20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE:

Related: Biden Thinks You’re An Idiot: It’s Pretty Obvious President Will Blame Coming Economic Ruin On GOP After Midterms.

President Joe Biden thinks you are an idiot.

Based on the president’s comments last week, it is abundantly clear that his team is readying to blame Republicans for any economic ruin after the midterm elections — despite the fact that his economic policies over the past 20 months are behind current skyrocketing costs.

“If Republicans win, inflation’s going to get worse. It’s that simple,” Biden recently said in Los Angeles.

Biden’s declaration came the same day that the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index reported that inflation was hotter than expected in September and rose by 8.2% year-over-year. That is now the twelfth straight month with inflation year-over-year above six percent.

Somehow, Biden wants you to believe that Democrats have a handle on inflation, and the GOP will only add to the worries.

Of course, throughout 2021, America was also experiencing inflation, albeit at a slightly lower rate. For example, in July 2021, the U.S. saw an annualized rate of inflation of 5.4%. The president claimed that the surging costs were due to a roaring economy but that it wouldn’t last long.

“Some folks have raised worries that this could be a sign of persistent inflation,” he added. “But that’s not our view.  Our experts believe and the data shows that most of the price increases we’ve seen are — were expected and expected to be temporary.”

It was not temporary and, in fact, only worsened after those comments.

In December 2021, Biden predicted America was at the peak of inflation. Clearly, that was false.

If there is a GOP majority elected in November, look also for loads of ginned-up non-scandals by the DNC-MSM in their attempt to derail their majority, such as the media’s blanket attack in early 2011 on Sarah Palin for an apolitical lunatic’s shooting of Dem. Gabrielle Giffords (and a George H.W. Bush-appointed judge, who was killed, but received far less ink). Katrina in 2005. Or the non-scandal in 1994 of Newt Gingrich’s book contract. (In contrast to Dem. former speaker Jim Wright, whose book deal was essentially a kickback scheme.)

HAHA, THEY ALWAYS BLAME “MESSAGING” WHEN THE DOG DOESN’T LIKE THE DOG FOOD: Liberal Media Scream: It’s Biden’s communications, not his policies, failing him.

WAIT, ISN’T IT RE-ELECTION RESULTS IN HER CASE? Stacey Abrams Dodges on Whether She’d Accept Georgia Gubernatorial Election Results.

AGAINST THE GREAT RESET: ‘Then Fall, Davos’.

DEAL OF THE DAY: MEGAWISE 2500A Peak 21800mAh Car Battery Jump Starter. #CommissionEarned

IT’S A ROGUE AGENCY: Durham: The FBI is the “elephant in the room” in Danchenko trial.

DON’T GET COCKY: Democrats’ Disconnect With Voters Is a Gaping Chasm With Only Three Weeks Left. “Not even a majority of Democrats agreed when CAPS-Harris asked them specifically if the economy was on the right track.”

SENATOR SLUMLORD: Pests, Filth, and Killer Elevators: Inside Raphael Warnock’s Secret Low-Income Apartment Building.

RIOTS FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME: Cori Bush spent $490,000 on private security despite calls to defund police: Report.

“Squad” member Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) allegedly spent just under $500,000 on private security over the last two years despite public calls to defund the police, according to a new report.

Bush’s campaign paid out over $100,000 for security services during the third quarter of 2022 alone, according to Federal Election Commission records obtained by Fox News. Just over $71,000 went to private security, while the other $30,000 was categorized for other security services. She has spent $490,000 overall.

Despite standing by defunding the police, Bush said it is better to think about the movement as a reallocation of the funds that typically went to police departments into a broader department of public safety. Calls to defund the police unfurled after the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd, who died two years ago after a police officer knelt on his neck.

“The thing about ‘defund the police’ is we have to tell the entire narrative,” Bush said in an interview on Good Morning America. “People hear ‘defund the police.’ But you know what they’ll say? Say ‘reallocate,’ say ‘divest,’ say ‘move.’ But it’s still the same thing. We can’t get caught up on the word. People spend more time focusing on the word ‘defund’ than they spend on caring and addressing the problem of police in this country.”

Related: Seven Minutes of Democrats Saying Defund The Police:

(Classical reference in headline.)

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (COMMUNIST CHINA EDITION): China May Be ‘Uninvestable’ After All.

This is not the first time analysts have issued dire warnings against investing in Chinese stocks. From our standpoint as advocates of long-term investing, we too share the view that what qualifies as a high-quality investment, necessarily requires some level of visibility into future cash flows or prospects of the asset in question. When it comes to investing in China, though, the future is wildly unpredictable given the lack of transparency, weak accounting standards, and poor regulatory oversight. Worse, the fate of the Chinese economy is almost entirely dependent on the political aspirations of a single man, Chinese President Xi Jinping.

And Xi Jinping’s actions of late have been nothing short of disturbing for investors. Even former Morgan Stanley Chief Economist and long-time optimist of China, Stephen Roach, has recently issued warnings that China’s actions are signaling the early stages of a cold war.

Xi’s gotta have it — or whatever is left of it.

TO BE FAIR, HE WAS NEVER A QUICK LEARNER: Charles Blow’s sudden revelation on the universality of racism.

It’s always somewhat amusing to watch a certain kind of anti-racist progressive reckon with the fact that various non-white groups can dislike one another, and that the way that that animosity manifests is — at least in the contemporary United States — often far more bitter and explicitly racist than white racism itself. Blow doesn’t explain how or why the anti-black racism of the Latino L.A. councilmembers is “the work of white supremacy” — these are the kinds of things that are asserted, not argued — but then again, recognizing that ethnic conflict and tribalism exist everywhere, across time, place, and race, would be deeply inconvenient for a number of progressive premises about America and the logic of intersectionality.

The fact is that non-whites are often every bit as racist as whites, for reasons that have far more to do with the brokenness of human nature than any abstract system of white supremacy. Blow himself has acknowledged this in the past — in response to a 2016 story about a Chinese detergent commercial promoting its product’s ability to turn a black man into a fairer-skinned Asian one, the Times columnist thundered: “Anti-black racism is a GLOBAL scourge!” In fact, the United States is far less racist than other comparable multiracial societies — Hollywood movies hoping to make inroads in the Chinese market infamously diminished or fully cut out black characters to appeal to the country’s antipathy to blackness. But I don’t expect Blow to reckon with those contradictions anytime soon. If you’re a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

It’s hard to teach a man something when his salary depends on not learning it. And Blow’s role at the NYT depends on not recognizing certain obvious truths that, if recognized, would wreck the preferred narrative.

BURIED LEDE: JOE BIDEN CHANNELS INSTAPUNDIT!

JOE BIDEN 2007: "How are you going to keep it from us being able to be in a position where you can manipulate the machines, manipulate the records? I think we should pass a federal law mandating that the same machines with paper trails be mandatory for every federal election.” pic.twitter.com/FGXyClKYh7

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 16, 2022

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

I’ve been pushing paper ballots since 2002.

Flashback, November 2, 2020: Will your ballot be safe? Computer experts sound warnings on America’s voting machines.

Millions of voters going to the polls Tuesday will cast their ballots on machines blasted as unreliable and inaccurate for two decades by computer scientists from Princeton University to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Toyed with by white-hat hackers and targeted for scathing reviews from secretaries of state in California and Ohio, Direct Recording Electronic voting systems, or DREs, have startled Illinois voters by flashing the word “Republican” at the top of a ballot and forgotten what day it was in South Carolina. They were questioned in the disappearance of 12,000 votes in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, in 2002 and 18,000 votes in Sarasota County, Florida, in 2006. . . .

All election systems are for the most part black boxes: proprietary software and hardware jealously guarded by the handful of companies selling them. But state reviews and court cases opening up DRE systems of all makes and models for examination have for years flagged problems.

In New Jersey in 2008, Princeton computer scientist Andrew Appel and a five-member team got a rare look under the hood of an AVC Advantage DRE, part of a lawsuit alleging DREs could not reliably count votes

Among the findings: The system sometimes only seemed to record a vote. It sometimes did record a vote but seemed not to. It would take one screwdriver and seven minutes to insert a vote-stealing program. That kind of hack would probably be invisible, Appel concluded.

Plus: Democrats question election results: ‘We just trust the machines, and we shouldn’t.’

Matt Luceen didn’t vote for former President Donald Trump in 2020, but he came to Washington last week to protest President Biden’s inauguration, saying the election was flawed.

Mr. Luceen, a supporter of Sen. Bernard Sanders, said he toted signs that read “COUNT OUR VOTES BY HAND,” and “End the charade.”

“We don’t ever really put the paper into piles and count them by hand anymore,” the 34-year-old computer programmer said. “We just trust the machines, and we shouldn’t because we have documented proof that these machines are vulnerable.”

While Mr. Trump and his supporters have been explosively vocal about their distrust of the election system, discontent runs through a broad swath of voters from across the political spectrum.

In 2016, it was Democrats complaining that the election had been tainted by Russian interference. Two years later, the party complained that Stacey Abrams had been denied the Georgia governorship because of shenanigans with voting rolls.

Ms. Abrams never conceded, and Democrats — who took control of the U.S. House in those 2018 elections — made her cause a rallying cry, vowing to repair elections.

In 2020, it was Mr. Trump sowing complaints early and often.

And remember this? Democratic senators warned of potential ‘vote switching’ by Dominion voting machines prior to 2020 election.

In a December 2019 letter to Dominion Voting Systems, which has been mired in controversy after a human error involving its machines in Antrim County, Michigan, resulted in incorrect counts, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, and Amy Klobuchar and congressman Mark Pocan warned about reports of machines “switching votes,” “undisclosed vulnerabilities,” and “improbable” results that “threaten the integrity of our elections.”

“In 2018 alone, ‘voters in South Carolina [were] reporting machines that switched their votes after they’d inputted them, scanners [were] rejecting paper ballots in Missouri, and busted machines [were] causing long lines in Indiana,’” the letter reads. “In addition, researchers recently uncovered previously undisclosed vulnerabilities in “nearly three dozen backend election systems in 10 states.” And, just this year, after the Democratic candidate’s electronic tally showed he received 164 votes out of 55,000 cast in a Pennsylvania state judicial election in 2019, the county’s Republican chairwoman said, “nothing went right on Election Day. Everything went wrong. That’s a problem.”

The letter continued: “These problems threaten the integrity of our elections and demonstrate the importance of election systems that are strong, durable, and not vulnerable to attack.”

Dominion sued Rudy Giuliani, but not these Democrats. But an “unbiased” voting machine company that only sues Republicans has kind of blown its credibility already.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Texas Dad Arrested for Speaking Out at School Board Meeting Waits Hours for Hearing, Only to Be Denied Yet Again.

Police arrested [Jeremy Story] on Sept. 17, 2021, on a misdemeanor charge of hindering proceedings by disorderly conduct. The charge dates to the previous Aug. 16, when Story raised concerns about Schools Superintendent Hafedh Azaiez [of the Round Rock Independent School District], who at the time faced allegations of family violence in an application for a protective order (redacted version available here).

According to publicly available footage of the meeting, Amy Weir, then president of the Round Rock Independent School District Board of Trustees, warned Story not to speak about “something other than D1 or D2” on the meeting’s agenda.

Story responded: “I will show you how what I’m about to comment on is related to that.”

Weir twice interrupted Story, saying, “No, I do not want you to demonstrate … ” However, she agreed to let him speak. Yet as soon as Story said, “Our superintendent has a protective order … ,” Weir nodded to Round Rock school district police officers, who escorted Story out of the building.

Story, along with another Texas father, Dustin Clark, argues that Weir was intending to silence him. Weir categorically denied this claim.

Weir told Fox News that “there has never been an attempt to silence Mr. Story.” Following normal procedure, she said, Story wrote on a card indicating what he would say in the meeting, and he wrote that “unlike the board, citizens are not required to speak on items on the agenda,” indicating that “he was planning to speak on a topic not listed for the meeting.”

Story filed a grievance with the school board on Sept. 4, 2021. The board noted it as “filed” on Sept. 16, the day before police arrested Story.

Story referenced a “protective order” to discuss the claims of a woman who identified herself as Azaiez’s girlfriend from September 2018 to December 2020 and then from February to June 2021. In her application for a protective order, the woman claimed that when she told Azaiez that she was pregnant with his child, he demanded that she get an abortion. When she refused, she said, he assaulted her in her home, which put her in danger of miscarrying.

The woman also claimed that she overheard Azaiez “plotting” with Weir about hiding certain things from other school board members.

In a text message chain about the situation included in the application for the protective order, Azaiez wrote: “For the last time I am telling you please get an abortion[;] you don’t know what you are getting yourself into. I will make you pay this[,] you will not make me lose everything … Don’t make me go after you and make you pay the consequences for you and this baby.”

However, another board member, Danielle Weston, countered Feller’s claim, insisting that the board president has authority over its meetings.

Police arrested Story on Sept. 17, 2021, on a misdemeanor charge of hindering proceedings by disorderly conduct. The charge dates to the previous Aug. 16, when Story raised concerns about Schools Superintendent Hafedh Azaiez, who at the time faced allegations of family violence in an application for a protective order (redacted version available here).

It’s PJ Media alum Tyler O’Neil in the Daily Signal, so read the whole thing.

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: Are Democrats Trying to Steal the Election in Pennsylvania? “Pennsylvania’s Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman issued guidance last week directing local officials to count those illegal ballots anyway.”

Kevin Downey Jr: Congressional Candidate Makes Virtue-Signaling Adult Videos to No One’s Delight. “Mike Itkis, a far-left New York City commie hoping to replace the current pinko, Jerry Nadler, in Congress, is so sex-positive that merely talking about it isn’t enough.”

Yours Truly: A Crimean Bridge Too Far. “In the meantime, Russia does have a couple of options for keeping their Kherson forces fed and armed — neither of them as good as having full use of that bridge.”

GOOGLE IS BUILT ON LIES AND EXPLOITATION: Google employees joked about how ‘Incognito mode’ is ‘not truly private.’

Google employees cracked jokes about the Chrome browser’s “Incognito mode” and criticized the company for not living up to its users’ expectations for privacy, according to a series of internal communications unearthed in court.

In one 2018 chat, a Google engineer proposed changing Incognito mode’s icon to “Guy Incognito,” a character from the Simpsons known for looking identical to protagonist Homer Simpson except for a mustache, according to court documents reported by Bloomberg.

The character’s lazy disguise “accurately conveys the level of privacy [Incognito mode] provides” in comparison to Chrome’s standard browsing mode, the employee said.

Don’t trust Google.

SHOULDN’T THAT READ “AFRICAN-AMERICAN” HOLE?  Black hole ‘burps’ up star years after eating it, stumping scientists.

On the serious side… um….

GOVERNMENT EXCEL AT JUST TWO THINGS: TAKING THEIR PEOPLE’S MONEY AND KILLING THEIR PEOPLE:  Government to Musk: “Nice business you got here, shame if something happened to it.”

I HAD SUSPECTED AS MUCH:  Air pollution is making women fat: study.

It couldn’t possibly be the fault of chocolate.

THEY’RE RIGHT YOU KNOW?  Durham’s In-Your-Face Danchenko Gambit.

AND EDUCATION, PUBLISHING, THE NEWS, ETC ETC:  The Gramscian march through arts institutions – and arts funding.

Was completed by the 80s. If you’re only noticing now, it’s because now they’re being brazen. Those inside knew, those who disagreed didn’t dare talk.

SHE AIN’T THE ONLY ONE WONDERING:  Where Have All the Flowers Gone?*

IF TRUE IT’S ANOTHER TURN ON THE RATCHET:  Breaking: British PM Liz Truss being ousted in “boardroom coup”?

GOOD. IF THIS IS TRUE, WE’LL KNOW WHO TO BLAME:  Researchers at Boston U. Supposedly Claim They Developed a COVID Strain With ‘80% Kill Rate’.

AND YET, WE REMEMBER:  Fauci: Don’t Blame Me For School Lockdowns.

AT LEAST NOW IT’S OUT IN THE OPEN:  Blacklisting in academia has been going on for decades unseen.