DE BLASIO TO SIGN BILL ADDING THIRD GENDER, ‘X,’ TO BIRTH CERTIFICATES.

Related: America’s largest city is facing a monumental subway crisis.

In 2011, Victor Davis Hanson warned of “The Bloomberg Syndrome:” “Quite simply, the next time your elected local or state official holds a press conference about global warming, the Middle East, or the national political climate, expect to experience poor county law enforcement, bad municipal services, or regional insolvency.”

JACK DUNPHY: Once Again, the Los Angeles Times Unfairly Profiles Police as Racists.

THE ROAD AHEAD: How Will It Feel When Computers Finally Kick Us Off the Street?

BATMAN VILLAINS ALWAYS TEAM UP TOGETHER: Al Gore Endorses Penguin for Congress.

AT AMAZON, save on bestsellers in Automotive.

Plus, deals on Vitamins and Dietary Supplements

NEVER DOUBT THEIR END-GAME: The world’s top scientists just gave rigorous backing to systematically dismantle capitalism as a key requirement to maintaining civilization and a habitable planet.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Leftist Male Feminist Training in Toronto (video).

Related: Male Feminist Who Kicked Pro-Lifer Gets Arrested. Guess What His Rap Sheet Reveals?

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Does Japan Need an Aircraft Carrier?

In June of 1942, Imperial Japan was rather suddenly in need of four new aircraft carriers, but modern Japan could go with a leisurely build-up to that many and still give Beijing serious pause.

And for what it’s worth, Japan’s Izumo-class “helicopter destroyers” could, with fairly minor few modifications, carry a dangerous complement of F-35B jets, and they’ve already commissioned two of those.

OVERSOLD? That New Apple Watch EKG Feature? There Are More Downs Than Ups: The heart monitor should not be considered a medical device and reflects wider problems with health screens.

HMM: Gorsuch and Sotomayor Fault Congress for Giving ‘a Blank Check to the Attorney General.’

These two seem to be forming a cross-ideological alliance on criminal justice issues.

They should read my Ham Sandwich Nation piece.

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Raw Story senior editor says Steve Scalise ‘deserves a Darwin award’ for being shot:

BLOOMBERG DOUBLES DOWN: New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom.

A major U.S. telecommunications company discovered manipulated hardware from Super Micro Computer Inc. in its network and removed it in August, fresh evidence of tampering in China of critical technology components bound for the U.S., according to a security expert working for the telecom company.

The security expert, Yossi Appleboum, provided documents, analysis and other evidence of the discovery following the publication of an investigative report in Bloomberg Businessweek that detailed how China’s intelligence services had ordered subcontractors to plant malicious chips in Supermicro server motherboards over a two-year period ending in 2015.

Appleboum previously worked in the technology unit of the Israeli Army Intelligence Corps and is now co-chief executive officer of Sepio Systems in Gaithersburg, Maryland. His firm specializes in hardware security and was hired to scan several large data centers belonging to the telecommunications company.

Both sides seem awfully confident that this hardware hack either did or didn’t happen.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Multi-dose treatment more effective for STD than standard method: Researchers at Tulane University report a single dose of medication is not enough to eliminate trichomoniasis.

BUT OF COURSE: Facebook Stifles Ads For Film On Abortion Monster Kermit Gosnell. “Facebook is censoring this story and destroying our attempts to get the news about this film out to the public.”

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Whole Foods Forced To Get A Restraining Order Against Berkeley Vegans.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Remember When Criticizing Kanye Was Racist?

“George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” This was the moment when Kanye became a superstar. Even people who didn’t like his music cheered on this semi-coherent rant. Kanye spoke for every American who wasn’t quite smart enough to articulate an argument against Bush, but still knew in their bones that Bush was bad. Any attack was welcome, and the angrier and more irrational, the better. They literally blamed Bush for the weather, and Kanye became their hero.

And if you didn’t like what Kanye said back in ’05, or thought it was the wrong venue to say it, or had any other criticism whatsoever, guess what that made you? HINT: It starts with “R” and ends with “acist.”

But that was different because back then Kanye was still useful to the cause.

NOT GOOD: Men seeing drastic drop in sperm count, study claims.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● Shot: Hillary: ‘You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for.’

 —CNN.com, today.

● Chaser: “Hillary Clinton told Ohio voters that Donald Trump is threatening America’s democracy by not promising to accept the results of the presidential election.”

 —The Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 21, 2016.

GOODNESS: Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation isn’t democracy. It’s a judicial coup.

For all the justified outrage about sexual assault, involving allegations that Kavanaugh denied, the new supreme court justice represents an even bigger lie than his mindless fabrications about “ralphing” and “boofing”. He can blame his weak stomach if he likes; the rest of us are heaving at the sight of a generation-long confidence trick suckering an entire democracy.

You could hear it as Kavanaugh’s loyal supporters stood up on the Senate floor and proclaimed their sincere belief in, nay their earnest yearning for, judicial impartiality.

“Judges make decisions based on law, not on policy, not based on political pressure, not based on the identity of the parties,” said Deb Fischer, the Nebraska Republican who quoted liberally from Kavanaugh himself.

This may come as a surprise to anyone who has been awake and conscious for the last several decades of a campaign to stack the courts with conservative ideologues.

It’s hard to believe that Mitch McConnell, the wily Republican leader of the Senate, has fought so hard and so long for his legacy to be such wonderfully impartial and apolitical judges.

As I’ve said many times these last few weeks, the Left will smear and if possible destroy any institution they can’t seize or keep hold of.

Exit question: Is it “stacking the courts” when Democrats appoint progressive-left judges?

CONFIDENCE: Facebook Takes a Break from Privacy Scandals to Release a Smart Camera That Films You in Your Home.

SURPRISING EXACTLY NOBODY: FBI’s smoking gun: Redactions protected political embarrassment, not ‘national security.’

From the heavy redactions, all one could tell is that FBI general counsel James Baker met with an unnamed person who provided some information in September 2016 about Russia, email hacking and a possible link to the Trump campaign.

Not a reporter or policymaker would have batted an eyelash over such a revelation.

Then, last Wednesday, I broke the story that Baker admitted to Congress in an unclassified setting — repeat, in an unclassified setting — that he had met with a top lawyer at the firm representing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and received allegations from that lawyer about Russia, Trump and possible hacking.

It was the same DNC, along with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, that funded the unverified, salacious dossier by a British intel operative, Christopher Steele, that became a central piece of evidence used to justify the FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign in the final days of the election.

And it was the same law firm that made the payments for the dossier research so those could be disguised in campaign spending reports to avoid the disclosure of the actual beneficiaries of the research, which were Clinton and the DNC.

And it was, in turns out, the same meeting that was so heavily censored by the intel agencies from Footnote 43 in the House report — treated, in other words, as some big national security secret.

What makes this so extraordinary is that the FBI and the DOJ would have Americans believe that a contact with a lawyer for a political party during the middle of the election is somehow a matter of national security that should be hidden from the public.

It’s full-on banana-republicanism.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Did Cold War II break out last week while no one was watching?

The Trump administration’s China policy swam into view, and it’s a humdinger. Vice President Mike Pence gave a guide to the approach in a speech last week at the Hudson Institute (where I am a fellow). Denouncing what he called China’s “whole of government” approach to its rivalry with the U.S., Mr. Pence vowed the Trump administration will respond in kind. He denounced China’s suppression of the Tibetans and Uighurs, its “Made in China 2025” plan for tech dominance, and its “debt diplomacy” through the Belt and Road initiative. The speech sounded like something Ronald Reagan could have delivered against the Soviet Union: Mr. Xi, tear down this wall! Mr. Pence also detailed an integrated, cross-government strategy to counter what the administration considers Chinese military, economic, political and ideological aggression.

In the same week as the vice president’s speech, Navy plans for greatly intensified patrols in and around Chinese-claimed waters in the South China Sea were leaked to the press. Moreover, the recently-entered trilateral U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement was revealed to have a clause discouraging trade agreements between member countries and China. The administration indicated it would seek similar clauses in other trade agreements. Also last week, Congress approved the Build Act, a $60 billion development-financing program designed to counter China’s Belt and Road strategy in Africa and Asia. Finally, the White House issued a report highlighting the danger that foreign-based supply chains pose to U.S. military capabilities in the event they are cut off during a conflict.

Any one of these steps would have rated banner headlines in normal times; in the Age of Trump, all of them together barely registered. But this is a major shift in American foreign policy.

Overdue, too.

And do read the whole thing.

MORE ON THE WEEK’S MOST RIDICULOUS STORY: BLM and Antifa Agitators Take Over Street in Portland to Protest Police Shooting. “One activist accuses a homeless man of having ‘white privilege.'”

ERIC DREIBAND AND JEFF CLARK WILL FINALLY GET A FLOOR VOTE: Well, it’s about time. I can’t imagine a good reason for the Trump Administration to want to allow DOJ’s Civil Rights Division or its Environmental and Natural Resources Division to go without a leader for this long.