MEET CUTE AND DIE: Feminist YouTube Star Harassed for Dating Political Opponent.

ELIZABETH SCALIA: Oh, for the good old days of Twitter.

You’d think at least the chugging hysteria born of the daily headlines would keep it interesting, but you’d be wrong. Unless one is entertained by the possibility that the nation may have a collective stroke in mid Re-Tweet, which I am not, there is precious little new thinking or creative expression coming through the threads. It is not interesting to see the same people, saying the same things. It is not entertaining to witness such a dismaying contempt for curiosity, or to comprehend my own. There is a busy-ness of words, many of them issuing from people whose faces have been before ours for decades, but the messages are rote or kneejerk, and all of them seem to reduce discourse down to, “Oh, shut up, and get away from our lunchroom table.”

It’s a tribal thing, really, but on social media it feels like everyone is on auto-pilot, so long enthralled to the idol of their own ideology that they aren’t even really thinking about it anymore, they’re just moving with the mob, and they can’t tell you why. Or they can, but only because, as I wrote in Strange Gods, “We can always give a million reasons to justify our hatreds, but our love? Often we cannot explain our love at all, except as an open and full-hearted mystery…”

I miss the old Twitter, too, before the company discouraged honest give-and-take by going Full SJW.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: Freed from the circus, lions killed by poachers.

CHARLIE MARTIN: Daesh (ISIS) Claims Attacks in Tehran. “This could be the start of something big.”

I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Iraqi Kurds plan independence referendum on Sept. 25.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Comey’s Notes and the Wages of the Special Counsel Investigation.

Here is another example of how this could play out at Thursday’s hearing. When the president fired Comey, he took pains to say that the former director had told him on three separate occasions that he was not under investigation. Prehearing reporting suggests that Comey does not remember it this way. The matter is thus being teed up as though one or the other man must be lying.

We’ll have to see what happens, but to my mind, the seeming contradiction maybe reconcilable. According to Comey’s own prior testimony, the Russia investigation is a counterintelligence investigation. As I have repeatedly pointed out, a counterintelligence investigation is very different from a criminal investigation. It does not have “subjects” and “targets,” which are terms-of-art in criminal investigations, designating suspects who may be indicted by the grand jury. The purpose of the counterintelligence investigation is to focus on a foreign power – in this instance Russia – in order to determine what threats it might pose to American interests.

It is not the purpose of a counterintelligence investigation to build a prosecutable criminal case against a suspect. Nevertheless, if evidence of criminal wrongdoing turns up, the FBI’s national security division reserves the right to refer that evidence to its criminal division and the Justice Department, which can then determine whether prosecution is warranted.

It could well be that President Trump, a non-lawyer, was told the Russia investigation is a counterintelligence investigation, which would not be designed to build a case against him or anyone else. If so, he might understandably have taken that to mean he is not a suspect under investigation. At the same time, Comey realizes that you never know what evidence an investigation will turn up until it has been completed. Since the Russia investigation had not been completed, the former director may well believe that could not, and did not, make commitments regarding any information that had not yet been uncovered.

That’s just my educated speculation – and, as noted above, we’ll have to see what happens.

Lots to chew on here — read the whole thing.

THANKS, BILL! How Bill Clinton Brought Back the 1911 Pistol.

But did it ever really go away?

HMM: OPEC’s ace in the hole.

As it turns out the Saudis have a plan which they believe will help push the oil markets in what they consider the proper direction. It is common knowledge that OPEC has openly been encouraging other oil producing nations to join in the production cut and according to Saudi Arabia those calls have been answered.

In a recent press conference in Riyadh the Saudis disclosed they had enticed not just the elephant (Russia) in the oil market in the production cut, they have also induced several other smaller non-OPEC players to join their side.

While Saudi Arabia has not yet disclosed the identity of their additional recruits the list of candidates is relatively limited. An appeal to curb production would only appeal to nations which are net oil exporters and therefore would benefit from a rise in the price of crude. The list of nations who fit into this category is limited and for now speculation is rampant.

Assuming nobody cheats, what happens when the cuts expire and American frackers have had an additional nine months of OPEC price supports and domestic productivity increases?

THE BEST DEFENSE IS NO DEFENSE: South Korea Suspends Deployment of U.S. Antimissile System.

In comments to reporters, a senior official from the presidential Blue House in Seoul said on Wednesday that the two launchers of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system that had been installed could remain but that four launchers that had yet to be deployed would not be set up until the administration completed an environmental assessment.

The missile defense system, known as Thaad, has been controversial in South Korea and has drawn sharp criticism from China, which views the system’s radar as a threat. Beijing has taken retaliatory economic measures against Seoul, including curtailing the flow of Chinese tourists and punishing South Korean companies in China.

During his campaign, Mr. Moon, who won the presidency last month, complained that the United States and the previous South Korean administration rushed to deploy Thaad before the election to present him with a fait accompli. His decision to suspend the installation could strain relations with the White House, which has taken a hard line in confronting North Korea and its nuclear weapons program. It could also raise concerns about United States efforts to present a tough, unified position with Japan and South Korea against the North.

This time appeasement will work.

I DON’T KNOW, I CAN IMAGINE QUITE A BIT: London Attack Reveals That ‘Known Wolf’ Terrorism Is Worse Than You Could Imagine.

NO. Is Trump Violating the First Amendment by Blocking People on Twitter?

RETAIL BLUES: Sears store closures for 2017 now pushing 250.

I’d be surprised if by the end of next year there were any Sears stores still operating.

WE MAY NEVER KNOW THEIR TRUE MOTIVE: Schools ‘in lockdown’ after female nursery worker on her way to work is pulled to the ground and slashed in the arm by three girls ‘shouting Allah will get you’

Karrien Stevens, who runs Little Diamonds nursery in Hermon Hill, London said a member of staff was punched, kicked and slashed by three girls while on her way to work this morning.

The victim, 30, was walking down Wanstead High Street, in north London, when she was set upon and knifed, according to her boss.

She was attacked from behind and then stabbed in the arm as her assailants chanted ‘Allah’, however police are not treating it as a terrorist incident.

That’s correct — they’ve graduated to insurgency.

CORN, POPPED: Trump May Live Tweet ‘If He Feels the Need’ During Comey’s Testimony.

WHAT’S FASTER THAN AN SR-71? Skunk Works Hints At SR-72 Demonstrator Progress.

Four years after revealing plans to develop a Mach 6 strike and reconnaissance aircraft, Lockheed Martin says hypersonic technologies are now sufficiently mature to enable progress towards a flight demonstrator.

The company’s secretive Skunk Works unit has been working since at least the early 2000s on the basic building blocks for an operational hypersonic vehicle and in 2013 revealed to Aviation Week it was developing a scaled demonstrator for the SR-72, a proposed successor to the U.S. Air Force’s long-retired Mach 3 SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. However, details on any subsequent progress have been scarce since this initial plan was unveiled.

I’d expect them to stay scarce, even after the SR-72 takes to the skies.

JILL FILIPOVIC: The GOP wants to distract you with Reality Winner.

Maybe in this one case the period should go after “Reality.”

PENSION REFORM: Michigan GOPs Propose Blocking New Teachers From Pensions; Union Leaders Outraged.

ANALYSIS: The Media Have Been Played by Trump’s Tweets.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Media Memory Holes Bill Maher’s GOP Hate.

When the “Real Time” host trashed the Palin family in 2011 no one batted an eye. Variety didn’t call for his ouster. Yet the pure hate of his comments, targeting not just Sarah Palin but her children (including a special needs child) was off the proverbial charts.

And when I point out that Sarah Palin is a vainglorious braggart, a liar, a whiner, a professional victim, a scold, a know-it-all, a chiseler, a bully who sells patriotism like a pimp, and the leader of a strange family of inbred weirdos straight out of “The Hills Have Eyes,” that’s not sexist. I’m saying it because it’s true, not because it’s true of a woman.

The comments appeared planned, too, unlike his exchange with Sasse.

The comedian also called Sarah Palin a dumb tw** and the C-word in separate exchanges.

More recently, the comic trashed President Donald Trump last month in a way that made Stephen Colbert’s “cock holster” crack seemed quaint.

He suggested the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, needs to manually stimulate him to change his mind on certain policies.

No outrage from HBO. No collective calls from the media to fire him.

Nor did anyone in the mainstream media yelp when Maher accused a war widow of letting herself be President Trump’s “prop.”

When they demand, “Have you no decency, sir?” it’s all projection.

ISIS’ LAST STAND IN RAQQA? Fueled by “high morale and great preparations” and “our hatred of terrorism,” SDF moves into Raqqa.

IRAN UNDER FIRE, COMEY UNDER EXAMINATION, AND CONGRESS UNDER THE CLOCK: Liz Sheld’s morning brief has it all.

“ALL BUT IMPOSSIBLE”: Republican senator says Trump’s education cuts won’t get through Congress.

“This is a difficult budget request to defend,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at a hearing held by the subcommittee on labor, health and human services. “I think it’s likely that the kinds of cuts that are proposed in this budget will not occur, so we need to fully understand your priorities and why they are your priorities.”

DeVos appeared on Capitol Hill to argue for a proposal to slash spending for numerous programs while boosting funds for private school vouchers and other school choice initiatives.

This isn’t the G.O.P. congress I’d been hoping for, but it’s about the one I expected.

HMM: The $110 Billion Arms Deal to Saudi Arabia is Fake News.

I’ve spoken to contacts in the defense business and on the Hill, and all of them say the same thing: There is no $110 billion deal. Instead, there are a bunch of letters of interest or intent, but not contracts. Many are offers that the defense industry thinks the Saudis will be interested in someday. So far nothing has been notified to the Senate for review. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arms sales wing of the Pentagon, calls them “intended sales.” None of the deals identified so far are new, all began in the Obama administration.

An example is a proposal for sale of four frigates (called multi-mission surface combatant vessels) to the Royal Saudi navy. This proposal was first reported by the State Department in 2015. No contract has followed. The type of frigate is a derivative of a vessel that the U.S. Navy uses but the derivative doesn’t actually exist yet. Another piece is the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system (THAAD) which was recently deployed in South Korea. The Saudis have expressed interest in the system for several years but no contracts have been finalized. Obama approved the sale in principle at a summit at Camp David in 2015. Also on the wish list are 150 Black Hawk helicopters. Again, this is old news repackaged. What the Saudis and the administration did is put together a notional package of the Saudi wish list of possible deals and portray that as a deal. Even then the numbers don’t add up. It’s fake news.

Moreover, it’s unlikely that the Saudis could pay for a $110 billion deal any longer, due to low oil prices and the two-plus years old war in Yemen.

It’s difficult to feel much sorrow for the Saudis. On the other hand, a win for Iran in Yemen would be a disaster.

ONE SECOND AFTER: EMP Commission Chair Warns on North Korean EMP.

WE MAY NEVER KNOW HIS TRUE MOTIVE: Notre Dame hammer attack suspect yelled ‘This is for Syria’