RIP: Diahann Carroll, Pioneering Actress on Julia and Dynasty, Dies at 84.

BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE IS: Greta Thunberg is tipped to win the Nobel Peace Prize next week after her angry climate change speech to the UN.

WELL, GOOD: Stroke rate among older Americans continues to fall.

OVERREACH: Xi’s embrace of false history and fearsome weapons is worrying. “China’s leader is stoking hair-trigger nationalism with his idea that the Communist Party never makes mistakes.”

DEMS WORRIED IF IMPEACHMENT FAILS THEY’LL HAVE TO NOMINATE ELECTABLE CANDIDATE.

I’m so old, I can remember when the Babylon Bee was still satire, before morphing into America’s Paper of Record.

AT AMAZON, Schick Hydro 5 Disposable Razor for Men with Hydrating Gel Reservoir, 3 Count.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Florida Man Friday: The Naked Car Burglar.

That’s car, not cat.

THE UNEASE OF THE CHINESE DIASPORA: How the CCP is attempting to create a Chinese ummah.

I watch with unease as the People’s Republic of China turns 70 amid great fanfare about its growing economic and political heft, the longest-running nation state to ever fly a flag emblazoned with the hammer and sickle, surpassing even the former Soviet Union. Ever since it embarked on its modernization program, China has been subtly cultivating and influencing the Chinese diaspora to its cause.

At an overseas Chinese conference just shortly before President Xi Jinping consolidated power and was reelected at the 19th Party Congress, Xi noted that the realization of the ‘great rejuvenation’ of the Chinese nation ‘requires the joint efforts of the Chinese people at home and abroad’, saying that he hoped that those who have Chinese descent outside of China — up to 60 million ethnic Chinese in more than 180 countries — can work hard for and share in the ‘Chinese dream’.

The word ‘Chinese’ can refer to the citizenry of a country, a race, a language, and even a culture, ambiguities that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exploits in order to appeal to the diaspora via the sentimental heartstrings of heritage via ‘flesh and blood’. It exports and reinforces the concept that there is only one politically-correct way of being Chinese: loyalty to the party first and foremost, above all else. In effect, it’s like the ummah, an Arabic term that describes the supra-national global community that unites all Muslims as one. Only this one is based not on religion but on ethnicity, where Tibetans, Uigher Muslims, Chinese dissenters, Hong Kong protesters, are excluded and marginalized like infidels.

Almost nothing embodies the scope of China’s attempts at a global soft power offensive more as the Chinese government-funded Confucius Institutes, where there are 480 branches operating on six continents around the world.

Yep.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: LaRouchePAC takes credit for trolling AOC; AOC doesn’t rule out eating babies.

Flashback to the earlier, funnier days of AOC: Ominous Parallels: Were AOC and LaRouche Secretly Working Together?

But the idea likely didn’t originate with the LaRoucheites: As left-leaning Business Insider reported last month, “A Swedish scientist suggested the climate crisis could lead people to consider eating human flesh. It’s not the first time a scientist has suggested the idea…In 2018, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins put forth a similar idea.”

And finally, as Iowahawk tweets today, “No matter your position on the baby eating issue, I think we can all agree not to let our children get spoiled.”

VAPING: ‘Toxic chemical fumes,’ not oils, may be causing vaping illness, Mayo Clinic researchers find.

Researchers from the Mayo Clinic examined lung biopsies from 17 patients suspected of having a perplexing vaping illness that’s sickened more than 805 people since April. Doctors have previously said it resembled a rare form of pneumonia caused by the accumulation of fatty substances known as lipids.

However, none of the cases examined by the Mayo Clinic researchers showed any evidence of lipoid pneumonia, according to the study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. It’s the first formal study examining tissue samples of patients who have fallen ill from vaping.

“It seems to be some kind of direct chemical injury, similar to what one might see with exposures to toxic chemical fumes, poisonous gases and toxic agents,” said Dr. Brandon Larsen, a surgical pathologist at Mayo Clinic Arizona and a lead author of the study. “Based on what we have seen in our study, we suspect that most cases involve chemical contaminants, toxic byproducts or other noxious agents within vape liquids.”

Vape black market stuff and you take your chances. Government overreaction will push more vapers into the black market.

ALIENS: Strange Fireballs Soared Across Chile’s Skies. They Weren’t Meteorites.

CHANGE: Samsung ends mobile phone production in China.

The shutdown of Samsung’s last China phone factory comes after it cut production at the plant in the southern city of Huizhou in June and suspended another factory late last year, underscoring stiff competition in the country.

The South Korean tech giant’s ceased phone production in China follows other manufacturers shifting production from China due to rising labor costs and the economic slowdown.

Sony also said it was closing its Beijing smartphone plant and would only make smartphones in Thailand.

But Apple still makes major products in China.

Samsung’s share of the Chinese market shrank to 1% in the first quarter from around 15% in mid-2013, as it lost out to fast-growing homegrown brands such as Huawei Technologies and Xiaomi Corp, according to market research firm Counterpoint.

So this is about Samsung’s weak position in the Chinese domestic market, and not a response to tariffs, or a concern for human rights, or anything like that. Still, not a great look for Apple.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Can We Recreate The Motown Sound?

The basic level of gear that Motown employed in the 1960s, and the cramped quarters of its Detroit studio are a reminder that it was the musicians (the brilliant Funk Brothers house band) who made the sound, infinitely more than the gear recording them.

DAVID HARSANYI: Jimmy Carter Is Our Worst Ex-President. “Joe Scarborough is wrong. The world would have been a far better place had Carter left the stage.”

“Great men” do not, as Carter has his entire post-presidential life, use freelance diplomacy abroad to undermine elected American governments. They do not coddle and legitimize tyrants and murderers around the world. They do not undercut liberalism by allowing despots to use them as props. It is one thing to meet with detestable characters as president — diplomacy and American interests often dictate it — but it is quite another to ally yourself with them as a free man. Yet, that’s what Carter has done for 40 years.

Carter was the first, and only, ex-president to visit communist Cuba. “I look forward to this opportunity to meet with Cuban people from all walks of life and to talk with President Castro,” Carter claimed. While there, Carter would spin fantasies about Cuba’s “superb systems of health care and universal education,” while offering perfunctory attention to the hundreds of political prisoners who were, as he tossed around a baseball with Castro, being imprisoned and tortured.

Then again, there are few communist strongmen who haven’t sung Carter’s praises.

They know who their friends are.

SOUNDLY BEAT THE EXPECTATIONS: September unemployment rate falls to 3.5%, a 50-year low, as payrolls rise by 136,000.

ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE, STILL A TOTAL MYSTERY: Paris knife attacker who killed 4 in police headquarters had converted to Islam: report.

CHANGE? Supreme Court Takes Up First Abortion Case After Kavanaugh Confirmation.

ROGER SIMON: The Joseph Mifsud Story: The Great Movie Hollywood Will Never Make.

It’s the great movie that will never be made.  It  would blow Hollywood’s narrative to smithereens.  Robert De Niro’s head would explode.  He’d release a fusillade of f-bombs the likes of which you have never heard and probably take it out on the nearest female.

But if you’re looking for an explanation for why the world has gone crazy–at least the American part of it–if you want to know how such an outrageous liar as Adam Schiff (aka the Jussie Smollett of Congress) has been able to take center stage, if you want to know why half the country doesn’t talk to the other half, you should look no further than the story of the missing Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud.

Read the whole thing. Though heck, I’m still waiting for Hollywood to finally get cracking on Total Eclipse.

CLAUDIA ROSETT REPORTING FROM HONG KONG: Fueling Hong Kong’s Fury, Carrie Lam Invokes Emergency Powers, Ban Masks. “Having invoked emergency powers, Lam is now in a position to do almost anything. As the New York Times sums it up: ‘Under the emergency powers, Mrs. Lam has a wide discretion to create new criminal laws and amend existing laws — all without going through the legislative process.’ Newspapers can be censored or shuttered, web sites closed down, property seized, searches carried out galore, and so forth.”

Read the whole thing.

PERFECT TIMING: Clint Eastwood Blasts Fake News in Richard Jewell Trailer. “Anyone getting George Zimmerman-Covington Kids-Darren Wilson-Duke La Crosse-Brett Kavanaugh-University of Virginia-Russia Collusion-Ukraine Hoax flashbacks?”

AUSTRALIA: ‘A rapidly spreading crisis.’ “A 12-year-old student in Melbourne was verbally abused, physically assaulted and forced to kiss the feet of a Muslim boy – all because he is Jewish.”

IT’S WEIRD HOW ELITES WANT FOR ELITES TO BE ABLE TO DISCRIMINATE BASED ON RACE, AND NON-ELITES DON’T: Lawmakers approved race preferences in college admissions after voters rejected it. Voters fought back. Asians are in the forefront of this fight, because they expect that the discrimination will be against them.

POWERLINE: Dimissing Ilhan Omar’s lies and frauds as a “conspiracy theory?” An informative slap at the mainstream media’s coverup of Omar’s relentless mendacity.