HOW DO YOU DO, FELLOW KIDS? Check Out the Biden Campaign’s Latest Innovation: Rap Battles.

No word yet what Tupac Shakur thinks of this pandering.

GROSS: Netflix CEO Says ‘Cuties’ Is Misunderstood, but ‘Speaks for Itself.’

The movie revels in what it purports to condemn.

QUESTIONS THAT SHOULD BE SELF-ANSWERING: Do you want a Trump or Biden economy?

WELL, YES:

They got one fair-to-middlin’ debate performance out of Biden — why take chances?

CHUCK YEAGER BECAME FIRST MAN TO FLY FASTER THAN SPEED OF SOUND ON THIS DAY IN 1947.

NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY BEING UPDATED IN REAL TIME: Merriam-Webster alters definition of sexual “preference” to say it’s offensive after Hirono attacked Barrett for using it.

Related: Speech police alert: Judge Barrett said “sexual preference.” But so did Biden and Ginsburg.

More: If Amy Coney Barrett Has To Apologize for Saying Sexual ‘Preference,’ Does Joe Biden?

UPDATE:

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Founders Wanted You to Own an AR-15. “Not one Founder mentioned anything about ‘hunting’ or ‘skeet shooting’ during the debates over the drafting of the Constitution.”

HUNTER BIDEN PROBED OVER HARD DRIVE AND SMOKING GUN EMAILS, NY POST EXPOSES.

A Senate committee is investigating a bombshell cache of documents about Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings acquired by a Delaware computer repairman that was exposed Wednesday by The Post.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmed it is working with the repairman, whose identity was confirmed by The Post, to verify the documents.

An email from the cache indicates Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden met with Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, while it employed his son. At the time, Biden led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.

Biden said last year, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” including his reported $83,000 monthly pay on Burisma’s board.

Or to put it another way:

And that response really is “good enough” for the DNC-MSM:

AEROSMITH-APPROVED: ACB Hearing Actually Makes Some News: Judge Amy’s Got a Gun.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Blitzer vs Pelosi in CNN Battle Royale.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: Who put the mega-dose of testosterone in Wolf Blitzer’s Wheaties yesterday?

Answer: Seriously. We’d like to buy them a drink.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• Reintroducing Amy Coney Barrett, Meme-Queen
• We might not know art, but we know that’s not it.
• Nikole Hannah-Jones has lost her mind. Or is it loster?

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

NOW OUT: My new book, America’s New Destiny in Space (Encounter Intelligence Book 7). The Encounter Intelligence series is designed to be short enough that a Senator or a CEO can read it on a single flight, so it’s a quick — but, I hope, interesting — read.

Buy one, buy three! Makes a great wedding, birthday, or Bar Mitzvah gift!

WINGS OVER HOUSTON: An A-10 Thunderbolt II, an F-35 Lightning II, an F-16 Viper and a WW2-era P-51 Mustang fly in formation over Ellington Airport, Houston, Texas. Photo taken Oct. 11, 2020. The F-16V (Viper) is an upgraded version of the F-16 Fighting Falcon. The manufacturing apparently suggested renaming the upgrade the F-21. That designation shows up in reports and analyses, but it hasn’t “entered standard usage,” so to speak.

Quote from the Warplanes update:

The changes in the V model are considerable. The airframe is upgraded and strengthened to enable 12,000 flight hours per aircraft. The electronics undergo an even more extensive upgrade which involves replacing the mechanical radar with an AESA (phased array) radar, an upgraded cockpit, a Sniper targeting pod, a Link 16 digital data link and upgraded navigation gear. The newly redesigned cockpit is all digital and flat screen touch displays that replace dozens of gages and switches and makes it much easier to fly the aircraft.

More data at the update.

COLD WAR II: Chinese Increasing Nuclear Submarine Shipyard Capacity. “Just how many nuclear submarines China will build over the next ten years is a hot topic. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) recently forecast China’s submarine fleet to grow by six nuclear-powered attack submarines by 2030. Other observers, such as retired Capt. James Fanell who was Director of Intelligence and Information Operations for the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, place their estimates even higher. What seems clear is that the number of nuclear submarines will increase.”

One of the few bright spots in the US Navy’s procurement effort is the Virginia-class nuclear attack subs. They’re great hunter-killer boats, and they’re being commissioned at a rate of almost two per year, and they haven’t blown through cost estimates.

But:

The Navy’s force-level goal for SSNs is to achieve and maintain a force of 66 boats. The Navy’s SSN force included 50 boats at the end of FY2019. From the mid-2020s through the early 2030s, the number of SSNs is projected to experience a valley or trough, reaching a minimum of 42 boats in FY2027-FY2028. Some observers are concerned that this projected valley could lead to a period of heightened operational strain for the SSN force, and perhaps a period of weakened conventional deterrence against potential adversaries such as China. The projected SSN valley was first identified by CRS in 1995 and has been discussed in CRS reports and testimony every year since then. The Navy’s FY2020 30-year shipbuilding plan projects that, after reaching its projected 42-boat minimum, the SSN force will increase to 66 boats by FY2048.

2048 is a long way off.

FREE SPEECH: Judge rules in favor of student and his Trump-mural school parking space.

THIS MAY BE THE MOST INTERESTING THING YOU READ TODAY: 10 Amazing Things about your mind and your brain. The political significance is not immediately obvious but, just to cite one example, if there is no such thing as the human mind, the legitimacy of claims on behalf of individual freedom is seriously compromised.

OH: Billionaire Leon Black Allegedly Bankrolled Jeffrey Epstein Even After Disgraced Financier Was Convicted Of Soliciting Sex From A Teen.

I REMEMBER WHEN HIGHER EDUCATION WAS SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE REFLECTION AND CIVILITY: Yale prof calls for ‘civil disobedience’ to stop Amy Coney Barrett confirmation. “In response to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the president’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, several professors at leading universities are comparing the Republican Party to Nazis and Confederates. Others expressed a willingness to do ‘whatever it takes’ to make sure that the Republicans are not successful.”

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HEH: ACB Calmly Answers Questions While Typing Up Appellate Court Decision And Cooking Dinner For 9.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: So Much for Hoping That Democrats Wouldn’t Be Awful Filth During the ACB Hearings. “By the way, Kennedy’s turn at the mic was beyond epic. Made an Animal House reference and referred to Boston University’s Ibram X. Kendi as “some butt head professor” for calling Barrett a “white colonizer” because she adopted children of color. The GOP could use ten more of him.”

COLLUSION: Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad.

Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to e-mails obtained by The Post.

The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the e-mail reads.

An earlier e-mail from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.

The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.

More at the link.

SMART: Dropbox Makes Remote Work Permanent in ‘Virtual First’ Shift.

Dropbox acknowledged that all those back-to-back video conferences can be overwhelming and said isolation from peers can sometimes lead to miscommunication. To help address this, the company plans to facilitate in-person collaboration with existing real-estate or other flexible spaces it’s calling “Dropbox Studios.”

“We’ll have Studios in all locations we currently have offices—whether they’re dedicated spaces in places we currently have long-term leases and a high concentration of employees, the company said, adding that it would allow some employees the flexibility to relocate to locations where it currently does not have offices. “We expect Dropbox to become more geographically distributed over time.”

Every red state needs to get serious about Glenn’s “welcome wagon” idea.