GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Erdogan calls on Turks to convert hard currency, gold into lira, after the local currency tumbled to a record low this week.

If Erdogan’s wider powers don’t already include the authority to confiscate gold, they soon might.

TOMORROW’S SPIN — TODAY! Record High Jobs, Low Unemployment, Doom Trump.

OH: Osama Bin Laden May Have Planned 9/11 to Unleash the Apocalypse.

Maybe he was onto something — do MOABs count?

NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG. Longtime staffer for Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein was reportedly a Chinese spy.

CHANGE: Venezuela Eases Currency Controls Amid Economic Meltdown.

Venezuela repealed portions of laws governing foreign exchange, enabling businesses and individuals to swap money at designated trading houses and increasing access to hard currency after more than a decade of strict controls.

The changes passed by the politically omnipotent constituent assembly Thursday are to take effect Aug. 20, when the government is simultaneously planning to slash five zeroes off denominations of its near-worthless bolivar currency. Inflation that could reach 1 million percent this year and a deep depression have forced President Nicolas Maduro to begin dismantling a Byzantine system that has left citizens desperate for food and medicine.

Well, good. But it’s weird how the new Assembly’s wider powers failed to stem the country’s currency woes and they ended up having to inject a little capitalism back into the system.

HOW TO READ THE NEWS LIKE A PRO: Can the press get anything right about Venezuela — or anything else?

MATT MARGOLIS: Six Times the Obama Administration Should Have Appointed Special Counsel. “Their sham investigations were used to keep up the ruse that Obama was scandal-free.”

SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: One Year After He Was Nearly Killed, Scalise Is Still Receiving Assassination Threats.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Related: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History.

FOREIGN MEDDLING? Latino Groups Go To War With Facebook For Requiring ID To Buy Political Ads.

SARAH JEONG AND HER NEW WHITE COWORKERS AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: Every one of them knows that she hates and disdains them… and every one of them also knows that they’d better keep their damn mouths shut about it.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I dunno, the next white guy laid off will have a pretty good “hostile environment” claim. . .

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Public Enemies and Much, Much More. “Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders performed a beat down on anti-Trump resistance activist Jim Acosta of the political street gang known as CNN.”

DUMB: Apple shuts App Store affiliate program, imperiling recommendation sites.
“TouchArcade: ‘Apple extending a massive middle finger” to third-party linkers’.”

This might be understandable if the App Store weren’t such a mess, but it is.

SHE’S STILL GOT IT: Navy’s Old Harpoon Anti-Ship Missile To Get New Tricks After Scoring Six For Six At RIMPAC.

During the U.S. Navy’s giant Rim of The Pacific (RIMPAC) international naval exercises, which occurs every other year off the coast of Hawaii, six Harpoons of various sub-types were fired off at targets, which include two decommissioned warships, the ex-USS Racine and the ex-USS McKlusky. These six missiles were fired from U.S. and Australian P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft in the air, from the Singaporean frigate RSS Tenacious on the ocean’s surface, and from an American Los Angeles class fast attack submarine from below the waves.

Out of the six missiles fired, every one of them worked just as advertised, resulting in an awesome showing for Boeing’s supposedly near-obsolete anti-ship missile.

What’s really remarkable is that the US-fired missiles probably spent the last 20 years in storage.

ASHE SCHOW: Study Shows Liberal Universities Show Liberal Bias Even In Tweets.

Andrew Selepak, a researcher at the University of Florida, analyzed more than 1,000 tweets sent by the top 25 and bottom 25 universities on the U.S. News and World Report’s 2016 college ranking. He found that more than 80% of the tweets were politically neutral, but tweets that included political statements by the top 25 schools were overwhelmingly liberal, according to Campus Reform’s Toni Airaksinen.

“Among the elite universities, for example, Selepak documented 87 pro-liberal tweets in comparison to 30 pro-conservative tweets, whereas less prestigious colleges sent out more politically balanced tweets: 35 liberal tweets compared to 30 conservative-leaning tweets,” Airaksinen wrote.

Honestly I would have expected the numbers to be much more lopsided. Perhaps Selepak could gather a larger sample, because 1,000 tweets is not that many.

BECKET ADAMS: CNN contributor (wrongly) accuses Trump of treason.

They keep using this word. I do not think it means what they think it means. Ret. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, who fled Fox News for CNN in March, accused President Trump this week of treason.

“Collusion outright may not be a crime in and of itself,” he said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “[but] treason is a crime. Collaborating and conspiring with a hostile foreign power against the United States is a crime.”

Peters added, “Receiving material support, clandestine material support from a hostile foreign power is a crime. And we get to the people around Trump. Money laundering is a crime. Tax fraud is a crime. Lying under oath is a crime.”

Let’s back this train up for a second and look at his treason allegation. The politest way to respond is to say: He’s full of it.

I’ve enjoyed reading Peters’ novels since the late ’80s. Red Army, The War in 2020, and especially Flames of Heaven remain favorites to this day. And his non-fiction work for the US Army War College magazine Parameters during the Nineties and early Naughts was always brilliant and frequently prescient.

But lately he’s really come unhinged.

TYLER O’NEIL: RNC Declares War on the Kochs. “Tells donors it is ‘NECESSARY’ to keep the Party in business.”

IVANKA TRUMP: Family Separations ‘a Low Point for Me,’ but ‘We Are a Country of Laws.’

NEWS YOU CAN USE? How to Pair Wine With Gummy Bears.

GOOD NEWS: Independent US craft beer production up 5% so far in 2018.

SCRAPPLEFACE: NFL Players to Kneel Over Cowboys QB Anthem Stand.

COROLLARY TO PARKINSON’S LAW: Scripting expands to fill the bandwidth available for downloading.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT: Hardcore ISIS Foreign Fighters ‘Who Represent Some of the Biggest Threats to Our Nations’ in New SDF Battle. “British coalition general stresses ahead of SDF operation that ‘we should be in no doubt that the campaign to defeat ISIS is not yet over’.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP: Americans Having Fewer Kids Now Than in Past 42 Years.

AT LEAST IT ISN’T ANOTHER OVER-HOPPED IPA: One of the world’s largest beer makers is about to start producing marijuana-infused drinks.