CHINA HAS SOWN THE WIND, AND HERE IS SOME OF THE WHIRLWIND IT’S REAPING: Japan is converting its 2 biggest warships into aircraft carriers, and US Marines are helping it train to use them.

The friend who sent this comments: “Interesting that all these carriers and other new ships. are named after Japanese ships that were prominent in WW2. Including Pearl Harbor. And that Japan has also created an amphibious troop capability. Will we soon see the Self-Defense Marines? I remember visiting JAXA in Tokyo in 2014. They were very proud of the fact that they had reduced the prelaunch sequence for the new Epsilon solid orbital launcher from nine hours to thirty seconds. You don’t really need a thirty-second launch sequence for any civilian applications.”

QUIET REVOLUTION:

JOHN HINDERAKER: “Tomorrow is Columbus Day. Or, at least, it used to be. In many places around the country, like Minnesota, Columbus is out of favor.”

Plus: “It is often said that groveling statements like those issued by Joe Biden reflect self-hatred, but I do not think that is correct. I don’t think liberals hate themselves. On the contrary, I think they are puffed up with unmerited self-regard. I think they hate you. And they associate you–not themselves–with the United States of America.”

Yep. The history they’re peddling is the sort of thing a conqueror might impose on a defeated people to break their spirit.

OPEN THREAD: Time sure flies when you’re all jacked up. Don’t start no stuff.

HMM: Report offers way to ease Mars mission planetary protection requirements. “Future Mars lander missions could adopt less stringent planetary protection requirements by landing in regions of the planet unlikely to allow any terrestrial contamination to propagate, a study concludes. The study by a National Academies committee, released Oct. 7, recommended that missions that don’t plan to go more than a meter into the surface could land across a wide range of lower latitudes of the planet unlikely to have large amounts of water ice.”

GOOD ORAL HYGIENE PROTECTS AGAINST A LOT: Better oral health may help keep severe COVID-19 at bay, study says. “Previous research has found an association between poor oral hygiene and increased inflammation and heart disease, and COVID-19 severity has also been linked to an inflammatory response, the study authors noted.”

That said, this study is small, and I’d call it suggestive rather than proof. But you should be brushing and flossing anyway.

CHANGE: Unvaccinated Patients Are Getting Kicked Off Of Organ Transplant Waitlists.

CORRUPT THUGS: Mollie Hemingway: It Is Amazing What The Priorities Of Biden’s FBI And DOJ Are Today.

WHAT COMES AFTER MATURITY? “Many major tech companies, I’m arguing, are now past mature, but finding a name for the state of play is less clear-cut. The biggest change is that tech is now a major aspect of geopolitics, with a raft of consequences starting to flow from that status.”

Plus: “In answer to the question posed by the newsletter’s title — ‘what comes after maturity?’ — the answer most certainly is ‘regulation.’ The next few years will be most interesting as the tech sector on most every continent will face state scrutiny, litigation, legislation, and taxation. That idealized garage startup is a distant memory.”

NATIONS THAT ALLOW THEIR POLICIES TO BE GUIDED BY PHILOSOPHERS SELDOM FLOURISH: ‘Long Reflection’ Is Crazy Bad Idea.

GOODER AND HARDER:

● California moves toward ban on gas lawnmowers and leaf blowers.

● California mandates gender-neutral toy aisles for large retailers.

● California drivers react to the most expensive gas prices in America.

● Tesla’s Elon Musk suggests Texas HQ move inspired by tweet from California Democrat.

YES, WHAT DID PENNY SEE IN LEONARD? A key part of the Big Bang remains troublingly elusive.

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: Excess deaths in people with mental health conditions increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Note that they improved as lockdowns eased.

WELCOME BACK, CARTER: America Tried the Biden Recovery Plan in the 1970s—It Was a Disaster.

Fed by those new taxes and deficits, spending rose across the board. Billions went to city-scale housing projects and urban development, with mass public transit cutting swathes across urban moonscapes. The nation’s railroads were bailed out, with passenger lines nationalized as government-owned Amtrak. Millions of new welfare recipients were created, social security beneficiaries massively expanded, and Washington was abuzz with talk of a “guaranteed annual income” mirroring today’s universal basic income.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the income distribution, crony payments went out to influential lobbyists; $1 billion for the supersonic transport (SST) Boeing 2707 boondoggle that supposedly would compete with the doomed Concorde, then an outright $700 million grant to keep contractor Lockheed in business. The Chrysler Corporation, once a crown jewel of the American economy, received $1.5 billion in taxpayer loan guarantees. Influential Senator Jacob Javits (R–NY) proposed bailing out any company that suffered losses at all.

The second ingredient that created the economic crisis was the explosion of the regulatory state. President Nixon, with the support of Congress, created entire regulatory agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency. Regulatory budgets at the federal level went from $6.8 billion in 1967 to nearly $20 billion (adjusted for inflation) by 1980—nearly tripling in just 12 years. Over that period, the number of regulatory staff grew from 78,000 to nearly 150,000 bureaucrats, a veritable army dedicated to handicapping the American economy.

Earlier: What Happened in 1971? Edward Snowden and Jack Dorsey Want to Know.

OUT ON A LIMB: Comparing Rand Paul to the Squad Is Unfair. He Doesn’t Hate Israel.

INTO THE AIR, JUNIOR BIRDMEN: NASA plans careful restart for Mars helicopter after quiet period.

ROGER KIMBALL: Garland Just Tipped Over the Dominos.

Because parents across the country have suddenly woken up to the wokeness haunting their schools and poisoning the minds of their children. The school boards, many of which are staffed by leftists, are pushing the Marxist ideology of critical race theory, virtue-signaling mask mandates, and forcing noisome gender identity politics on primary and secondary school students.

Most parents don’t like that. They pay for the schools. The school board (in theory) works for them, and they, the parents, have been vocal in making their displeasure known. A left-wing lobbying group called the National School Boards Association complained to the Biden Administration that “Public Schoolchildren, Public School Board Members, and Other Public School District Officials and Educators” were subjected to “Threats and Acts of Violence” by parents whose actions “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” Note the surreal accusation that schoolchildren were being harmed by “threats and acts of violence,” which, if you look at the actual instances adduced, turn out to be people arguing against the insinuation of radical, politically charged ideas into the the curriculum.

Garland’s response was to threaten to unleash the law enforcement apparatus of the state against parents by forging a “Partnership among federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement to address threats against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff.” What threats?

When I first wrote about this, I was unaware that Garland’s daughter Rebecca is married to Xan Tanner, the founder and president of Panorama, a multimillion-dollar company that sells CRT and related ESG materials to schools around the country. File that in the folder marked “optics” if not the one labeled “conflict of interest.”

Read the whole thing.

HMM: China Prepares for Possible Large-Scale COVID-19 Outbreak: Leaked CCP Documents.

The Chinese regime has notified local authorities to prepare for a large-scale outbreak of COVID-19, according to leaked internal documents obtained by the Chinese Epoch Times.

One document, titled “Notice of Further Strengthening of Epidemic Prevention” was issued by the Chinese regime’s State Council, and forwarded by Fujian provincial government to local authorities on Sept. 30.

The other is a “National Day Epidemic Prevention Notice” issued by the State Council on Oct. 1 and distributed by the Fujian provincial officials to local authorities.

The documents are both marked “extra urgent.”

Both notices request enhanced preparations for an emergency response to the outbreak, with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) putting forward at least two standards for local authorities.

One is to build central isolation sites, with local authorities required by the end of October to set up isolation centers and rooms of not less than 20 rooms per 10,000 people. The scale of each isolation site must be more than 100 rooms.

According to public data, the population of Fujian Province in 2020 was 41.54 million. As of Sept. 19, the province has set up 35,691 quarantine rooms in 296 central sites.

Based on the standard in the epidemic prevention notice, Fujian Province will need to build at least 83,000 quarantine rooms by the end of October, which is around 47,000 rooms in less than a month.

According to one expert, the requirements for the COVID-19 quarantine sites reveal the real situation of the pandemic in China.

Remember when we were told that the Chinese had licked Covid because they didn’t worry about pesky individual rights?

Related: To Defeat Delta Variant, Experts Recommend Doing All The Things That Didn’t Work The First Time.

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWN AND THE DAMAGE DONE: Study confirms rise in child abuse during COVID-19 pandemic. “There was a great deal of economic stress, job insecurity, and loss of housing potential during this time frame along with the closing of schools, which can be a reprieve for parents and kids.” These weren’t consequences of Covid, they were consequences of the response to Covid.

DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS: Texas Decides To Defend America: Fact, Not Brag.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: American Red Guards Accuse Honored Chinese-American Music Prof of Racism for Screening Shakespeare’s Othello.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Write a Hard Rock Classic in Five Minutes: Billy Gibbons Tells the Incredible Story of ZZ Top’s “Tush.”

MANSPLAINING AND WHITESPLAINING: Terry McAuliffe Tells Black Anchor That Bringing Up Critical Race Theory Is ‘Racist.’

LET’S GET TO THE IMPORTANT THINGS: How To Brew: Everything You Need to Know to Brew Great Beer Every Time.

DAVE CHAPPELLE’S NEW NETFLIX SPECIAL ISN’T ‘ANTI-LGBT’ OR ‘TRANSPHOBIC’ — IT’S HILARIOUS AND MOVING.