WHO? ABC’s David Muir takes hit to ratings after performance as debate moderator.

BUREAUCRATS AT WAR: FAA fines SpaceX for launch license violations.

IT’S ABOUT TIME: The Supreme Court Gets a Defense:

As political attacks on the Supreme Court become more heated, the institution could use more defenders. Most of the press and the professoriate are hostile. So it’s welcome that a leading member of the appellate bar is speaking up to defend the Court and urging his colleagues to do the same.

“I believe that the criticisms of the Court’s legitimacy are unfounded,” said Kannon Shanmugam in a notable speech Monday at Duke Law School. “But more than that, I believe that attacks on the Court’s legitimacy are dangerous, undermining public confidence in the Court and imperiling the rule of law.”

Mr. Shanmugam, a partner at the Paul Weiss law firm, has argued 38 cases at the Supreme Court. He clerked for Antonin Scalia on the Court and was an assistant to the Solicitor General at the Justice Department. “I believe that those of us who practice regularly before the Court, and who thus have a unique familiarity with the Court and its work, should speak up when we believe that the Court is being unfairly attacked,” he told the Duke audience. He’s right.

Take the claims of unethical conduct. “Many of the allegations are transparently insubstantial,” Mr. Shanmugam said, citing as an example the recent news of a $900 gift on Justice Samuel Alito’s financial disclosure. “Just last week,” he said, “we had the claim that there was something nefarious about a Justice and his spouse attending a concert with a, quote, ‘eccentric German princess.’” The proliferation of immaterial complaints suggests some critics “are more concerned with targeting particular Justices.”

He went on to discuss “two rules” that apply at the High Court. The “core ethical rule,” Mr. Shanmugam said, is that Justices recuse from cases in which their impartiality is “reasonably” in question, as “assessed from the perspective of a reasonable person, not someone who presumes the Justice is acting in bad faith.” Second is an obligation of financial disclosure.

Mr. Shanmugam: “In my view, in order to assert that the Court is acting ‘corruptly,’ critics bear the burden of showing, at a minimum, that the Court’s members have been intentionally violating those rules. That is a high burden, and I do not believe the critics have met it.” Complaints of alleged failures to recuse “largely center on the conduct not of the Justices themselves, but of their spouses.” Disputes about the Justices’ old disclosures of travel and “personal hospitality” reflect “genuine ambiguity about the meaning of the then-existing rules.”

There’s room for “healthy debate” about ethics rules, Mr. Shanmugam said, suggesting the Court might want to restrict lucrative book deals or require blind trusts. Yet this isn’t what the complainers want: “It is hard to escape the conclusion that many critics’ real beef is with the outcomes the current Court is reaching.”

Of course it is. Nobody who’s supported Biden or Harris cares about corruption.

DOG BITES MAN: Election Donation Cheating? Oregon Democrats Say ‘Hold My Beer.’

NOT ALL THAT SLYLY: Anti-Trumpers Want Him Dead and Keep Asking Somebody to Do It–Slyly.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: WATCH: Kamala Harris Delivers Word Salad on Israel, Spars With Black Journalists During Panel Discussion.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS: What Happens After Biden’s Economic Manipulations Disappear?

Some examples of this rigging include:

Biden’s steady sale of US strategic oil reserves in order to drive down energy and gas prices, thereby artificially reducing CPI (official monthly inflation numbers). By June of this year Biden had sold off at least 50% of the nation’s emergency oil supply just to keep CPI down a few points. Keep in mind, bringing down the CPI does nothing to cut the real inflation that has already accumulated in necessities (30%-50% higher prices depending on the product or service).

Then there’s the manipulation of BLS unemployment data to show millions of new jobs that don’t actually exist. After it was announced that Biden was no longer the Democratic candidate, suddenly the US Payroll has been revised down by over 818,000, likely with more revisions to come. Meaning, Bidenomics was being fluffed with fake job creation.

An even greater concern is the fact that all new jobs created for the past several years have been going to illegal aliens, not legal citizens. In fact, since October of 2019 native-born US workers have lost over 1.4 million jobs. Over the same period, migrants illegally residing in the US have gained 3 million jobs. The new narrative among leftists is that this is a good thing; they claim that the US needs illegal immigration and open borders in order to support the jobs market and “bring down inflation.”

I’m doubtful that the jobs boost to illegals is real, either. More likely the migrant jobs data is rigged because it’s much harder to track and confirm. But these people don’t seem to understand how inflation works – Greater population means higher resource demand, and that helps drive up prices (as we’ve seen in housing). It doesn’t bring prices down, nor does it reduce the existing money supply.

It should also be noted that full time jobs numbers have plunged while part time low-wage jobs have increased. These are the kinds of issues no one in the Biden Admin is talking about.

Finally, rising GDP is often cited as a key indicator of a vibrant economy, but what the “experts” rarely mention is that GDP is rigged by the inclusion of government spending. The more federal and state governments tax, borrow and spend, the higher GDP goes. Currently, government spending accounts for at least 36% of GDP (officially) in the US.

It makes it look like America is more successful than ever but this is based on the government taking more cash from the public, printing more money and going into greater debt, then throwing that cash away with wild abandon in order to prop up the numbers.

And don’t forget: “Trump’s arrival in the Oval Office will result in a hailstorm of bad economic data, and most of this will be due to the sudden end of statistical manipulations that have been in place for the last four years.”

UPDATE (From Ed): If Trump wins expect the reverse of what the DNC-MSM did in 1992, when it worked with Bill Clinton to transform a minor recession into “the worst economy in 50 years,” only to turn around and reveal that, as the Charlotte Business Journal wrote in 2010, “The U.S. economy actually grew 4.2% in the fourth-quarter that year and went on to enjoy a terrific decade-long run of prosperity. And we learned in hindsight that recession had actually already ended when the [September 1992 Time magazine] article was printed.” Time described it in December of that year as “Bush’s Economic Present for Clinton.”

Get ready for Biden-Harris’ exploding cigar for Trump, if he wins in November, or whenever elections are ultimately decided in these enlightened times.

WELL, THEY’RE USED TO GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: Even Cat Eating Haitians Are Looking At The Trump Shooter Like An Inside Job.

IT’S ONLY INCITEMENT TO VIOLENCE WHEN REPUBLICANS USE FAR MILDER LANGUAGE: Rubicon Crossed: White House Doubles Down on Trump Being a ‘Threat’ After Latest Brush With Death.

CHEAPER THAN BUYING MISSILES FROM RAYTHEON: Report: Mossad Intercepted Hezbollah Pager Shipment, Loaded Them With Explosives.

NORMALLY ON SUNDAY I DO A PROMO POST FOR (MOSTLY) INDIE WRITERS. THIS WEEK IT WAS ON MONDAY. AND I FORGOT TO LINK IT YESTERDAY:  Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

There are some good books in there though, and there’s a fun vignette-writing challenge.

HEH: Kamala is the candidate of joy, thanks to her bong and her Chardonnay.

Plus: “That Trump almost took another bullet for us again didn’t fit the narrative, so USA Today kept the story off its front page.”

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK OVERSEAS: Somebody in the U.S. Department of State approved spending $20,000 to stage a play in Macedonia to stage a stage play in which God is bisexual, depicts former President Ronald Reagan as a crazy homophobic, Marxists are the good guys and LGBTQ+ are glorified.

“Earlier in September, the State Department greenlit funding for a showing of Tony Kushner’s 1991 play ‘Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes’ in North Macedonia, with the agency claiming the production will raise awareness about ‘LGBTQ+ issues’ in the country, federal grant records reveal, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Robert Schmad reports.

“The play follows multiple storylines, among them the ghost of convicted communist spy Ethel Rosenberg antagonizing dying conservative lawyer Roy Cohn and a gay man having sexually explicit visions of heaven as he struggles with AIDS,” Schmad writes.

Don’t know about you but, boy, I feel better knowing State Department political appointees and career activists in the American Foreign Service are so generous with our tax dollars overseas!

EAGERLY (AND RECIPROCALLY):  How the UK government helped the US crush free speech.

IT MIGHT BE IMPOSSIBLE TO HATE THE GERMAN MEDIA ENOUGH:  ‘Trump Sowed the Seeds’: German Media Blames Trump For Assassination Attempts.

IF HER LIPS ARE MOVING, SHE’S LYING:  Harris Repeats Lie That Admin Inherited ‘Worst Unemployment Since Great Depression’.

NEXT THING THEY’LL WANT TO GIVE THEM REFUGEE STATUS:  As Polar Bear Population Explodes, Animal Loses its Climate Crisis Mascot Status.

THE LEFT NEVER PAYS ATTENTION TO UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES:  The Largest Wave Of Sex And Human Trafficking In History.

SERIOUSLY?  New state law gives Letitia James power over NY’s closest election contests.

I THINK IT’S SAFE TO SAY NO:  Will Biden and Kamala finally congratulate the Spacex Polaris Dawn team?

A BIASED MEDIA WE DON’T HATE NEARLY ENOUGH:  The double standard of a biased media.

A REPORT:  Springfield Haitian Situation Summary.

ONLY “EXPERTS” ARE SURPRISED:  Swift endorsement turns more voters from Harris than it attracts: poll.

J. K. ROWLING WAS RIGHT:  The Land of Immunity.

WE TOTALLY TRUST THEM, RIGHT?  Postal Workers’ Union Endorses Kamala Harris but Your Mail-In Ballot Will Be in Good Hands.