SAN JUAN MAYOR: Whoever Deletes Trump’s Twitter Account Should Get a Nobel Prize.

The Nobel Prize for Stifling Opinions I Don’t Like isn’t a real thing — yet.

TYRANNO-SOROS REX: George Soros has transferred $18 billion – the bulk of his fortune, it seems – to his Open Society Foundation. This puts the Foundation second only in assets to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Twenty years ago, my friend Marlo Lewis wrote about how Soros was using self-contradiction to attack free-market economies, ignoring what free-market economists actually say:

Far from postulating “perfect” competition, laissez-faire advocates eschew this airy construct as a source of interventionist mischief. Attainment of this impossible state of affairs would not even be desirable. “Perfect” information could be achieved only by diverting vast resources from other consumer priorities.

Soros with his billions may be able to afford a more socialistic world; those in need of economic opportunity cannot. Soros pontificates that open societies can no longer define themselves in terms of opposition to Communism. But free societies must always define themselves in opposition to tyranny. Otherwise, they may be tempted to sell their birthright for a mess of potage like the statist claptrap Soros is peddling.

Soros’ Foundation now has a huge war chest to promote this claptrap.

REHEARSING: U.S. Army soldiers training with a South Korean air defense unit.

Yes, the goal is to continue to rattle Rocket Man.

PAUL KRUGMAN ON ELECTION NIGHT: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”

CNN Breaking News: Dow crosses 23,000 for the first time in its 121-year history. It’s up more than 4,600 points since election.

CHILDREN’S STORY TIME IN WEIMAR AMERICA. 2017 in a single sentence: “A Satanically clad drag queen reading to children at the Michelle Obama Library in Long Beach, California. This particular tweet has been taken down, but someone saved it. Below, a tweet from the Long Beach Public Library system promoting the event.”

We’ve had a good run America. Click over, if only for the mind-blowing photo atop Rod Dreher’s post.

WELL, GOOD: The Army is developing navigation tech to help the GPS-denied soldier.

GPS can fail due to turbulent weather, bad communications links or enemy attack. The Army is concerned about how troops on patrol can continue to function without GPS, and it is pursuing a range of initiatives to bolster wayfinding for those cut off from the usual means of guidance.

One effort involves the development of vision-aided navigation technologies. “We are using camera technology and electro-optic imaging sensors and applying them from a navigational perspective,” said Gary Katulka, a lead engineer for vision-aided tech in the Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center‘s Command, Power and Integration Directorate’s Positioning, Navigation and Timing Division, or CP&ID PNTD.

The PNT team is working on systems that combine cameras with inertial measurement units, or IMU, which are made of sensors such as gyroscopes and accelerometers. By joining this sensor data to a camera’s visual feedback, a soldier would be able to navigate effectively, even without GPS.

Exit question: Does the Army still teach map and compass skills?

FEMALE PRIVILEGE: Lori Moylan: If Not Even The Boy Scouts Can Celebrate Boys, They’re In Serious Trouble. In a world where masculinity is too often thought of as toxic and men disappear from the labor force and marriage, scouting was a place boys could be taught as boys, by men.

SARAH HOYT: Quick, to the Victim-Mobile!

THE NEW YORK TIMES’ DOUBLE STANDARD ON THE NFL:

When Mr. Kaepernick began protesting the national anthem, the Times ran a few opinion pieces but refrained from staking out an official position. That changed after Donald Trump weighed in. At a Friday night rally in Alabama last month, the president asked: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now?’ ”

In response, the Times blitzed. A Sept. 24 editorial called “The Day the Real Patriots Took a Knee” asserted the president’s remarks about the flag and players were yet more evidence of his disregard for “the legitimate and deeply felt fears and grievances of minority Americans.”

It piled on, accusing Mr. Trump of “implying that players give up their right to free speech when they put on a uniform.” For good measure, it went on to impugn Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin for suggesting “players should keep their mouths shut in the workplace.”

We get it: Employers have no right to restrict their employees’ speech.

But one tiny question: Why do Times reporters not enjoy this same right?

The obvious action is for Timespeople to revolt en masse against Dean Baquet, their editor, for his recent clamping down their wokeness on social media. Fight the systemic oppression inherent in the system!

WELL, THAT GETS YOU A FREE PASS IN HOLLYWOOD: A Litany of Harvey Weinstein’s Catholic-Bashing Films. Or at least, it did.

FANTASYLAND: How Hillary Clinton Can, and Should, Become President After the Trump-Russia Investigation.

This …unlikely… scenario comes from no less than Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig:

If number 1: If Trump is definitively found to have colluded directly with Russia, he would be forced to resign or be impeached.

If number 2: If Trump is removed, Vice President Mike Pence would become president.

If number 3: If Pence becomes president, he should resign too, given that he benefited from the same help from Mother Russia.

If number 4: If Pence resigns before appointing a vice president, Ryan would become president.

If number 5: If Ryan becomes president, he should do the right thing and choose Clinton for vice president. Then he should resign.

Does the left still fancy itself as the “reality-based community?”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): “Mother Russia?”

BUMMER: Study shows blood pressure meds may not restore vascular function. “Researchers found that conventional medication used to reduce high blood pressure restored normal vascular rhythms only in the largest blood vessels, but not in the smallest blood vessels. The World Health Organization reports hypertension affects roughly 40 percent of people over age 25 and is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke and kidney failure.”

SPENGLER: Why Europe’s new nationalists love Israel.

NARRATIVE FAIL: WATCH: Puerto Rico’s Delegate To Congress: ‘Everything We’ve Asked For, Trump Has Provided.’

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Will Jersey voters fall for happy fantasies?

Yes. Next question?

NO, HARVEY. ‘Was seeing me naked the highlight of your internship?’

Working as a production assistant, Wachowiak said she mostly had to cash checks at a bank, but was once asked by an auditor working on the project to take a bunch of checks in a manila folder to Weinstein’s hotel room to get them signed.

When she got to the hotel room, Weinstein was holding a hand towel around his waist and she could tell that he was naked underneath, she told the Buffalo News.

When he took her folder, Weinstein dropped the towel and was naked, she said.

Wachowiak thought, “Relax, these are movie people, they think nothing of walking around naked,” she said. “Just keep your eyes on his face and don’t look down. And for God sake don’t let on that you want to run out of the room screaming.”

He sat on the bed with the folder over his groin and went through the checks, asking why they were paying for certain things, she recalled. He then complained about a pain in his shoulder and asked her for a massage, Wachowiak explained. Telling the newspaper that she’d experienced unwanted advances before, Wachowiak shot back, “That’s not in my job description.”

“He tried to encourage me by telling me what a fantastic opportunity it was for me to be part of this project,” Wachowiak related. “I told him that I was happy to be part of the project but I would not touch him. He finally gave up and signed all the checks.”

RELATED: ‘Everybody-fucking-knew.’

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Liberals Embrace ‘Dark Money:’ Fusion GPS rolls out a novel excuse to block a House subpoena.

Remember when Democrats and the press corps complained about “dark money” and wanted to rewrite the First Amendment to ban certain campaign contributions? Well, well. Now the progressive operatives at Fusion GPS are invoking free-speech rights to block the House Intelligence Committee’s probe of the infamous Steele dossier.

Fusion GPS is the opposition research firm behind the Steele dossier claiming that Donald Trump colluded with Russians to win the 2016 election. Congress is investigating Russian influence, and former British spook Christopher Steele relied on Russian sources. The dossier is clearly of interest, perhaps even a Rosetta Stone in the probe.

Yet Fusion chief Glenn Simpson won’t cooperate, and on Monday the company’s lawyers sent a letter to the House Intelligence Committee refusing to comply with subpoenas for documents and testimony related to the dossier. The letter claims the subpoenas “violate the First Amendment rights of our clients and their clients, and would chill any American running for office . . . from conducting confidential opposition research in an election.”

Hello? Mr. Simpson must be having a good laugh at that one. Surely he knows that his many Democratic clients have spent most of the last decade moaning about “dark money” donations in politics. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders proposed rewriting the First Amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling so government could regulate political speech. Fusion must also not have read the avalanche of press releases from Democrats like Chuck Schumer demanding disclosure of all political donations.

Citizens United protected the broadcast of a movie opposing Hillary Clinton—obvious political speech. But the House wants to know who paid Fusion to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump and whether any of that money or intelligence came from foreign sources. The First Amendment doesn’t protect attempts by foreign governments or agents to influence U.S. elections.

Foreign campaign contributions are banned under U.S. law, and in the 1990s Congress conducted extensive investigations into Chinese and other donations to the Clinton campaign. No one claimed the Riady family’s donations were protected political speech because they financed Bill Clinton’s re-election.

Fusion by its own admission has worked in the past on a lobby campaign for a Russian company with ties to the Kremlin. Investigators want to know if those clients or other foreign actors had anything to do with the commissioning or production of the Steele dossier.

It’s as if all the talk of Trump/Russia collusion, which has so far turned out to be vaporware, was just a smokescreen to cover the real collusion.

THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IS NOT TO PLAY: North Korea Says ‘A Nuclear War May Break Out Any Moment.’

Kim In Ryong told the U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee that North Korea is the only country in the world that has been subjected to “such an extreme and direct nuclear threat” from the United States since the 1970s — and said the country has the right to possess nuclear weapons in self-defense.

He pointed to large-scale military exercises every year using “nuclear assets” and said what is more dangerous is what he called a U.S. plan to stage a “secret operation aimed at the removal of our supreme leadership.”

This year, Kim said, North Korea completed its “state nuclear force and thus became the full-fledged nuclear power which possesses the delivery means of various ranges, including the atomic bomb, H-bomb and intercontinental ballistic rockets.”

“The entire U.S. mainland is within our firing range and if the U.S. dares to invade our sacred territory even an inch it will not escape our severe punishment in any part of the globe,” he warned.

Beijing had best keep a close eye on its unstable neighbor.

BEAUTIFUL GIRLS SCRIBE SCOTT ROSENBERG ON A COMPLICATED LEGACY WITH HARVEY WEINSTEIN:

So what if he was coming on a little strong to some young models who had moved mountains to get into one of his parties?
So what if he was exposing himself, in five-star hotel rooms, like a cartoon flasher out of “MAD MAGAZINE” (just swap robe for raincoat!)
Who were we to call foul?
Golden Geese don’t come along too often in one’s life.

Which goes back to my original point:
Everybody-fucking-knew.
But everybody was just having too good a time.
And doing remarkable work; making remarkable movies.

As the old joke goes:
We needed the eggs.

Read the whole thing. By the way, interesting callback in the last line quoted above.

CATHY YOUNG: Much Ado About “Mansplaining:” The “woke” media are the dumbest show on earth. “The real punchline? Stanley wasn’t wrong.” Well, that’s the thing about “mansplaining.”

SPACE: First Glimpse of Colliding Neutron Stars Yields Stunning Pics.

Just stunning.

ROGER SIMON SPOTS FOUR GOP SENATORS STANDING IN THE WAY OF PROGRESS.

IS THIS ALL THAT UNUSUAL FOR FLORIDA? Candidate for Congress: ‘I Was Abducted by Aliens.’

MORE GOOD ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS: In addition to Glenn’s point below about America’s emission still declining, there was the good news yesterday that EPA head Scott Pruitt will be moving to stop “sue-and-settle,” the process by which the agency reached deals with enviro groups that threatened court action, in effect letting the green groups dictate priorities.

However, as my colleague Will Yeatman points out, the real problem is the EPA missing its statutory deadlines on purpose to allow this to happen:

During the Obama administration, for example, the EPA missed 84 percent out of more than 1,000 Clean Air Act deadlines by an average of 4.3 years. The problem is that the agency’s failure to meet its legal responsibilities allows environmental special interests to sue and thereby dictate regulatory priorities to the EPA.

Any solution to this problem must start with the EPA making timely performance of its responsibilities a priority, which the agency has yet to do under any administration.

In other words, the EPA has habitually put its discretionary responsibilities above its mandatory responsibilities. If Scott Pruitt can change that culture, the swamp will be a little less murky (although still in dire need of draining).