THE FUTURE IS NOW: Killer Robots Are About to Fill Ukrainian Skies.

In a front-line dugout this spring, a Ukrainian drone navigator selected a target—a Russian ammunition truck—by tapping it on a tablet screen with a stylus. The pilot flicked a switch on his handset to select autopilot and then watched the drone swoop down from a few hundred yards away and hit the vehicle.

“Let it burn,” said one of the team, as they observed a plume of smoke on a video feed from a reconnaissance drone.

Strikes like this represent a big advance in Ukraine’s attempts to use computers to help it combat Russia’s huge army. The drone that carried it out was controlled in the final attack phase by a small onboard computer designed by the U.S.-based company Auterion. Several other companies, many of them Ukrainian, have successfully tested similar autopilot systems on the battlefield.

Now, an even bigger breakthrough looms: mass-produced automated drones. In a significant step not previously reported, Ukraine’s drone suppliers are ramping up output of robot attack drones to an industrial scale, not just prototypes.

Enabling the upshift is producers’ successful integration of inexpensive computers into sophisticated, compact systems that replicate capabilities previously found only in far pricier equipment.

“None of this is new,” said Auterion founder and chief executive Lorenz Meier. “The difference is the price.”

Indeed. It’s also the exact opposite of how the US has approached procurement for 25 years or more.

The real beneficiary may prove to be Taiwan, however. They’ll likely be on their own in case of war with China, given that our Navy seems unready to fight much further west than Midway.

COLD WAR II IS NOT OFF TO A GOOD START: Hillary Clinton’s Uranium Giveaway to Russia Is About to Bite Us on the… You Know.

The good news is that nuclear power — safe, clean, affordable, and carbon-free — has been coming back in a big way here in the USA in recent months. The weird news is that it’s generally left-leaning tech firms and AI’s ravenous need for electricity leading the charge (SWIDT?) to build new nuclear power plants or spin shuttered ones back up.

The bad news is that the voters of this country were twice reckless enough to put people like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton in charge — and now Russia is putting the kibosh on the uranium exports we need for nuclear power.

Much more at the link.

PREPARE FOR THE HOLIDAYS: DASH Tasti-Crisp™ Ceramic Air Fryer Oven, 2.6 Qt., Cream – Compact Air Fryer. #CommissionEarned

IRAN: Ahoo Dariyaei’s Revolution.

If they arrest you, what awaits is quite often rape, torture, and death. Most are beaten to death, but if there has been resistance or other to raise the stakes, they can be hung. Keep in mind that rape is a tool, and one mandated years ago by the Ayatollah who decreed that female prisoners of any age were to be raped before execution so they would go to hell and not to heaven. No joke. If you want to learn the horrors that await those who defy these animals, there is plenty out there for you to look up. No, not linking as this is something you need to look up and see for yourself, so that it can’t be dismissed as mere propaganda.

Which brings us back to this young lady, Ahoo Dariyaei. Watch the video. She was attacked, fought back, and then they were surprised. Look at her face, at the anger there, as she raised the stakes on them. Then watch her as she realizes where she is at in terms of choices. You see the anger, the fear, and then the determination. She very clearly knows what awaits (rape, torture, death most likely), and steps forward anyway. She makes a choice, and though she is scared, she steps up and out anyway. That is the choice of a martyr, a willing sacrifice.

Her act spread like wildfire, and was such a threat that the mad mullahs did something unusual.

Can’t stop the signal.

A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES: Health care organization launches ‘Stop RFK War Room.’ “Democratic-aligned health care advocacy groups are putting together a strategy to fight Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be HHS secretary.”

Plus: “Woodhouse acknowledged that while some of Kennedy’s ideas might have broader support — like his efforts to ban certain food additives — his views on vaccines and his plans to cut the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration are ‘too dangerous’ to take his nomination laying down. ‘Just because Hannibal Lecter has a couple good ideas on something, doesn’t mean I want to invite Hannibal Lecter to dinner,’ he said.”

Good to see that Democrats have abandoned their over-the-top demonization of opponents post-election. But I suspect this is mostly a grift, to give consultants and operatives a new source of funds post-election. Especially if Kamala’s operation winds up stiffing them, as seems likely. . . .

STAND UP AGAINST BIGOTED INDOCTRINATION: ‘Indoctrinating’: U. Oklahoma’s mandatory critical race theory course may violate state law: OU’s education program under fire for course that discusses social justice and ‘critical whiteness in education.’

BUT PROBABLY NOT: Maybe THIS Is the Furious Backpedal That Will Save Disney’s ‘Snow White’ Reboot.

OH, GROW UP: Leaders of California universities and colleges issue statement addressing ‘anxiety’ after Trump victory.

THIS IS THE DUMBEST TIMELINE: Apparent AI Hallucinations in AI Misinformation Expert’s Court Filing Supporting Anti-AI-Misinformation Law.

AUDIT THEM HARDER: Over 800 IRS employees owe millions in back taxes after audits pushed by Ernst.

Over 800 Internal Revenue Service employees still owe millions in back taxes despite heavy criticism from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who is hoping the level of tax waste will be squashed by billionaire Elon Musk, the newly tapped co-leader of the Department of Government Efficiency.

In a letter to the Iowa senator sent on Nov. 8 and shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner, the IRS noted that of the 2,044 employees who reported having balances totaling more than $12 million, 860 employees still have not paid overdue taxes. Only 20 of the 70 employees who “willfully evaded” paying their taxes were removed.

“We haven’t seen a tax revolt like this since the Boston Tea Party,” Ernst said in a statement. “If hardworking Americans dodge taxes, they are faced with steep fines and imprisonment, but it appears that tax collectors in Washington believe those rules are for thee but not for me.”

Ernst would make for a very Trump-47-like pick to head up the IRS…

STRICTER CHRISTIAN COLLEGES EXPERIENCING ENROLLMENT INCREASES AS RELIGIOUS FAMILIES BECOME MORE WARY OF SECULAR INSTITUTIONS. Because religious families are not idiots.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Pennsylvania Sure Has Been Full of Surprises This Month. “I would like to take this opportunity to take back every bad thing I said about Pennsylvania this year.”

OF COURSE NOT. DEMOCRATIC HACKS ARE PRESUMPTIVELY QUALIFIED:

How much transportation was in Pete Buttigieg’s bio? How much healthcare was in Xavier Bacerra’s bio?

Surely you complained about those too, right? https://t.co/yYL4VdxZ2K

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) November 19, 2024

What a ridiculous and unfair smear of President Trump's nominees.

60 Minutes had no issue with Rachel Levine, Xavier Becerra, or Merrick Garland.

The American people gave President Trump a mandate and see right through this. https://t.co/4bfFZ2HjfO

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) November 18, 2024

FAST AND FURIOUS: Trump Announces Former Rep. Sean Duffy as Transportation Secretary.

ERICK ERICKSON: Prosecute These Threats to Democracy.

Late yesterday, the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court again sided with Dave McCormick, ordering counties not to count undated ballots.

It is essential to note this is the second time the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has had to intervene to force Democrats to follow the law. Democrats in the state openly admitted they would break the law to count ballots that they had no proof were legitimate.

The incoming Department of Justice should prosecute the individuals involved and should consider RICO.

It was a brazen, brazen act for Democrats to defy a Supreme Court ruling in an effort to steal an election. After four years of screaming about Donald Trump being a threat to democracy, the Democrats have become the threat they claimed Trump was.

Become?

LIGHTNING DEAL: Mueller Pro-Series 10-in-1, 8 Blade Vegetable Chopper. #CommissionEarned

MATT TAIBBI: How America’s Accurate Election Polls Were Covered Up.

John McIntyre couldn’t believe it. The publisher of the Real Clear Polling National Average, America’s first presidential poll aggregator, woke on October 31st to see his product denounced in the New York Times. Launched in 2002 and long a mainstay of campaign writers and news consumers alike, the RCP average, he learned, was part of a “torrent” of partisan rubbish being “weaponized” to “deflate Democrats’ enthusiasm” and “undermine faith in the entire system.”

“They actually wrote that our problem was we didn’t weight results,” says an incredulous McIntyre. “That we didn’t put a thumb on the scale.”

The Times ended its screed against RCP’s “scarlet-dominated” electoral map projection by quoting John Anzalone, Joe Biden’s former chief pollster, who said: “There’s a ton of garbage polls out there.” But being called “garbage” in America’s paper of record was nothing compared to what happened to RCP at Wikipedia.

Six months ago, when former Wikipedia chief Katherine Maher became CEO of NPR, video emerged of her talking about strategies at Wikipedia. She said the company eventually abandoned its “free and open” mantra when she realized “this radical openness… did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.” Free and open “recapitulated” too many of the same “power structures,” resulting in too much emphasis on the “Western canon,” the “written tradition,” and “this white male, Westernized construct around who matters.”

Read the whole thing — and understand that, no matter how much you hate the press and the Left (but I repeat myself), they hate you more.

I ALREADY SUPPORT HIM, YOU DON’T HAVE TO SELL ME:

BREAKING: The Pentagon is reportedly legitimately concerned that Pete Hegseth if appointed Secretary of Defense will immediately defund the close to $86 BILLION spent on DEI initiatives in the Pentagon. pic.twitter.com/zGoBgFnFcl

— Ian Jaeger (@IanJaeger29) November 19, 2024

Millions or bilions, it does damage beyond just the waste of money.

EXPERTS AT PARROTING THE PARTY LINE ARE NOT ACTUALLY EXPERTS: Gun Control ‘Expert’ Seriously Beclowns Herself Before Congress. “This wasn’t some random anti-gunner talking to the media. This was the litigation director for Giffords, Esther Sanchez-Gomez, and we got this little nugget from her. A stabilizing brace gives a pistol more power and more lethality? What the hell are they smoking in the Giffords offices, anyway?”

Video at the link.

FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT: Republicans dig in and dispatch hundreds of lawyers to Pennsylvania’s Senate battle.

MEET THE FORGOTTEN AUTHOR OF ‘WOKE:’ Richard Pollock is absolutely essential reading whenever he digs into the history of the New and Far-Left movements in this country since the 1960s. He knows this history because he was an insider participant in it for many years before recognizing the Right reality.

In his latest Substack column, Pollock reminds us of the crucial role of the Marxist Professor Herbert Marcuse in developing the theoretical background for what developed into the oppressive contemporary Wokeness.

“One of Marcuse’s most virulent and dangerous legacies was his ardent advocacy for censorship in America, which I describe in detail below. His dark sentiments regrettably influenced a whole generation of progressives who today largely lead our mainstream media, our movie studios, publishing houses, ad agencies and our educational institutions. We now can see Marcuse’s ugly theories and handiwork in real time in America,” Pollock explains in his latest Substack.

This Pollock contribution is longer than usual but then he has so much knowledge and insight to share on these topics because, as he informs us, he knows “a bit about Marcuse because I was a New Left activist and was exposed to Marxist ideas as the roommate with the late Rennie Davis, one of the Chicago 8 defendants.

“I became friends with such radicals as Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman. In the 1970’s, I also participated in a number Marxist-Leninist study groups in Washington, D.C. In fact, I once was in a Marxist-Leninist-Mao Tse Tung study group. Yes, they existed!”

PROMOTED FROM LATE YESTERDAY

DON SURBER: Media discovers Republicans buy sneakers too. “I expect commercials to lose their wokeness as well. More than half the country is white. They buy shoes too.”

They have a lot to make up for:

Yes, the legacy (formerly mainstream) media just literally lied relentlessly https://t.co/1NC8T39o5J

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2024

CDR SALAMANDER: How to Get the Navy’s Groove Back.

NATIONWIDE CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY WOULD BE BETTER BUT THIS WOULD BE A NICE START: ‘Trump Will Fix It’: Concealed Carry Interstate Reciprocity.

CONSCIOUSNESS OF GUILT: DOJ Apparatchiks Told to Lawyer Up and Flee the Country. Why?

The resume-burnishing appears to extend to main Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (housed under the DOJ), and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia office, which oversees the government’s ongoing prosecution of January 6 protesters. Anonymous “sedition hunters” who have aided the FBI in targeting and identifying hundreds of J6ers deleted their social media accounts over the weekend for fear of reprisal; the FBI reportedly paid the “sedition hunters” as FBI informants to help their pursuit of Trump supporters.

But the corrupt operatives in the DOJ are doing more than just looking for new jobs—some are looking for attorneys. The surprising nomination of former Representative Matt Gaetz as attorney general sent terror waves throughout the DOJ; Gaetz resigned his Florida House seat last week to prepare for a nasty confirmation fight and avoid release of a House Ethics report into debunked allegations about Gaetz’s conduct.

“Inside the Justice Department, some employees who had braced for the possibility of other names that had surfaced early in the transition were appalled when Trump made the Gaetz announcement,” CNN reported on Sunday. “One career official described hearing audible cries of ‘oh my God’ echoing down the hallway inside DOJ’s headquarters.”

NBC News also revealed that DOJ officials “wept” over Trump’s resounding victory. Why? Because they know their turn under the harsh lights of federal interrogators is coming next. “Multiple current and former senior Justice Department and FBI officials have begun reaching out to lawyers in anticipation of being criminally investigated by the Trump administration. The selection of former Rep. Matt Gaetz…to lead the department has sharply increased the sense of alarm.” One unnamed former top DOJ official admitted he “is bracing for a potentially long and costly legal battle, as well as the possibility of protracted congressional investigations.”

Creepy NeverTrumper and faux conservative Matt Lewis told MSNBC this morning reports that DOJ/FBI staffers are lawyering up demonstrates Trump’s desire to “weaponize” the department. “I think it’s real,” Lewis said about the likelihood of charges against corrupt government officials. . . .

In fact, their criminal exposure is so serious that one longtime Democratic operative is advising top targets to leave the country. Mark Zaid, an attorney who represented self-described Ukrainian “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, prompting the first impeachment of Trump in 2019, just told both CNN and Politico magazine that government officials worried they will be pursued by a Trump DOJ or Republican Congress should travel “outside of the country” right around Inauguration Day.

Weaponize? It’s already a weapon.