STEPHEN MILLER: Does the left ever want to win elections again?

I don’t need to debate the merits or the wisdom behind Kaepernick’s actions.There’s been too much of that already. But what is up for debate is the wisdom of the political left throwing in with a gesture that still, to this day and despite what you see on cable news and social media, remains largely unpopular with the voting public. In 2016, a Quinnipac poll found that only 38 percent of those supported NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem. A Reuters poll found that 72 percent found the protest to be unpatriotic but also that 64 percent agreed there should be no punishment or fine.

Thanks to Trump’s reinvigoration of the debate, it didn’t take long for pundits on the left to start suggesting that taking a knee during the national anthem is now a direct protest of Trump himself. D.C. Bureau chief for Mother Jones, David Corn outright stated “The kneel will now become a sign of opposition to Trump,” effectively hijacking the gesture from black activists. Washington Post social justice reporter Wesley Lowery called on colleagues to demand a reasoning from players who chose not to kneel. No word yet if Lowery chose to ask Pittsburgh Steelers tackle and former Army Ranger and Bronze Star recipient Alejandro Villanueva why he chose to stand for the anthem in the tunnel, the only player from the team to do so. Villanueva’s jersey sales have now skyrocketed in only a day. Jon Schwarz from the left leaning site The Intercept wrote “The National Anthem is a Celebration of Slavery”

The left has chosen to make kneeling for the national anthem now a referendum on Trump himself. A larger problem for them, and the NFL in general, is they picked this fight on a day meant to honor Gold Star mothers.

Dumb.

OH, CANADA! Canada Refuses Entry to Chelsea Manning for Crime That Would ‘Equate’ to ‘Treason.’

You read that right: Canada’s Trudeau government is more sensible than the previous American administration.

BOOM: Iraq gives Kurdistan three days to hand over control of airports to avoid embargo.

SNAG: Elon Musk’s Plan to Girdle Earth With Satellites Hits Turbulence.

SpaceX, the rocket startup Musk runs, filed for permission for its constellation of refrigerator-sized satellites late last year. Selling broadband from orbit is a key part of how SpaceX plans to make money beyond its original rocket-launching service.

But the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is poised to deal the project a setback with a decision that could force power reductions on SpaceX satellites, and potentially limit the spectrum they can use, making them less effective.

The regulator will in part defer to the International Telecommunication Union, an agency of the United Nations, on how these new satellite systems need to coordinate and share spectrum, according to a draft set of rules set for a vote Tuesday. The package is likely to pass as it’s backed by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who leads the agency’s Republican majority.

I wonder if the expense and risk inherent to space launches might encourage Musk and his competitors to come up with a better self-regulatory scheme — and faster than the FCC and UN could.

DAILY CALLER: What’s True, False And In-Between In The Trump Dossier?

I SUSPECT THESE WOULD MOSTLY BE CIVILIANS: Korean War Estimates 20,000 Deaths Daily in South Korea.

THE USE OF “STEM” IN THIS HEADLINE IS PROBABLY SEXIST: Prof Claims Allegations of Sexual Harassment Against Him Stem from Disagreeing With Woman.

MUTUAL ASSURED DIGITAL DESTRUCTION: The Global Commons is a Great Good.

From an interview with former NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis:

TCB: Is there a level of hypocrisy when countries who engage in offensive cyber operations abroad but then condemn it when others do it against them, calling it an infringement on their sovereignty?

Inglis: We need to understand that we live in a bit of a glass house, and therefore, the things we practice could become the norms for others who might practice those things against us. There is a certain symmetry here, which is that what we can do to others, can easily be done to us. There are very low barriers to entry – it doesn’t require extraordinary capabilities to do anything, frankly, in cyberspace. Any feature can be picked up, turned around, and used in the reverse direction. In that sense, the old adage, don’t through stones in a glass house because you live in that house and the impacts will come back to you, is true in cyberspace.

Mutual Assured Destruction was never good policy — it was just a Cold War acknowledgement that both sides could build enough nukes to destroy the other, and that there was no way, with the technology of the time, for either side to defend itself.

Since the barriers to entry are far, far lower in digital warfare than in nuclear warfare, you would think that we would take digital defense much more seriously than we seem to do.

CHANGE: Enormous Turnout for Kurdish Independence Referendum. “Nearly 80% turnout as tensions escalate with Turkey and Iran.”

BRUCE BAWER: Misrepresenting Germany in the New York Times.

Case in point: a 14-minute “Times documentary” entitled “Seeking Asylum in Germany – and Finding Hatred.” Credited to Ainara Tiefenthäler, Shane O’Neill, and Andrew Michael Ellis, and posted front and center on the Times website last Thursday, it’s about Abode, a tall, lanky 22-year-old Libyan refugee who, at the beginning of the film, has been living in the Saxon town of Bautzen (pop. 41,000) for over two years.

From the outset, Abode is presented as an innocent victim of racist hatred. We see him in his room at the Bautzen asylum center, talking softly, his large brown eyes oozing sensitivity. We see a cell-phone video in which a young white woman half his size kicks and hits him, apparently without provocation. We see him rehearsing for a hip-hop stage adaptation of Romeo and Juliet in which he plays Mercutio; the theater director, a middle-aged woman, speaks of him glowingly.

Providing contrast to this peaceable young man, we see a ragtag neo-Nazi group in Bautzen’s town square, waving flags and praising Donald Trump. And we see close-ups of racist online comments (in German) about refugees.

Abode says that when he used to see pictures of Europe on TV, he thought it looked wonderful. But now he hates it. “Libya is the land of good,” he says. Germany, by contrast, is a land of Nazis.

“Nazi” is a word he uses a lot. He says he’s had “problems with Nazis and the police” ever since his arrival in Germany. Eventually we discover that he’s been described in the local media as the head of a gang of refugees who engage in rioting and violence. We see a newspaper front page featuring a picture of him aiming a machine gun.

Read the whole thing.

PATRICK POOLE: Puerto Rico’s Governor Dismantles Media Attacks on Trump’s Response to Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

BODIES OF WATER ARE PEOPLE, TOO: The State of Colorado Is Being Sued by…the Colorado River?

Bringing a suit on behalf of the Colorado River is hardly a novel concept in the international arena; similar efforts in Ecuador, Colombia, India and New Zealand have established legal rights for natural resources in those countries.

“There’s a new international law emerging,” says Flores-Williams. “It’s leveling the playing field between corporations and nature, which traditionally has had no say. Now you have courts in India issuing judicial orders on behalf of the Ganges River.”

But in the United States, in order to file a suit on behalf of a natural entity like the Colorado River, you must establish that harm is being done to human beings, because the U.S. legal system is based around people.

The important question is, Does the Colorado River self-identify as a human being — and if so, what is xits preferred gender?

JON GABRIEL: Red Team? Blue Team? Start Your Own Team.

Remember when multimillionaire President Trump criticized a multimillionaire football player last night? Well today, a multimillionaire basketball player said he didn’t want to go to the White House no more. So, President Trump said the multimillionaire basketball player wasn’t welcome at the White House in the first place. And then a different multimillionaire basketball player tweeted something mean at President Trump.

Honestly, I’m just happy the Republic hasn’t collapsed.

A few million put on their Red Team uniforms and rushed to their computers. Another few million put on their Blue Team uniforms and grabbed their iPhones. To the barricades, citizens!

Then they wasted a beautiful Saturday afternoon tweeting at each other.

Melissa and I spent Saturday doing chores and then drinking and talking too loudly with old friends — highly recommended.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: More NFLOL, DACA/Amnesty on the Senate Table, and Much, Much More.

THE NEW-NEW LABOUR: Expel Jewish Group From Party, Israel Like Nazis.

A fringe event at Labour conference has heard calls to expel Jewish activists from the party, while a speaker compared Israel to Nazis and the audience was banned from tweeting in an attempt to silence “hostile” coverage. The room echoed its agreement as a speaker protested that the Jewish Labour Movement was given a campaigning awarded yesterday, instead calling for the group and Labour Friends of Israel to be “kicked out” of the party. A speaker, Miko Peled, said Israel and Israelis should not be treated differently to white South Africans during Apartheid or Nazis. He claimed Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza. He said those present should stop calling Israel by its name, a view taken up by other speakers who then referred to it only as “the Zionist state”. The notorious Tony Greenstein, who was suspended by Labour for ranting about “Zionist scum” was applauded, and there were cheers for Ken Livingstone.

Things like this are becoming less fringe and more “respectable,” because of course the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.

LET’S HOPE SO: Iran’s supposed missile launch was fake, US officials say.

The video released by the Iranians was more than seven months old – dating back to a failed launch in late January, which resulted in the missile exploding shortly after liftoff, according to two U.S. officials.

President Trump had originally responded to the reported launch in a late-Saturday tweet, saying, “Iran just test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel. They are also working with North Korea. Not much of an agreement we have!”

This was after Trump, speaking before world leaders at the United Nations, called the Iran nuclear deal an “embarrassment” to the United States.

One embarrassment doesn’t negate the other.

THE BROKEN EVERYTHING FALLACY: Fed Suggestion That Hurricanes are Good for Economy? Hardly.

Paul Krugman for Fed Chair?

RAHM EMANUEL’S CHICAGO: Fired Chicago Police Superintendent Blasts Obama, Lynch.

He said that politicians and political leaders have characterized data-driven policing as systemic racism, but according to McCarthy, the issue is a flawed economic system that disenfranchises African-American communities. Police, he said, have been repeatedly used as the poster child for questionable interactions involving African-Americans in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Dallas and St. Louis.

He said that disenfranchised communities suffer from poverty and lack family structure, education, resources, optimism, healthcare and public services. These communities also deal with rampant narcotics activity and rampant alcohol abuse, he said, calling it a broken landscape that creates legal cynicism. That cynicism fuels the belief that the law and its agents are ill-equipped to ensure public safety, he said.

“It’s an indictment of the entire system of government that is not providing what those communities need. Look at Flint, Mich. Look at what happened there,” he said. “You don’t see state’s attorneys on the street. You don’t see U.S. attorneys on the street. You don’t see elected officials on the street, unless they’re campaigning, of course.”

What’s exacerbating the problem, he said, is public reaction to questionable incidents involving police and minority groups.

“We’ve misdiagnosed the problem,” he said. “The problem in this country is not the police. The problem in this country is a social and economic divide that puts people in those disenfranchised communities in the positions that they’re in. In essence, we’re taking the wrong medicine for what ails us.”

Turning the police into well-armed social workers was always doomed to fail.

JACK DUNPHY: Journalists Shouldn’t Be Exempt from the Law.

SOMETIMES IT’S NOT-SO-NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY: Shannon Watts tries to stomp NRA after Tenn. church shooting, steps on BIG rake instead.

PRIVACY: Apple does right by users and advertisers are displeased.

AND SO IT BEGINS:

Phil Long is a pretty big deal here in southern Colorado.

ISIS: Hurricanes Show U.S. Must be Overrun with ‘Disasters and Illness.’

FLASHBACK: Anthony Weiner, Andrew Breitbart, and the greatest press conference of all time.

IT’S TIME: Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Walter Jones lend clout to push CIA to release still-secret JFK files.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., are working on a congressional resolution to force intelligence agencies, like the CIA, to fully comply with the JFK Records Act of 1992. Under the statute, government agencies are required to fully disclose all records related to the assassination by Oct. 26, 2017.

An aide to Jones confirmed to the Washington Examiner language for the resolution has already been drafted but is unclear when exactly the measure will be officially offered.

Nearly four million pages of records were released in the late 1990s and in the early part of the decade but another 100,000 pages of assassination-related material has yet to be released and is being held by a dozen different government agencies.

The law does permit the CIA, FBI and other government agencies to postpone the release of still-secret JFK records after Oct. 26 but they can only do so with express written permission from the president.

Jones says the American people are owed the full story and it is the government’s obligation to share the truth of Kennedy’s assassination with the American people.

Surely after a half a century or so, the public has recovered just enough from the shock to handle the whole truth.