INDEED: The Complex, Childish Identity Politics of Elizabeth Warren’s Native Heritage: There’s nothing wrong with a little self-mythologizing when you’re young, but there comes a time to set aside childish things.

CHANGE: Union Members Have Traditionally Supported Democrats, But This Poll Shows A Dramatic Shift.

OH: US Sanctions Threats ‘Unexpectedly’ Led To Deeper Economic Ties Between Iran And Russia.

According to a report by Israeli political analyst Dana Weiss, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a secret document that describes Russia’s plan to aid Iran in subverting the incoming US Sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s oil exports.

According to Weiss, Iran will transfer its crude oil to Russian refineries on the Caspian Sea. After that Russia would present and sell the oil as Russian and reimburse Iran on the sales. According to the secret document, the plan was made together by Turkey, Russia and Iran during their summit on September 7th. In the summit the leaders of the three countries discussed avoiding an escalation in Idlib.

The document also said that European parties may be complacent in allowing Iran to circumvent US sanctions in order to trade oil with Asia. This would make sense, since the EU signatories on the Iran Nuclear Deal are interested in keeping Iran in the deal and upholding it. After all, the EU has made steps towards assisting Iran deal with the sanctions.

According to Weiss, this is worrying for Israel because Iran would avoid an economic collapse, which will also be reinforced by this new way of circumventing US sanctions.

We just need to find more soft spots to push on, is all.

KATIE PAVLICH: The left’s identity politics fall apart.

CHANGE: Signs mount of a fundamental shift in US-China ties.

With efforts to resolve the tit-for-tat tariff battle in limbo, Vice President Pence this month served public notice that the US sees trade as just one grievance among many against China’s economic, military, geopolitical, and human rights policies. And he explicitly questioned a core assumption of US policy over the past two decades: that support for modernization in China and its integration into the world economy would temper Chinese leaders politically and provide the basis for a relationship of cooperation. Mr. Pence said, in effect, that ship had now sailed.

A new cold war, if that’s what it becomes, will likely look far different from the first. The Soviet Union was an underdeveloped country with an outsized military and a fearsome nuclear arsenal. China is also a nuclear power, and has been gradually building up its military reach in recent years. Yet with China, the root source of competition and of steadily growing friction has been an economic one. More specifically, it’s about how China has been using its growing economic might.

It’s interesting that Ned Temko should bring up the Soviet Union’s lack of economic might, when for decades we had been assured (always by the Left) that the Soviets were on the brink of overtaking us — if they already hadn’t. Given China’s debt explosion and coming demographic implosion, you have to wonder if they’re as economically mighty as so many people think they are.

OCTOBER 17:  On this day in history, Evel Knievel was born.  And #MeToo.

HMM: Ukraine’s Spiritual Split From Russia Could Trigger a Global Schism. “For Moscow, the crisis is geopolitical as well as religious.”

“This is a victory of good over evil, light over darkness.” That’s how Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described the announcement Thursday that the Orthodox Church’s Istanbul-based leader, Patriarch Bartholomew, will grant Ukraine’s Church independence from Russia.

In televised remarks, Ukraine’s president dubbed this a “historic event,” which it undoubtedly is: For more than three centuries, Ukraine and Russia have been religiously united within the Russian Orthodox Church. It was a union Poroshenko characterized this summer as a “direct threat to the national security of Ukraine,” given his view that the Russian Orthodox Church fully supports Kremlin policy; he said then that it was “absolutely necessary to cut off all the tentacles with which the aggressor country operates inside the body of our state.”

Now, four years after Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, Ukraine is asserting its territorial independence by demanding its own national Church. For Russia, the crisis is geopolitical as well as spiritual. The stakes are so high that in order to protest Ukraine’s religious autonomy, Russia may respond harshly enough to trigger a deep schism in the Christian world.

“Little green men” and assassins can’t fix this problem for Putin.

HMM: Tenn. Lawmaker Accuses Bredesen Campaign Treasurer of Hatch Act Violation: Bredesen’s campaign treasurer is on TVA board of directors, appeared in campaign ad. “The complaint from Rick Tillis, a Republican member of Tennessee’s House of Representatives, concerns Virginia Lodge, who was appointed to TVA’s board of directors by Barack Obama in 2012 and is the listed as the treasurer for Bredesen’s Senate campaign. Lodge was featured in a recent ad that was used by the campaign in a fundraising plea, which Tillis believes crosses the line set by the Hatch Act.”

This seems pretty penny-ante to me.

I’D RATHER SEE MORE DISTANCE BETWEEN BIG GOVERNMENT AND BIG BUSINESS: Facebook’s ex-security chief will start a new center to bring Washington and Silicon Valley together.

BLUE WAVE? Conservative Leah Vukmir Looks To Defeat Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D) in Wisconsin. “The most recent poll shows Baldwin leading Vukmir by 10 points, 53% to 43%. Asked about this, Vukmir responded by noting that the usually reliable poll has been all over the map since the beginning of the senatorial campaign, showing her at one point trailing by 30 points and at another two points behind, well within the margin of error. Vukmir also noted that the polling was done before the recent debate at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee campus, in which she clearly dominated an uncomfortable and often flustered Baldwin.”

Good bio of an unconventional candidate in a largely overlooked race.

INEQUALITY: The Top 3% Of U.S. Taxpayers Pay 50% Of Income Taxes.

I’M A BIG FAN. I FIGURE WILLETT FOR THE BREYER SEAT, BARRETT FOR THE GINSBURG SEAT: Judge Don Willett Stands Out on Criminal Justice Reform: The 5th Circuit judge weighs in on qualified immunity, criminal sentencing, and false imprisonment.

VEGETIUS LIVES: If you want peace, prepare for nuclear war.

PETITION: Order a federal investigation into sex crimes committed by Bill Clinton, including the rape of Juanita Broaddrick. #TimesUp.

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Kamala Harris’s Ellen Appearance: Jokes about Killing Trump, Pence, Sessions.

SHOCKING NEWS FROM USA TODAY: Google News results favor left-leaning media, report finds.

BLACK FIRE CHIEF WINS DAMAGES AFTER BEING REPRESENTED BY WHAT SPLC CALLED A HATE GROUP: Atlanta To Pay Out $1.2 Million To Christian Fire Chief After Violating His First Amendment Rights.

WELL, THIS IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s gone, with the wind.

CHANGE: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade. “The top spot hasn’t gone to the U.S. since the financial crisis stalled output and triggered a global economic slowdown.”

TO BE FAIR, THEY’RE ALWAYS OUTRAGED OVER SOMETHING: Social Justice Warriors Now Outraged Over the “NPC” Meme.

UPDATE: “Twitter suspended 1,500 accounts that were using the NPC meme as their avatar. Meanwhile, they have taken no action against 100’s of far-left accounts that advocate for violence, including one that used the platform to distribute a poster calling for the assassination of Trump.”

I’VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR A WHILE NOW: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators: The ideological bent of those overseeing collegiate life is having the biggest impact on campus culture.

I soon learned that the Office of Student Affairs, which oversees a wide array of issues including student diversity and residence life, was organizing many overtly progressive events — programs with names like “Stay Healthy, Stay Woke,” “Microaggressions” and “Understanding White Privilege” — without offering any programming that offered a meaningful ideological alternative. These events were conducted outside the classroom, in the students’ social and recreational spaces.

The problem is not limited to my college. While considerable focus has been placed in recent decades on the impact of the ideological bent of college professors, when it comes to collegiate life — living in dorms, participating in extracurricular organizations — the ever growing ranks of administrators have the biggest influence on students and campus life across the country. . . .

Intrigued by this phenomenon, I recently surveyed a nationally representative sample of roughly 900 “student-facing” administrators — those whose work concerns the quality and character of a student’s experience on campus. I found that liberal staff members outnumber their conservative counterparts by the astonishing ratio of 12-to-one. Only 6 percent of campus administrators identified as conservative to some degree, while 71 percent classified themselves as liberal or very liberal. It’s no wonder so much of the nonacademic programming on college campuses is politically one-sided.

The 12-to-one ratio of liberal to conservative college administrators makes them the most left-leaning group on campus. In previous research, I found that academic faculty report a six-to-one ratio of liberal to conservative professors. Incoming first-year students, by contrast, reported less than a two-to-one ratio of liberals to conservatives, according to a 2016 finding by the Higher Education Research Institute. It appears that a fairly liberal student body is being taught by a very liberal professoriate — and socialized by an incredibly liberal group of administrators.

All subsidized — whether at public or private institutions — by taxpayers who are much less liberal, but have no say.

I THINK WE’VE REACHED PEAK 2018: Iowa City: Woman charged after detonating plastic explosives in cheating husband’s anus.

DANIEL JOHN SOBIESKI: Trump’s Rising Black Support, Not Kanye West, Scares and Angers Democrats.