OOPS: Ford Mustang Mach-E Recalled for Windshield and Sunroof Issues.

ABOLISH THE FBI AND TAKE THE TAPES: Gaetz, Greene call on FBI to release 14,000 hours of footage from Jan 6.

DOES HOCHUL TALK TO GOD ON HER CELL? The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz wonders exactly how the New York governor communicates with the Almighty.

DAVID SOLWAY: Kamala Harris: A Representative Figure and a Harbinger of Catastrophe.

AND NOW THIS: Power Outages Hit China, Threatening the Economy and Christmas.

GENERALS CONTRADICT BIDEN: We told him to leave 2,500 troops in place in Afghanistan. “Time to play another round of ‘Is Biden senile or just a liar?’”

AI RESEARCH HITS A WALL: Deep Learning’s Diminishing Returns: The cost of improvement is becoming unsustainable.

JOHN NOLTE: No Time to Die Director Smears Sean Connery’s Bond as Rapist.

The scene this goddamn simpleton is talking about is in Thunderball, where Connery’s Bond is recovering at some sort of rest spa and seduces a luscious therapist into a tryst.

It’s not rape. It’s nothing close to rape. It’s doesn’t even graze rape. What it is is a complicated, adult, nuanced, and sexy seduction. And it is also a seduction that’s making a much larger social point.

Bond and the therapist obviously want one another, and the only reason she’s all “No, no, no” is because having sex with the customers is just not done. So this scene is not about James Bond forcing a woman to have sex with him. It’s about what much of the sixties was about, and that’s overcoming your sexual inhibitions.

Bond isn’t raping this woman. He’s not forcing himself on her. He’s sexually liberating her.

No, really, he is.

Dummies.

Are people really this stupid?

Or are they so insecure and neurotic, so desperate for approval that they just spout these simplistic moral bromides that make Joe McCarthy look like Timothy Leary?

The makers of the James Bond films have been trying to get back to the Connery days since The Spy Who Loved Me. Those films are considered the gold standard of the Bond franchise. Why on earth would the director of its latest chapter trash the man who started it all?

Flashback: License To Killjoy. Can James Bond survive the #MeToo era?

WELL, HE DID: In Sworn Testimony, Generals Accuse Biden of Lying About Afghan Pullout.

ANNOYINGLY, THIS ARTICLE DOESN’T SAY WHICH WAY: Sunlight exposure guidelines may need to be revised, researchers warn. From this I infer that the recommendation is probably to get more sun, and that they’re afraid to say that in this news account. But I could be wrong.

FALSE NARRATIVES DON’T JUST ESTABLISH THEMSELVES, YOU KNOW: Twitter Censors Daily Signal Video About Border Patrol on Horseback.

OLD AND BUSTED: Joe Biden: I’m going to ‘shut down the virus’, not the US.

—The Grauniad, October 23, 2020.

The New Hotness? Mayorkas: Hey, that surge in Delta COVID-19 variant was totally unexpected at the border.

—Karen Townsend, Hot Air, today.

Allowing the surge at the border is also at odds of Biden’s message yesterday on vaccinations: Back To Normal? Biden Wants 97% Of The Country Vaccinated.

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: Isolation during pandemic caused people to think less about future, other people. A little part of it in everyone. And every Karen’s like a setting sun. . .

BYRON YORK: The Democratic cave begins.

Reports say she will allow the House to vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill on Thursday. The reason is that the $3.5 trillion bill has just not come together in the Senate. No one seems to know what Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will vote for, and without all 50 Democratic senators on board, the bill will go nowhere. At the very least, it will take a while to do.

Meanwhile, the $1.1 trillion traditional infrastructure bill has been passed by the Senate. All the House has to do is vote on it. Lawmakers can pass it anytime and send it to the president’s desk for signature. And they will do so; there is no way in the world Democrats will just leave $1.1 trillion sitting on the table. And why keep waiting for a $3.5 trillion pie-in-the-sky bill that might or might not happen and in any event will involve more infighting among Democrats? Pass the $1.1 trillion now. Take the win.

That is what Pelosi is doing. But of course, taking the win is actually a cave for Pelosi in the sense that she vowed not to do it this way and has now surrendered to the so-called centrists in her party — and to common sense. So now, when the House passes the bill, and Biden signs it, Democrats can go back to fighting among themselves about the $3.5 trillion.

Before that, though, Congress has to pass a bill to keep the government funded, and then, after that, a bill to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. That’s where Pelosi (and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer) face some tough choices.

I dunno — a trillion here, and a trillion there, and sooner or later, you’re talking about real money.

AGAIN: 95% Vaccinated Harvard Business School Suspends In-Person Classes After Covid Outbreak.

SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Study: Young boys who play sports less likely to have anxiety, depression.

POSTMODERN DEMS: The ‘comfort the comfortable’ coalition.

Last Wednesday, I saw a friend walking his dog in the late morning on Capitol Hill, attired in shorts and flip-flops. “Nice suit,” he said to me as we crossed paths. “Yep,” I said. “Busy week at work.” He laughed. “I am at work now.”

I don’t know my friend’s politics, but I assume he is part of the Comfort the Comfortable Coalition, that group of upper-middle-class urban professionals who the Democrats seem most interested in pleasing this election cycle.

Finley Peter Dunne, the noted scribe of the early 20th century, described his mission in life as comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. The Democrats seem much more interested in comforting the comfortable, those ascendant progressives who drive most policy decisions in their now fragile coalition.

Read the whole thing.

JUST NBC THE HYPOCRISY: Chuck Todd, Glaring Conflict of Interest, Moderating 2nd Virginia Governor Debate. “The Virginia gubernatorial candidates engage in their second debate tonight on WRC, the local NBC station in Washington. The moderator is Chuck Todd. That’s an interesting choice, since Chuck’s wife Kristian Denny has been active in advising and donating to Democratic candidates in Virginia.”

I THINK THIS IS CORRECT: NEPA Does Not Apply in Outer Space, Argues TechFreedom in Amicus Brief.

SpaceX is seeking to become the first company to provide widespread, low-latency, reasonably priced, direct-to-consumer satellite broadband. In the order at issue here, the FCC granted SpaceX’s request to move some previously licensed satellites to a lower orbit. On appeal, a rival satellite broadband company contends that the FCC’s order failed to comply with NEPA, a procedural statute that requires the government to assess the environmental impact of “major actions”—defined broadly to include many permit approvals. Both the FCC and SpaceX contend that the FCC satisfied the statute’s requirements.

TechFreedom’s brief argues that whether the order complies with NEPA is irrelevant, because NEPA does not apply in the first place.

“American law is presumed to apply only where America is sovereign,” said James E. Dunstan, TechFreedom’s General Counsel. “America is not the sovereign of space. On the contrary, our nation has little control over what other countries do on the final frontier. Indeed, if we were to smother our satellite companies in procedural red tape, nothing would stop other nations, such as China, from steaming ahead with their own broadband satellite constellations, with far less concern for the space environment.”

“Absent a clear signal from Congress, therefore, NEPA does not apply in space,” Dunstan continued, “yet NEPA contains no such signal. On the contrary, the law says that it applies only to the ‘human environment’ and the ‘biosphere.’ The absence of a clear reference to space is especially telling when you consider the year NEPA was passed—1970. It was the height of the Space Race. We had just joined the Outer Space Treaty and landed on the Moon. Never in American history has Congress been more aware of outer space—but NEPA makes no mention of it.”

More spacefaring and less lawfaring please. The brief is here.

GOD AND MAN AT ALBANY:

● Watch: NY Gov. Kathy Hochul Proclaims Unvaccinated People ‘Aren’t Listening to God.’

● COVID-19 vaccines are ‘from God to us,’ N.Y. governor tells Brooklyn megachurch.

● New York Gov. Hochul tells Christian worshippers: ‘God wants you to be vaccinated.’

● NY Gov. Hochul says vaccines are ‘from God,’ sends out her own ‘apostles’ to push jabs.

I prefer American socialists to be a bit more secular. And as Jim Geraghty notes, “At this hour, despite the governor declaring that everyone in the state must listen to God and do as God wants, there is no complaint from Americans United for Separation of Church and State.”

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Jen Psaki Is the Stupidest Person in the World (Or Hopes You Are).

Plus:

• Vanilla Ice is going to save the planet (really)
• Thanks, Madam Speaker! Introducing outsider-insider trading
• Shoplifting gang caught on video but not by Chicago police

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