to the brand’s above-average insurance rate are twofold. For whatever reason, Tesla models are subject to an abnormally high number of incidents that result in insurance claims, but they’re also more expensive to fix. “Teslas get into a lot of crashes and are costly to repair afterward,” explained Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which operates as the HLDI’s parent organization. “Consumers will pay for that when they go to insure one.”

For the Model 3, the result is tragically high premiums. A recent study conducted by Gabi Personal Insurance Agency Inc. and posted by Automotive News shows the EV’s average insurance cost across 150 ZIP codes is $2,814 per year. That’s $35 less than the cost of insuring a Porsche 911, using the same metrics.

“In the last month we had more and more people coming in with Model 3, and they were all complaining about high insurance costs,” said Gabi CEO Hanno Fichtner. “We found cheaper deals for them, but not as cheap as we thought they would be. We even had customers tell us they are returning their Model 3 due to the high running costs.”

I wonder if this will change when Tesla starts producing lower-spec, less-expensive Model 3s in quantity.

RECOVERY SUMMER, MEET RECOVERY AUTUMN: Inventory Surge Signals Good Start For Q3 GDP.

SMART: Majority of Americans Agree with Trump’s Decision to Revoke Brennan’s Security Clearance. “59 percent felt Brennan should have lost his security clearance and 64 percent said Comey should lose his.”

GOOD LORD: Pet owners abusing their own animals to get drugs.

STIFF COMPETITION: Is This the Stupidest Book Ever Written About Socialism? “The left-wing hosts of the insanely popular Chapo Trap House podcast have no idea what they’re talking about, and their glib new book proves it.”

Bill Scher:

The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts and Reason lives up to its ironic title. The freshly published polemic is co-authored by the hosts—Felix Biederman, Matt Christman, Brendan James, Will Menaker and Virgil Texas—of the socialist, satirical podcast Chapo Trap House. The podcast rakes in six figures a month from more than 20,000 Patreon subscribers. It built its following on withering takedowns of insufficiently leftist liberals who serve up “thin, flavorless gruel” in the dying news media.

The book, which aims to expand the reach of “the Chapo Way,” begins with a self-consciously over-the-top sales pitch. By imbibing the authors’ words, “you’ll become an initiate in the Chapo Mindset and take control of the neurons that govern your weak, fragile emotions.” Apparently, we should take our “Ironic Left” cult leaders seriously, but not always literally.

Yet by the end of the book, it’s hard to escape the nagging feeling that Chapo—the podcast and the book—is, at bottom, an actual, unironic infomercial scheme. They make bank by selling you a candy-coated version of socialism, one that may offend real socialists even more than liberal gruel-peddlers like myself.

Ouch.

IF IT MOVES, TAX IT. IF IT DOESN’T MOVE, TAX IT. IF IT USED TO MOVE, TAX IT. Is California Planning A Statewide Sugar Tax?

In June, lawmakers in Sacramento, with the support of Gov. Brown, passed legislation, Assembly Bill 1838, that bans cities and counties from imposing any additional taxes on sodas and other sugary drinks for the next 12 years (the cities with taxes already in place are allowed keep them).

This would be joyous news if the motivation behind the bill had been to protect consumer sovereignty and personal freedom. Alas, the lawmakers who supported the bill did so for purely strategic reasons: they knew that if they didn’t pass the ban, a voter initiative coming this fall could have made it much harder to local governments to raise taxes in the future. In exchange for the soda tax ban, the voter initiative was withdrawn.

The new law, however, leaves open the possibility of establishing a statewide sugar tax, and many California legislators appear supportive of the idea. The detrimental economic impact of such a measure would be substantial, pushing Californians’ tax burden (already one of the highest in the nation) to new heights.

At least they haven’t put a tax on thingy.

THIS SEEMS LIKE A BIG DEAL: Suspended Pentagon Whistleblower Says FBI’s Russia Probe Was ‘All a Set-Up.’ “Absolute, ironclad document trail” shows that Stefan Halper “foisted the Russians on the Trump officials.”

IT TOOK NEARLY A FULL DAY TO ADMIT THIS: Twitter Reverses Ruling After Backlash, Concedes It’s Against The Rules To Wish Death Upon Dana Loesch’s Children.

Going forward, maybe a little clarity from Twitter HQ.

HEH: How to Write the Perfect Glossy Profile of Beto O’Rourke.

He’s like a Kennedy!

This one is very important. O’Rourke sort of looks like a Kennedy, and he’s young-ish, and he has Correct Thoughts, thus he is “Kennedyesque.” In the #MeToo Era, the left’s fetishization of a notorious womanizer puzzles to a degree, but narratives gonna narrative.

Town and Country: “With a disdain for highly paid consultants, a willingness to travel to unexpected places, and an inspiring message for an extraordinarily divided electorate, it’s hard to look at O’Rourke and not think of Bobby Kennedy in 1968.”

BuzzFeed: “‘There’s a reason people compare him to a Kennedy,’ Sam Hatton, who’s running a scrappy campaign for the Texas House District 71, told me. ‘And it’s not just those Kennedy teeth.'”

Yahoo: “Rep. Joe Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat and grandson of Bobby Kennedy who happens to be a close friend, has joked that O’Rourke is the ‘best looking Kennedy in Washington.'”

Washington Post: “Democrats might look at O’Rourke—a small-business owner with hipster credentials, a Gen Xer who speaks fluent Spanish and looks more like a Kennedy than the Kennedys do—and see a candidate of thrilling national potential, marred only by where he happens to live.”

TIME: “Elderly voters some-times tell him that he reminds them of John F. Kennedy.”

Texas Monthly: “He looks like a Kennedy. (Massachusetts congressman Joe Kennedy III, Bobby’s grandson, jokes that O’Rourke is ‘known as being the best-looking Kennedy in Washington.’)”

Politico: “‘He reminds me of Robert Kennedy, but more so,’ said one of them, Dianne Martin, a 71-year-old South African immigrant who met Kennedy as a schoolgirl on his 1966 trip to the country and predicts O’Rourke will be president someday. ‘I can’t tell you how much I love this man.'”

Rolling Stone: “‘I’m old enough to remember, and he reminds me of Bobby Kennedy,’ says a woman in a blue flower-print dress. ‘You can look at him and tell he means what he says.'”

Vanity Fair: “As Austin-based political strategist Brendan Steinhauser put it, it doesn’t hurt that O’Rourke ‘looks like a damn Kennedy.'”

Lots of great tips here, which apparently the media is all up on top of already.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The ChiComs Stole Hillary’s Emails and Much, Much More. “So, while the fake news media potatoes have been meowing about RUSSIA, RUSSIA COLLUSION, TRUMP TOWER RUSSIAN MEETING, the Chinese were reading all of the Secretary of State’s emails.”

I’m old enough to remember when their were legal consequences for that kind of criminal negligence.

DON’T DO THIS TO YOUR KIDS: Marijuana study finds THC in breast milk up to 6 days after mom’s use.

FLASHBACK: Over 98% Of Mass Shootings Have Occurred Within Gun-Free Zones According To FBI Stats.

YA THINK? ‘This Is a Little Scary’: Texas AG Says Dems’ Call to Decriminalize Illegal Entry Could ‘Cost Lives.’

As Bill Whittle likes to say: We have to build a wall because Democrats wouldn’t let us enforce a border.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Life Without Water: Sweaty, Smelly, and Furious in Caracas.

In Caracas, we go without reliable access to an extensive list of basic life essentials, from toilet paper to toothpaste. But if you ask me, dry taps are by far the most unpleasant of the epic shortages.

Dishes are brushed off and reused, and clothing is not something regularly laundered, though, personally, I draw the line at multiple wearings of underwear or socks. You ask friends whether it’s okay to flush. You often do not. We’re sweaty and, yes, smelly, especially in the rainy season when the humidity can top 80 percent. We’re at risk, too, because water stagnating in the vessels that people stash around their homes attracts mosquitoes; malaria rates have soared.

The poorest, as usual, have it the worst, though no one is spared. Hospitals and schools, posh neighborhoods and slums, they all go without water—at times for weeks on end—making this man-made drought arguably the most equalizing disaster the socialist government has ever managed to engineer.

Running out of water in a country with Venezuela’s geography would be like running out of energy in a country with Venezuela’s geography — achievements only a socialist regime could muster.

I HOPE IT ISN’T SKYNET: Who will mass produce the first lethal drone?

While drones like the DJI Phantom may match the ubiquity of the AK-47, they certainly don’t match the lethality, making them more akin to the Model-T of drones, or perhaps even the Hilux. What the study is looking for is that seamless pairing of ease of use and lethality, and it’s likely the drone that fills this role doesn’t exist yet.

In a section on drone export controls, the study looks at the ways in which nations may collectively prevent such a drone from being sold broadly. The study itself was funded and published by PAX, a nonprofit with the explicit goal of protecting civilians from violence, reducing armed conflict, and building a just peace.

While a far cry from world peace, nations maintaining high barriers to the export of drones is one way to mitigate who ultimately ends up with armed drones. Instead, the study finds that nations are reducing those barriers, making it easier for smaller states, and ones that would have a harder time passing strict betting, to afford and acquire flying machines. Still, these drones remain the purview of states, priced such that nations can buy them, not insurgent groups.

While that’s true for now, a sharp terror group would would keep their drone-building (and lethality) secret until they had enough on hand and ready to deploy for a 9/11-size attack.

PROFILES IN COURAGE: Joe Manchin Struggles to Defend Vote to Fund Planned Parenthood. “I am pro-life, and I think everyone knows.”

BLUE WAVE? GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter up by 8 points despite indictment.

ANOTHER ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF CONCEALED CARRY: Jacksonville shooting survivor describes “most helpless feeling in the world.”

WELL, DON’T TELL THEM: The Left Still Has No Clue Why It’s Losing.

And Don’t Tell Them II: Liberal media’s desperate push for Trump impeachment may actually hurt Democrats.

HMM: That Dem Move On Super-Delegates Is Less Than It Appears.

The Democratic establishment is kinda tattered now as the far-left wing of the party is rising and will likely produce the eventual nominee in what is certain to be a batch of wannabe Trump challengers even larger than the 17 starters in the 2016 GOP field. With so many seekers it’s quite possible no one will have the necessary majority when the convention opens.

As a sop to the left activists feigning reform, party chairman Tom Perez oversaw the vote to deny super-delegates any say. It sounds great, as many Democrat ideas do.

“Today,” Perez proclaimed Saturday, “we demonstrated the values of the Democratic Party. We trust you, we want you to join the party. We will listen to you, we want you to have a seat at the table.”

But there’s a catch, a big catch. Super-delegates cannot vote on the convention’s initial ballot. Wait for it. However, if there’s no winner then, they can weigh in for the establishment on all subsequent ballots. Some reform.

Window-dressing to appease the Democratic Socialist masses?