SO MANY SNOWFLAKES, ALL ALIKE: 3-in-4 White Democrats Find It ‘Stressful’ To Talk to Trump Supporters.

CHANGE IT BACK: Trump Sidelines State Dept., Tasks Trusted Staffers with Making Case to Decertify Iran.

QUESTION ASKED: Would a Supervolcano Eruption Wipe Us Out?

The past 500 years have been fairly peaceful ones for Campi Flegrei. There have been no eruptions at all since 1538, and that was a comparatively small event that resulted in the formation of the “New Mountain”, Monte Nuovo. But recent events suggest that this period of quiescence may be coming to an end.

An acceleration of processes causing deformation and heating within the caldera saw the Italian government raise the volcano’s threat level in December 2016. Fears are growing that magma deep inside Campi Flegrei could be reaching the “critical degassing pressure”, where a sudden large-scale release of volcanic gases could abruptly inject heat into surrounding hydrothermal fluids and rocks. When this happens on a significant scale, it can cause catastrophic rock failure within the volcano, triggering an eruption. In line with this, a study published in May 2017 found evidence that the supervolcano has been building towards an eruption for decades.

But the difficult question is not if, but when, and just how big an event this would be.

When will environmentalists finally get serious about putting a stop to climate-destroying tectonic plate movements?

PRIORITIES: As chaos envelops Venezuela, Caracas spends millions on lobbyists in Washington.

“The costs for representation is a drop in the bucket when compared to the potential economic loss” of oil sanctions, said C.J. Gimenez, the son of Miami-Dade mayor Carlos Gimenez and a lobbyist who left Avenue Strategies, a firm started by former campaign aides, after the firm decided to pick up Citgo as a client.

U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s oil market could have major financial implications for the Maduro regime and for average Venezuelans. Although Venezuelan crude makes up a small fraction — about 8 percent in 2016 — of all U.S. oil imports, the U.S. buys nearly half of Venezuela’s oil, and oil revenues account for 95 percent of Venezuela’s export earnings, according to OPEC.

Gimenez said Venezuela’s greatest asset is its oil and that Maduro “uses it to fund his continued existence.”

Frack that.

GOOD LORD: A hefty reward awaits the murderer of an Israeli family — courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

Ironically and appallingly, just last week the US State Department published a report blaming Israel for Palestinian terrorism and claiming that the PLO-led, and US-funded Palestinian Authority doesn’t incite terrorism and violence and hatred.

The State Department also opposes the Taylor Force bill which if passed — along the lines passed in the House of Representatives, (the Senate bill is an insult to our intelligence), would end US taxpayer subsidization of Palestinian terrorism to the tune of more than half a billion dollars a year.

The State Department — Tillerson included, apparently, doesn’t see anything wrong with the fact that the PA uses more than $300 million every year to pay people like the murderer who butchered the Solomons and their families.

Having murdered the Solomons in their home, this terrorist is guaranteed a lifetime salary and pension for his family that ensure them all an upper middle class economic status — courtesy of US taxpayers via the “moderate” PA, PLO, Abbas, terror machine.

There’s a lot of swamp to drain at State, but beware the crocodiles.

OFFICIAL CORRUPTION: Kremlin’s Black Cash Described as the ‘New Red Menace.’

WELL, THEY SHOULD: GOP Fears Health Care Fail Could Thin Senate Majority.

AMANDA MARCOTTE: The sad story of Charlie Gard shows there’s no limit to right-wing political vampirism. “A dying baby and his parents have been exploited by conservatives who want to strip Americans of health care.”

Forget it, Jake — it’s Marcotte.

PATRICK POOLE: Media Cartel Feigns Outrage After Trump Tweets on Cancelling CIA’s Syria Program.

COLLUSION: Videos suggest Russian government may be arming Taliban.

The Taliban have received improved weaponry in Afghanistan that appears to have been supplied by the Russian government, according to exclusive videos obtained by CNN, adding weight to accusations by Afghan and American officials that Moscow is arming their one-time foe in the war-torn country.

US generals first suggested they were concerned the Russian government was seeking to arm the Afghan insurgents back in April, but images from the battlefield here corroborating these claims have been hard to come by.

These two videos show sniper rifles, Kalashnikov variants and heavy machine guns that weapons experts say are stripped of any means of identifying their origin.

Maybe it’s time to let the Russians handle Afghanistan — again.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF MUSCLE CARS (CONTINUED): Ford Bumps 2018 Mustang’s Power, Claims Sub-four-second 0-60 Time for GT.

CIVIL DISCOURSE: Kat Timpf Assaulted At Campaign Event.

TONI AIRAKSINEN: College Speech Codes Discriminate Against People With Asperger’s, Prof. Argues.

Worse, they discriminate against anyone with something interesting to say.

NIALL FERGUSON: The meaning of Dunkirk.

The release of Christopher Nolan’s film “Dunkirk” provides a welcome reminder that there have been bigger disasters in British history than last year’s referendum vote to leave the European Union. We have made the best of worse jobs.

May 1940 was, as Winston Churchill said at the beginning of his peerless “finest hour” speech, a “colossal military disaster.” Nolan’s film is a powerful and moving work, but it still understates the magnitude of the calamity. The German newsreels of the time are more chilling for their black and white sobriety. For once, Joseph Goebbels had no need to exaggerate for propaganda purposes: Hitler’s forces really had inflicted a crushing defeat on Britain, not to mention France and Belgium. So chaotic was the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force that the shattered survivors had to be quarantined on their return for the sake of civilian morale.

The key point about “Dunkirk,” however, is that it could have been much, much worse. In a fateful decision often wrongly attributed to Hitler himself, Field Marshals Gerd von Rundstedt and Günther von Kluge recommended that the German forces around Dunkirk should halt, at a moment when their marauding panzers might well have finished off the encircled BEF. The killing or capture of around 338,226 Allied troops — the total number evacuated in Operation Dynamo, of whom roughly a third were in fact French — would have been a devastating blow from which British morale might never have recovered.

Read the whole thing.

PERHAPS SARAH HOYT COULD LEND ME HER SHOCKED FACE: Researchers Have Been Underestimating the Cost of Wind and Solar.

How should electricity from wind turbines and solar panels be evaluated? Should it be evaluated as if these devices are stand-alone devices? Or do these devices provide electricity that is of such low quality, because of its intermittency and other factors, that we should recognize the need for supporting services associated with actually putting the electricity on the grid? This question comes up in many types of evaluations, including Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI), Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), and Energy Payback Period (EPP).

I recently gave a talk called The Problem of Properly Evaluating Intermittent Renewable Resources (PDF) at a BioPhysical Economics Conference in Montana. As many of you know, this is the group that is concerned about Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROI). As you might guess, my conclusion is that the current methodology is quite misleading. Wind and solar are not really stand-alone devices when it comes to providing the kind of electricity that is needed by the grid. Grid operators, utilities, and backup electricity providers must provide hidden subsidies to make the system really work.

You don’t say.

SUSTAINABILITY: Medicaid Enrollees Set to Climb 40,000,000 Under Obamacare.

Under current law—including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare)—there will be 112,000,000 people who enroll in Medicaid at some time during fiscal 2027, according to the latest baseline estimate published by the Congressional Budget Office.

That would be an increase of 40,000,000 from fiscal 2013, the last year before Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid program went into effect.

In fiscal 2013, according to CBO, there were 72,000,000 enrolled in Medicaid at some point during the year.

The US population is expected to increase by less than 15% from 2013 to 2027, while the CBO now reports that Medicaid enrollment will grow by nearly two-thirds.

So just a reminder that anything which can’t go on forever will stop, and promises which can’t be kept, won’t be kept.

PATRICK POOLE: Bay Area ISIS Supporter Wanted to ‘Redefine Terror,’ Kill 10,000.

Make no mistake — they’ll keep trying until they do.

PERSEVERANCE: Sen. McCain will return to Senate Tuesday ahead of health care showdown.

CONGRESSMAN LUIS GUTIERREZ: When Democrats Take Majority We’re Going To “Eliminate” Trump.

The Lincoln United Methodist Church is a sanctuary church and according to Gutierrez’s website, he “spoke to a packed house about the need to defend DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and other forms of legal immigration status that are under attack from Republicans and Donald Trump.”

Gutierrez said that while Trump is attempting to criminalize immigrants, the president is the “real criminal.” The Congressman said illegal immigrants are not criminals and that history will determine who the true criminals are.

“For me, the major criminal that exists in the United States of America is called Donald Trump, he lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House,” Gutierrez said to the congregation. “And we’re going to take actions today, and we’re going to take actions tomorrow. And there will soon be a majority in the House of Representatives, and I’m going to make sure that I am there to make sure of one thing, that we write those articles of impeachment and take him to trial before the Senate and eliminate him as president of the United States of America.”

I’m so old I can remember when eliminationist rhetoric was an incitement to violence.

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK? Trump taking aim at Sessions for ‘weak’ position on Clinton, reportedly discussing firing.

Trump’s intensifying criticism has fueled speculation that Sessions may resign even if Trump opts not to fire him. During an event at the White House, Trump ignored a shouted question about whether Sessions should step down. The attorney general said last week he intended to stay in his post.

If Trump were to fire Sessions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would be elevated to the top post on an acting basis. That would leave the president with another attorney general of whom he has been sharply critical in both public and private for his handling of the Russia probe, according to four White House and outside advisers who, like others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

It could also raise the specter of Trump asking Rosenstein — or whomever he appoints to fill the position — to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and potential collusion with Trump’s campaign.

The firestorm is going to be yuge, even if Trump does take Kurt Schlichter’s advice.

EXACTLY HOW DID MAXINE WATERS GET SO RICH? That and more in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

SIGNS POINT TO YES: Have Repeal Efforts Always Been a Republican Ruse?

All this opposition to funding Obamacare led to the latest of 17 government shutdowns in American history. Despite all the bluster about how it would prove harmful to Republicans, 2014 was another landslide victory for them – giving them the largest majority in Congress and state legislatures since 1928.

Forward to 2015. Now in command of the House and Senate, Republicans spearheaded and passed a bill to repeal Obamacare. Naturally, Obama vetoed the bill in January of 2016, and Republicans did not have the votes to override the veto.

Later that year, Democrats lost the presidency to candidate Donald Trump, who vocally railed against Obamacare.

The American people, after nearly seven long years of struggle which led to a complete reversal in the balance of power at the federal level, had created the circumstances necessary to eliminate the ever-unpopular Obamacare once and for all, relegating it the annals of immediate history as a failed socialist experiment. Republicans had, after all, proven that they’re driven to repeal Obamacare at all costs, hadn’t they?

But once in power, Republicans didn’t try to repeal Obamacare at all.

They’ve put on quite a show of it — all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

NO. Can Democrats Deliver Like Papa John’s?

What Democrats thought they needed most in the midst of the Trump-losion was a slogan — and not even a good one. They should have kept their mouths shut and let voters think they were rudderless rather than announcing their mantra and removing all doubt.

Here, in their infinite political savvy, is what they’ve reportedly come up with: “A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages.”

The Twitterverse took about 10 seconds to compare the mantra to Papa John’s “Better Ingredients. Better Pizza.”

It borders on blasphemy to place an order for an extra-small, half-Franklin Roosevelt, half-Papa John’s pie.

But, more astoundingly, the Democrats missed the basic point of the Papa John’s slogan: Better ingredients are the predicate for a better pizza.

It’s cute when statists try to mimic the results of the free markets they abhor.

WELL, GOOD: Defense Official: Next Moves Against ISIS Up to Iraqis, ‘No Matter What.’

Although it’s a safe bet that the pounding from the USAF will continue.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST: Meet the lawyers who gave $$ to Hillary, now investigating team Trump.