TWITTER BATTLE: Donald Trump versus George Conway — Kellyanne’s husband.

NEW RECORD: America arms itself, ‘necessary steps to defend selves’. “The spurt in terror attacks, including the recent two in England, are pushing gun sales into record territory just months after predictions that the election of a pro-gun president would end the rush.”

COCKY OR CONFIDENT? Democrat Jon Ossoff declines a 6th District debate on CNN.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: Keeping Faith With Tiananmen.

I was there, reporting in Beijing for The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and in a story I filed for the May 22 Asian edition, on “The Creed at Tiananmen Square,” the message on that poster figured in the lead. One of my editors, Seth Lipsky — who now runs The New York Sun — added a line that comes to mind today: “What’s happening in China right now is something the world will remember.”

We must remember. It is a matter not only of keeping faith with the heroes of Tiananmen, but with our own creed that liberty is an unalienable right. It is a matter of understanding something vital about the undercurrents in China, something that Beijing’s rulers would prefer we forget.

In the 28 years since June 4, 1989, China’s ruling Communist Party has done everything in its power to obliterate inside China the memory of the Tiananmen uprising. As far as China’s government alludes to it at all, Tiananmen’s haunting cry for freedom is recast as a “disturbance,” caused by a rabble. The lone man who on June 5 stopped a column of tanks has become an inspiring symbol abroad, but in China he has literally disappeared. It is by now routine to find in the news, on each anniversary of the June 4 slaughter in Beijing, articles such as today’s dispatch in the Financial Times, headlined “Support grows in China for 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.”

Read the whole thing.

MATTIS ON LONDON: ‘We don’t scare.’

THIS MEANS WAR: After three jihadist attacks in as many months, the United Kingdom is facing a protracted insurgency—not mere terrorism.

Britons trying to remain optimistic note that they survived and eventually defeated Irish nationalist terrorism not all that long ago. But this is a flawed analogy. In the first place, at any given time during the Troubles, the number of active Provisional Irish Republican Army terrorists seldom exceeded a hundred. Moreover, the PIRA was a “normal” terrorist group with rational political motives, not a religiously-motivated death cult, and it generally eschewed killing civilians for its own sake. Indeed, atrocities like the 1987 Enniskillen attack, which murdered 10 innocents, proved a black mark for the group, even among staunch republicans. Therefore, comparing the PIRA to ISIS and its murderous Western wannabes isn’t much help to practical counterterrorism.

That said, if Britain doesn’t soon devise tough countermeasures to its vast domestic jihadism problem, many of its cities may come to resemble Northern Ireland a generation ago, with armed soldiers in battle gear patrolling the streets as “aid to civil power” while enforcing frequent security checks on average citizens with the aim of stopping terrorists.

Even then, Britain didn’t win against the IRA until much of its foreign funding dried up after 9/11.

RECYCLING: Space station welcomes 1st returning vehicle since shuttle.

The Dragon supply ship pulled up Monday, two days after launching from Florida. This same capsule dropped off a shipment in 2014. SpaceX recycled it for an unprecedented second trip.

Until their 2011 retirement, NASA’s shuttles made multiple flights to the space station. But it’s the first time a private company has achieved such a feat. The Americans on the space station — Jack Fischer and Peggy Whitson — used a robot arm to capture the Dragon as the craft soared above the South Atlantic.

Well done.

MICHAEL WALSH: Memo to the Thing That Wouldn’t Leave.

That would make a great title for a campy 60s office-horror movie starring Vincent Price.

ENOUGH: After London Bridge, The World Is Sick Of Politicians Downplaying Terrorism.

The sad truth, and getting sadder with every attack, is that the political class has little interest in doing what would really be necessary to combat Islamist terrorism, let alone talk about it. They don’t want to talk about how Britain’s lax immigration policies over decades led to hundreds of thousands of immigrants entering the country with varying degrees of willingness to assimilate and adopt Western values. They don’t want to openly criticize the blatant problems with the multiculturalism the UK has pursued for years and the obvious impact it has had on the immigrant population.

Oh no. This would cost them too much. It would shatter the façade of political correctness that’s been constructed over our “civilized” western world, and destroy the illusion, so vital to the political class, that Western values are universal.

The politicians are only willing to give speeches about how united we are and how terrorists cannot tear us apart. But the truth—so clear and obvious—is that with every attack the West becomes more and more divided. We are not united, not by a long shot. Before the bodies of the poor souls who were killed Saturday by radical Islamists were even identified, the Left and Right were at one another’s throats. On that score, the terrorists emerge victorious every time.

Despite what our elites insist, terrorists do not seek to divide us; they seek to murder us.

LIES, DAMN LIES, AND STATISTICS: 93% Of All Jobs “Created” Since 2008 Were Added Through The Birth/Death Model.

According to prevailing narrative, job growth in the US, where GDP over the past decade has been on par with that in the 1930s, is one of the otherwise brighter economic indicators in a time when much of the economic data such as capital spending, productivity and especially wage growth (so critical for the Fed’s future plans) has been a chronic disappointment. Today, for example, headlines blast that the US has enjoyed 80 months of continuous jobs growth with unemployment hitting 4.3% – the lowest since 2001. However, there is more to this “strong” number than meets the untrained eye.

As our freiends at Morningside Hill calculate, a full 93% of the new jobs reported since 2008 – 6.3 million out of 6.7 million – and 40% of the jobs in 2016 alone were added through the business birth and death model – a highly controversial model which is not supported by the data. On the contrary, all data on establishment births and deaths point to an ongoing decrease in entrepreneurship.

This may be the single biggest reason why the long-running “recovery” has felt like anything but.

RICK MORAN: Democrats Chasing an Illusion in Georgia Special Election.

KEEPING IT WEIRD: Clashes break out as supporters and opponents of Trump descend on Portland.

Police in riot gear made 14 arrests and used pepper spray and flash-bang grenades to break up the crowds. But the violence was far less than city officials had anticipated after a white supremacist was accused of stabbing to death two men who tried to defend a pair of teenagers from his anti-Muslim insults and racist taunts on a city train. A third man was injured during the confrontation May 26.

Trump supporters held signs aloft saying, “Don’t tread on me,” “God, guns and Trump” and “Make America great again,” as they engaged in heated arguments with black-clad protesters holding signs saying, “Black lives matter,” “You have blood on your hands” and “Portland stands against hate.”

The pro-Trump March for Free Speech drew the ire of many Portlanders after images went viral showing the 35-year-old suspect in the killings attending a similar protest in April led by local video blogger Joey Gibson, who also organized Sunday’s demonstration. As Jeremy Joseph Christian was arraigned Tuesday on charges of murder and attempted murder, he shouted a stream of threats: “Free speech or die, Portland. You got no safe place. This is America. Get out if you don’t like free speech.”

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler tried and failed to get a federal permit for Gibson’s rally revoked, saying its participants “peddle a message of hatred and bigotry.” In a message to residents last week, Wheeler urged “everyone participating to reject violence.”

Freedom of speech is a rejection of violence.

75 YEARS LATER: Why Japan Lost the Battle of Midway.

This article makes a nice five-minute brief to some of the ideas introduced in Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully’s Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, which I can’t recommend highly enough.

SPENGLER: Counter-terror Lessons from America’s Civil War.

These attacks, in other words, are designed to impress the Muslim public as much as they are intended to horrify the western public. In so many words, the terrorists tell Muslims that western police agencies cannot protect them. If they cooperate with the police they will be found out and punished. The West fears the power of Islam: it evinces such fear by praising Islam as a religion of peace, by squelching dissent in the name of fighting supposed Islamophobia, and by offering concessions and apologies to Muslims. Ordinary Muslims live in fear of the terror networks, which have infiltrated their communities and proven their ability to turn the efforts of western security services against them. They are less likely to inform on prospective terrorists and more likely to aid them by inaction.

The terrorists, in short, are winning the intelligence war, because they have shaped the environment in which intelligence is gathered and traded. But that is how intelligence wars always proceed: spies switch sides and tell their stories because they want to be with the winner. ISIS and al-Qaeda look like winners in the eyes of western Muslim populations after humiliating the security services of the West.

Read the whole thing.

HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION UPDATE: What I Saw at Evergreen State College.

Evergreen education is based on holism. All credits are holistically integrated into one course. For example, as an Evergreen graduate with a Bachelor of Arts (1985-89), I took a 32-credit course my freshman year entitled “Political Ecology” that was two quarters long. While it was largely a nonstop attack on Christianity and capitalism for helping precipitate the ecological crisis of modern times, all of the credits were divided among ecological studies, agricultural studies, Native American studies, geography, evolutionary biology, and creative writing, among other credits. In the spring, I took a course called “Thinking Straight” (16 credits) that consisted of credits in philosophy, English, creative writing, and logic. My favorite course at Evergreen was “The Classical World,” which lasted my entire sophomore year (48 credits). We began with the early Greeks in the fall and ended with early Christianity in the spring, reading through much of St. Augustine’s City of God.

My junior year was given over to “Political Economy” (32 credits) in the fall and winter, followed up by “Race, Class, and Gender” (16 credits) in the spring. Such a year presaged many of the political convulsions now rocking America, with no small thanks to the Obama administration – but all of which is still rooted in the hippie radicalism of the ’60s, not to mention all of the social upheaval in Europe dating back to the 1800s that was largely a very German affair. The content of these particular courses was loaded with a blending of socialism, Marxism, fascism, and postmodernism taught by true believers.

While one of the professors seemed to enjoy his popularity with female students, another was actively involved in fomenting lunatic student protests against the college administration. One particular memory stands out in sharp relief: at lunchtime on one beautiful spring day – while watching the student protest proceed – one wise Native American student said something along these lines, which I have never forgotten: “You know, we can all try to do good things to help bring about a better world by protesting the unfair and evil things we see around us, but the problem with all this is that people like that professor over there will be running things.”

This is precisely the crossroads that Evergreen has arrived at now, only worse, as the more fascist elements of liberalism so-called are now dominating the school.

A year at Evergreen costs about $37,770 for nonresidents.

CHRIS WALLACE VS AL GORE, QATAR VS THE MIDDLE EAST, AND SUSAN RICE VS REALITY: Liz Sheld’s morning brief has you covered.

PATRICK POOLE: Major Confrontation Between Saudi, Egypt, UAE Against Qatar Over Terror Support.

SARAH HOYT: Why Common Core Fails the Test.

DAVID HARSANYI: Democrats Have Lost On Climate Change, And It’s Their Own Fault.

Moreover, many voters don’t see Democrats acting like people who believe we’re facing an extinction level event. For instance, why aren’t we talking about adding hundreds of new nuclear power plants to our energy portfolio? Such an effort would do far more to mitigate carbon emissions than any unreliable solar or windmill boondoggle –certainly more than any non-binding international agreement. Maybe there are tradeoffs, who knows.

Or take prospective presidential hopeful Andrew Cuomo. Setting intentions aside, in all practical ways, he’s been worse for the environment than Trump. Cuomo claims he “is committed to meeting the standards set forth in the Paris Accord regardless of Washington’s irresponsible actions.” Yet as governor, he’s blocked natural gas pipelines and banned fracking, which has proven to be one of the most effective ways to mitigate carbon emissions. U.S. energy-related carbon emissions have fallen almost 14 percent since they peaked in 2007 according to the OECD – this, without any fabricated carbon market schemes. The driving reason is the shift to natural gas. Why do liberals hate science? Why do they condemn our grandchildren to a fiery end?

Fact is, Obama—as was his wont—tried to shift American policy with his pen rather than by building consensus (which was also an assault on proper norms of American governance, but the “Trump is destroying the Constitution!” crowd is conveniently flexible on this issue.) It’s not a feasible or lasting way to govern, unless the system collapses. It is also transparently ideological.

Indeed.

FAKE NEWS: Was Trump really getting ready to lift sanctions on Russia for “absolutely nothing”?

BREAKING: Possible Terror Attack on London Bridge, Police Declare ‘Major Incident’

INNOVATION: Air Force cadet creates bulletproof breakthrough.

Air Force cadet Hayley Weir had an idea that turned out to be a game changer. “It was just the concept of going out there and stopping a bullet with something that we had made in a chemistry lab.”

The 21-year-old Weir approached Air Force Academy Assistant Professor Ryan Burke with the idea. He was skeptical.

“I said, ‘I’m not really sure this is going to work, the body armor industry is a billion-plus-dollar industry,” he noted.

Weir’s idea was to combine anti-ballistic fabric with what’s known as a shear thickening fluid to create a less heavy material to use in body armor. She demonstrated the principle to Burke by combining water and cornstarch in a container and asking the professor to jam his finger into the paste-like goo.

“I jam my finger right into this bowl, and I almost broke my finger! Hayley’s laughing because I’ve got this finger that I’m shaking and I’m saying, ‘You know, that’s pretty impressive stuff.'”

Read the whole thing.

TURN IT UP TO 11: Your Soundtrack to the Post-Paris Climate Accord Trumpocalypse.

I would have included Michael Penn’s “Brave New World.”

BLUE STATE BLUES: Connecticut’s Tax Comeuppance – With the rich tapped out, the state may resort to Puerto Rico bonds.

Last month the state Office of Fiscal Analysis reduced its two-year revenue forecast by $1.46 billion. Since January the agency has downgraded income-tax revenue for 2017 and 2018 by $1.1 billion (6%). Sales- and corporate-tax revenue are projected to fall by $385 million (9%) and $67 million (7%), respectively, this year. Pension contributions, which have doubled since 2010, will increase by a third over the next two years. The result: a $5.1 billion deficit and three recent credit downgrades.

According to the fiscal analyst, income-tax collections declined this year for the first time since the recession due to lower earnings at the top. Many wealthy residents decamped for lower-tax states after Mr. Malloy and his Republican predecessor Jodi Rell raised the top individual rate on more than $500,000 of income to 6.99% from 5%. In the past five years 27,400 Connecticut residents, including Ms. Rell, have moved to no-income-tax Florida, and seven of the state’s eight counties have lost population since 2010. Population flight has depressed economic growth—Connecticut’s real GDP has shrunk by 0.1% since 2010—as well as home values and sales-tax revenues.
…
The state treasurer has advocated “credit bonds” securitized by income-tax revenues to reduce the state’s borrowing costs. Investors beware: Puerto Rico tried something similar with its sales tax, and bondholders might not get back a penny.

They’ve run out of other people’s money — unexpectedly.

QUESTION ASKED: Is Feminism to Blame for Obesity Epidemic?