AND THERE IS MY SHOCKED FACE AGAIN!  Report: Top Officials on Biden’s Iran Team Acted Under Directions From Tehran.

GOOD:  After acquittal, Texas AG Paxton vows to take on huge illegal-alien shantytown north of Houston.

THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE!  Another Trump indictment and what a coincidence, just as some damning news about Joe Biden’s corruption rolls out.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY. LITERALLY:  Scientists ‘shocked’ and ‘alarmed’ at what’s in the mRNA shots.

THE JUSTICE SYSTEM HAS ITS OWN VALUES: Real estate insiders bewildered by judge’s $18M valuation of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago: ‘Would list at $300M.’

OPEN THREAD: Hump day.

“STREET JUSTICE” IN NEW YORK: “When bullies aren’t prosecuted street justice is required.”

Remember, police aren’t there to protect the public from criminals. Ultimately, they’re there to protect criminals from the public, and the more-savage and less-due-process-laden punishments the public doles out. The bargain is, let the police handle the crimes instead of being vigilantes. No police, no bargain.

UNEXPECTEDLY! UK Study: Puberty Blockers Given to Teens — Get This — Worsened Their Mental Illnesses Rather Than Abating Them. “While the updated analysis from the University of Essex has yet to be peer-reviewed, another long-term study from Sweden found those who underwent transgender surgery were 19 times more likely to die by suicide than the general public.”

IT’S LIVE: Grab a Drink and Join Us for the 2nd GOP Presidential Primary Debate.

AT THIS POINT, MILDLY. Possible hints of life found on distant planet – how excited should we be?

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: The US Attorney who prosecuted the J6 Lectern Guy was arrested for stabbing another driver and lectern guy has thoughts.

REDNECK NATION: ‘The rules are confusing:’ New York Times now identifies roundtable guests by race and it’s … awkward.

In an interview roundtable, the New York Times now identifies participants with explicit racial labels—"white," "Latina." For the past several years, there has been an attempt to normalize introductions with gender pronouns and now racial labels. Not good. pic.twitter.com/Kawvej2ryZ

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) September 26, 2023

THIS IS CNN:

A CNN Producer said he had an email from Hunter stating that Hunter "expected all of this "stuff" to go away when his dad becomes president."

Strange that I don't recall @CNN ever reporting this. pic.twitter.com/ULAQuHdHq9

— Jeff Carlson (@themarketswork) September 27, 2023

Just think of CNN as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

Evergreen:

KARATE GUYS THWART WOULD-BE CARJACKERS IN OAKLAND:

As Glenn wrote in 2020, the lack of serious law enforcement leads to “a lot of vigilante justice. And what are people gonna do about it? Call the cops? Remember, in the end the police aren’t there to protect the public from criminals, they’re there to protect criminals from the public. Communities dealt with crime long before police were invented, usually in rather harsh and low-due-process ways. The bargain was, let the police handle it instead. No police, no bargain.”

BREACH OF FIDUCIARY DUTY: State pension funds are being manipulated for a left-wing agenda. “The 1792 Exchange, a nonprofit group helping businesses move back to political neutrality, analyzed the proxy voting records of every state pension. The data show that asset managers voting on behalf of state pension holders have supported controversial resolutions at major corporations that would implement policies enforcing arbitrary environmental, social, and governance goals, racial ‘equity,’ abortion travel benefits, and more. These asset managers have violated their fiduciary duty, and these attempts to undermine democracy using public pension funds need to be made illegal.”

They need to face lawsuits by and on behalf of beneficiaries.

BOB MCMANUS: Asking the public to carry OD-reviving Narcan is the liberal government giving up. “Word that New York City set a drug-overdose death-toll record last year was underscored this week by Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan’s proposal that everybody now pack an OD rescue kit. . . . That’s so you’ll be prepared in case you’re strolling through Tompkins Square Park one sunny afternoon, and notice someone flaked out on a bench looking seriously overdosed. You’ll reach for your Narcan holster and come to the rescue (even though, given Tompkins’ clientele, you’ll doubtless need a much bigger holster.) Hey — it takes a village, right?”

THIS WILL END WELL: Can China contain Evergrande’s collapse?

The Chinese Communist party appears set to kill off its largest economic zombie, while gambling that it can control the fallout. Evergrande, the world’s most indebted developer, first defaulted almost two years ago, as China’s property bubble began to burst. It has since been able to stagger on from one crisis to another, while struggling to restructure its mountain of debt and sell its assets. Now even the CCP seems to have decided this is untenable. The problem for the party is that Evergrande is not the only occupant of China’s economic valley of the living dead, and the impact of its collapse may be impossible to control.

The signs of a final reckoning have been growing over recent days. On Monday, Hengda Real Estate, Evergrande’s main unit in mainland China, defaulted on repayment of a further $547 million of loans and said in a statement that plans to restructure its debts had ran into trouble because it was being investigated by the authorities. It was reported today that Evergrande’s billionaire founder and chairman has been placed under police surveillance. He is said to have stopped contacting staff and become inaccessible over recent days.

China’s financial press also reported that several current and former executives have been detained. This followed the arrest of executives at Evergrande’s wealth management unit and an appeal to the public to report any cases of suspected fraud. These investigations mean that the company is unable to issue any new debt, that its lifeline has effectively been cut. They are also a signal that the CCP is not only pulling the plug but is lining up scapegoats on whom the company’s demise can be blamed.

Evergrande’s collapse and its fallout is further proof that: China May Be Headed for a Lost Decade*.

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

* Of course thanks to Bidenomics we may be as well.

GOODER AND HARDER, PHILLY: All Philly liquor stores are closed today after at least 18 were broken into overnight.

Flashback: Vetoing Liquor Privatization, Pennsylvania’s Governor Says Competition Would Raise Prices.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Massive Study Pinpoints Specific Gut Bacteria Linked to Alzheimer’s.

OF COURSE SHE WAS: “Hillary Clinton was at the State Department yesterday for the unveiling of her official portrait as Secretary of State. She was ungracious as usual.”

Also dishonest.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: It’s Looking Increasingly Likely India’s Historic Lunar Lander Is Dead For Good.

THEY NEVER WENT EXTINCT, THEY JUST WENT UNDERCOVER: Unlocking the Secrets of the Past: New Study Reveals Shocking Similarities Between Dinosaur and Bird Feathers.

HOT! HOT! HOT!:  Today, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is releasing its report on Anti-Asian Racism.  My Commissioner Statement is here.  I learned an important thing from this report:  Only topics that are consistent with the progressive agenda can be the subject of a Commission report.  In other words, it’s fine to demand accurate counts of hate crimes, but the question of how to prevent those crimes is of little interest. (And heaven forbid that we should discuss race-preferential college admissions policies!)

PLAUSIBLE: Researcher Meredith Whittaker says AI’s biggest risk isn’t ‘consciousness’—it’s the corporations that control them.

It’s certainly been the case so far that tech firms are more of a threat than the tech itself.

DAVID THOMPSON: And In Machete-Wielding-Educator News. Shellyne Rodriguez, who held a machete to the neck of a New York Post reporter in May has a new teaching gig in Fun City. “Readers are invited to speculate as to what it might take for a progressive educator to become unemployable.”