VLADIMIR PUTIN: North Korea crisis could be ‘impossible’ to solve.

Putin made the comments after meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia.

Putin repeated his assertion that sanctions won’t be enough to rein in North Korea, and cautioned against getting “emotional” over the issue and pushing the regime “into a corner.”

“We should be cold-blooded and we should avoid steps to escalate tension,” Putin said. “Without political and diplomatic levels, this situation will be very difficult to resolve and I think even impossible to do.”

The real problem is that China continues to spoil and overprotect its rotten child.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Hurricane DACA, the Iran Deal and Much, Much More.

MARC THIESSEN: Antifa are domestic terrorists. Meet their academic apologist.

There is no better example of an opponent of open-minded inquiry and robust debate than Mark Bray, a Dartmouth lecturer who has become the country’s leading academic apologist for antifa — a neo-Marxist movement that attacks peaceful protesters and uses violence to shut down free speech. Bray recently published a pro-antifa book, “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” (and to make his allegiance clear, he’s donating part of the proceeds to antifa groups). He openly defends antifa’s violent tactics, which he calls “both ethically justifiable and strategically effective.”

When Bray recently appeared on Meet the Press, moderator Chuck Todd told him “You seem to be a very small minority here who is defending the idea of violence,” Bray did not deny it.

Read the whole thing.

OUCH: Utah Will Fork Over $10 Million to Cover Obamacare Insurer’s Debt.

TONI AIRAKSINEN: Don’t View Obesity as a ‘Health Issue,’ Professors Say.

STUDY: Lack of Access to Financial Services Exacerbates Racial Wealth Disparities.

Busette said that median accumulated wealth for white households in America is about $111,000, while African-American households have accumulated about $7,000. According to numbers released this year by the Economic Policy Institute, the gap is even wider, with median wealth for white households recorded at $134,230 and black households $11,030. Average wealth, according to EPI, is $678,737 versus $95,261.

EPI also broke down the wealth gap by distribution of college and graduate degrees. White college degree holders reported about $180,500 in median wealth accumulation versus $23,400 for African-Americans. For graduate degrees, the difference is $293,100 to $84,000.

“That gives you an idea of the disparity and why it’s so important to have folks included in the formal financial system,” Busette said.

Successful inclusion into a bourgeois institution like the financial system requires the adoption of bourgeois values and behaviors.

INDEED IT DOES: First Amendment Protects Cinema’s Right to Show Unicorn Masturbation Scene While Serving Alcohol, Says Judge.

ED ROGERS: A 2020 Democratic agenda is emerging.

As I see it, the ante to be in the game as a serious contender for the Democratic nomination will include uniform positions on at least five issues. Specifically, any Democrat who wants to be taken seriously must support a single-payer health-care system, a $15 minimum wage, free college tuition, affirmative support for sanctuary cities along with minimal immigration controls and, finally, a contender must completely embrace Black Lives Matter and engage in a probing courtship with the radical pseudo-group the “antifa.”

The race to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2020 will be a race to the left. The Bernie Sanders agenda has taken root. By the time the Democrats’ nominating process was complete in 2016, Hillary Clinton had become Bernie Sanders-lite. I see the next Democratic nominee as likely to be Sanders on steroids.

That’s the ticket.

HMM: Buoyed by Gains Among Republicans, Union Approval at Highest Levels Since 2003.

More than 60 percent of American adults approve of labor unions, according to Gallup, which has measured the popularity of unions since 1936. The findings represented a resurgence for the labor movement after support dipped to 48 percent in 2009—the first time that union support dropped below 50 percent—though it still lags behind union approval over the last several decades.

“After plummeting in 2009, union approval remained lower than in its heyday but began climbing,” Gallup said.

Political partisanship plays a large role in shaping support for labor unions with Democrats, at 81 percent, about twice as likely as Republicans to support them. Republican support has risen from 26 percent in 2009 to 42 percent in 2017. Gallup said the election of Donald Trump may be responsible for the increase in popularity. Trump has made blue-collar job creation a top priority, championing manufacturing and infrastructure spending, as well as his opposition to free trade deals, a position he shares with unions.

To be fair, there’s not much left of unions in the private sector, and it’s a good bet that support for public sector unions is much lower.

BOOM: South Korea’s defense minister suggests bringing back tactical U.S. nuclear weapons.

ACTUALLY, THERE’S A LOT OF WIGGLE ROOM IN TODAY’S ANNOUNCEMENT: DACA Begins ‘Orderly, Lawful Wind-Down,’ with Current Applications Still Processed.

UH-OH: North Korea threat prompts Japan evacuation preparations.

There are currently about 38,000 long-term Japanese residents in South Korea, as well as another 19,000 or so tourists and other short-term travelers. “If the U.S. decided on a military strike against the North, the Japanese government would start moving toward an evacuation on its own accord regardless of whether the American plans are public,” a Japanese government source said.

Tokyo is working on a four-tier emergency plan based on the severity of the situation: discouraging unessential travel to South Korea, discouraging all travel to South Korea, urging Japanese citizens there to evacuate, and finally, urging them to shelter in place.

Should skirmishes erupt between the two Koreas, for example, the Japanese government would discourage all new travel to South Korea. At the same time, it would urge citizens already there to evacuate using commercial flights. Although the Japanese Embassy would help secure airline reservations, the government’s role under this scenario would mainly be to provide information.

There’s a lot of commercial air traffic in the region, which would presumably all be grounded in the event of a military crisis. It’s also easy to imagine a mass exodus from Seoul, which is home to nearly half of the South’s 52 million people.

Foreign nationals in Korea had better have a plan in place, a backup plan, and a backup to the backup plan.

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

TRUE CONFESSIONS: I Was a Stay-at-Home Mom and Have Zero Regrets.

HARDER, PLEASE: Merged Offline and Online Offensives Hit ISIS.

A SIMPLE MISUNDERSTANDING? Ohio news photographer reportedly shot by deputy while setting up to take pictures of traffic stop.

He was rushed to Miami Valley Hospital for surgery and is expected to recover.

Grimm had left the newsroom around 10 p.m. on Monday to take pictures of a lightning storm, the paper said. While he was taking pictures, a traffic stop occurred on the same road, according to the article.

“I was going out to take pictures and I saw the traffic stop and I thought, ‘Hey, cool. I’ll get some pictures here.'” he told the newspaper. He said he pulled into a parking lot in full view of the deputy, got out of his Jeep and started setting up his tripod and camera. “I turned around toward the cars and then ‘pop, pop.”

The newspaper speculated that the deputy may have mistaken the camera for a weapon. Grimm said the deputy, identified in reports as Jake Shaw, gave him no warning.

“I was just doing my job,” he said. “I know Jake. I like Jake. I don’t want him to lose his job over this.”

That might be taking “high-trust society” a step too far.

EUROPE’S NEW LIE: Comparing Asylum Shelters to Nazi Concentration Camps.

Recently, Franco Berardi, the Italian author of a play in Germany, “Auschwitz on the Beach”, charged Europeans with setting up “concentration camps” on its territory. One line in the performance was, “Salt water has replaced Zyklon B” — a reference to the poison gas used by the Nazis in World War II to exterminate Jews. After protests from the Jewish community, the play was cancelled. Adam Szymczyk, the director of the Documenta exhibition, defined the show as a “warning against historical amnesia, a moral wake-up call, a call to collective action”. This response, while true for the mass-murder of Jews, is a grotesque distortion of what has been happening in Europe for the last three years. On the contrary, governments, non-governmental organizations, bureaucrats, charities and the media have all embraced migrants in the millions, and welcomed them with open arms. The Jews during the Second World War — most of whom were turned away, turned in or betrayed by all European governments — were not so fortunate.

The current misrepresentation was first formulated by Sweden’s deputy prime minister, Asa Romson. “We are turning the Mediterranean into the new Auschwitz”, she said. Since then, this sham comparison has entered into the European mainstream, and the death of six million Jews has been turned into an ideological platform — a parable of human suffering — to justify importing even more unknown migrants.

The question European voters must ask themselves is: Importing them to what purpose?

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Republican Congressman Determined to Protect DACA with House Discharge Petition.

PLEASED TO MEET YOU: This is the US military arsenal poised to WIPE OUT Kim’s threat.

I WOULD CERTAINLY HOPE NOT: Has Iraq Stopped Cheating On The OPEC Deal?

STEPHEN KRUISER: Canada Demanding U.S. End ‘Right to Work’ Laws as Part of NAFTA Renegotiation.

CHANGE? Cuba opens 5-month transition likely to end Castro reign.

Over the rest of September, Cubans will meet in small groups to nominate municipal representatives, the first in a series of votes for local, provincial and, finally, national officials.

In the second electoral stage, a commission dominated by government-linked organizations will pick all the candidates for elections to provincial assemblies and Cuba’s national assembly.

The national assembly is expected to pick the president and members of the powerful Council of State by February. Castro has said he will leave the presidency by that date but he is expected to remain head of the Communist Party, giving him power that may be equal to or greater than the new president’s.

There’s even less change coming that that last line allows for, given that “the government does not allow the participation of parties other than the ruling Communist Party and has worked to quash the election of individual opposition candidates.”

If you like your Communism, you can keep your Communism — or else.

SINGLE PAYER, SINGLE SUPPORTER: 2020 Democratic Hopefuls Aren’t Backing Bernie Sanders’ Single Payer Bill.

California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris is the only high-profile lawmaker to openly approve the plan. However, other Democrats and progressives alike have been slow to support the measure.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe haven’t spoken publicly about the proposed measure, and other high-profile Democrats like Sens. Chris Murphy, Sherrod Brown, and Kirsten Gillibrand have yet to announce their support as well.

Some, like Sen. Cory Booker seemed to believe that pursuing such a far-left idea in a Republican-controlled Congress was unlikely to actually pass. “I don’t know how we get it done in this environment,” a spokeswoman for Booker told The Hill.

Democrats are in the precarious position of needing to virtue-signal their support to Democratic primary voters, without poisoning their chances in the general election. Although to be fair, Democratic voters can be amazingly sympathetic (ahem) to candidates whose positions magically “evolve” leftward after they assume office.

NOT DISRESPECTFUL, JUST HONEST: Turkey slams Germany’s ‘disrespectful messages’ about Erdogan, democratic values.

Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for the Turkish presidency, said in a tweet Monday that Merkel and her Social Democratic Party rival were seeking to divert attention from urgent issues in their country and in Europe, such as a surge in discrimination and racism.

In Sunday’s debate, Schulz said he would seek to end long-running but currently stalled talks on Turkey joining the EU over what he perceived to be Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian policies.

Merkel, who has previously expressed doubts about Turkey ever joining the EU, refused to commit firmly to the move, which would have to be agreed among EU members. She sharply criticized Erdogan’s rule, saying: “Turkey is departing from all democratic practices at breakneck speed.”

Turkey’s efforts to join the EU were probably doomed from the start. Kemal Ataturk had tried to instill enough Western values and habits to drag his people into modernity, but they never quite took.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: DACA Announcement, Hurricane Irma and Much, Much More.