COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Hospital floors frequently contaminated with antibiotic resistant bacteria.

FLASHBACK: Middle East peace accord, economic recovery and space travel: There is still good news. “It might sometimes feel as if the news media, with all their depressing and divisive coverage, are waging psychological warfare against their audience. But out in the real world, good things are happening.”

RIP SEAN CONNERY: Iconic James Bond Pioneer Actor Dies at 90.

Sean Connery, the most iconic James Bond actor, is now having drinks with the Man Upstairs. The acting giant passed away in his sleep overnight in the Bahamas. His loss is tragic, but he lived to the age of 90.

Before his iconic roles as James Bond, Indiana Jones’ father in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), and more, Connery worked as a milkman, laborer, artist’s model, bodybuilder, and sailor in the British Royal Navy. At the age of 23, he chose acting over becoming a professional soccer player.

Connery pioneered the role of 007 in Dr. No (1962). He embodied the iconic British spy at the height of the Cold War, launching the James Bond series that continues to this day.

In his 1990 book Medium Cool: The Movies of the 1960s, Ethan Mordden wrote of Connery as Bond, “Once in an era there is perfect casting. Greta Garbo as Ninotchka, Margaret O’Brien as Tootie Smith, Johnny Sheffield as Bomba the Jungle Boy—and Connery as 007.”

NOT THE BABYLON BEE: Fighting rooster kills police officer in the Philippines during raid on cockfighting ring that was violating Covid restrictions because it is still 2020.

TO BE FAIR, THE GRAY LADY’S BEEN UNHINGED FOR QUITE SOME TIME: New York Times opinion section comes unhinged ahead of the 2020 election.

What shameful caterwauling. If ever there was an example of the obscene privilege of the elite, this appallingly self-indulgent and self-important collaboration by the New York Times is surely it.

Kristof, Bruni, and Cohen have a combined 181 years among them on this planet. That is to say nothing of the other columnists who participated in the New York Times project, including Gail Collins, 74, and Maureen Dowd, 68.

They lived through Abscam, the Iran-Contra scandal, the Waco massacre, Bill Clinton perjuring himself, the launch of the Forever Wars, the federal government’s culpability in the financial crisis, the Veterans Affairs scandal, the NSA spying scandal, and the extrajudicial droning of American citizens.

But it was not until this administration that the United States lost its “innocence,” its “persuasion,” its “pride,” and its standing as a democratic world power?

So if America only lost its “innocence,” “pride,” and its standing as a democratic world power under Trump, that means no one at the Times believes its “1619 Project,” either. Has anyone checked in on Nikole Hannah-Jones to see if she’s had another temper tantrum?

THIS IS CNN: Principled CNN Journalist Jake Tapper Told NY Post to Bow to Twitter’s Demands Just Hours Before Their Account was Restored, Gets Wrecked in Response.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Unhappy Halloween Edition.

CLAY TRAVIS: Why I’m Voting for Donald Trump.

ROGER SIMON: The Two Necessary Approaches for Ending Big Tech.

The captains of Big Tech who appeared before a Senate committee a few days ago revealed once again what a pernicious force they are.

Moral narcissists of the highest order, they are all the more dangerous because they think they are good. They are convinced they are helping the world, making sure we in the great unwashed are not propagandized by what they deem disinformation or misinformation, when in actuality they are making a frontal assault on free speech via various forms of censorship.

This reached the level of Theater of the Absurd when Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, responding to Senator Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), testified that Holocaust denial did not meet Twitter’s definition of misinformation while, evidently, the New York Post’s reporting on Tony Bobulinski’s widely-authenticated emails did.

Dorsey also told Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) his site had not censored tweets from the president when they had done so literally dozens of times.

The most flagrant Orwellian prevarication, however, was when Dorsey stated Twitter had no influence on elections. (Why then would he bother to censor the New York Post?)

Four legs good, two legs bad, anyone?

Google and Facebook are at least as disturbing and arguably vastly more powerful.

In a manner even the Chinese might envy, “The ends justify the means” has come to America via unseen algorithms dictating what is displayed on our laptops, cellphones and, soon, just about everything else.

But what do we do about it?

I propose a two-pronged attack, one legislative and one personal/consumer-oriented. The latter, I believe, may ultimately be more effective, but both are necessary.

From the legal standpoint, Sens. Blackburn, Joshua Hawley (R-Mo.) and several others, some Democrats, are attempting to overhaul Section 230 that shields sites like Facebook and Twitter from being sued for the content to which they have linked.

Written over twenty years ago, the early Paleolithic Age in internet terms, the authors of this rule could not have conceived to the degree these sites have become publishers themselves.

In fact, they are now, in essence, the managing editors of the world’s news and therefore the gatekeepers of an overwhelming percentage of global information. In a sense, the truth is what they say it is. What could be more powerful than that in a digital age?

We should adamantly support a rewriting of 230, allowing these behemoths to be sued just as much as the rest of us residents of Grub Street. It’s possible this can be accomplished, but, unfortunately, as no doubt some of those legislators would agree, that is not going to be nearly enough.

A serious look at rewriting anti-trust legislation should be in the cards, but without a Trump victory, that is highly unlikely. And even with one, it will be tremendously difficult, given the deepest pockets in Washington—the deepest pockets anywhere actually— belong to the tech giants. And since “money is the mother’s milk of politics,” well, you know the rest….

Consumers

Which leads me, my fellow citizens, to that second prong, to what we can and must do—the consumer approach.

We can leave Google, Twitter, and Facebook, pretty much in that order. If there are enough of us, we can cut their profits and build competition.

For some, maybe many, of us that means our lives will change radically—or at least we fear it will. But as the saying goes, fortune favors the daring.

The lockout of the New York Post is a reminder that Abandoning the decentralized Blogosphere for the walled gardens of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube was a huge mistake, particularly for conservatives. Somebody should write a book about the reasons why.

QUESTION ASKED: American Weimar or American Hapsburg?

Above all, the typical affluent young American, the sort who in a more stable time might have thrown in his or her lot with the bureaucracy or a management job in the Mittelstand, the corporate heart of the economy, now resembles no literary figure so much as Ulrich, the protagonist of Robert Musil’s 1913 novel The Man Without Qualities.

Ulrich is a forerunner of our college-educated millennials: morally enfeebled, sexually frustrated, professionally stunted. He has acquired enough sophistication to see through the forms of politics and social life — ‘critical thinking’, as the imposters of our schools call it — but not enough conviction to act in a way that might improve his life by bringing him into authentic contact with ‘reality’, which he knows is somewhere out there but cannot touch.

Musil never finished his novel. But Hitler, who rode the failings of Weimar all the way to the top spot, eventually gave the Ulrichs a purpose. The American future won’t be Weimar, but late-Hapsburg: a dual monarchy, divided between itself and within itself by nationalism, decadent with corruption and lassitude, scapegoating Jews because it cannot accept its own mediocrity, and waiting for the historical intrusion that will free it from the slow spiral of decline.

Read the whole thing.

Earlier: Weimar America?

If the polls are right, we’re about to elect our equivalent of Field Marshall von Hindenburg, in the form of a 78-year-old with obviously failing mental capacity whose career in any case has shown him always unable to resist the blandishments of the left. Biden is, at best, a transitional figure to the complete wokification of the Democratic Party, and the further extension of the administrative state that is its preferred instrument of rule.

How good and hard do Americans want to get it for the next four years? We’re about to find out.

CALIFORNIA DISSIDENTS STRIKE BACK: Group Responsible for 405 Trump Sign Comes Forward With Killer Pro-Trump Campaign Ad. “On October 6th, 2020 Los Angeles woke up to a giant TRUMP sign in the foothills overlooking one of the busiest stretches of road in the United States, the 405 freeway. The sign was immediately removed by the City of Los Angeles, citing traffic hazard worries, despite being on private land. Although the antics made national news, no one came forward to claim responsibility for the sign. Until now.”

The video is here.

Plus: “If you had asked me in 2018 if I thought there was any chance in hell Trump could flip the Golden State I’d have said you were out of your mind for even suggesting it. In March of this year I changed my mind, and published an article predicting the possibility of a flip for Trump. That was before lockdowns, before school closures, before Uber and Lyft were threatening to leave the state, before businesses closed, before riots and looting, before Defund the Police…even before all these horrors California was feeling ripe for a flip, mainly due to the horrific AB5 law that decimated the gig economy and eliminated nearly 300 job categories overnight. I’d never seen so many true blue Democrats ready to cross the aisle. It’s only gotten worse here.”

If the Democrats lose California, it’ll be a self-inflicted wound, brought on by arrogance and ineptitude. Of course the arrogance and ineptitude are still there whether they lose or not.

A DEFEAT FOR BIGOTRY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: NYU and Department of Education reach settlement over anti-Semitism complaint.

OLD AND BUSTED: “We Report, You Decide.”

The New Hotness? CNN’s Don Lemon Brags About Abandoning His Friends for Disagreeing With Him.

And speaking of CNN: ‘You struck a nerve with the intern’! Kirstie Alley fires back after somebody at CNN PR took offense to her calling out their fear-mongering.

You stay classy, CNN.

IF WHITE PRIVILEGE IS SUCH A THING, WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE PRETENDING NOT TO BE WHITE? Again? Another White Professor Outed as Fake ‘Chicana.’

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, GET-WOKE-GO-BROKE EDITION: Evergreen State College enrollment is down sharply again in 2020.

The decline in enrollment must have put a massive dent in the school’s operating budget and is almost surely going to translate into the need to reduce the size of the faculty. There don’t seem to be any announcements or news stories about that but it must be happening behind the scenes. That will in turn make it harder to recover as the school will have less capacity and maybe even fewer degrees to offer. For the record, I think it’s fair to say the pandemic could also be playing a role in enrollment but that’s clearly not the main problem at Evergreen.

I wonder if at some point it will simply be unable to survive. Again, no one is saying that but there must be some lower limit where they have to call it. The school is a testament to what can happen when far left extremists are allowed to take over an organization. I sincerely hope other large organizations are watching and learning what not to do.

As Iowahawk would say:

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.

Plus, Best Selling Products – Updated Every Hour.

Also, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

WELL: New Twist in the Hunter Biden Saga: A White House Meeting for Elite Chinese Group.

#HIMTOO: Dem Senate Candidate Kelly Wanted Ex-Wife Jailed Amid Custody Dispute. “Arizona Democratic Senate candidate Mark Kelly made an odd request years after his 2004 divorce: The famed astronaut petitioned a Texas court in 2010 to sentence his ex-wife to 6 months in jail and 10 years of supervised release after she moved to a new town a few miles outside of their children’s school district. . . . The documents, which include a temporary restraining order issued against Kelly in 2004, appear to contradict his description of the divorce as ‘amicable’ in his 2011 autobiography.”

Related: Buzz Aldrin endorses Martha McSally over former astronaut Mark Kelly.

REST IN PEACE: Sean Connery dead at 90: The Scotsman played James Bond and defined aging coolness. The best of the many Bonds by far.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Drudge Report traffic plunges as content turns against Trump.