EDITORIAL: Trump’s Anti-Press Talk Makes Us Feel Bad.

MICHAEL WALSH: When you’ve tried everything else… why not go with a proven, murderous, inhuman failure?

DON’T BE EVIL OR WHATEVS: Google Knows Where You Are, Even If You Disable Tracking.

ANALYSIS: Don’t expect Beijing’s South China Sea ‘breakthrough’ to weaken US ties with Asean nations. “While Chinese state media hailed a new code of a conduct in the disputed waters as a ‘rebuke for foreign meddling’, Southeast Asian states are likely to be keen to maintain long-standing ties to Washington.”

Indeed. China’s naked aggression in the region seems more likely to strengthen American ties to smaller nations in the region than anything else.

WAPO HEADLINE: “White-supremacist rally near White House dwarfed by thousands of anti-hate protesters.”

“Anti-hate” seems like a strange word to describe protestors who chanted hate against borders, police, and their own country.

#HIMTOO? Democratic Representative Keith Ellison Accused of Domestic Violence.

Ed Morrissey advises you to question the timing.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Antifa, Omarosa and Much, Much More. “You can get a sense of the counter-protestors agenda by their chants like ‘cops and Klan go hand in hand’ and ‘No borders, no walls, no USA at all.’ Politico reports that ‘Some counterprotesters shot fireworks in the direction of police officers around the time that Unite the Right participants were escorted away. Some protesters also threw eggs at police officers’.”

LET’S GET FRACKING: $90 Oil Is A Very Real Possibility.

SO A HELPFUL READER BROUGHT THIS TO MY ATTENTION ON FACEBOOK YESTERDAY:

If you see it pop up on your feed, just send them an education link about that other holocaust, Holodomor.

Update: Holodomor.org seems to be having issues this morning, directing readers to a WordPress installation page. Hopefully they’ll get it sorted out quickly.

WELL, GOOD: U.S. Navy Boosts Submarine Plans As Tensions With Russia And China Worsen.

The Navy needs more attack subs. They are literally the only warships that can perform many of the missions they are assigned. During the Obama years, the rock-bottom number the Navy considered acceptable was 48, a number it will dip below midway through the next decade. But that goal was driven by a national security strategy that drastically under-estimated the threat likely to be posed by Russia and China — not to mention Iran and North Korea — in the years ahead. The strategy resulted in naval shipbuilding budgets being under-funded.

Today, things have changed. The Trump national defense strategy frankly acknowledges that Russia, China, and several lesser nations are “revisionist” powers bent on challenging U.S. interests. It also acknowledges that while America has been distracted fighting terrorists in Southwest Asia, those countries have made big strides in improving their military capabilities and fielding new warfighting technologies. President Trump’s big increase in defense spending last year was a recognition that threat levels demand more resources.

The Navy now has a new goal for its attack sub fleet. It wants 66 boats, a 38% increase over the plan inherited from the Obama years.

The brilliant strategic thinkers of the previous Administration seemed to have based their plans on the assumption that China and Russia were getting nicer, and that the oceans were getting smaller.

BECAUSE SOCIALISM. NEXT QUESTION? Venezuela has dirt-cheap fuel, so why is driving nearly impossible?

Under the late Hugo Chávez, who ushered in Venezuela’s socialist revolution in 1999, a new constitution and numerous elections placed nearly all government institutions under the control of the ruling Socialist party.

This concentration of power was aided by a feuding opposition which carried out ineffectual campaigns and electoral boycotts. After Chávez died of cancer in 2013, he was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro who is even less tolerant of dissent.

Growing political authoritarianism has coincided with greater state dominance over the economy. But expropriations, price controls and mismanagement have led to a 40% contraction of the economy in the past five years.

Oil accounts for 96% of Venezuela’s export income but many foreign companies have been driven out and production has dropped to a 30-year low.

The resulting fiscal crisis has prompted the government to print more money, which has led to hyperinflation and a collapse of the currency.

It also means that the government can’t import enough food and medicine to meet demand.

Maduro has rejected economic reforms out of loyalty to socialism and because many government officials are allegedly getting rich off the economic distortions – through exchange rate scams and by selling scarce food on the black market.

Hand it to The Guardian’s Joe Parkin Daniels and Mariana Zúñiga for some refreshingly straight reporting.

UNSUSTAINABILITY: US Spending On Interest Hits All Time High As Budget Deficit Soars To $684 Billion.

While out of control government spending is clearly a concern, an even bigger problem is what happens to not only the US debt, which recently hit $21.3 trillion, but to the interest on that debt, in a time of rising interest rates.

US government Interest Payments are already rising rapidly, and just hit an all time high of $538 billion in Q2 2018.

Interest costs are increasing due to three factors: an increase in the amount of outstanding debt, higher interest rates and higher inflation. Needless to say, all three are increasing; furthermore, a rise in the inflation rate boosts the upward adjustment to the principal of TIPS, increasing the amount of debt on which the Treasury pays interest, turbocharging the amount of interest expense.

Think about that: Just paying the interest on the debt isn’t much less than this year’s deficit.

BLUE WAVE: Democrats Shoveling Loads of Cash into Longshot Races. “Do the Democrats know something the rest of us don’t?”

You know the drill: Less time on the internet, more time volunteering or donating to a vulnerable candidate.

BRUCE BAWER: Death by Entitlement.

On August 7, the New York Times ran a story by Rukmini Callamachi about Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, a young American couple, both graduates of Georgetown University, who decided to quit their humdrum office jobs and go on an epic bike ride and camping trip that would take them all over the world. “I’ve grown tired of spending the best hours of my day in front of a glowing rectangle, of coloring the best years of my life in swaths of grey and beige,” Austin wrote. “I’ve missed too many sunsets while my back was turned.”

So in July of last year, they flew from Washington, D.C., to Cape Town, and from there bicycled through South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, and Malawi to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. From there, they flew to Cairo, and after seeing the pyramids flew on to Casablanca, from which they cycled through Morocco, Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Greece, to Turkey. From there, another flight took them to Kazakhstan. They biked through Kyrgyzstan and entered Tajikistan. It was in that country that their journey came to an abrupt end this past July 29, when five ISIS members deliberately plowed their car into the two adventurers, killing them along with two temporary cycling companions, one from Switzerland and the other from the Netherlands. “Two days later,” wrote Callimachi, “the Islamic State released a video showing five men it identified as the attackers, sitting before the ISIS flag. They face the camera and make a vow: to kill ‘disbelievers.’”

Read the whole thing.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: GOP Congressman Praises 3D Gun Printing for Making Gun Control ‘Obsolete.’

TYLER O’NEIL: Dem. Staffer Resigns After PJ Media Reports Old Tweets Calling America a ‘Sh*thole Country.’

THAT SEEMS UNWISE: U.S. airstrikes are softening the Islamic State at a key border crossing without any plans for a follow-on ground offensive to deny it to Iran.

REDMOND IS WATCHING YOU: Microsoft Threatens to Shut Down Gab After Anti-Semitic Posts by User.

UNEXPECTED QUESTIONS: Should the U.S. Air Force Bomb Forest Fires? “Earlier this summer, the Swedish Air Force dropped a laser-guided bomb on a forest fire to help suppress the flames. Now there’s a proposal for the United States to do the same, using the might of the U.S. Air Force to fight America’s raging forest fires via bombs and sonic booms. Bombers that have attacked targets in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq could instead strike targets in the continental United States — this time saving lives and property.”

Interesting premise, but why the dig at the Air Force’s mission in Syria, which does save lives from ISIS?

OK THEN: Russian Prime Minister Says U.S. Sanctions Will Be Considered an Act of ‘Economic War.’

Russia’s economy is about one-sixth the size of the US. That’s slightly smaller than South Korea’s, despite having nearly three times more people.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The Space Force, PJ Media’s Impact, and Much, Much More. “So… I may be partly responsible for a Democrat operative leaving a campaign in Arizona.”

Tyler O’Neil is filling in for Liz today.

BRAVE NEW WORLD: Homeless people wearing barcodes to accept cashless payments.

A new social innovation project, called Greater Change, hands homeless people a QR code, similar to the kind issued for online tickets.

Passersby who wish to give money – but who may not have any change in their pocket – can scan the code using their smart phone, and make an online payment to the person.

The donation goes into an account which is managed by a case worker who ensures that the money is spent on agreed targets, such as saving for a rental deposit or a new passport.

“The problem we’re trying to solve here is that we live in an increasingly cashless society and as well as this when people give they worry about what this money might be spent on,” Alex McCallion, founder of Greater Change, told the BBC.

How about a blockchain pauper’s oath to go with it?

COLLUSION! Russia’s ruble plunges on US sanctions news.

HMM: In Alarming New Study, Nuclear Lab Scientists Question U.S. Weapons’ Performance.

Here are some excerpts from the scientific paper:

“Nuclear tests gave decisive, direct evidence about the behavior of new weapons destined for the stockpile….Virtually no comparable data exist on the nuclear performance of stockpiled weapons in their current state.”

“The nuclear weapons laboratories have a continuing responsibility for maintaining the safety, performance and reliability of these weapons as long as they remain in service….This responsibility cannot adequately be met within the SSP.” (Stockpile Stewardship Program)

“But this approach does not take into account the facts that in the past some serious problems were revealed only as a result of a nuclear test, or that nuclear test data are required to develop and validate the scientific judgement and computer codes that must be used to assess the nuclear performance of weapons .”

“We note further that in the absence of testing the current stockpile maintenance program inevitably promotes a shift in the standard of assurance for the performance of stockpiled weapons from ‘decisive, direct evidence of proper performance’ to ‘absence of evidence of unacceptable performance.’ In so doing, the nuclear weapons program is clearly flying in the face of extensive experience concerning the standards that must be met to confirm the safety, performance and reliability of complex, high-consequence systems.”

Sure would be nice if we could test the damn things once in a while.

REQUIRED READING: Thomas Sowell’s ‘Discrimination and Disparities’ Is The Book About Racism That America Needs. “Sowell’s calm and calculated look at racial disparity in America is a stunning work of brevity and reason.”

Sowell certainly does not suggest that discrimination doesn’t exist, but he does break it down into two essential categories. The first is discrimination that is based on evidence and can be positive, such as “a person of discriminating taste.” The second is discrimination based on animosity towards a group. Importantly, Sowell divides the first form into two groups. The first takes no notice of race; the second takes race into account, but only based on accurate information.

Sowell is essentially rejecting the progressive premise that there is no difference between racism based in hatred and racism based in accepting racist systems and disparate outcomes. As it turns out, attempts to address evidence-based discrimination that seek to eliminate the discrimination itself can have bad outcomes, especially for those who are members of groups with more negative outcomes.

One example of this he gives is that progressives widely see criminal background checks for employment as racist. But in reality, employers that use background checks employ black workers at a higher rate. This is because without the checks blacks with clean records suffer from the fact that they belong to a group with a higher crime rate. Ideally, one could argue that employers shouldn’t take group tendencies into account, but until that happens, background checks are a solution that actually works.

Yes, but that doesn’t keep Democrat voter groups riled up.

Anyway — Sowell’s latest has gone to the top of my reading list.