CHRISTIAN TOTO: The One Reason Media Refuse to Cite for Bad Box Office.

RELATED: Spielberg-Lucas “Blockbuster Implosion” Omen Prevails.

Spielberg said at the time: “That’s the big danger, and there’s eventually going to be an implosion — or a big meltdown. There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen mega budget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm.”

Other huge flops this year include “Life” — the sci fi movie no one saw, “Monster Trucks,” which was a monster disaster. “Ghost in the Shell” with Scarlett Johansson also came and went quickly. Plus Will Ferrell’s “The Office” was a total write off, and Sony’s “Rough Night” was an embarrassment.

I’m not counting the $100 million plus lost on “The Promise,” because it was a vanity production.

This year also brought Tom Hanks’s biggest flop in decades, “The Circle.” And of course there were the two misbegotten TV remakes– “Baywatch” and “CHiPs.”

Even blockbusters that seemed like hits weren’t — “Pirates of the Caribbean 5” was a bloated mess. And “Transformers 5” was so bad that critics wondered why it was made. “The Mummy” also reeked of failure and desperation.

Hollywood has a long list of creative ills, but seven-figure vanity productions might be the least excusable.

HEATHER MAC DONALD: Don’t Even Think About Being Evil – Corporate America has managed to make higher education look like an open marketplace of ideas.

Mr. Damore’s fate was foreshadowed by the sacking of Harvard president Larry Summers in 2006. At a conference the previous year, Mr. Summers had hypothesized that the unequal distribution of the highest-level mathematical abilities may contribute to the sex disparity of science faculties. Numerous studies have confirmed that men predominate at the farthest reaches of math skills (high and low).

Mr. Summers’s carefully qualified speculation infamously provoked MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins to flee the room and tell reporters she “would’ve either blacked out or thrown up” had she stayed. Mr. Summers issued a groveling retraction and ponied up a cool $50 million for more gender-diversity initiatives, but his tenure as president was doomed.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai employed the same bathetic language of injury in his response to Mr. Damore. “The memo has clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender,” he asserted in a memo of his own. Yonatan Zunger, a recently departed Google senior engineer, claimed in an online essay that the speculations of Mr. Damore, a junior employee, have “caused significant harm to people across this company, and to the company’s entire ability to function.” He added that “not all conversations about ideas even have basic legitimacy” (emphasis his).

This is what happens when a multibillion-dollar corporation is run and largely staffed by crybullies.

Plus: “When a gigantic corporation that controls our data and knows us intimately takes a controversial political stance, it ought to make us worry,” the wise man once wrote.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 5 Things to Know About the Alabama Senate Primary Elections.

UNITE? YOU KEEP USING THAT WORD… “Unite the Right” leader attacks Trump — for letting his daughter marry a Jew.

RIP: Joe Bologna, Star of “My Favorite Year,” Half of Hollywood’s Most Married (And Happiest) Couple.

My Favorite Year is an under-appreciated gem, and also features one of Peter O’Toole’s most enjoyable performances.

OH: Iran filling vacuum left by IS retreat in Syria, Iraq, Mossad chief warns.

“The areas where Daesh [an Arabic term for IS] presence is decreasing, Iran is working to fill the void,” Mossad chief Yossi Cohen said during a security briefing to cabinet ministers on Sunday.

In late 2014, the terrorist group controlled approximately 100,000 square kilometers (38,610 square miles) of territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria, according to the US-based RAND Corporation think tank. (The group also controlled an additional 10,000 square kilometers in Nigeria, Libya, Afghanistan and Egypt.) It started losing ground in 2015 and currently controls less than half that area, or some 36,200 square kilometers (14,000 square miles), according to the IHS Conflict Monitor intelligence think tank.

Israeli security officials have warned that Tehran may use the area of western Iraq and eastern Syria as a “land bridge” connecting the Islamic Republic to Lebanon, through which it can move fighters and weaponry.

Cohen said Iran is also taking over territory for itself and its proxies in Lebanon and Yemen.

The Mossad chief noted that in the two years since the signing of the Iran nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Tehran has not abandoned its desire to develop nuclear weapons, and that the agreement “only reinforced that trend and strengthened Iranian aggression in the region.”

You don’t say.

PENNSYLVANIA, MICHIGAN, AND WISCONSIN COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Trump acts like the president of the Red States of America.

FIGHTING NOT-SO-VAINLY THE OLD ENNUI? Why Generation X Might Be Our Last, Best Hope.

The members of the in-between generation have moved through life squeezed fore and aft, with these tremendous populations pressing on either side, demanding we grow up and move away, or grow old and die—get out, delete your account, kill yourself. But it’s become clear to me that if this nation has any chance of survival, of carrying its traditions deep into the 21st century, it will in no small part depend on members of my generation, Generation X, the last Americans schooled in the old manner, the last Americans that know how to fold a newspaper, take a joke, and listen to a dirty story without losing their minds.
…
Though much derided, members of my generation turn out to be something like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca—we’ve seen everything and grown tired of history and all the fighting and so have opened our own little joint at the edge of the desert, the last outpost in a world gone mad, the last light in the last saloon on the darkest night of the year. It’s not those who stormed the beaches and won the war, nor the hula-hooped millions who followed, nor what we have coming out of the colleges now—it’s Generation X that will be called the greatest.

I rather doubt that last bit, but Rich Cohen has written an interesting and entertaining piece.

UPDATE: More on this from Jon Gabriel. “Boomers and Millennials, writ large, subscribe to the unconstrained vision; Gen X to the constrained, or tragic, vision. Perhaps we should start calling my generation the Sowell generation.”

RON RADOSH: Trump’s Statements on Charlottesville Reveal a Deeply Flawed President at His Worst.

RETENTION: The Air Force’s ‘Quiet Crisis.’

The United States Air Force is bleeding manpower at a rate so alarming Air Force leaders have described it as a ‘quiet crisis.’[1] In an attempt to mollify frustrated personnel, former Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James and Air Force Chief of Staff, General David Goldfein, published directives last year ordering a reduction in additional duties[2]. These burdens were a source of many complaints and reducing them was seen as a way to improve the work environment for airmen. Yet despite successful efforts to reduce some tasks, the service has created a patchwork of uneven standards across the Air Force, further sapping morale and confidence in the service.

The Air Force faces personnel shortages in a number of career fields, but it is currently most pronounced in fighter pilots. It is projected that by October 1, 2017, the Air Force will lack 1,000 aviators, almost a third of the force, and the numbers are set to worsen. The Air Force believes that the primary cause of this exodus is the recent hiring boom by the airline industry which offers experienced military pilots lucrative civilian jobs. Accordingly, the service has offered pilots retention bonuses of up to $35,000 annually, though this has not stemmed the tide.

As the Air Force already offers pilots a robust salary and good benefits in addition to the generous bonus packages, it is likely that financial considerations are not the sole causal factor of the shortage. This is backed by exit survey data from airmen separating in 2015 which revealed that 37% of the personnel found ‘additional duties’ to be a factor in their decision to leave the service.

Less bureaucratic bullcrap, more flight hours.

PRESIDENT HASSAN ROUHANI: Iran could restart nuclear programme within hours.

I’m so old I can remember when Obama sold his nuclear deal with Iran by claiming that “all four pathways to a bomb are blocked.”

GHOST SHIP: Cruise Passengers Spend 10 Days in Darkness Hiding from Pirates.

BRET STEPHENS: Trump, Obama and the Politics of Evasion.

Consider the following propositions:

(1) James Alex Fields Jr., the young man who on Saturday, police say, rammed his Dodge Challenger into a crowd in Charlottesville, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others, was not a “domestic terrorist.”

(2) He was a fatherless, troubled individual who likely experienced economic disenfranchisement as a child of Kentucky and was moved to violence for motives about which we can only guess.

(3) The marchers who gathered in Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee are not necessarily “alt-right.” After all, the alt-right movement encompasses a diverse spectrum of opinion, only some of it racist, and should not be tarred by the rhetoric or actions of a few.

(4) White people should feel no sense of responsibility because a tiny handful of so-called white “nationalists” and “supremacists” falsely claim to speak in their name.

(5) The blame for the events in Charlottesville does not lie with any particular group. Both sides bear their share of guilt and should have shown greater restraint.

(6) President Trump was right on Saturday to avoid stigmatizing any particular group in his remarks condemning violence and hatred. Doing so would unnecessarily elevate the profile of the angry losers and occasionally violent extremists who defame Americans and give them the P.R. victory they were seeking all along.

O.K., now here’s hoping you’re revolted by each of the six preceding points. Because, if you are, then maybe we can at last rethink the policy of euphemism, obfuscation, denial and semantic yoga that typified the Obama administration’s discussions of another form of terrorism.

Read the whole thing.

HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? U.S. Oil Drillers Keep Pressure on OPEC With Record Shale Output.

The forecast comes just as Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the two biggest producers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries promised to strengthen their commitment to cutting production. Crude output in the U.S. meanwhile has climbed in nine of the last 10 months. Prices declined to a three-week low Monday as the growing U.S. output and signs of lower demand from China stoked concern that a global oversupply will linger.

Shale drillers such as Pioneer Natural Resources Co. and Devon Energy Corp. have been taking advantage of price rallies near $50 a barrel to hedge their output for next year and beyond, with some producers locking in prices as far out as 2023, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The EIA expanded its monthly forecasts to include the Anadarko shale region, which spans 24 Oklahoma and five Texas counties. The region, a well-established oil and gas producing area, has seen an uptick in improved drilling and completion technology, the agency said in its monthly Drilling Productivity report released Monday.

I’m so old I can remember when America’s peak oil days were well behind us.

YOU DON’T SAY: Islamic radicalization has skyrocketed in France in the last two years.

French Minister of the Interior Gérard Collomb reported on Friday that individuals reported as radicals and connected with terrorist organizations has jumped 60 percent in the last two years, and that the number is steadily increasing.

According to Ouest France, some 18,500 people in France are registered as potential radicals. This is an increase from 11,400 cases of potential radicalization as reported by “terrorism-related terrorist prevention” in March 2015. The database tracks the personal information of watched individuals, as well as their alleged connections to terrorist groups.

According to Ouest France, the suspected terrorists are not just men, but women and children as well.

This will not end well.

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Emails show Trump camp blew-off repeated attempts to set up meetings with Russians.

“THIS IS NOT A PEACEFUL PROTEST”: Richmond Local CBS Photojournalist Left Bloodied After Unprovoked Attack by Antifa Protesters.

Collectivist thugs are collectivist thugs.

A TIMELY REMINDER FROM DONALD SENSING: Nazism’s Marxist Roots.

We are calling one side the “alt-right” for no other reason than it’s easier to keep score, I guess, like we call one team a home team and the other visitors, but they’re both baseball teams. What we really saw in Charlottesville was two far-left groups having at each other because neither will countenance a competitor.

Yes, some of the demonstrators carried Nazi flags, just as some of the counter-demos carried hammer-and-sickle Soviet flags. In fact, those flags are almost interchangeable. Everyone knows and acknowledges that Soviet Communism was based on Marxism, hence Marxism and its spawn today are “Left,” but everyone also apparently thinks that Fascism and Nazism apparently just sprang up our of thin air with no relation to political theories and contexts that came before, and that Fascism and Nazism were and are “Right.”

Untrue. Both Fascism and Nazism were founded on Marxist theory and belonged firmly on the Left side of the spectrum, according to their founders.

Read the whole thing.

EASY MONEY: Panicking About North Korea’s Nukes? The Stock Market Isn’t.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The science behind sexbot creation.

BREAKING: Car attack kills one and injures seven outside Paris.

EGADS: Europe Is Experiencing a Butter Shortage and Bakers Say It’s a ‘Major Crisis.’

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? New study says drinking beer leads to mental clarity.

The science is settled.

FUNNY COMING FROM A SENATOR WHO JUST VOTED AGAINST REPLACING IT: McCain Says ‘I Still Believe’ Obamacare Can be Replaced; ‘I Believe We Must.’

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Maduro’s Son Threatens to Take Over White House With Rifles.