CIVIL DISCOURSE: Shots Fired at Truck Flying ‘Make America Great Again’ Flag in Indiana.

DELAY: Vote on healthcare bill by July 4 looking more in doubt.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy didn’t seem too concerned if the Senate fails to vote on healthcare reform by Congress’ July 4 recess.

“It’s not like your wife’s birthday. You miss your wife’s birthday, there is hell to pay,” the Louisiana lawmaker said Thursday. “On the other hand, if you don’t cut the grass on Friday but do it on Saturday it is not a big deal. I am not saying it isn’t a big deal, but you know what I am saying.”

And:

Complicating a July 4 vote that no text has been publicly released, which has rankled some Republicans who want any bill to receive a fair amount of scrutiny.

“We need time to fully understand it,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. “I don’t want to see us vote before the July 4 break. I think that would be too soon.”

Johnson said he hoped that there would be a short-term bill to stabilize markets, separate from a long-term overhaul. But no such bill has emerged.

He understood the reluctance by leadership to put together a short-term bill now.

“By not doing anything we have put pressure on ourselves to get this completed,” he said.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., summed up the mindset surrounding the July 4 goal.

“It is a hope, an aspiration, [and] it’s a plan,” the third-ranking GOP senator said Thursday.

It sounds like a mess.

WAPO HAS MORE ANONYMOUS SOURCES, THE DOJ WARNS AGAINST ANONYMOUS SOURCES, AND THERE’S NOTHING ANONYMOUS ABOUT LEFT-ON-RIGHT CRIME: All that and more in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

CHARLIE MARTIN: My Trip to a Marijuana Dispensary, the Happiest Place in Boulder.

VIDEO: This Bernie Supporter on ‘The Young Turks’ Network Just Victim-Blamed Steve Scalise for Getting Shot.

But of course.

THIS IS CNN: Jim Acosta of CNN Spreads Fake News About Trump’s Visit to Congressman Steve Scalise.

Another one for the growing Chris Cillizza Dumpster Fire File.

Related:

CNN hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory the last 24 hours.

TRUMP TWEETS: ‘They Made Up a Phony Russia Collusion Story, Now They Go for Obstruction of Justice’

WINNING: With Natural Gas Booming, Race Is On To Export It To The World.

GUY BENSON: New York Times Only Partially Corrects-Palin-Giffords Lie.

The Times has added an online correction on this coruscating inaccuracy, reducing the likelihood that they’ll get sued over their libelous bilge. I obviously approve of the decision to alter this grossly inaccurate content, but the fact that their essay was approved as fit to print in the first place last evening is quite revealing. A central piece of their argument was rooted in fantastical left-wing folk lore, repeated so frequently by people who populate institutions like the New York Times editorial board that it morphed into a “fact.” The new version of the editorial still mentions Palin’s map, which is totally unconnected to anything of relevance on this subject. A bizarre non-sequitur. Their utterly wrong, unsupported implication remains intact. How about deleting the entire piece? Also, having made a change to their virtual copy under intense criticism today, will the Times showcase an apology and retraction in tomorrow’s print edition?

Outlook not so good.

PATRICK POOLE: Media Gaslights Congressional Assassination Attempt After Gaslighting Orlando Terror Attack Days Earlier.

THE ILLINOIS MELTDOWN (CONTINUED): Powerball, Mega Millions to drop Illinois due to state’s budget crisis.

HMM: Qatar Buys U.S. F-15s Days After Trump Says Country Funds Terror.

GOP CONGRESSMAN RODNEY DAVIS: ‘Hateful Rhetoric That Has Consumed Politics, on Both Sides, Has to Stop’

He was at the scene of the attack yesterday.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Google Drive will soon back up your entire computer.

The backup feature will come out later this month, on June 28th, in the form of a new app called Backup and Sync. It sounds like the Backup and Sync app will replace both the standard Google Drive app and the Google Photos Backup app, at least in some cases. Google is recommending that regular consumers download the new app once it’s out, but it says that business users should stick with the existing Drive app for now.

It’s not clear exactly how much you’ll be able to do with the expanded backup feature. You’ll presumably be able to open and edit some common file types within Drive, as you’ve already been able to. But it’s not clear if you’ll be able to sync those files back down to multiple other computers, using Drive as an intermediary.

All of those files will very likely count toward your Google Drive storage limit, too. This will be a very quick way of hitting that 15GB cap on free accounts.

No word on whether Google will scan your backups to better target ads at you.

UPDATE: Chinese authorities suspect “gas cylinder explosion” for kindergarten blast.

GOP CONGRESSMAN WALTER JONES: ‘Resentment and Hatred’ in Political Climate ‘Started with President Obama Being African-American’

“I think, truthfully, the world we all live in now, is a world of anxiety and distrust, whether it be a Republican or Democrat or it might be an independent, but too many times the distrust becomes hatred and resentment and I think that’s a lot of this problem, to be honest with you,” Jones responded.

The congressman said he thinks the current political climate “all started with President Obama being an African-American.”

“I just think that was the beginning, and now with the current occupant of the White House, I just hope that maybe he will see this as an opportunity to change some of his tactics, meaning what he tweets out and what he says. I hope that we can change the tone around here, but I don’t know if we can or not,” he added.

Even the New York Times is starting to shy away from blaming Republicans from inciting violence.

ANDREW KLAVAN: How the Media Covered the Giffords Shooting.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? Why printers add secret tracking dots.

These “microdots” are well known to security researchers and civil liberties campaigners. Many colour printers add them to documents without people ever knowing they’re there.

In this case, the FBI has not said publicly that these microdots were used to help identify their suspect, and the bureau declined to comment for this article. The US Department of Justice, which published news of the charges against [Reality] Winner, also declined to provide further clarification.

In a statement, The Intercept said, “Winner faces allegations that have not been proven. The same is true of the FBI’s claims about how it came to arrest Winner.”

But the presence of microdots on what is now a high-profile document (against the NSA’s wishes) has sparked great interest.

The EFF has an online guide to help you “read” printer microdots.

HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? Oil From OPEC’s Rivals to Exceed Demand Growth in 2018.

The U.S., Brazil, Canada and other producers outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase output next year by the most in four years, the IEA said. So while the cutbacks should reduce the world’s bloated oil inventories to average levels by the time they’re scheduled to end next spring, demand for OPEC crude won’t be high enough for the group to reverse the curbs without seeing stockpiles rise again.

“Our first outlook for 2018 makes sobering reading for those producers looking to restrain supply,” said the Paris-based IEA, which advises most of the world’s major economies on energy policy.

Oil prices have slipped 14 percent in New York this year as hopes that supply curbs by OPEC and partners such as Russia would end a three-year surplus have given way to concern that the cuts aren’t deep enough and that U.S. shale drillers will fill any shortfall.

I’ve been enjoying watching the unnatural act of gas prices going down just as the summer road trip season kicks into gear.

So it turns out you can drill your way to lower prices — who knew?

ONLY SIX? Top 6 Media Lies That Radicalized the Violent Left.

SARAH HOYT: Fun House Mirrors.

I am not a prophet. I swear I’m not a prophet. But the vague, cold feeling that has been in my stomach for weeks, which got worse after that “discussion” yesterday has coalesced into a clear fear. I just posted this on Facebook:

A radical from a fringe group, led by insane rumor and innuendo, has shot someone who is not even the leader of the faction he hates.

Is Rep. Scalise’s middle name Ferdinand?

Listen to me now; stop believing crazy people, even those in the media. Yesterday, in a friend’s post someone called me racist/sexist/homophobic or implied it because apparently I want to “suppress voices” in science fiction. NO ONE who knows me can believe that. This woman knows me. And this was over an aesthetic disagreement in fricking tiny, irrelevant science fiction.

LISTEN TO ME NOW, it’s time to believe your lying eyes and accept that people can disagree with you without being evil. It’s time to investigate all news, even the ones you think confirm you bias. It’s time to wake up.

YOU DON’T WANT TO GO DOWN THIS ROAD. There is nothing for you here. It didn’t turn out well in 1914. It won’t turn out well now.

I’ve collected at least one idiot already, who thinks that saying republicans are evil doesn’t prove my post. What the actually? What madness is this? Can it end but in blood?

Read the whole thing.

GOOD LORD: Parents and children killed after explosion rips through Chinese kindergarten as mothers and fathers queue to pick up their little ones.

No word yet on the cause of the explosion.

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DESPICABLE LIES, WHAT WOULD THEY HAVE?

And as Ace wrote last night, “At this point in the Dylan Roof Cycle the media already had enough evidence to demand that all confederate flags be stricken from the masts, and yet here, they can’t draw any kind of line between remorseless leftist agitation to violence and the inevitable fruition of such.”

ONLY SEVEN? The 7 Most Despicable Reactions to the Virginia Ballpark Shooting.

ONE OF THEM IS PAUL KRUGMAN: How Two Nobel Prize Winning Economists Got Oil Wrong.

In a May 12 2008 column, Krugman pooh-poohed the idea that speculation was driving the oil price (then at $125 a barrel), saying: “all through the period of the alleged bubble, inventories have remained at more or less normal levels. This tells us that the rise in oil prices isn’t the result of runaway speculation; it’s the result of fundamental factors, mainly the growing difficulty of finding oil and the rapid growth of emerging economies like China.”

Further, he attributed the tendency to blame speculators on conservatives in this instance, a reversal of the usual politic spectrum, and especially because of their failure to recognize that “a realistic view of what’s happened over the past few years suggests that we’re heading into an era of increasingly scarce, costly oil.” He later doubled down on this, describing “the way ideas go from crazy stuff that only DFHs believe to stuff everyone knows, without ever going through a stage in which the holders of conventional wisdom acknowledge that they were wrong. Oh, and the people who were right are still considered DFHs; you see, they were right too soon.

It looks as if peak oil may be going that way.” [DFH is an acronym that can’t be translated here, but consider ‘treehuggers’ as a good equivalent.]

In this case, the problems are that a) Professor Krugman is not an expert on resource economics, b) he has viewed this through political lenses, c), he has assumed temporary price trends are due to long-term changes; and d) cardinal error: he takes a bad price forecast as evidence of bad underlying theory.

Predictions are hard — especially about the future, as Krugman should know.