UPSTAGING OUR GOVERNMENT: 5,100 Christian and other at-risk Afghans evacuated in private rescue mission, says Glenn Beck.

SO THEY’RE GOING TO LIFT FAUCI’S LICENSE? Calls grow to discipline doctors spreading virus misinformation.

“Spreading misinformation” is a joke term in this dishonest environment of politicized science.

BRENDAN LOY ON NEW ORLEANS AND IDA.

OPEN THREAD: Comments are your weapon of choice.

OUR RULING CLASS HAS ITS PRIORITIES:

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China researching challenges of kilometer-scale ultra-large spacecraft. “The National Natural Science Foundation of China has outlined a five-year project for researchers to study the assembly of ultra-large spacecraft. Scientists are being directed to meet the ‘urgent need’ for the construction of ultra-large spacecraft. Preliminary research is to include studying the challenges of developing lightweight structures and subsequent on-orbit assembly and control.”

Orion is the key. If the Chinese beat us to this, don’t say you weren’t warned.

BUT THEN WHO WILL BUY THE HIGH-FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP? Reducing sugar in packaged foods can prevent disease in millions.

I’M NOT SO OPTIMISTIC: Ida might tell us if we learned anything from Katrina.

UPDATE: It seems my lack of confidence was not misplaced.

Also:

When you have the political class of a banana republic, eventually things start to look like a banana republic.

ANOTHER UPDATE: From the comments: “To tie it back to another commenter’s point in another thread, we have a managerial class who have MBAs and other credentials from all the correct schools, but are utter incompetents. They learned to game the system, and have relied on decades worth of accumulated social, political, cultural, and economic capital to carry them through these crises. Now that capital is almost used up, and they’re discovering that they are vastly overleveraged.”

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Light-to-moderate coffee drinking associated with health benefits. “Our results suggest that regular coffee consumption is safe, as even high daily intake was not associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes and all-cause mortality after a follow-up of 10 to 15 years. Moreover, 0.5 to 3 cups of coffee per day was independently associated with lower risks of stroke, death from cardiovascular disease, and death from any cause.”

UK SAYS ITS FINAL MILITARY FLIGHT HAS LEFT KABUL.

Related: The Brits somehow seem to be getting their people out of Afghanistan.

BLAST OFF: SpaceX launch of robotic arm to space station reset for Sunday.

WHY DOES THE TALIBAN REPORTEDLY WANT A U.S. DIPLOMATIC PRESENCE IN AFGHANISTAN? “Why the Biden administration would consider reopening the embassy doors in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001, is a mystery. Most of us are old enough to remember another embassy attack on a similar anniversary. Many of the same geniuses who made the Sunday show rounds to tell us a YouTube video caused the attack on Benghazi hold positions of power in the Biden administration. These people would do anything to cover their incompetence and should not be trusted. The lights at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul went out on August 15. They should stay off. Under no circumstances should the United States legitimize the terrorist regime now in power. And the disastrous retreat to the Kabul airport and subsequent evacuation of Americans ‘who want to leave’ should be the last time our nation negotiates with or relies in any way on the Taliban.”

IT’S THE RETURN OF SUPPLY-LINE DISRUPTIONS! More than 40 ships waiting outside LA and Long Beach setting new record. “Retailers in the US are battling record low inventories, likely meaning the container crunch will worsen in the coming weeks.”

WILL THEY LEARN TO CODE OR BUILD SOLAR PANELS? Layoffs are just the beginning of bad news for Vice and Buzzfeed.

HMM: Study: Long-used cholesterol drug may help fight severe COVID-19. “In lab experiments, they found that the cholesterol-lowering drug fenofibrate, marketed as TriCor, effectively reduced damage to lung cells and stopped the COVID-19 virus from replicating. A study in 15 patients confirmed the lab results.”

Not a very big study.

NOT THE BABYLON BEE: This news clip from Australia is unbelievably dystopian (video).

1984: A warning for the rest of us, a how-to guide for the left. And a whole lot of people in Australian government need to be asking themselves: Are we the baddies?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU

ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER: Tim Blair on Presidential Profiles in Courage.

DON SURBER: To Survive, We Must Fire Them All.

The survival of America depends on firing them all. The good, the bad, and the indifferent must all go because we must send a clear signal to the mediocrities running the military and the Department of State.

The message must be failure gets you canned.

We failed 20 years ago to do so, and it cost us dearly.

9/11 resulted in no firings. Instead of dismissing the people in charge of an intelligence community that failed the nation, Bush 43 appointed a 9/11 commission, which included many of the people responsible for the 9/11 whiff. The commission was a bipartisan circle jerk and coverup. After months of interviews, it concluded that the FBI and CIA had “not well served” Presidents Clinton and Bush.

No shit, Sherlock.

Contrast and compare to FDR’s response to the REAL Pearl Harbor.

Indeed.

SELF DEFENSE ADVICE: Always and awareness are two words that really don’t go together. None of us are always as aware as we should be.

HELP! MY DAUGHTER IS MARRYING A WHITE MAN AGAINST MY WISHES.

Perhaps judge him by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin. Or is that too quaint an idea?

CHANGE: The Age of the Car is Gone, that of the SUV has succeeded.

“DON’T UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP.”

● Shot: Biden Pledges To Strike Back After Attack Kills 13 U.S. Service Members In Kabul. “’Know this,’ Biden said to the attackers. ‘We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.’”

—NPR, Thursday.

● Chaser: Pentagon: Two ‘High Profile’ ISIS-K Targets Killed in Retaliatory Drone Strike.

—NRO, today.

● Hangover: Pentagon spox says names of 2 ‘high profile’ ISIS-K planners killed in airstrike won’t be released.

—Twitchy, today.

● The D.T.s: Joe Biden’s Afghanistan Drone Strike Against ISIS-K Is a Joke, and We Are the Punchline.

—Red State, today.

BOB ZUBRIN: We Need Fusion Power.

CHINA, INC. WAS ANOTHER OVERHYPED AND DESTRUCTIVE MANAGEMENT FAD:

During a recent conference of regional business leaders at which I was in attendance, an executive of one company was asked about tariffs and the global supply chain squeeze, and what impact they were having. He started his response by stating that “China, Inc. was another overhyped and destructive management fad.” He went on to state that Trump’s Chinese tariffs turned out to be a welcome catalyst for many businesses to finally start disengaging from China, and that businesses shocked by current supply-chain problems from China are as delusional as the GE executives who believe their company keeps struggling because it just isn’t pushing Six Sigma hard enough.

His comment about China, Inc. caused me to recall two conversations I had about ten years ago with two separate business executives.

Flashback to November of 2019: How to Conduct Business with Chinese Companies That See a Dark Future.