WOULDN’T WE BE BETTER OFF REGULATING PRIVATE JET USAGE INSTEAD? DiCaprio Urges Public to Monitor Commercial Fishermen with New Technology.

Also, shouldn’t there be limits on new film and television shoots?

AN ILL WIND: As Drug Deaths Soar, a Silver Lining for Transplant Patients. “The surge in deaths from drug overdoses has become an unexpected lifeline for people waiting for organ transplants, turning tragedy for some into salvation for others. As more people die from overdoses than ever before, their organs — donated in advance by them or after the fact by their families — are saving lives of people who might otherwise die waiting for a transplant. . . . The impact has been striking, especially in a region like New England, which is in the grip of a heroin and opioid epidemic.”

SKYNET SMILES: Google Wants Robots to Acquire New Skills by Learning From Each Other.

KEEP IT TOGETHER, SHEP: Fox Anchor Says “Your Kids Will Die” When Reporting on Hurricane.

AT AMAZON, deals on Cell Phones & Service Plans.

“BAD LUCK:” How Roman Central Planners Destroyed Their Economy.

DEATH RATTLE… BUT FOR WHOM? Donald Trump Makes History With Zero Major Newspaper Endorsements.

STANLEY BING: The Downside of Saying ‘I’m Sorry:’ In the age of social media, apologizing is more likely to lead to heartache than forgiveness.

REALITY INTRUDES ON THE ELITE LEFT’S WORLD OF WORDS: John Kerry threatens to charge Russia and Syria with war crimes. I guarantee Putin and Assad aren’t worried. Kerry lives in a world of words. He really thinks what he says has decisive effects. Without the will to act on the battlefield, his words are hot air. Pompous Norwegians have bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize on Juan Manuel Santos, a failed Colombian president who negotiated a flawed peace deal Colombia’s citizens rejected. Let’s agree that Colombia’s dirty war stained everyone. Former President Alvaro Uribe is a stained man, but Uribe is the leader who defeated the Communist rebels. He and the Colombian military created the military and political conditions that brought the rebels to the table. Santos didn’t. Why didn’t the Nobel committee give the prize to both Santos and Uribe? Oh, right. Santos is a socialist. Uribe is a conservative. Giving the award to Santos shows the peace prize is a joke.

UPDATE AND CLARIFICATION: One commenter is quite correct. Santos served as Minister of Defense under Uribe. My original post could be read to imply that Santos didn’t oppose the FARC. He did. That needs to be emphasized. Once negotiations started, Santos split from Uribe — Uribe was stained. Santos said he was learning from the mistakes of prior leaders. Was Santos playing good cop, bad cop? Maybe. However, Uribe argued that the deal Santos ultimately negotiated could be used to put him (Uribe) in jail. If the Nobel committee had given the prize to both Uribe and Santos I wouldn’t have griped. As for his economic inclinations, I see Santos as more left than Uribe. That may not make him a socialist, but the perception does make him more palatable to European lefty elites.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS: In 2002 Uribe said his administration would be devoted to defeating FARC. This is a classic strategypage update, from election day 2002. “FARC has threatened to kill anyone who votes for Uribe.” Uribe didn’t rule out peace talks if the rebels stopped their attacks. They didn’t. Over the next eight years he dealt FARC defeat after defeat. Those defeats are what led to real peace negotiations. When the Santos administration announced new negotiations in August 2012 I was hopeful, even though the strategypage update at the time doesn’t sound hopeful. (August 27, 2012 post.) The initial talks were fitful. Ah. Here’s the update I was looking for. December 8, 2012. “Most Colombians want justice, and sorting that out may be the most difficult part of the negotiations.” That proved to be true. Colombians judged the deal Santos negotiated to be unjust.

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: White House Coordinated on Clinton Email Issues, New Documents Show.

Newly disclosed emails show top Obama administration officials were in close contact with Hillary Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign in early 2015 about the potential fallout from revelations that the former secretary of state used a private email server.

Their discussion included a request from the White House communications director to her counterpart at the State Department to see if it was possible to arrange for Secretary of State John Kerry to avoid questions during media appearances about Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement.

In another instance, a top State Department official assured an attorney for Mrs. Clinton that, contrary to media reports, a department official hadn’t told Congress that Mrs. Clinton erred in using a private email account.

It’s the crime and the coverup.

MODERN POLITICKING: Trump’s Ground Game Footprint Remains Small.

Jeremy Baker, a field director for AFP in central Pennsylvania, estimates he has knocked on 30,000 doors with his team. “Trump has a campaign office nearby, but I don’t see them out knocking on doors,” Baker said. “I’ve never seen a door hanger, I haven’t seen people walking around.”

Even in more populous areas of the state, like southeast Pennsylvania, Trump’s ground game has been invisible.

“They’ve started to see campaign people down there,” said Beth Anne Mumford, the Pennsylvania state director for AFP, who joined the canvassers that day. “But we haven’t seen presidential anywhere.”

This would be panic-inducing to see in a normal campaign, but Trump’s isn’t a normal campaign.

I suppose we’ll find out on November 8.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Hey Republicans, Time to Limit or Scrap the Judgment Fund.

FROM MAURICE STUCKE AND ALLEN P. GRUNES: Big Data and Competition Policy. As I said on the Reason podcast, it’s past time to bring in some antitrust.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: The Children Have Been Left Behind.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ “Nation’s Report Card” program, private and parochial schools have routinely outpaced public schools in math and reading assessments. But the absence of voucher programs puts this education out of the reach of many underprivileged and minority students, who are most in need of better educational opportunities. Charter and magnet schools are often a more realistic option, with an added layer of accountability as staff are easier to replace and there are real consequences for the school administration if they fail to produce results.

But private schools require tuition, and charter schools have such high demand that they select their students through interview processes and lotteries. This results in these higher-quality educational opportunities drawing away students who are already performing well, leaving poor & underperforming students — the ones most in need of an alternate education method — in the lurch.

Read the whole thing.

MOSCOW ABHORS A VACUUM: Russia Might Restore Its Military Bases In Vietnam And Cuba.

Heckuva job, Barry.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1247.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Young America, You’re Getting Screwed.

Bob Kerrey:

Clinton is pushing 70. Trump just passed it. Both have substantial amounts of non-employment income to supplement their Social Security benefits. Neither have any personal concern about the Social Security trustees’ report warning that the so-called trust fund for the Old Age and Survivors program will be depleted in 18 years.

Congress is in the same privileged condition. The average age of senators and House members is 62 and 57 years, respectively. They will have congressional pensions to supplement their Social Security. And thanks to the lucrative revolving door to the private sector, it is unlikely that they, like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, will be personally impacted by the dire predictions of the report.

However, for every American under the age of 50—especially the growing numbers whose only source of retirement income will be Social Security—the trustees’ report is very bad news. The “Do Nothing Plan” supported by nearly every member of Congress and the presidential candidates contains a large cut in benefits or a comparably large increase in taxes. And every year support for the “Do Nothing Plan” is sustained, the burden on young Americans grows.

As I noted above, the “second screwing” of young Americans costs them more than $10,000 per year. And if you exclude government employees that number is almost $20,000 a year about the total average amount of college debt.

Very few younger Americans understand just how much has been taken from them, or just how much they already owe for services which will they will likely never receive.

When they finally do understand, the political eruption may make 2016 seem tame.

WHY IS ALABAMA SO HOMOPHOBIC? The University of Alabama is using the “heckler’s veto” to prevent College Republicans from hosting a gay conservative journalist speaker.

FASTER, PLEASE: Roger Goodell Feels a Great Disturbance in the Force, Er, Profits, Jim Geraghty writes.

This tweet by Iowahawk neatly sums up the current state of NFL, whose efforts over the past decade or so to alienate its core audience (and I say this as somebody who watched pro football for over 35 years before giving up) have finally reached fruition:

GOOD FOR THEM: Horizontal fracking can go ahead, the government has said, in a landmark ruling for the UK shale gas industry.

SO MUCH FOR PEAK OIL: Alaska Just Nearly Doubled its Oil Reserves.

Of course, this isn’t just encouraging for Alaska, it’s also a boon for U.S. energy security. Low oil prices have led to a slight decline in U.S. oil production from 9.6 million bpd back in June of 2015 down to just below 8.5 million bpd today, as shale producers have been forced to idle their higher-cost projects. The area of Alaska where this new discovery was made typically has a breakeven level of around $40 per barrel, so with oil trading today near $50, the Caelus project should be able to turn a profit.

As good as this is for both Alaska and the United States, it’s a bad sign for other major producers, and more specifically it’s unwelcome news for petrostates like Saudi Arabia and Russia. OPEC intends to cut production at its semiannual meeting in November, but even as it works to constrain the world’s oil supply to set off a price rebound, new discoveries are being made and new projects are coming online. You can find the latest example of this massive global glut off the coast of the United Kingdom, where roughly a dozen tankers are waiting their turn to offload their crude cargoes. The world is awash in oil, and despite the protestations of the delusional “peak oil” movement, that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon.

I remember when doubting “peak oil” meant you were a shill for Exxon.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Satellite images show activity at North Korea nuclear test site.

TURNING THE USA TOTALITARIAN FOR THE ‘BETTER GOOD:’ Do we still believe in the rule of law?, asks Roger Simon.

SO IT’S A CRIME TO MOCK MASS HYSTERIA NOW? Clowning dad charged after tailing school bus. “An Auburn dad who followed his kid’s school bus with a scary clown mask is being charged with disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace for terrifying the middle school students, whom he followed from the their bus stop, police said. . . . The Auburn man, who police did not identify last night, is facing the charges because ‘there was no legitimate purpose for his actions (which) could have caused a potentially hazardous situation to these children,’ a police spokesman said.”

So now you have to have a “legitimate purpose” to do entirely legal things? Besides, in today’s America, mockery is always a legitimate purpose.