TALES OF A COUP: What Trump Can Learn From Gorbachev. “The parallels with the current talk against Trump are rather remarkable.”

JAMES ROBBINS IN USA TODAY: Manchester bombing shows Donald Trump is right.

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STORIES OF FUTURE AMERICAS: Rocket’s Red Glare.  I’m in this, along with my friend brad Torgersen.

HMM: Manchester Bombing Witness: Suspicious Woman with Backpack Left Right Before Concert Ended.

OF COURSE THEY ARE: ABC News Worried About Potential ‘Anti-Islamic Backlash’ After Manchester Terror Attack.

DRIVING THE ESTABLISHMENT INSANE: Amazon’s at it again.

BECAUSE PREACHING MAKES FOR LOUSY ART: It was true for traditional religions, and it’s just as true for Marxism. Why Those ‘Woke’ Feminist Movies and TV Shows Are So Bad.

CANDLELIGHT VIGILS DON’T HELP IN THE WAR ON TERROR TO SAVE MUSLIMS FROM THEMSELVES:Candlelight Progressive Magic… Again.

PARTICULARLY IF YOU ARE MARRIED TO A CLUELESS DOLT: Study reveals emojis can save your relationship.

JUST SIX?  I CAN THINK OF DOZENS OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD: The six things you should never say to a guy in bed.

HE WAS MY FIRST CRUSH WHEN I SAW HIM IN THE PERSUADERS.  I WAS TEN: My world will never be the same again’: ‘Devastated’ Michael Caine leads tributes to Sir Roger Moore after the legendary James Bond actor dies aged 89 after a short battle with cancer.

ESTABLISHING THE STATUS OF NOBILITY: Minor Nobles of Exquisite Breeding and Dubious Character.

STRIKE A POSE, THERE’S NOTHING TO IT.  Mark Steyn on when “Dangerous Woman” Meets Dangerous Man:

[M]ost other western citizens believe that, to invert Trotsky, if you’re not interested in Islam, Islam won’t be interested in you. Ariana Grande was eight at the time of 9/11, and most of her fans even younger. They have passed their entire sentient lives in the age of Islamic terror, yet somehow assume it’s something compartmentalized and sealed off from them. “Dangerous Woman” is meant to be an attitude, nothing more — an edgy pose in a pop culture that lost any edge long ago; a great T-shirt, like the ones last night scavenged from the merchandising stands and used to bandage the wounded. It must come as a shock to realize there are those who take your ersatz provocations as the real thing, and are genuinely provoked by them.

“Carrying on exactly as before”, as The Independent advises, will not be possible. A few months ago, I was in Toulouse, where Jewish life has vanished from public visibility and is conducted only behind the prison-like walls of a fortress schoolhouse and a centralized synagogue that requires 24/7 protection by French soldiers; I went to Amsterdam, which is markedly less gay than it used to be; I walked through Molenbeek after dark, where unaccompanied women dare not go. You can carry on, you can stagger on, but life is not exactly as it was before. Inch by inch, it’s smaller and more constrained.

Read the whole thing.

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WHEN SOCIETY TREATS YOU AS DEPLORABLE AND DISPOSABLE: Suicide rate skyrockets among middle-aged men.

HISTORY: A primer on Bronze-Age swordmaking from an unlikely source.

RIGHT ON SCHEDULE, HERE COME THE BROMIDES:

UK commentator Rod Liddle rather bitterly sums up what he says is the message from the BBC broadcasting this morning. Excerpt:

We must all come together. Hope, not hate. Nothing to do with Islam. Nothing to do with Muslims. Just a rogue individual, possibly in the employ of some mysterious foreign agency. Just terrorism, bad people. Unaligned wickedness. Nothing to do with religion. We must all come together. And show love. And solidarity. Hope not hate.

Je Suis Ariana Grande. Already viciousness is being expressed on social media sites. People jumping to all sorts of conclusions. Horrible, horrible, people – no better than the murderer. Who might just as easily have been a Methodist. Remember Jo Cox? That wasn’t them, was it? There, you see.

Keep reading, to discover Slate blaming Manchester on — who else — “the established heteropatriarchal order.”

Meanwhile, with the Eiffel Tower going dark in sympathy (seemingly a monthly occurrence these days, between Earth Hour and terrorism), Iowahawk tweets, “Fear our tastefully somber symbolic gestures, bloodthirsty zombie caveman rapists.”

Finally, when Morrissey, an aging gay vegan animal rights-obsessed mope-rocker is a nation’s voice of sanity, perhaps it’s time for England to question its premises*, to coin a phrase:

Morrissey issues a statement on the Manchester bombing. He is not having anymore of the UK’s immigration status quo. pic.twitter.com/oEYn9YuK9R

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) May 23, 2017

* Nope, not just yet, alas.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: When you can legally have sex with a 17-year-old, can you be prosecuted for possessing lewd nude photos of her?

MY USA TODAY COLUMN OFFERS HELPFUL TIPS FOR THIS SUMMER’S COLLEGE DIVERSITY TRAINING WORKSHOPS: Bros are people, too: Title IX enforcers need to fix the toxic environment they have created for men. I take a bold stand against “hormone shaming” and the gendering of rape. Weirdly, some of the commenters at USA Today deny that there’s anti-male sentiment at colleges.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Best Portable Air Conditioners.

WHAT IT’S REALLY LIKE to own a new Ford GT.

YOU CAN’T BUY THAT KIND OF P.R.: Al-Qaeda Slams Trump as ‘Hateful Crusader Master.’

YOU MAY NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOU: Here’s How Trump Supporters Lose Acting Gigs.

THIS WILL KILL THE BIG MONEYMAKER FOR GI DOCS: Robots May Soon Perform Better Colonoscopies.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN OFFERS HELPFUL TIPS FOR THIS SUMMER’S COLLEGE DIVERSITY TRAINING WORKSHOPS: Bros are people, too: Title IX enforcers need to fix the toxic environment they have created for men. I take a bold stand against “hormone shaming” and the gendering of rape.

LOOK FOR THE PEOPLE WHO ARE HELPING OTHERS: What was trending after the Manchester Ariana Grande attack? Mr. Rogers. Here’s why.

DAN MITCHELL: The Five Most Important Takeaways from Trump’s Budget.

It’s both amusing and frustrating to observe the reaction to President Trump’s budget.

I’m amused that it is generating wild-eyed hysterics from interest groups who want us to believe the world is about to end.

But I’m frustrated because I’m reminded of the terribly dishonest way that budgets are debated and discussed in Washington. Simply stated, almost everyone starts with a “baseline” of big, pre-determined annual spending increases and they whine and wail about “cuts” if spending doesn’t climb as fast as previously assumed.

Here are the three most important things to understand about what the President has proposed.

First, the budget isn’t being cut. Indeed, Trump is proposing that federal spending increase from $4.06 trillion this year to $5.71 trillion in 2027.

As usual the “draconian cuts” mean “reductions from the rate of increase various constituencies had hoped for.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE? Why Some People Can’t Handle Their Weed.

When humans consume weed, it stimulates their endocannabinoid system (ECS), which plays a key role in regulating our response to reward, stress and emotions. “What the ECS does is it optimizes our brain between excitation and inhibition,” says Dr. Baler. But when chemicals found in weed, such as THC, enter the ECS, they perturb the system’s ability to act in synchrony, which can disrupt our ability to regulate our response to stress, potentially causing anxiety.

“Fear stimuli that we can normally cope with can become unmanageable under the effects of marijuana because our fight-or-flight response gets disrupted,” says Dr. Baler. “You may not be able to keep those stimuli under control because your ECS is so out of whack because of all the THC in your system,” he says.

Chelsea Wind, a 46-year-old caregiver from Anderson, California, has been using medicinal marijuana every day for the past six years for pain management. One night she had a panic attack when she was at her friend’s house. “He was encouraging me to smoke more and more and get as high as humanly possible,” says Wind. “It felt like I had stopped being able to breath. I was panicking so much and I made him call 9-1-1.”

Too much is too much.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Older adults may not benefit from taking statins to prevent heart disease. “While there is evidence to support older adults taking statins for secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease – such as to prevent a second heart attack or stroke – there is limited evidence on the risks and benefits of this age group taking the cholesterol-lowering medication to prevent a first cardiovascular event. Now, an analysis of data from a clinical trial that compares it with usual care finds no benefit in use of a statin for primary prevention in older adults with high blood pressure and moderately high cholesterol.”

MARK I: ‘Iron Man’ Suit On Track, But Hurdles Remain.

The highly anticipated tactical assault light operator suit (TALOS), which has been in development since 2013, is intended to protect the first special operator coming through a door during a raid. It should have enough armor to thwart small arms fire or bomb blasts. It would also provide support for physically exhausting activities such as climbing multiple flights of stairs or carrying heavy loads.

Army Col. Jim Miller, director of the suit’s joint acquisition task force, said the program is continuing to develop a prototype of the often-dubbed “Iron Man” suit. The current suit is called the Mark 5 because it has gone through at least five iterations since the effort first began.

“There have been some design changes to it every month since I arrived last July,” he said at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Special Operations Forces Industry Conference. Nevertheless, the task force has made progress narrowing down requirements and capabilities, he added.

The TALOS effort is “relatively on schedule,” Miller said. “I say relatively because this is [research and development],” he added, noting that it is critical to develop a product that works as advertised. Once a prototype is developed, the effort will become a program of record, most likely run by program executive office SOF warrior, he said.

The suit comprises a base layer that hosts a variety of physiological and biological sensors, actuators that serve as the muscles to power the suit, processors and computers, and a durable exoskeleton that offers support to the operator.

Currently the exoskeleton is made out of titanium, but the task force may consider alternative materials such as composites in the future, Miller said.

How much longer before we have a suit for special operators which operates without the operator?

OH: Monica Lewinsky Blames Roger Ailes For What She And Bill Clinton Did.

MY SISTER, WHO’S ON A FIRST-NAME BASIS WITH THE FOLKS AT TRACTOR SUPPLY, IS INTO THIS IDEA: Stock Tank Pools Are Going to Be All the Rage This Summer.

QUESTION ASKED: How liberated are you if you’re waiting around for men to get their act together?

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ON THE INTERNET, INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE. SO DO CONVICTS. South Dakota Becomes First State with Online Pardon Application.

UNPOSSIBLE! Progressives Can Be Sexual Predators, Too.

GOLDEN STATE BLUES: How some Southern California drug rehab centers exploit addiction.

His hair is dirty and matted. His voice is raspy. And on this sunny Tuesday, Solomon is dragging around a bag full of cans and bottles that he hopes to sell to the RePlanet Recycling station behind the Ralph’s in San Clemente.

He wants to raise $20 so he can get high one last time before he goes into rehab.

As a kid, Solomon was taught not to steal or use drugs. But today, at 28, he’s grown up to become a shoplifter and a junkie, addicted to heroin and meth and benzodiazepines, one of the hardest drugs to kick.

Those aren’t the only contradictions in Solomon’s life.

As broke as he is, Solomon is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Chronic drug users like Solomon are commodities, exploited by a growing world of drug and alcohol rehab operators who put profit ahead of patient care. Everything from the opioid epidemic and Obamacare to prison realignment and legal loopholes has created conditions in which unethical operators can flourish, using addicts to bilk insurance companies and the public out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Though many legitimate centers remain, critics and long-time insiders say a darker version of the industry is emerging, built around an illicit world of patient recruiters, fraud-driven clinics and drug-testing mills.

Southern California, where the implementation of Obamacare makes it easy for recent arrivals to sign on for insurance, is on the front line of the conflict.

Read the whole thing, if you can.

FAKE NEWS: Move over InfoWars, here comes CNN! Analyst blames Manchester Bombing on ‘right wing false flag.’

Related: Ex-CNN Chief: By Creating FNC, Ailes Tarred All Journalists as Biased.

That’s our old friend Jonathan Klein, who in 2004 while famously defending Dan Rather, inadvertently named the site for us. In reply to a question from Bill O’Reilly in September of 2004 on how Rather had eviscerated his credibility, Klein barked out, “It’s an important moment, because you couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances, and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing what he thinks.”

All journalists are biased, of course, since their job is issuing opinions and interpreting facts. The honest ones are those who will admit what their biases are, and how they shape their worldview. Klein’s statement harkens back to the earliest days of mass media, and it’s long overdue for him to update his talking points.

MINUTES MATTER: Aggressive treatment for sepsis can save lives, research shows. “Every additional hour it takes to give antibiotics and perform other key steps increases the odds of death by 4 percent, according to the study reported at an American Thoracic Society meeting and in the New England Journal of Medicine.” Since I have no spleen, I’m at higher risk for sepsis. As a result, I keep a Levaquin capsule on me, with instructions to take it and rush to the ER if I have the symptoms.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Regime Change by Any Other Name?

Truth or consequences? Obama skated for far worse misdeeds. Election machines in three states were not hacked to give Donald Trump the election. There was never a serious post-election movement of electors to defy their constitutional duties and vote for Hillary Clinton. Nor, once Trump was elected, did transgendered people begin killing themselves in alarming numbers. Nor were there mass resignations at the State Department upon his inauguration. Nor did Donald Trump seek an order to “ban all Muslims” from entering the U.S. Instead, he temporarily sought a suspension in visas for everyone, regardless of religion, from seven Middle Eastern states that the Obama administration had earlier identified as incapable of properly vetting travelers to the U.S. The first lady did not work for an elite escort or prostitute service. She never said that she and young Barron Trump would not be moving to the White House. Barron does not have autism. Trump’s father never ran racist ads as a supposed candidate in a purported political campaign. Kellyanne Conway denies that in a private conversation between segments on MSNBC, she privately remarked to hosts that she had to take a shower after working for Trump. Donald Trump never suggested to the Mexican president that the U.S. was going to invade Mexico. Nor did Trump plan to mobilize the National Guard to send back illegal aliens. He did not remove a Martin Luther King bust from the White House. There was no evidence that he ever promised to ease Russian sanctions (much less that he promised the Russians he would be “flexible” after he was elected). He did not short the FBI of resources to conduct an investigation into supposed Russian collusion. He did not go to Moscow and watch prostitutes in his bed urinate where Barack Obama had previously slept. His deputy attorney general did not threaten to resign over the Comey firing. . . .

Fake news crowds out real news. Here is what we do not read much about: North Korea, long appeased, could well send missiles against our allies, perhaps even with nuclear payloads. Afghanistan is at a crux and will either implode or need more American troops. China’s role is in the balance, and it may or may not help defang North Korea. The greatest tax- and health-reform packages in years are now in the hands of Congress. Executive orders have revolutionized the domestic energy industry and achieved a stunning and historic reduction in illegal immigration. The stock market is soaring, employment is up, and confidence in the economy has returned. Wall Street seems to dip only on talk of impeaching Donald Trump. Commensurate Worry? And here is what no longer troubles us at all. In 2008, candidate Barack Obama used back channels to communicate flexibility to the Iranians (as in the later assurance he gave, on a hot mic, to the Russians), which may have helped undermine the ongoing Bush-administration negotiations with Iran. Hillary Clinton set up an illegal server, distributed classified information in an illegal and unsecured fashion, lied about it, and destroyed thousands of e-mails central to an investigation — and got off without an indictment. In the 2016 election, the head of the DNC conspired to massage the debates and help swing the nomination to the Clinton campaign. The prior attorney general of the United State met with the spouse of a presidential candidate under investigation, in a stealthy conversation on an airport tarmac, did not inform officials of that meeting until the get-together was discovered by a reporter, semi-recused herself under pressure only to turn over her prosecutorial discretion to the head of the FBI, in a fashion that was both improper and perhaps unconstitutional. We do not hear how exactly Russian interests at Uranium One obtained market control over 20 percent of U.S. uranium holdings, or the connections between Uranium One and their prior multimillion-dollar donations to the Clinton Foundation, or that the Podesta Group had numerous financial dealings with Russian interests, or that Bill Clinton received $500,000 in 2010 from Russian oligarchic interests while his wife was secretary of state — ten times more than what Michael Flynn was alleged to have received. . . .

The effort to remove the president is conducted by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the wire services, and the major networks. And we have seen nothing like it in our time.

It’s like we’ve been living in a banana republic for a decade.

JEFF REYNOLDS: Tom Coburn Says Millennials Must Embrace a Convention of States.. “We’re now up to $124 trillion in unfunded liabilities, which, over the next 50 years, the major portion of that is going to have to be paid back. Guess who’s going to have to pay that back? Millennials. That’s $30,000 per year per millennial.”

The bright side, which you can see if you squint just right, is Millennials’ lowered income expectations — they won’t pay those taxes on income they’ll never earn.

ROGER SIMON ON MANCHESTER: This Time They Came for Our Children.

FACTS AND NARRATIVE: “The DNC raised $4.7 million in April. Meanwhile, the RNC raised $9.6 million in April. The RNC has $41 million cash on hand. and the DNC $8.8 million. But Trump’s in trouble. Wait for those midterms. The Dems will flip the House and the Senate. That’s what I read in the MSM.”

HAVE YOU MET MISS ROSY SCENARIO? Mnuchin Comments On Trump’s “Historic” Budget Proposal: “It Will Prevent Taxpayer Bailouts”

In a statement issued moments ago discussing Trump’s proposed, if completely impossible, budget proposal, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that Trump’s “budget will achieve savings through reforms that prevent taxpayer bailouts and reverse burdensome regulations that have been harmful to small businesses and American workers.” Translation: taxpayer bailouts are imminent, especially now that the current economic cycle is the 3rd longest of all time and a recession grows likelier with every passing day.

Mnuchin also said that Trump’s proposed initiatives “coupled with comprehensive tax reform and other key priorities, will move America one step closer to sustained economic growth of 3 percent or higher.”

While we will clearly take the under, what we find most amazing about Trump’s budget proposal, is that it does not anticipated a recession until 2027. That would imply 18 years of economic growth since the 2009 recession, without a single contraction! Good luck with that.

That does seem a little optimistic.

THE ANGEL OF MANCHESTER: Paula Robinson shepherded 50 terrified teenagers to safety and then posted her mobile number on social media so worried parents could contact her.

IT’S A GOOD START: Austerity: Trump budget cuts $3.6 trillion over next decade.

RIP ROGER MOORE, 89: Tyler O’Neil looks back at 13 of the Best Roger Moore James Bond Scenes.

DAVID FRUM: Take a moment while mourning Manchester dead to remember Trump’s intel leak.

You stay classy, David.

IN THE MAIL: From Matthew Palmer, Enemy of the Good.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN OFFERS HELPFUL TIPS FOR THIS SUMMER’S COLLEGE DIVERSITY TRAINING WORKSHOPS: Bros are people, too: Title IX enforcers need to fix the toxic environment they have created for men. I take a bold stand against “hormone shaming” and the gendering of rape. Weirdly, some of the commenters at USA Today deny that there’s anti-male sentiment at colleges.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Condemning Manchester Terrorist Murder of Children … in the Company of Abbas.

ANOTHER VICTIM OF T.D.S.? Max Boot, the Perpetually Unhappy Camper.

CONFEDERATE STATUES IN RETREAT AT LAST.

Don’t overthink this, because it’s quite simple, really. When Democrats’ national position depended on unwavering support from “the Solid South,” we got lots of pro-Southern propaganda: the Lost Cause, Gone With The Wind, Disneyfied Uncle Remus, etc. As a vital Democrat constituency group, southerners, even practical neo-Confederates, were absolved of all sins as long as they stayed in line.

Now the South isn’t “solid” anymore — or, more accurate, it’s becoming pretty solidly Republican — so rather than receiving cultural dispensations, it now gets targeted for cultural warfare.

That’s all that’s going on here. It has nothing to do with morality or decency, any more than it did a half-century or more ago when the national cultural machine took a different position. It’s just politics by other means. The rest is just noise.

Is this analysis highly cynical? Yes. But still probably not cynical enough.

WILL NO ONE RID ME OF THIS MEDDLESOME REGIME? Venezuela’s paradox: People are hungry, but farmers can’t feed them.

With cash running low and debts piling up, Venezuela’s socialist government has cut back sharply on food imports. And for farmers in most countries, that would present an opportunity.

But this is Venezuela, whose economy operates on its own special plane of dysfunction. At a time of empty supermarkets and spreading hunger, the country’s farms are producing less and less, not more, making the caloric deficit even worse.

Drive around the countryside outside the capital, Caracas, and there’s everything a farmer needs: fertile land, water, sunshine and gasoline at 4 cents a gallon, cheapest in the world. Yet somehow families here are just as scrawny-looking as the city-dwelling Venezuelans waiting in bread lines or picking through garbage for scraps.

Having attempted for years to defy conventional economics, the country now faces a painful reckoning with basic arithmetic.

“Last year I had 200,000 hens,” said Saulo Escobar, who runs a poultry and hog farm here in the state of Aragua, an hour outside Caracas. “Now I have 70,000.”

As the wise man once said, “Get the hell out of my way!”

SHOCKER: Manchester Ariana Grande Concert Bomber is Yet Another ‘Known Wolf’ Terrorist.

NO MORE HASHTAGS OR CANDLELIGHT VIGILS: Brendan O’Neill: After Manchester, It’s Time For Anger. “The great fear of both officialdom and the media class in the wake of terror attacks is that the volatile masses will turn wild and hateful. This is why every attack is followed by warnings of an ‘Islamophobic backlash’ and heightened policing of speech on Twitter and gatherings in public: because what they fundamentally fear is public passion, our passion. They want us passive, empathetic, upset, not angry, active, questioning. They prefer us as a lonely crowd of dutiful, disconnected mourners rather than a real collective of citizens demanding to know why our fellow citizens died and how we might prevent others from dying. We should stop playing the role they’ve allotted us.”

SOUNDS LIKE AN EASY WIN: Lawsuit Accuses California University of Liberal Bias in Student Activity Funding.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN OFFERS HELPFUL TIPS FOR THIS SUMMER’S COLLEGE DIVERSITY TRAINING WORKSHOPS: Bros are people, too: Title IX enforcers need to fix the toxic environment they have created for men.

KEN WHITE: The Dubious “Anthony Weiner’s Accuser Was Actually Over 16” Story, And Why I’m Very Skeptical.

AFTER MANCHESTER: Are we, the West, ready to get serious?

OLD BUT RELIABLE, DEADLY AND UPGRADED: Why Special Operations Command sticks with the MH-6 helicopter.

THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH A WIRE SERVICE AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: AP Hires Leftist Activist as Freelancer to Sneak Into Closed Press NH GOP Event to Attack KellyAnne Conway.

BATTLE FOR MOSUL: The slow fight continues.

Iraqi military engineers installed a new floating bridge across the Tigris river on Wednesday, reconnecting the two halves of Mosul to facilitate troop deployments ahead of a final assault to dislodge Islamic State.

All five bridges connecting the two sides of the city bisected by the Tigris were struck by the U.S.-led coalition in order to hinder the militants’ movements in the early stages of the campaign to retake Mosul last year.

Seven months on, Iraqi forces have removed Islamic State from all but a pocket of territory in the western half of Mosul, including the Old City, where the militants are expected to make their last stand.

It is set to be the most complex battleground yet.

UNEXPECTEDLY: San Francisco’s Higher Minimum Wage Costing Hundreds of Jobs.

CONNECTICUT DEMOCRATS CONSIDER SPENDING CUTS: I’m so old I remember when cutting spending made you a terrorist.

Governor Malloy says negotiations over the state budget, which began this week, have a long way to go, but after wobbling on taxes he has accomplished something remarkable. He has pushed his party’s majority in the General Assembly, the Democrats, to agree that state government’s financial collapse must be fixed mainly by cutting spending, and has induced the Republican minority, which is just a few votes short of displacing the Democrats, to propose cutting spending even more and to get specific about some spending cuts.

It’s amazing what a Democratic governor can accomplish when, forswearing re-election, he no longer must play the tool of the special interests that run the party, the state employee and teacher unions, and can pursue the public interest instead.

Of course the unions, working through Democratic legislators, will try to induce the governor to go wobbly on taxes again. After all, government in Connecticut long has been less a mechanism of public service than of financing the Democratic Party, keeping the party’s most active members on the government payroll. This makes ironic the Republican opposition to the Citizens’ Election Program, which makes all election campaigns, not just campaigns supported by government employee unions, eligible for government funding.

CHANGE: “Young men slide down income ladder.”

R.I.P.: First victim of Manchester bombing named as Georgina Callander, 18.

The story reports that some parents are still waiting for news of their children.

EIGHT YEARS OF OBAMA? How Donald Trump seized the mantle of hope and change.

Looking back, the sign-stealers were a portent of sorts, an early indication that 2016 would be like no election in recent memory.

While it is not uncommon for people to steal campaign signs from other people’s lawns in the heat of an election campaign, normally people confiscate the signs of candidates they oppose.

But something quite different happened in Robeson County, N.C., as Donald Trump started to gain traction in the presidential campaign. As Bo Biggs, treasurer of the county’s Republican Party, tells it, “People were stealing [Trump] signs to put them in their own yard.”

Trump won North Carolina and its 15 electoral votes by claiming seven rural counties that had voted for Barack Obama in 2012. Among them was Robeson County, the state’s largest county, and one of its poorest and most violent.

An easy explanation of Robeson County’s transition from blue to red focuses on economic stagnation and cultural despair. But from another vantage point, one my brother Jordan Allott and I saw during a recent visit to the county, Trump’s 5-point victory had more to do with his ability to tap into the same desire for hope and change that Obama retained in an 18-point victory four years earlier.

So now he needs to do what Obama didn’t do, and deliver.

TRUMP ON MANCHESTER TERRORISTS: “EVIL LOSERS IN LIFE.” “I won’t call them monsters, because they would like that term. . . . I will call them, from now on, losers, because that’s what they are.”

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BREAKING: Police arrest 23-year-old man in connection to Manchester suicide bombing that killed 22.

Greater Manchester Police say they have arrested a 23-year-old man in connection with the apparent suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in the English city.

Police say the man was arrested in south Manchester on Tuesday, a day after the explosion killed 22 people and injured 59, many of them teenagers.

They did not provide details.

More to come.

2018: Michigan Businesswoman to Challenge Stabenow.

Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow received her first Republican challenger as businesswoman Lena Epstein announced her candidacy for Michigan’s Senate race.

Epstein is a third-generation co-owner of Vesco Oil Corp., which distributes automotive and industrial lubricants.

Epstein also served as co-chair of President Donald Trump’s campaign in the state, where he became the first Republican to win Michigan since George H.W. Bush won in 1988.

In a statement announcing her run, Epstein portrayed herself as an outsider in the Trump mold.

“Michigan spoke loud and clear in the last election — we want an outsider with business leadership skills who can inspire the people of Michigan with a bright vision for the future.”

Stabenow is a tired hack who ought to be vulnerable, though of course that will depend to some degree on events. Epstein’s website is here.

GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld’s morning brief has almost everything you need to know.

AS LONG AS YOU TREAT LYING ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL PILLS THE SAME WAY: “Stealthing” Your Partner During Sex Could Soon Be Classified As Sexual Assault.

But how likely is that, since it would put so many women at risk? Anyway, this whole thing has the smell of a panic manufactured via dubious research.

THE NEW COKE OF NEWS! As Fox News Moves to the Left, Its Ratings Plummet.

LAST MONTH HE WAS HITLER, SO THIS IS A BIG IMPROVEMENT: Juan Williams: Trump morphs into Nixon.

WEIRD: DNC reports worst April of fundraising since 2009.

BIGGER IS BETTER: Gas Guzzlers Rule in China.

Official targets call for 40% of cars bought in China in 2030 to be pure electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids. The country already is the world’s largest electric-vehicle market. Roughly half the 700,000 electric cars sold world-wide last year were sold in China.

In all, China will have 30 million electric cars on the road, 9% of the country’s total passenger-car fleet, by 2025, Bernstein Research forecasts. While that’s likely to eclipse the number of electric cars operating in any other country, China’s appetite for electric cars still looks modest alongside the craze for SUVs.

From four million SUVs in 2010, China will have 150 million—45% of its entire passenger-car fleet—by 2025, Bernstein estimates. The sedan has long been king in China, but SUVs will start outselling sedans next year, says Bernstein auto analyst Robin Zhu, and by 2023 SUVs will outnumber sedans nationwide.

SUVs are so popular that one of China’s biggest auto firms, Great Wall Motors Co., makes nothing else.

Even in China, consumers foil central planners’ demands.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Astronomical Percentage Of Students Willing To Pay For College With Sex. “What does it mean? We don’t know yet, but openness to the idea of becoming a sugar baby is far higher than we had predicted.”

LEFTIST POLITICS: “Find some truly hard people. . . . It is necessary secretly — and urgently — to prepare the terror.”

This is why you should own guns.

TWITCHY: ‘F*ckin’ scumbag’: Verified Twitter account tweets VILE ‘jokes’ about incident at Ariana Grande concert.

A FRESH, YOUNG FACE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY! Biden fuels 2020 speculation.

Flashback: Biden Swims Naked, Upsetting Female Secret Service Agents:

Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,” Kessler writes in the book – due for release Aug. 5.

“Female Secret Service agents find that offensive,” he writes.

“Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe,” an unnamed agent told Kessler. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”

Plus: Washington Post: What Are We Going To Do About Creepy Uncle Joe Biden?

And: ‘Creepy Veep’ Joe Biden ‘nuzzles’ wife of colleague and claims he is friends with lots of Somali cab drivers.

Also: Joe Biden’s Woman-Touching Habit.

Related: Talking Points Memo: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?

Plus:

HIS PEN NAME WAS RUSSIA? Kim Dotcom: ‘I Knew Seth Rich. I Know He Was the Wikileaks Source’.

TUCKING IN THE NAPKINS AT CANNIBAL FEAST: Male Feminist Disavows Feminism, Cites Rise of Hatred.

YOU’VE PROBABLY SEEN THIS, BUT IF YOU HAVEN’T: BREAKING: Bombing of Manchester UK Ariana Grande Concert.

SCREAMING ACROSS THE VOID: Of Anointed and Laymen.

RELATED TO THE LAST POST: Never ever forget one thing about Liberals.

VIRTUE SIGNALING HAS A PRICE: Action, meet consequence!

BECAUSE WE CAN’T AFFORD IT:Insurers Request Double-Digit Premium Rate Increases for Obamacare Plans Next Year.

ABOUT TIME: Trump Admin Declares Jerusalem Part of Israel in Major Policy Shift.

IN THE END, WE CAN’T AFFORD IT: Single-Payer Slayer.

OF COURSE THE COST WILL KEEP YOU AWAKE AT NIGHT:‘Clean’ sleeping is the next big wellness trend.

NEITHER: The wrong question, the right answer.

AND MANY OF THEM DID IT KNOWINGLY AND GLEEFULLY: The Media Spreads Fake News About Ivanka Trump.

AT AMAZON, save big on bestselling Pet Supplies.

Plus, savings in Sports and Outdoors.

THIS REALLY DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE. Historically Black College Leader: So Far, Trump a Step UP From Obama.

THE INSTA-WIFE: Is Humor Helpful in Reducing Men’s Suicide Rates?