THIS NARROWS IT DOWN: State Department issues ‘worldwide caution’ alert amid Israel-Hamas war.

THE GREAT EV BACKING-OFF CONTINUES: Proof the Next-Gen Dodge Charger Won’t Only Be Electric? A triplet of surreptitious factory floor photos show an apparently internal-combustion Charger variant.

THE STIG CRASHES: Disinformation Reporter Ben Collins Failed to Correct the Gaza Hospital Story.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: RFK Jr. Just Proved He’s Still a Hard-Left Radical With This 1 Weird Trick.

WELL, GOOD: Depression, migraine drug may be effective treatment for IBS.

I can remember when talking about off-label uses of inexpensive, existing medications was considered practically criminal.

SCALING UP IS HARD TO DO: Elon Musk talks Tesla: “We dug our own grave with the Cybertruck.”

NCLA: NCLA Amicus Brief Decries SEC’s Administrative Denial of Jury Trial Rights, ALJ Removal Protections. “In 2010, the Dodd-Frank Act unconstitutionally transferred judicial power to SEC by empowering the agency’s ALJs to adjudicate SEC enforcement cases against Americans like Mr. Jarkesy for alleged securities law violations. The Constitution’s text places judicial power only in federal courts. So, SEC’s in-house adjudication scheme violates constitutional separation of powers.”

Reminder/disclosure: I’m on the NCLA’s advisory board.

THIS IS EMBARRASSING. Ninth Circuit Contender Is Exposed As Pretender.

Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Ware had long recounted (as this New York Times article put it) the “tragedy that made him ‘hungry for justice’: the murder of his teen-age brother, Virgil, in a racist shooting in Birmingham . . . at the height of the civil rights struggle in 1963.” James was pedaling his bicycle, with 13-year-old Virgil on the handlebars, when two white teenagers shot and killed Virgil, on “the same day that four little black girls were killed in the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church across town.”

In the years since his appointment to the federal bench, Ware had told the story “over and over at judicial conferences and in newspaper interviews” and had “held audiences . . . spellbound with his account.”

Except it turned out that Ware’s story was a fiction. More precisely, the horrific incident that Ware described did occur, but it was a different James Ware who was Virgil’s brother and who was riding the bicycle. Judge Ware was pretending to be that other James Ware.

The man who discovered and exposed Ware’s lie was a federal district judge in Alabama, U. W. Clemon. Judge Clemon, who became Alabama’s first black federal judge in 1980, had often heard Ware tell his story. In early August 1997, he read a Birmingham newspaper article that recounted the murder of Virgil Ware. The article quoted his brother James at length and stated that he continued to live in Birmingham and “has worked for Drummond/ABC Coke for 20 years.” It also included pictures of Virgil Ware’s family.

Ooops. This sort of lie would seem to be bad judicial behavior.

MARK FELTON: Last Celebrity WW2 Veterans 2023 (Video).

JUST PLEASE STOP TALKING: Joe Biden: ‘I Can Understand Why’ People Believe Israel Bombed Gaza Hospital.

CHAOS UMPIRE SITS: I was a DEI director — DEI drives campus antisemitism.

“Chaos Umpire sits, And by decision more imbroils the fray. By which he Reigns.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: The Battle for the Soul of Disney Is On. “Hope might have just reappeared in the form of activist investor Nelson Peltz.”

UM, NO: Roy Wood Jr. Compares ‘Daily Show’ Gig to Being a Marine. “Comedy Central continues to audition possible replacements for the low-rated Trevor Noah, who took over Stewart’s seat in 2015 but left the gig last year. It won’t be Wood nor Hasan Minhaj, the comedian reportedly at the top of the channel’s list until a New Yorker investigation found out Minhaj has a habit of making up harrowing stories out of whole cloth to promote a victimhood agenda.”

MASSIVE RESISTANCE: VCU med school sought to ‘work around’ affirmative action ban: documents.

No surprise, Virginia schools did the same thing the last time the Supreme Court told them they couldn’t discriminate on the basis of race.

FAKE NEWS: Washington Post Stands by Totally Debunked Atrocity. “What would a decent paper do after getting raked over the coals for blowing such an important story?”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Trans professor trying to ‘build a better world’ wants ‘excrement’ Jews to ‘rot in hell’: report. “Mika Tosca defines himself as an activist first and professor second on his website.” Well, I’d say he’s telling the truth there.

GOOD: Twitter’s Latest Test Puts Some New Users In Read-Only Mode Unless They Pay. “Elon Musk has a new plan to solve the spam and bot problem on X, formerly known as Twitter. That solution is called ‘Not a Bot’ and it involves an unverified user paying $1 per year to prove that they are indeed human. If the user pays, they will have the ability to tweet and share content from other accounts, as well as to “like,” reply to, and quote other posts. If the user doesn’t pay, however, their account will be relegated to read-only mode.”

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS, THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL: It’s been reported here earlier, but JustTheNews drives home the point.

“Carrying banners blaring the single word “ceasefire,” the demonstrators gathered en masse and staged a sit in […] Critics of the demonstrators characterized the event as an “insurrection” in an apparent reference to an oft-used term for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.”

Hysterical journalists bought the “insurrection” and “treason” narrative hook, line and sinker. If anyone is naïve enough that these Pro-Hamas people will be subjected to the same abuse (denial of due process, in particular) as those involved — or even nearby J6 — you only need to look back at the disruption of the Kavanaugh hearings by fools dressed as “Handmaidens” and their kid-glove treatment.

That wasn’t considered  an “insurrection” or “obstruction of government business” at all. Of course not. Why would they be?

Equal justice for some, more equal justice for others.

**Update: Marjorie Taylor Greene to seek censure of ‘terrorist sympathizer’ Tlaib over Capitol Hill protest.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Biden’s ‘Hamas Helper’ Trip to Israel Was an Embarrassing Disaster. “Biden is giving money to Gaza. No matter how many times the Democrats and other leftists around the world deny it, Gaza IS Hamas, and vice-versa. The people of Gaza have chosen Hamas to be in charge and that’s not really a casual hook up type of relationship that is easy to break off. There is no demarcation point where Gaza ends and Hamas begins. It’s a distinction that’s made by leftists to whip college kids into a frenzy and justify funneling funds to terrorists.”

IT’s NOT JUST HARVARD: Defense of Hamas Brutality By University of Michigan Law Student Organizations. For the uninitiated, Michigan is considered one of the top ten law schools in the country.

CAROL ROTH: America’s financial position is so bad it’s now a national security threat.

The IMF has come out explicitly and reinforced what its analysis has shown implicitly for quite some time: the current financial position of the U.S. is unsustainable. This shouldn’t be a surprise, as this has been echoed by analysis from the Treasury, the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) and just about anyone not detached from reality.

This unsustainability creates not only an economic security issue for the U.S., but a national security issue as well.

After exploding the already massive size of government another 40+% over the past four years, public debt to GDP is again at levels exceeding 120%. For context, the IMF and others have noted in the past that a sovereign balance sheet becomes unwieldy at around 70-80% debt to GDP.

If the U.S. were an emerging market, such a balance sheet would likely cause a currency crisis.

There’s a lot of ruin in a nation and Washington seems determined to find out exactly how much.

BURIED LEDE: CNN FINALLY COMMITS ACTUAL JOURNALISM. CNN Puts AOC On The Spot Regarding Calls For Ceasefire.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reminds me of the annual safety videos you’re required to watch and get quizzed on at work.

In other words, if there’s a fire in the building, you’re not going to whip out the policy and read up on what you should do about it – you just get the hell out.

CNN correspondent Abby Phillip halts AOC every time she attempts to dodge providing direct answers with a bunch of fluff, and it’s a beautiful moment.

Phillip: “As all of this kind of kicked off, you and several other of your colleagues, released a statement calling for a ceasefire in the region. But, I wonder, what is Israel supposed to do about Hamas after they murdered, brutalized, abducted over 1,000 of their citizens? Are they supposed to just do nothing?”

Behold the vacuous word salad that results:

Wow.

Really excellent job by @abbydphillip putting AOC on the spot to ezplain her nonsensical and poorly thought out calls for a ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/j2WcBTXSBr

— AG (@AGHamilton29) October 17, 2023

KURT SCHLICHTER’S NOVELS ARE NOT INTENDED TO BE HOW-TO MANUALS: Democrats now want US split into ‘blue’ states and ‘red’ states.

By the way, I finished reading Schlichter’s latest, Overlord, the other night. First-rate as always.

UPDATE: Don Surber: America Needs A Divorce — From Washington.

LOL: The Aussie elites are in meltdown: The mass public rejection of the Voice to Parliament has come as a rude shock to the cosseted intelligentsia.

The emotional response displayed by the cultural elites on social media came from a deep place. The Yes supporters’ image of themselves was suddenly at stake. These are people who pride themselves on having the judgement and wisdom to diagnose social ills and prescribe solutions. The No result was as much a rejection of them and their worldview as it was of the Voice proposal itself.

As we have seen following similar acts of popular insurrection, like Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election, the elites reacted like cornered cats. ‘Fuck Australia’, wrote ABC broadcaster Jonathan Green. ‘I mean seriously. What the fuck? How can you say No?’

According to the Yes campaign, Aboriginal Australians deserve special status. Why? Purely because they are the descendants of the nomadic hunter-gatherers who lived on the Australian continent before the British laid claim to Sydney Harbour. The primacy of indigenous people in the hierarchy of cultural identity is seldom challenged. But it should be, as ethicist Nigel Biggar sets out in his recent book, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning.

Frankly, the more these people yammer on about “decolonizing,” the better colonialism looks in contrast.

LEFTIST CELEBS SAY THIS QUADRENNIALLY, BUT THEY NEVER, EVER LEAVE: Cher says Trump’s reelection would drive her out of US.

To be fair “out of the US” would be much easier to accomplish than Cher’s promise in 2015:

No word yet if Cher attempted to land on Europa in late 2016 during her Jupiter expedition.