SAM BANKMAN-FRIED IS NOT ALONE: Some of History’s Greatest Monsters Were Democratic Megadonors.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” — Sir Isaac Newton

What happened: Sam Bankman-Fried, the digital guru who earlier this year pledged to spend as much as $1 billion in support of Democratic candidates, is under federal investigation after the cryptocurrency exchange he founded declared bankruptcy amid accusations of fraud and financial mismanagement.

Why it matters: Bankman-Fried is the latest in a long line of Democratic megadonors to be accused of egregious criminal acts.

The Washington Free-Beacon’s recent parodies of Axios’ bullet point-style articles are amusing in and of themselves, but that is indeed quite a, umm, err, colorful list of DNC financial enablers.

I AM UNPERSUADED: SpaceX fans should stand behind NASA and support Artemis.

FEDERALISM: Abbott Calls Out The Guard. “This could be huge news: Texas Governor Greg Abbott has summoned the National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety to repel the invasion of Texas from its southern border. Abbott invokes the Invasion Clauses of the U.S. and Texas Constitutions.”

He has a solid case.

NEW VIDEO FROM AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: If Women Had The Same Rights As Guns.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT, GUYS: NASA’s Artemis 1 moon rocket is go for launch on Nov. 16. Here’s how to watch it live. “Despite some concerns over the damage the $4.1-billion-dollar Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle and Orion spacecraft experienced due to Hurricane Nicole, NASA is moving forward with its current launch attempt. Artemis 1 is currently counting down to a two-hour launch window which begins on Wednesday (Nov. 16) at 1:04 a.m. EST (0604 GMT).”

JULIE KELLY: Feds Had Informants In Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for J6.

Prior to the September start of the seditious conspiracy trial against members of the Oath Keepers, prosecutors finally disclosed that at least five FBI informants were embedded in the groups weeks and months before January 6. Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia handling over 900 January 6 cases, sought to prevent the jury from hearing about the informants’ “activities or involvement in past investigations.”

None testified as a witness for the government. But the defense wanted to call to the stand the vice president of the Oath Keepers, a man who worked directly with Stewart Rhodes, the founder and head of the group. Greg McWhirter is a former sheriff’s deputy and current owner of a tactical shooting range and gun shop in Montana.

McWhirter also is an FBI informant.

According to a bombshell piece in the New York Times, McWhirter was “secretly reporting to the F.B.I. about the group’s activities in the weeks and months leading up to the Capitol attack.” Reporter Alan Feuer further revealed that McWhirter had suffered a medical emergency boarding a plane to Washington to testify and required hospitalization. (Prosecutors asked the presiding judge to find out who leaked the information about McWhirter’s role, under court-ordered protective seal, to Feuer. Defense dropped him as a witness.)

Not only did McWhirter work for the FBI, he lured Oath Keepers to his remote business by offering discounts to buy guns and ammunition before the 2020 election—presumably, at the behest of the FBI to produce evidence of a self-styled “militia” even though no crime was committed.

All of it reeks of the FBI-engineered plot to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, an entrapment scheme underway at the very same time the FBI utilized informants in the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers before January 6. In the Whitmer fednapping hoax, Dan Chappel, the lead informant, acted as the “commanding officer” of an imaginary militia—revealed during trial as a fabrication of the FBI—to lure the FBI’s targets into the trap.

Further, another Oath Keeper turned informant called the FBI tip line in November 2020 over fears the group planned to go “to war with the United States government” but investigators didn’t contact him until March 2021.

As Glenn noted yesterday, “Both the SDS and the KKK used to say in the 1960s that the guy in your group calling for illegal activity was the FBI mole.”

HEY, IT HELPED HIM STEM THE TIDE DURING THE MIDTERMS: Biden’s considering another (idiotic) student loan bailout.

JOE BATTENFELD: Donald Trump’s Possible Path to the Republican Nomination in 2024.

Despite the midterm election disaster and Democrats doing a victory dance, there still could be a path for Donald Trump to win the 2024 Republican nomination.

He will face incredible obstacles and even a possible indictment, but Trump could turn those negatives into a plus and emerge once again as a national GOP threat. Can all the negativity around Trump somehow help him win the nomination?

Recent polls continue to show Trump and President Biden locked in a close battle in a 2024 matchup, so the former president starts essentially even.

If Biden won such a big mandate – as Democrats claim — in the 2022 midterms then why is Trump still so close? . . . And if Trump is such damaged goods then why are Democrats even fearful of him running? You’d think they’d be egging Trump on to run.

Why, indeed?

MARK JUDGE ON THE PUNITIVE, PURITANICAL LEFT: The Unknown Hoya and why fun is more important than politics.

These days, it’s hard to make it an hour watching cable TV, combing through a bookstore, or scrolling social media without coming across someone whose main job in life seems to be punishing America. Our society has been overrun by American Stasi whose totalitarian impulses are far more dangerous than COVID ever was.

The best solution, as Schall put it, is to remember that we are first and foremost spiritual creatures and that the leftist bullies who would take away our rights would love nothing more than to make us forget that. They want docile, thoughtless sheep who know how to take orders — and that’s it. But what our society really needs is its own Wutanfall: joyful citizens determined to enjoy the freedoms they’ve been given while they still can.

Maybe we can kick things off with a keg party.

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™

IT’S NOT A CULT: The Curious Case of FTX’s ‘Company Therapist.’ FTX’s “company therapist” said he was actually an in-house coach who occasionally tried to find “dating options” for employees while serving as a psychiatrist to some on the side.

At times, though, [Psychiatrist George Lerner’s] job at FTX went beyond the duties of a traditional career coach. The company was based in the Bahamas, and though the country had a tropical climate and “amazing people,” according to Lerner, the 20-something FTX employees struggled with permanent island life and pined for a return to a major city. “THE biggest career discussion issue was not being in a big city,” he told Motherboard.

“When you’re in a big city, you know that there are options, even if you don’t seek them out,” Lerner told Motherboard. “The island has limited entertainment and social choices compared to Miami, NY, or SF.”

“A lot of people left relationships back home to move to the Bahamas,” he continued. “I knew a time would come when they would want to find someone to start dating. Also note that it’s not about sex. People can visit big cities and get that. It’s not what they were looking for. It’s about relationships.”

He became “very concerned that either they would leave the company due to lack of romantic relationships available (and some had) or would date within the company (not a great idea).” As the crypto news site CoinDesk reported last week, top FTX employees in fact had the sort of baroque interpersonal relationships that would be discouraged if not forbidden at most companies: In the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried lived for a time in a “luxury penthouse” with nine other members of his “inner circle,” all of whom had at one point “paired up in romantic relationships with each other” according to CoinDesk.

To make life in the Bahamas appealing without office entanglements, Lerner was “always looking for dating options for FTX people,” he told crypto-focused comedian and entrepreneur Margaux Avedisian in a message reviewed by Motherboard. Avedisian said she had met Lerner at a party at the home of FTX chief operating officer Constance Wang in April during the Crypto Bahamas conference put on by FTX and SALT, Anthony Scaramucci’s “global thought leadership” group. Avedisian was there to serve as master of ceremonies at an event put on by Deltec Bank, another Bahamas-based financial firm.

Anthony Scaramucci, eh? FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried — once dubbed ‘the next Warren Buffet’ before his downfall — rubbed shoulders with Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Orlando Bloom and Katy Perry at $3,000-a-head Bahamas crypto festival (but now his famous friends have gone dark). “Crypto Bahamas opened at midday on Tuesday, April 26 at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar, a luxury hotel on the island. The event was a partnership between FTX and SALT, a leadership and networking forum chaired by Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House Communications Director under Donald Trump.”

Something tells me next year’s show will have a different guest speaker:

BREAKING: House Called for GOP.

IT BEATS WALKING: Wormholes May Already Have Been Detected, Physicists Say.

EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE A RAT: Tokyo researchers discover rats have rhythm. Everybody wants to feel that rodent beat, ’cause everything else is obsolete.

FINALLY:

UPDATE: Republicans Win the House of Representatives. “Nancy Pelosi has been dethroned. The seat that pushed Republicans over the finish line was in California’s 3rd district, won by Kevin Kiley, who has been an outspoken fighter against Gavin Newsom in the state…This isn’t the outcome Republicans expected, but it is something. Winning is better than losing, and with winning comes the ability to dictate committee assignments, floor votes, and investigations. There are going to be a lot of entertaining things happening over the next two years. Buckle up and enjoy the show.”

HE JUST KEEPS GOING AND GOING: “Though some Republicans tried very hard to destroy Trump with the 2022 results, he’s going to go on. That’s what he does. I remember when I thought the Deadline Hollywood story was the end of him. He doesn’t stop!”

FALSE AND MALICIOUS ACCUSATIONS OF RAPE AND RACISM: Defendant’s “Cyber Campaign” “Was Multi-Faceted, Intricate and Extensive, Sly, Anonymous, and Horrible.” “Defendant’s conduct by any measure was vile and wanton, evincing sadistic moral turpitude. This record establishes these acts by clear and convincing evidence. One wonders how a normal person could be so consumed with evil as to engage in such a complex, feral, and cruel scheme.”

Plus: “When Defendant did choose to participate earlier in the case, she committed perjury.”

THROW BACK THE LITTLE ONES: Newsom’s Wife Testifies That Harvey Weinstein’s Worm Looks Like a Fish.

HMM: Georgia judge overturns state’s six-week abortion ban.

Judge Robert McBurney of the Superior Court of Fulton County said the law was void at the time it was passed in 2019 under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, which established a federal right to abortion in 1973.

McBurney said the state would have to pass the law again now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe for the ban to be valid. The 2019 law was “plainly unconstitutional when drafted, voted upon, and enacted,” McBurney wrote in his opinion.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

BREAKING: Russian Missiles Hits NATO Ally Poland, Two Dead.

READER FAVORITE: Instant Read Meat Thermometer for Cooking. #CommissionEarned

WELL, GOOD: Homeowner Shoots and Kills Man Who Followed Him Into His Home and Attacked Him With a Rock.

VIDEO: China’s Lockdowns: Even Crazier. “In Xining City in Qinghai province (next to Tibet), some people have been locked down in a wet market for over 40 days.”

That doesn’t seem very healthy.

LOVE HIM OR NOT, TRUMP’S ENDORSEMENT WAS POISON IN GENERAL ELECTIONS 2022: Hans Bader: Republican Trump ignored wins in a landslide, while Trump-backed candidates lose in the same state. Seems to me in DeSantis you get similar policies without the baggage.

DAILY CALLER: We Reject Steve Schmidt’s Attack On The First Amendment.

It is both sad and curious that many political operatives who claim to “protect democracy” so often do so with no respect or understanding for our cherished constitutional rights, especially those rights that underpin democracy itself. No truer example can be found than those who so casually disregard the First Amendment.

As some readers may know, The Daily Caller published an article on November 11 titled “Lincoln Project Co-Founder Steve Schmidt’s Ex-Wife Files For Restraining Order.” The next day we received a series of legal threats and demands from an attorney for Mr. Schmidt. As is our journalistic obligation, we immediately investigated his allegations of error, and indeed we did find that we made a few minor errors of no moment, but corrected them anyway. For example, we mistakenly said in the first version that Mrs. Schmidt was planning to divorce Mr. Schmidt, and Mr. Schmidt’s lawyer pointed out they were already divorced. Yes, it’s an error, yes we’re embarrassed, but these are exactly the kind of errors that the First Amendment has been read to give “breathing space” for freedom of expression, particularly in matters of public concern.

Unlike Mr. Schmidt, we do not intend to litigate this or any matter via Twitter. We do however wish to set the record straight that Mr. Schmidt has posted only one of several legal threats, each one changing his story a little bit. Moreover, we have reached out to his attorney and asked him to provide any material that can support his allegations of other errors so we can address them. He has refused to do this. We have even offered to allow Mr. Schmidt the opportunity to publish a statement or opinion piece – unedited by us – in which he can state his view. He has so far rejected this opportunity.

In our view, “litigation by Twitter” is little more than public relations. Mr. Schmidt complained that we referred to The Lincoln Project as “his” organization. While he might like everyone to forget that he was in fact a cofounder, we again as a courtesy, corrected the story to clarify that he left the organization after it was embroiled in a scandal involving homosexual harassment.

I’m sure he was delighted with that clarification.

THE MONEY WOULD BE BETTER SPENT DIGGING A BIG PIT, FILLING IT WITH CASH, AND COVERING IT: The Extended Parasite: On the Design of the Diversity Bureaucracy.