SO AFTER READING RIC LOCKE’S TEMPORARY DUTY, I got tired of WWII naval fiction and went back another century and a half to pick up on Julian Stockwin’s Thomas Kydd books at Caribee. I had started this series quite a while ago and it’s very entertaining.

STAND BY: Putin deploys world’s largest submarine with ‘apocalypse’ drone capabilities.

A military train that belongs to the forces responsible for Russia’s nuclear arsenal has been spotted moving toward the front lines in Ukraine, while Moscow was said to have deployed the world’s biggest submarine — capable of carrying “apocalypse” drones.

These latest maneuvers could signal an increasingly desperate Vladimir Putin’s willingness to escalate the war following a series of embarrassing defeats on the battlefield, including the loss of a key city in Donetsk and the most recent setbacks in the Kherson region.

The pro-Russian Telegram channel Rybar shared on Sunday a video showing a freight train hauling upgraded armored personnel carriers (APCs) and other sophisticated military equipment through central Russia.

Here’s a backgrounder on the Belgorod sub and its unique payload: New Details of Russian Belgorod ‘Doomsday’ Submarine Revealed.

APOCALYPSE NOW: Dems going dark over midterm message.

With a tough midterm election about six weeks away, many Democrats have largely settled on a campaign message, and it’s not one that simply emphasizes their accomplishments. Instead, it amounts to a stark warning: If Republicans take power, they will establish a dystopia that cripples democracy and eviscerates abortion rights and other freedoms.

“When you are the in-party in the midterms – like the Democrats are now – and the wind is blowing against you, you have to ride every advantageous breeze you can find,” former Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said. “And the Democrats have found those breezes in the Dobbs decision and in Donald Trump.”

For months leading Democrats, starting with President Biden, signaled that they would campaign on having helped Americans, from fixing bridges to cutting drug costs. Biden suggested that attacking Republicans too harshly would divide the country and alienate potential supporters.

But with Donald Trump’s reemergence, the proliferation of Republican nominees who reject fair elections, and the Supreme Court’s overturning abortion rights, the calculus has starkly changed. Biden now all but admits his initial approach no longer works.

“I remember I got beat up in the campaign by saying that I wanted to unify the country and unify the parties,” he recently told a Democratic gathering. “You used to be able to do that. But things have changed a whole bunch.”

Republicans have adopted their own apocalyptic rhetoric, warning that Biden and the Democrats are taking the country down a path of soaring crime, raging inflation and uncontrolled immigration. That has created a midterm arena marked by dueling dystopias, as the parties vie to outdo each other in describing the hellscape that lies ahead if the other side wins.

CTL-F “2020” returns zero results in this column by the WaPo’s Yasmeen Abutaleb (republished at Jewish World Review). Which is odd, since voters got to personally experience the Democrats’ dystopian hellscape that year. The most diehard of Democratic Party voters reacted by a forming a massively psychotic response (there must be a more concise phrase for this somewhere), in response to Red State voters who by and large remained much calmer — in large part because of their governors were calmer.

Liberals are freaking idiots https://t.co/3qNLXHW4Lw

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) October 2, 2022

Incidentally, that “unexpectedly” passive phrase, “Donald Trump’s reemergence,” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in Abutaleb’s column. Flashback: Biden White House Directly Involved in Conspiracy to Entrap Trump in Criminal FBI Probe.

Related: Majority see FBI as Biden’s ‘personal Gestapo’ after Trump raid.

As Glenn likes to point out, “Remember, Biden’s own press secretary says that if you disagree with the majority, you’re an extremist!”

IT’S EASY TO GET “CONSENSUS” WHEN YOU PERSECUTE ANYONE WHO DISAGREES:

Plus:

Worse than this particular bit of viciousness is that our institutions in general are controlled by people who think this way.

JORDAN PETERSON: “People have been after me for a long time because I’ve been speaking to disaffected young men — what a terrible thing to do, that is. I thought the marginalized were supposed to have a voice. It’s very difficult to understand how demoralized people are, and certainly many young men are in that category. And you get these casual insults: ‘These incels.’ What does that mean? Well, these men, they don’t know how to make themselves attractive to women, who are very picky. And good for them — women, be picky. That’s your gift, man. Demand high standards from your men. Fair enough. But all these men who are alienated, they’re lonesome. . . . and everyone piles abuse on them.”

WELL, THAT BUILDS CONFIDENCE: UN Official: “We own the science.”

AT LEAST 42 PEOPLE PRESUMED DEAD IN LEE COUNTY AS MEDIA RUSHES TO “KATRINA” RON DESANTIS:

Forty-two people dead, sadly, in just Lee County. And there will probably be more.

The media now unleashes the New DeathSantis Narrative it started working on a week ago.

At least 42 people are dead in Lee County, one of the areas hardest-hit by Hurricane Ian where rescue and recovery efforts are still ongoing.

Local officials are now facing questions about why they didn’t urge people in the path of the destructive Category 4 hurricane to evacuate sooner.

Last Sunday — three days before the storm landed on the peninsula — the National Hurricane Center predicted that Ian could bring a storm surge of 4 to 7 feet from Englewood to Bonita Beach, which includes all of coastal Lee County.

A 4 to 7 foot surge isn’t a major surge. It was the 10 to 15 foot (or more) surges that were deadly.

Lee County was not in the storm’s path according to the storm track 72 hours before landfall, as DeSantis explains to this dolt of a CNN reporter. Even at 48 hours, it was only on the periphery.

In other words, the storm changed its path and moved towards Lee County in the last 24 hours before landfall.

And DeSantis did order an evacuation. Actually, this isn’t directly about DeSantis; it’s about the local officials, who did order an evacuation. But the media is attempting to blame DeSantis for the local officials’ “deadly delay.”

Curious that the press attacked the Republican president but not Louisiana Democrats during their insanely inaccurate Katrina coverage, but now, the Democratic president gets a pass, and it’s the Florida Republican whom they’re attempting to run the same playbook on: DeSantis’s critics embarrass themselves over Hurricane Ian. “Untouchable in his private life, in his career before politics, and now in his highly competent handling of his first major natural disaster, DeSantis’s critics are only embarrassing themselves. They know it, and it is driving them crazy. Call it DeSantis Derangement Syndrome, and expect to be entertained as 2024 approaches.”

As fellow Insta-blogger Gail Heriot wrote on Friday, “The media can’t wait to blame DeSantis for Hurricane Ian.  Of course, that’s nothing new.  Bush got blamed for Katrina.  And the recent report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights put the blame on Trump for Hurricane Maria.  What’s interesting is how the blame gets assigned to the federal, state, or territorial level depending on where the Republicans are.”

HOW TO TELL IF YOU HAVE too much visceral fat.

UKRAINE DIPLOMAT AIMS 4-LETTER BLAST AT ELON MUSK’S RUSSIA PEACE PROPOSAL:

Under Musk’s peace deal, Crimea, a region Russia annexed in 2014, would formally become part of Russia, with Ukraine no longer laying claim to the territory and that water supply to Crimea would be “assured.”

He also proposed that Ukraine would remain neutral in global affairs under his peace deal. Ukraine’s diplomatic relationship with the West, including the U.S., has long been a point of tension with Russia. Ukraine on Friday announced it submitted an application to accelerate its effort to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). If Ukraine joins NATO, it would be seen as a massive blow to Russia’s efforts to prevent Ukraine from becoming tied to the West.

Melnyk, who serves as Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, hit back at the proposal in a tweet.

“F**k off is my very diplomatic reply to you @elonmusk,” Melnyk tweeted.

Related: Ukraine War: Russia’s Position Is Crumbling, Steve writes at the PJM mothership.

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH AL SHARPTON IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Al Sharpton Says Democrats Aren’t In Touch With Black And Latino Voters.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Kanye West Wears ‘White Lives Matter’ T-Shirt Design at YZY Season 9 Presentation. “Candace Owens was also in attendance and wearing a ‘White Lives Matter’ t-shirt.”

Back in the day, Time magazine declared West, “Hip-Hop’s Class Act” and “The Smartest Man in Pop Music,” so I’m sure he knows what he’s doing…

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): This bit from another story struck me: “In the hip-hop community, outspoken rapper Boosie Badazz, who famously bragged about paying prostitutes to perform oral sex on his son, then 12, and nephew, then, 13, called out West.”

VIA A FRIEND: “Don’t be mad at me for not wanting to pay your student loans — you don’t want to pay them either.”

I GUESS I’LL STICK WITH CHOCOLATE THEN: White rice and pasta are just as bad for your heart as CANDY, study suggests.

JOE BIDEN IS ALL THINGS TO ALL DEMS:

Biden, who often likes to draw on* his own personal background to connect with people, especially during times of tragedy and loss, said that his home state of Delaware had a “relatively” large Puerto Rican community when he was growing up. “I was sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically,” Biden said.

—”Biden visits Puerto Rico to survey Hurricane Fiona’s damage,” NBC News today.

‘I went to shul more than most of you:’ Biden hosts High Holiday reception.

—The Times of Israel, Saturday.

* NBC spelled “lie about” incorrectly here.

WAIT, ALL THE BEST PEOPLE TOLD ME THAT SORT OF THING WAS THE LAST REFUGE OF A SCOUNDREL: Are Democrats patriots?

By putting love of America front and center, Trump lured the Left into revealing their utter contempt for American values and Americans. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion curricula exploded into the classrooms, the New York Times went all in on the 1619 Project, which argued that the real American founding was in 1619, not 1776, because that is when the first African slaves were imported to America. They got a Pulitzer for this widely discredited dreck.

The Left’s critique went from “we can do better” to the more explicit: America sucks and always has. And anybody who took issue with that view was labeled a racist–or worse, a domestic terrorist. The National School Boards Association called on the Biden Administration to investigate parents as terrorists and even suggested calling out the National Guard.

The backlash was intense, and rightly so. But it also revealed something fundamental about the way the Leftist establishment views its role in society: to be the revolutionary vanguard against the normies among us who are so very very deplorable.

So yes, I think that the Left has no right to claim patriotism, because the Left doesn’t like America. And by that I don’t mean that they think America needs reform–any rational person could name a thousand things we could do better. We can debate policies all day long and all agree at the end of the day that America is both great and that it could be even greater. That is what living in a republic is all about.

Back during the Dubya era, Ace of Spades once defined the left’s love of country as being from the “Ike Turner school of patriotism:” “Those who love America show it by denigrating and beating the shit out of her at every opportunity.”

In that sense, very little has changed amongst the left’s worldview.

NOW SUE MEXICO FOR FENTANYL AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: Federal Court Dismisses $10B Mexican Lawsuit Against US Firearms Manufacturers.

BE PREPARED: Timberland Men’s Leather RFID Blocking Security Wallet. #CommissionEarned

IT’S THE STUPID ECONOMY: This Issue Will Drive Voters to the Polls in November, and Democrats Should Be Terrified.

FIRE COMES OUT AGAINST (NOT SO) SOFT CENSORSHIP BY PAYMENT PROCESSORS. “When payment processing services act as political hall monitors or moral arbiters deciding what speech and viewpoints are out of bounds, they present a grave threat to free expression.”

I can tell you, from working there for 19 years (I was executive director, now I’m a Senior Fellow after moving to private practice), FIRE does not take positions like this lightly. We care deeply about private organizations’ right to expression, or we wouldn’t be free speech advocates. But the danger presented by the concerted efforts to choke off dissent in this nation, through means both private and public, is hard to overstate. When I started at FIRE in 2003, the only place Americans were likely to experience censorship was a college campus, and the victims were justifiably outraged about it. Thanks to Big Tech thought policing, hundreds of thousands (maybe millions?) of victims each year are added to that total. Those who think this can continue forever are fools who will drive us this country off a cliff if they don’t stop ASAP.

ASSUMING THEY EVER EXISTED: ‘Where did they disappear to?’: Russian MP says 1.5 mln military uniforms are missing.

DON’T GET COCKY (CONT’D): Biden’s economy: Are Latinos about to hand the GOP wins in AZ and NV?

NEWS FROM 2020: How to enjoy fall festivities during the COVID pandemic.

GLEICHSCHALTUNG: They ‘Own the Science,’ and They Want to Control How You Access Information About It. “Elites control the media and the narratives, and, as Fleming says, they want people to know that. It isn’t that the elites are getting sloppy; they figure that their position is so secure that there is no need to mask their intent.”

PALEO AND KETO AREN’T THE SAME THING: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet. It had carbs.

DON’T GET COCKY: These deep blue seats could flip red in November’s midterm elections. “Fung is one of a handful of GOP congressional nominees across the country who have a good shot at winning long-time Democratic held House seats in solidly blue states.”