WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Army Lasers Will Soon Destroy Enemy Mortars, Artillery and Drones From Strykers.

OFF THE WALL GUITARS ABOUNDED AT THE 2016 ARLINGTON GUITAR SHOW: My photo-intensive wrap-up, at the PJ Lifestyle section.

Off the wall — sometimes off the ceiling — haircuts didn’t exactly abound, given the age of some of us collectors, but they could certainly be found as well.

I WOULD CERTAINLY HOPE SO: ObamaCare premium hikes fuel Trump, GOP case in key swing states.

SO I’M READING ROBIN HANSON’S The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth. I’m happy to see that his bibliography includes Greg Egan’s Permutation City, which I think is the best mind-uploading visualization in SF, though I’d add Egan’s Diaspora to that list if it were me.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Otto’s Robotruck Hauls Budweiser While the Driver Twiddles His Thumbs in the Back.

LIFE IN THE AGE OF HYSTERIA: “How could it not enter your mind that the signs belonged to someone else? She describes her mind as the mind of an insane person: Someone else’s speech was assaulting her mind and destroying all sense of equilibrium, as if she had to protect the inside of her own head where she never dreamed anyone else could own property. But it wasn’t really only in her own head, as the policeman kindly informed her. . . . She’s running with this I-was-literally-crazy argument. But Trump is worse, because he assaulted women. As if she were protecting women by stealing signs.”

Related: “One way to bully is to call the other person the bully. Chelsea could be said to be part of that activity.”

SHOCKER: Private Equity Executives Give To Democrats, But Not A Penny To Trump.

DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE:

.@mattyglesias Obamacare marker – which was solid as of 15 minutes ago – appears to no longer be markering pic.twitter.com/a0EyXImI8g

— Omri Ceren (@cerenomri) October 26, 2016

HMM: AARP Sues U.S. Over Rules for Wellness Programs. “Employers have raced to offer workers a hefty financial incentive to sign up for programs meant to improve their health, submitting personal medical details in the process. But as these programs have spread, so has resistance from employees dubious about sharing that information with employers.”

ANALYSIS: ALL-TOO-TRUE. Obamacare woes to linger long after Obama is gone.

Big price hikes to Affordable Care Act premiums announced this week mean that Obama’s proudest legislative achievement will fail to resolve the decades-old controversy surrounding the government’s role in managing the cost of and access to health care.

It will fall to the next administration whether to fix Obamacare’s shortcomings — including rising premiums and deductibles, slowing enrollment growth and the increasing number of insurers pulling out of the ACA marketplaces — or to trash the system and start again.

Heckuva job, Barry.

TWEET OF THE DAY:

JOHN SCHINDLER: Syria’s Civil War Is Over — Russia Won.

For Putin, his Syrian intervention has been an unambiguous win on the world stage. Its benefits exist on many levels, not least Russia’s reinforcing the potent message that Moscow, unlike Washington, stands by its friends. When his regime was collapsing in 2011, Hosni Mubarak, who had led Egypt for three decades as a loyal ally of America, was coldly abandoned by the White House. President Obama, against the advice of his own national security experts, cut Mubarak loose to the mob, refusing to take his panicked phone calls pleading for help.

That same year, when his regime was facing the abyss as civil war enveloped Syria, Bashar al-Assad got all the help he wanted from Moscow. Russia saved Assad and has not cared one whit about cries from the international community and NGOs about the brutal methods employed by the Syrian regime against rebels. This message has not been missed in the Middle East. It’s no wonder that even Israel has sought parley with Moscow, which has replaced Washington as the new regional kingmaker-cum-sheriff, while Egypt has renewed security ties with the Kremlin that Cairo abandoned more than four decades ago, in favor of the Americans. No more.

Putin and his ministers have acted cynically and cunningly in Syria, to good effect for Russia. However, it would be wrong to portray Moscow as strategic geniuses here. It’s much more about the staggering, unprecedented foreign policy incompetence of President Obama and his White House than anything else. Time and again, Obama and his coterie of self-proclaimed foreign policy masterminds on his National Security Council have been bested by the Russians, who view them with undisguised contempt.

As Mark Steyn noted about the jihadis after 9/11 — the question isn’t “Why do they hate us?” but “Why do they despise us?“

SHIKHA DALMIA: Hillary Clinton: Feminism’s False Prophet.

One does not have to be a Clinton basher to point out there is something screwy about her whole posture toward women. She now insists that all victims of sexual assault deserve to be taken seriously and chastised Trump for not apologizing to the women he’s insulted and allegedly assaulted. But at the Wednesday debate, when asked about her own husband’s sexual misdeeds, she pretended like she didn’t hear the question. And she herself hasn’t been exactly easy on her husband’s victims. Indeed, there is no denying that one reason Trump is getting away with his sexual misconduct is because her husband, whom she enabled, got away with his.

Nor did she play fair to get a plea deal for a 42-year-old who raped a 12-year-old girl in 1975. Granted, she took the case only very reluctantly. However, after she did, she resorted to every trick in the book — including suggesting that the girl fantasized about older men — to get her client off the hook. This would be fine if she believed that accused rapists deserve strong due process protections. Or that it is the duty of lawyers to defend their clients in the most aggressive way possible. Or if she at least explained that her position has evolved and she has come to understand that the victims of sexual assault bear a special burden and therefore deserve special protections (debatable though that is).

But she has done none of that and feminists have not pushed her to clarify.

The conundrum for feminists is that if they ask Clinton to reconcile her actions and positions, they risk exposing her hypocrisy and making her vulnerable in the face of an intolerable alternative. But if they don’t, they end up undermining their own credibility and effectiveness.

Actually, as even Maureen Dowd noticed, feminism died in 1998 after being converted into a groper’s support group for Bill Clinton. Hillary’s just reanimated its corpse to stagger around until November 8. And no, I’m not sure if that’s nihilistic fatalism or fatalistic nihilism.

Related: “He’s got beautiful blue eyes.”

MODERN STATESMEN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykISkFHiIFU

A fun reminder from Free Enterprise Alliance.

2016, MAN: “I’m wondering if they’re going for nihilistic fatalism or fatalistic nihilism.”

SO WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE THAT WAS AIMED AT CHRIS CHRISTIE? Protesters Disrupt Traffic On George Washington Bridge, Cause Major Delays. To be fair, the drivers seemed pretty outraged. Is this a Trump false-flag op?

HEH: “For almost a quarter of a century… the Nobel committee acted as if American literature did not exist — and now an American is acting as if the Nobel committee doesn’t exist.”

I’M GLAD TO SEE PRESIDENT ASH CARTER ON THE JOB: Carter suspends Pentagon’s demand of the return of cash bonuses to California soldiers.

BROSURANCE BUMMER, MAN: Young People Pick Beer Over Obamacare, says Aetna CEO.

I’m old enough to remember way back to this week in 2013, when the world was still young, and everything seemed possible — those halcyon hallucinogenic, fun-filled days of “Brosurance.” This was the unfortunate portmanteau created by a pair of the Obama administration’s fellow travelers, the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and ProgressNow Colorado Education, “two nonprofit advocacy groups involved in promoting enrollment under the Affordable Care Act.” According to CNBC,* they promised “young people” they could have both beer and insurance — Brosurance, dude! — thanks to the wonders of Obamacare.

Remember kids, “‘Keg stands are crazy. Not having health insurance is crazier,’ it says next to a photo of three hard-partying guys, described as ‘bros for life,’” before adding the two scariest words in the English language, “Thanks, Obamacare!” near the bottom of the ad.

*Speaking of Obama’s fellow travelers.

WE’VE BEEN BUSSING IN PEOPLE FOR 50 YEARS AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO STOP NOW: Yes, bussing in illegal voters to vote illegally is one way the Democrats rig an election.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1266.

ROGER SIMON: Only Trump Has a Chance to Bring the Country Together—and It’s Slight.

Read on for Roger’s modest proposal, the core of which is hinted at in my Photoshop.

TO FUEL OR NOT TO FUEL, THAT WAS THE QUESTION: Spain won’t have to decide. Moscow has withdrawn its request. “Spain had been coming under pressure from Nato allies not to allow the refuelling of Russian warships bound for Syria.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Jeffrey Toobin Doesn’t Know The First Thing About Clarence Thomas’s Legal Legacy.

As someone who had the privilege of clerking for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, I am more familiar with his opinions than most people are. I read them one after another as I nervously prepared to interview for the position.

With each opinion, I became less confident that I could even carry on a conversation with the man who had written so thoughtfully and prolifically about the original meaning of the Constitution, let alone help him with his work. But one does not have to have read the Thomas canon to know that Jeffrey Toobin’s recent article in The New Yorker, “Clarence Thomas’s Twenty-Five Years Without Footprints,” is nonsense.

Read the whole thing.