PROCUREMENT: Lockheed Sees More F-35, Missile Defense Orders From Abroad.

You read a lot of complaints about the F-35 from people who have never flown one, but the foreign orders keep stacking up.

GOOD TIMES: Here’s What Ronald Reagan Did When College Kids Went Ape At UC-Berkeley.

In an extremely controversial move, for which he never apologized, Reagan declared a state of emergency and sent in 2,200 National Guard troops. He enacted a curfew and banned public assembly for two weeks. The National Guard patrolled the streets of Berkeley, dispersing any crowd of four or more. It wasn’t pretty, but they restored order.

There is a classic, should-be-in-the-Smithsonian clip of Reagan at a press conference after the fact with university administrators. He says: “Those people told you for days in advance that if the university sought to go ahead with that construction, they were going to physically destroy the university.”

Someone in the crowd shouts that Reagan should have negotiated with the students. Reagan, with the incredulity of someone who understands that youth don’t run the world for a reason, says: “Negotiate? What is to negotiate? All of it began the first time some of you who know better and are old enough to know better let young people think that they have the right to choose the laws they would obey as long as they were doing it in the name of social protest.”

To underscore the point, Reagan got up and walked out of the room. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

Nope.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Democrats are still rushing to extremes.

Jolted by Hillary Clinton’s unexpected loss to Donald Trump, Democrats and progressives have retreated to an alternate reality. In this safe space that they’ve created for themselves, Clinton didn’t lose so much as the Russians won.

Red Mania hasn’t been confined to the fringe, but is being promoted by Democratic representatives, including Maxine Waters and Ted Lieu.

Waters took it so far as to suggest on MSNBC that GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight Committee, is leaving Congress because of his “connections” to “what is going on in the Ukraine and perhaps in Russia itself.”

Their reward for pushing this craziness? Becoming national heroes to the Democratic faithful.

As Mencken said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Maldives Blogger and Activist Yameen Rasheed Stabbed to Death.

Through his blog The Daily Panic and Twitter account @Yaamyn, Rasheed had become known as an outspoken critic of the government and radical Islamism. Shocked by this death, Maldivians expressed their grief and concerns on social media, while some demanded an international probe.

Rasheed was found in the stairwell of his apartment at 3 a.m. with multiple stab wounds and died soon after he was taken to the hospital. He suffered 16 stab wounds to his body, including 14 on the chest, one on the neck and one on the head. He had received several death threats via text messages and social media for his views against the government and religious extremists, which he had reported to the police.

Stabbing murders like this one have been going on in the Maldives for years.

ANTITERROR: Explosion rocks Damascus airport.

Israel’s Intelligence Minister Israel Katz appeared to back up claims that Israel was responsible for the explosion in an interview with Army Radio Thursday.

“I can confirm that the incident in Syria is completely compatible with the Israeli policy of operating to prevent the smuggling advanced weaponry from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon by Iran,” Katz said in response to a question on the incident.

“I don’t want to go any further as is natural in these circumstances but this event is completely compatible with our declared policy, a policy which we carry out as the Prime Minister has said, at any moment that we receive intelligence that shows the intent to pass advanced weapons to Hezbollah.”

Maintaining communications and logistics with their favorite terror groups is one reason why Iran is so desperate to maintain a presence in Syria.

CHANGE? Trump tells Canada, Mexico, he won’t terminate NAFTA treaty yet.

The first administration source told Reuters that there were diverging opinions within the U.S. government about how to proceed and it was possible that Trump could sign the executive order before the 100-day mark of his presidency.

The source noted that the administration wanted to tread carefully. “There is talk about what steps we can take to start the process of renegotiating or withdrawing from NAFTA,” this source said.

Mexico had expected to start NAFTA renegotiations in August but the possible executive order could add urgency to the timeline.

The Mexican government had no comment on the draft order. The country’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that Mexico would walk away from the negotiating table rather than accept a bad deal.

Trump recently ramped up his criticism of Canada and this week ordered 20 percent tariffs on imports of Canadian softwood lumber, setting a tense tone as the three countries prepared to renegotiate the pact.

What’s our problem with Canada?

EVERY SPENDING CUT PAYS FOR AN EQUAL AND OPPOSITE TAX CUT: White House Hopes Big Tax Cuts Will Pay for Themselves.

CHANGE MORE OF THE SAME: Turkey arrests 1,000 and suspends 9,100 police in new crackdown.

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD? White House unveils dramatic plan to overhaul tax code in major test for Trump.

White House officials are ambitious, but the path to overhauling the tax code is riddled with political land mines. Many budget experts say they believe the White House’s plan would reduce federal revenue by so much that it would grow the debt by trillions of dollars in the next decade, growing interest costs and slowing the economy.

And Trump’s advisers are looking to ax some tax breaks that are very popular in certain states, including the deduction Americans take for the state and local taxes they pay separately each year. Eliminating this deduction could save more than $1 trillion over 10 years but inflame lawmakers and governors in states that have high income tax rates.

Those high-tax states tend to vote for and be run by Democrats, and I seem to remember advice from the previous president about punishing enemies.

GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld’s Morning Brief will make it even better.

AND THEN THERE’S THE PRICE TO CONSIDER: Buying a Southern California home is ‘insane’

LEON PANETTA: Don’t Rule Out Sanctions on China to Rein in North Korea.

THE INTERNET OF THINGS: A Weakness Left Hyundai Vehicles Exposed to Tech-savvy Thieves.

NEWSWEEK HEADLINE: Trump’s Proposed Tax Plan Could Cost the Government $6 Trillion.

“Cost the government.”

21ST CENTURY SOLUTIONS: “Alexa, does my butt look big in this?”

UNEXPECTEDLY: Obama Accepts $400,000 Fee for a Speech.

From a Wall Street firm, natch.

QUESTION ASKED: Could North Korea Annihilate Seoul with Its Artillery?

A 2011 study by the Nautilus Institute throws a considerable amount of cold water on this scenario. While the sheer number of artillery tubes could theoretically kill a large number of civilians, operational issues complicate matters and push the number of civilian casualties greatly downward. Despite the thousands of artillery pieces, only 700 heavier guns and rocket launchers, plus the newer 300-millimeter MRLs, have the range to strike Seoul. Only a third would normally be fired at once, and notional rates of fire would be slowed tremendously by the need to withdraw guns into their hardened artillery sites (HARTS) to shelter them from counter battery fire.

Other factors reduce the projected loss of life in the greater Seoul metropolitan area. The city has extensive air raid shelters for civilians that will quickly reduce the exposed population density. The North will struggle to keep these heavy artillery units supplied with shells, particularly with its aging supply system. Finally, U.S. and ROK forces will quickly begin hunting down units participating in the bombardment, causing their numbers to drop almost immediately.

Good to know.

CONGRESS SHALL PASS NO LAW: Press Freedom Group Finds Bleaker Situation for Media in Nearly Two-Thirds of Countries.

In the last year of the Obama Administration, the U.S. dropped yet another two spots down to 43rd.

We should be ashamed.

BREAKING: Ann Coulter to Drop Out of Berkeley Speech. Roger L. Simon explains that “this is because the conservative group Young America’s Foundation backed away, citing safety issues. The irony in all this is nothing looks worse for the left than a bunch of masked goons breaking university windows. Too bad.”

RIP: Oscar-Winning Director Jonathan Demme Dies at 73.

Incongruous as it seems, Demme directed one of the best concert movies of all time — Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense — and with Silence of the Lambs, one of the best horror movies, too.

NOTORIOUS ROBOPHOBE MATT YGLESIAS DOES NOT APPEAR TO HAVE BEEN INVOLVED: Drunk Man Arrested After Attacking Armless Security Robot.

CHRISTIAN TOTO ON HOLLYWOOD’S POST-BUSH WAR MACHINE: Truth or Propaganda?

THE MORE YOU SWEAT IN PEACE… Beltway Agencies’ Terror Drill to Cover Six Sites Like Paris Attacks.

TESTING THE WATERS: US Navy destroyer fires warning shots at unresponsive, approaching Iranian ship.

The real lede is buried deep in the penultimate paragraph:

Since the nuclear deal with world powers, the hard-line Revolutionary Guard has stepped up its encounters with the Americans. The Navy recorded 35 instances of what it describes as “unsafe and/or unprofessional” interactions with Iranians forces in 2016, compared to 23 in 2015. With Monday’s event, there have been seven so far in 2017, McConnaughey said. [emphasis added]

I wonder why that is. Perhaps Mr. Obama, back from his extended vacay and back in the public eye, should be asked to comment.

I HAD BEEN TOLD THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: Popular belief that saturated fat clogs up arteries is a myth, experts say.

The authors, led by Dr Aseem Malhotra, from Lister Hospital, Stevenage, wrote: “Despite popular belief among doctors and the public, the conceptual model of dietary saturated fat clogging a pipe is just plain wrong.”

Dr Malhotra and colleagues Professor Rita Redberg, from the University of California at San Francisco, and Pascal Meier from University Hospital Geneva in Switzerland and University College London, cited a “landmark” review of evidence that appeared to exonerate saturated fat.
They said relative levels of “good” cholesterol, or high density lipoprotein (HDL), were a better predictor of heart disease risk than levels of low density lipoprotein (LDL), also known as “bad” cholesterol.

High consumption of foods rich in saturated fat such as butter, cakes and fatty meat has been shown to increase blood levels of LDL.
The experts wrote: “It is time to shift the public health message in the prevention and treatment of coronary artery disease away from measuring serum lipids (blood fats) and reducing dietary saturated fat.

“Coronary artery disease is a chronic inflammatory disease and it can be reduced effectively by walking 22 minutes a day and eating real food.”

I’d walk 22 minutes for a ribeye and a Caesar.