MICHELLE OBAMA: ‘All Men, All White’ GOP Makes People Distrust Politics.

“We should be working actively to mix it up, so we’re getting a real broad range of perspectives on every issue. Shoot, I would see that in Congress,” she stated.

“At the State of the Union address… when you are in the room what you can see is this real dichotomy. It’s a feeling of color almost,” Obama said. “On one side of the room is literally gray and white. Literally, that is the color palette on one side of the room. On the other side of the room, there are yellows and blues and whites and greens. Physically, there’s a difference in color, in the tone, because on one side all men, all white, on the other side some woman, some people of color.”

“I look at that, and I go, no wonder. No wonder we struggle, no wonder people don’t trust politics. We’re not even noticing what these rooms look like,” she added.

That statement isn’t coherent enough to rebut.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Well, Marco Rubio kind of did.

STRENGTHENING THE GRID: Rick Perry Wants to Subsidize Coal and Nuclear.

Late last week the energy secretary asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to consider paying “resilient” power producers more for the electricity they supply to the grid. In a letter written to FERC, Secretary Perry highlighted the “undervaluation of grid reliability and resiliency benefits provided by traditional baseload resources, such as coal and nuclear,” a problem he would see fixed by a potential market intervention by FERC.

This policy recommendation is the result of a study Secretary Perry ordered earlier this year, which aimed to take account of what the recent rise in intermittent renewable power suppliers had done—and what it was going to do—to America’s overall grid stability. That intermittency is a real issue: renewables like solar and wind can only provide power when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and that up-and-down supply makes it difficult to match supply with demand. Perry’s request of FERC could, in that context, be read as an attempt to shore up U.S. energy security by making sure baseload power providers are compensated for the stable electricity they contribute.

It’s true, too, that even as renewables are seeing growth, some of those reliable baseload power providers are struggling. We’re not building any new nuclear power plants because the business case for doing so simply isn’t there, and dozens of old plants face decommissioning in the coming decades. There’s no doubt that the nuclear industry would jump at the opportunity to secure higher rates for the stable power it supplies.

We should be building lots of nice, clean nukes anyway, because they’re greenhouse-friendly. You do care about climate change as much as Rick Perry does, don’t you?

THIS WILL END WELL: U.S. Needs to Join the Race for Multinationals’ Tax Revenue, Experts Say.

Or instead we could reduce and simplify our corporate taxes substantially, become an international tax haven, and reap the investment benefits.

But that would mean far fewer opportunities for graft, political manipulation, and plunder.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student whose MAGA hat stolen presses charges; thief’s peers demand school protect her, pay her rent.

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, updated hourly.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Digital Deals.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Nothing Makes Liberals Angrier Than Us Normals Insisting On Our Rights.

Yeah, they get so mad they want mass executions:

I remember when using violent rhetoric in politics was supposed to be bad.

UPDATE: From the comments:

Left: We need a total gun ban due to the threat of violence.
Right: The threat of violence from whom?
Left: Us…..

Heh.

A MODEST PROPOSAL: Equality and the NFL.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Prof who wanted ‘white genocide’ for Christmas blames ‘white people and men’ for Las Vegas massacre.

JOHN STOSSEL AT REASON TV: 100 YEARS OF COMMUNIST DISASTER.

SAYUNCLE ON BUMPFIRE STOCKS: We Must Ban Springs.

Remember way back in 2012 when David Gregory, clearly breaking DC law, held up an AR-15 magazine and showed it to the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre. He held it as though it had some magical killing power. It’s a box with a spring in it. Yup. All the righteous indignation over a box with a spring in it.

Well, the story is the same now only replace box with tube. Bumpfiring is an effective way of turning money into noise. It’s ineffective at shooting accurately. These bumpfire gizmos are basically tubes that go over some part of the gun. And some have springs in them. They’re simple. The loon in Vegas had 12 bumpfire stocks.

So, obviously we must ban them. That law was written by someone who knows absolutely nothing about guns or gun laws. Are we going to ban rubber-bands too? How about shoestrings? A lot of folks can bumpfire without the assistance of a device. It’s not hard. Just takes some practice.

Sounds silly. But ATF has already banned springs, to an extent. Conversion device rules are generally silly.

Now, of all the proposed gun laws the democrats and press (but I repeat myself) are going on about out there, I think this one is most likely to pass due to the hysteria from those ignorant of how these things work. And if it does, the pro-gun side damn well better get something in return. Or the Republicans will lose a lot of voters.

Maybe nationwide carry?

IN A WORD? SOCIALISM. How did Venezuela get to this point?

That collapse of the oil industry happened in two steps. First, all the know-how of that industry, centuries of man-years of experience was lost in the firing of these people. They were not only fired but persecuted, so most of them left the country. Many of them left the country. And they caused, for example, an oil boom in Colombia [where many of them moved to]. Colombia went from producing 200,000 barrels of oil [per day] to a million barrels of oil thanks to the fact that Venezuelans knew how to extract much more oil from the fields that Colombia was already exploiting.

So there was a massive loss of human capital. They also wanted to create a politically conscious oil company, so they started to put an enormous amount of social programmes and other things on the books of PDVSA, the oil company. And as a consequence they starved the company from investment and they ran the company in an amazingly corrupt way, and this is really not just talk about corruption but evidence of corruption in massive ways. There were these foreign oil companies… These foreign oil companies have been complaining to the government that they want to wrest control of the procurement of oil projects because they know that this procurement is being done at multiples of what things should cost. There’s people that have been found in the US owning hundreds of millions of Dollars of money that has been laundered out of PDVSA and so on.

So they really destroyed the hen that laid the golden eggs, at the time when their own plans and their own announced plans was to move Venezuela to produce six million barrels of oil. And instead of increased production they have never been able to stop a very rapid decline in production.

Excellent interview with Venezuelan economist-non-grata Ricardo Hausmann.

Highly recommended.

DOESN’T SOUND LIKE THEY THINK IT’S A LONE WACKO SCENARIO: FBI Agent: We Have ‘Multiple Leads’ In U.S. And ‘ALL ACROSS THE WORLD’ In Vegas Shooting.

“HAIL, HAIL, THE DEMOCRATIC GANG’S ALL HERE:” Sebelius: Harry Reid pushed me into “unusual” Menendez meeting in corruption trial.

IT’S THE JOOOOOS: Erdogan points out Mossad’s role in northern Iraq poll.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointed out the role of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in the recently-held illegitimate referendum in northern Iraq.

Speaking at a joint news conference with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani in capital Tehran, Erdogan said: “What is the referendum organized by northern Iraq’s regional administration for? No country in the world apart from Israel recognizes it.

“A decision made at the table with Mossad is not legitimate, it is illegitimate.”

Sadly, Erdogan is correct when he says that no country other than Israel recognizes the Iraqi Kurds’ referendum, which again shows a lack of imagination and backbone at the State Department and/or White House.

WHAT I’D REALLY LIKE TO SEE IS AN INVESTIGATION OF WIRETAPPING BY THE PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATION: Warrantless wiretapping reform legislation circulates on Capitol Hill.

THEY KNEW. THIS SAYS BAD THINGS ABOUT WEST POINT. EXCLUSIVE: Communist West Point Grad Was Reported In 2015 For Anti-American Posts.

Related: Kurt Schlichter: Our Broken Military Can’t Even Manage To Toss Out Traitors.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The Latest on the Vegas Massacre and Much, Much More.

FIVETHIRTYEIGHT: Mass Shootings Are A Bad Way To Understand Gun Violence. “First, they’re rare, and the people doing the shooting are different. The majority of gun deaths in America aren’t even homicides, let alone caused by mass shootings. Two-thirds of the more than 33,000 gun deaths that take place in the U.S. every year are suicides.”

VICE PRESIDENT (AND SPACE COUNCIL CHAIR) MIKE PENCE: America Will Return to the Moon—and Go Beyond.

The U.S. pays Russia more than $76 million a seat to carry American astronauts to the International Space Station, since we have no vehicle capable of performing this task. The intelligence community reports that Russia and China are pursuing a full range of antisatellite technology designed to threaten our military’s effectiveness. These are only two examples of America’s abdication of leadership in space.

The president has charged the National Space Council with restoring that leadership. The council’s objectives are clear.

We will refocus America’s space program toward human exploration and discovery. That means launching American astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit for the first time since 1972. It means establishing a renewed American presence on the moon, a vital strategic goal. And from the foundation of the moon, America will be the first nation to bring mankind to Mars.

We will renew America’s commitment to creating the space technology needed to protect national security. Our adversaries are aggressively developing jamming and hacking capabilities that could cripple critical military surveillance, navigation systems and communication networks. In the face of this threat, America must be as dominant in the heavens as it is on Earth.

We will promote regulatory, technological, and educational reforms to expand opportunities for American citizens and ensure that the U.S. is at the forefront of economic development in outer space. In the years to come, American industry must be the first to maintain a constant commercial human presence in low-Earth orbit, to expand the sphere of the economy beyond this blue marble.​

To achieve these goals, the National Space Council will look beyond the halls of government for insight and expertise. In the coming weeks, President Trump and I will assemble a Users’ Advisory Group partly composed of leaders from America’s burgeoning commercial space industry. Business is leading the way on space technology, and we intend to draw from the bottomless well of innovation to solve the challenges ahead.

An excellent start. There’s a lot of exciting space stuff happening, though very little of it is happening at NASA.

TRUMP2020 CAMPAIGN GATHERS SPEED: Harvard prof calls NRA a ‘domestic terrorist organization.’

“HOLD UP, DID THE CEO OF DISNEY REALLY JUST SAY THAT DONALD TRUMP WAS TRYING TO TAKE AWAY CIVIL RIGHTS FROM BLACK PEOPLE? YES, YES HE DID:” Disney CEO Decided Not to Suspend ESPN’s Jemele Hill Over Trump Insults Because Her Feelings Were Hurt.

BONE UP: B-1B To Fly Through 2040 Without Major Life Extension.

In 2012 and 2013, Boeing began fatigue testing the wing and fuselage, respectively, to validate the predicted life of the B-1B, which at the time was forecast to fly through 2050.

With 72% of wing testing and 20% of fuselage fatigue testing now complete, the Air Force estimates the B-1B can operate through 2040 without needing an expensive life extension.

Brig. Gen. Michael Schmidt, the Air Force’s program executive officer for fighters and bombers, says B-1B testing is extremely important and helps identify which parts of the swing-wing supersonic bomber need closer inspection and which need repair or replacing, and in what timeline.

“As of right now, we don’t plan a fully fledged life extension,” Schmidt confirmed during a Sept. 25 interview.

Like the Boeing B-52 and Northrop Grumman B-2, the B-1B was built tough and will fly longer than expected without needing new wings or other major structural upgrades, like smaller fighters and attack aircraft. The B-1B was originally designed to fly 9,681 equivalent flight hours. But data provided by the fighters and bombers directorate at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, shows it lasting far longer. The projected service life of the B-1B, originally built by Rockwell and acquired by Boeing, will reach 19,900 equivalent flight hours, the service says.

That’s great, but the Air Force had better get moving with the planned B-21 Raider, because it looks like the B-1B and the B-52 will start entering retirement at about the same time.

IT’S AMAZING WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE FACTS: A Statistician Reconsiders Her Support for Gun Control After Looking at the Data.

LIZ PEEK: President Trump isn’t responsible for Puerto Rico’s decades of corruption and collapse.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are very, very concerned about the people of Puerto Rico. Both have joined the mayor of San Juan in criticizing President Trump for not doing enough for the Commonwealth in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

Seriously, where have they been?

Where were they when Puerto Rico’s debts ballooned to $123 billion, thrusting the economy into an 11-year recession?

Where were they when 50,000 of the island’s best and brightest hightailed to the mainland every year, looking for jobs and opportunities, as median household income sank to $18,626 as compared to $56,516 on the mainland?

Where were they as the territory’s power system went bust, while its administrators came under FBI investigation for stealing from the people of Puerto Rico?

They were nowhere to be seen, except of course during election season.

Clinton and Sanders are good at feigning concern, but the real action is from the Democrat-Media Complex, which sees in Puerto Rico a chance to “Katrina” Trump like they did George W. Bush.