BENDING THE COST CURVE: $10,345 per person: U.S. health care spending reaches new peak.

That figure would be far lower if the obstructionist GOP Congress had passed the Obama Administration’s proposed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

BUT WILL HE KEEP THE PROFITS? Sanders has book deal; will reflect on campaign.

POLITICO’S PETER SCHWEIZER: The Strange Gaps in Hillary Clinton’s Email Traffic.

Strange? You keep using that word…

DIPLOMACY: The World According to Boris, New Foreign Secretary of Britain.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph in 2007 Johnson questioned whether he could back her candidacy. Clinton, who today is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was at the time seen as a favorite to win the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

“She’s got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital; and as I snap out of my trance I slap my forehead in astonishment.
How can I possibly want Hillary? I mean, she represents, on the face of it, everything I came into politics to oppose: not just a general desire to raise taxes and nationalise things, but an all-round purse-lipped political correctness.”

Can’t there be a job for Boris in a Trump Administration?

COIFFEURGATE: French president Hollande pays his hairdresser over $10,000-a-Month.

Where is a Socialist president getting that kind of money?

RED LINE: Obama’s Syria plan teams up American and Russian forces.

The Obama administration’s new proposal to Russia on Syria is more extensive than previously known. It would open the way for deep cooperation between U.S. and Russian military and intelligence agencies and coordinated air attacks by American and Russian planes on Syrian rebels deemed to be terrorists, according to the text of the proposal I obtained.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry plans to discuss the plan with top Russian officials in a visit to Moscow on Thursday. As I first reported last month, the administration is proposing joining with Russia in a ramped-up bombing campaign against Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, which is also known as the Nusrah Front. What hasn’t been previously reported is that the United States is suggesting a new military command-and-control headquarters to coordinate the air campaign that would house U.S. and Russian military officers, intelligence officials and subject-matter experts.

Ordinarily I’d say that joining forces with Moscow might be a good way to combat ISIS and to reduce NATO-Russian tensions. But given the Obama Administration’s history of incompetent diplomacy with Russia — starting with Hillary Clinton’s comically failed “reset” button — you have to wonder not if but how Putin will play Obama and Kerry for suckers.

MOLON LABE: Lawmaker Says Second Amendment Applies to Muskets, So Eliminate Assault Weapons.

Progressive politicians have a difficult time grasping the difference between passing a law and getting the result they intended.

QUESTION ASKED: Will Mike Lee Blow Up Trump’s Convention?

One influential delegate in particular could swing the vote to secure a minority report. Sen. Mike Lee, who sits on the rules committee along with his wife, Sharon, has remained mum on his plans for the vote. But advocates for the conscience clause are optimistic that he will side with them.

The Utah lawmaker “is definitely there in mind, body and spirit,” said one Republican involved in discussions on unbinding delegates, and Lee could be a “deciding factor” if the vote is close by empowering others to follow his lead.

“What he gives people is permission,” the source said. If Lee were to vote in the affirmative, the source added, delegates would have more cover to vote the same without fear of retribution: “If a U.S. senator can do this, so can I.”

Hmm.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The riot machine is starting up again, and the left is milking it.

JOURNOLISM:

This lede is jaw-dropping – and that is not a compliment. https://t.co/nrHuLNt6C4

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) July 14, 2016

I think this Denis Slattery/Adam Edelman report is supposed to be straight news rather than a lame op-ed hit piece, but these days how does one tell at the New York Daily News?

BUT OF COURSE: Cop accused of trading favors for sex invokes ‘Hillary defense’

HOPE: In Advanced Economies, Two-Thirds of Population Have Seen Incomes Stagnate, Study Shows.

Between 540 million and 580 million people in 2014 had lower or stagnant incomes than similarly situated people in 2005, according to a new study from the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the global consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The finding presents a break from the trend in advanced economies during the post-World War II era when, throughout twists and turns, most families ended up improving on the standard of living of their predecessors.

“Prior to the financial crisis, all but 2% of people in the Western world ended up better off than people like them 10 years ago,” said Richard Dobbs, a McKinsey senior partner and one of the report’s authors. “But the world changes when you get a cohort of people who are no longer advancing.”

The American economy alone would be more than two trillion dollars richer than it is, had the Obama “recovery” been merely average.

TRANSPARENCY: FBI confirms special secrecy agreements for agents in Clinton email probe.

A July 1 letter sent by a senior deputy to FBI Director James Comey to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, detailed the restrictions on agents. The letter, reviewed by Fox News, confirmed agents signed a “Case Briefing Acknowledgement” which says the disclosure of information is “strictly prohibited” without prior approval, and those who sign are subject to lie detector tests.

The fix was always in.

DIETING: Artificial sweeteners may trick people into being hungrier, study says.

Researchers in the new study say, however, that while reduction of sugar consumption can be healthy — so replacing real sugar with something else should be beneficial — the effects of using chemicals in unhealthy foods rather than replacing sugar-sweetened foods with those carrying natural sugar had not previously been explored.

“These findings further reinforce the idea that ‘sugar-free’ varieties of processed food and drink may not be as inert as we anticipated,” Herbert Herzog, a professor at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, said in a press release. “Artificial sweeteners can actually change how animals perceive the sweetness of their food, with a discrepancy between sweetness and energy levels prompting an increase in caloric consumption.”

I won’t eat or drink anything with them, because they taste horrible and aspartame gives me a wicked headache.

FOLLOW THE MONEY, IF YOU CAN:

Cause of Action Institute (CoA Institute) today filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the United States Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for failing to produce records about its role in the federal government’s multi-million dollar agreements with big banks over their allegedly faulty residential mortgage securities practices. HUD has failed to produce relevant documents for more than a year after CoA Institute filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information.

Cause of Action Institute President & CEO, and former federal judge, Alfred J. Lechner, Jr.: “Taxpayers deserve to know why the money from these agreements is going to third parties and not being returned to the Treasury Department. The Obama administration should be held accountable when agencies like HUD make decisions behind closed doors and fail to produce timely relevant documents in accordance with the law.”

The most transparent administration in history.

ANALYSIS: SAD BUT TRUE. Even at a funeral, dividing the nation is apparently good politics.

On Tuesday, during the memorial service for the five murdered Dallas police officers, President Obama began the speech eloquently. But it sadly once again became a political dividing tool when he made the absolutely outrageous statement that teenagers can get a hold of a Glock more readily than a book or a computer.

Harmony, brief as it was, immediately became a social media free-for-all. He just could not help make it about his political beliefs with a whopper of a lie. Has he never heard of a library? Did he think politics really belonged at a memorial service? With an entire nation grieving and watching an entire city and police force grieving in front of him, for some odd reason, he felt the need to go there.

Someone should have reminded him he was not speaking at a campaign rally. There is a time and place for politics. A funeral service to help heal racial divides is not the time or the place to stoke political divides.

In short, we are letting the race hucksters make a three ring circus of our lives, our communities and our relationships with each other and we have become willingly audience members pinned to our sides to exit from the show.

That’s Salena Zito, and of course you’ll want to read the whole thing.

BAYH, BAYH GOP SENATE? Evan Bayh makes it official, announces U.S. Senate run in Indiana.

FORGET IT, HE’S ROLLING: No, President Obama, It’s Not Easier To Buy A Glock Than A Book.

YOUR OBAMACARE FAIL OF THE DAY: Ayn Rand got it right again.

DAVID MCCULLOUGH GOES FULL GINSBURG: Scholars Steeped in Dead Politicians Take On a Live One: Donald Trump.

Authoritative and measured, Mr. McCullough typically strikes a tone of determined neutrality. In public appearances, he said, he deliberately avoids commentary on contemporary politics.

“Very often, during question-and-answer sessions, people ask me some question about the president or other would-be candidates,” he said in an interview this week. “I’ve always said, ‘My specialty is dead politicians.’ In that way, I could sidestep the question without getting myself involved.

“But this time around, I don’t feel that way any more.”

Now Mr. McCullough and Ken Burns, the filmmaker and author, have assembled a group of distinguished American historians to speak about the candidacy of Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, in videos being posted to a Facebook page, Historians on Donald Trump.

Seems panicky to me.

HOPE: Bernie’s Uninspiring Endorsement

So said Sanders at a rally in New Hampshire on Tuesday, where he appeared on stage with Hillary Clinton as an ally for the first time. As big events go, it felt pretty small, with Sanders waving his arms around and offering up his usual list of shouted slogans.

Sanders avoided subjects like war and foreign affairs, since he and Clinton disagree violently on those things. He harped on his successes, which was understandable, but it was passing strange when he claimed that he and his backers “showed the world that we could run a successful national campaign based on small individual contributions.”

Yes, if you define successful as losing.

Clinton — who actually wrapped up the nomination more than a month ago — stood next to him looking uncomfortable, nodding endlessly like a bobblehead doll and smiling at odd, seemingly random moments.

Never give up, Bernie Bros, never surrender.

RED LINE: Turkey PM Yildirim hints at mending ties with Syria.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Bourbon Review Magazine names best 80 bourbon bars in America.

My personal favorite is the one in my living room.

GIVING THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT, GOOD AND HARD, PART II: Venezuelans Living Life on the Line.

The average Venezuelan shopper spends 35 hours waiting to buy subsidized goods each month. That’s three times more than in 2014, the polling firm Datanalisis says.

As Venezuela’s lines grow longer, they also grow more dangerous. More than two dozen people were killed in line in the past 12 months, including a 4-year-old girl caught in gang crossfire. Vasquez once had to run down the block to avoid getting caught up in a knife fight that broke out when a woman was accused of cutting the line.

And what’s missing from the AP’s heart-wrenching report?

DNC PLATFORM: Global Warming Is Too Important To Wait For Democracy.