OPEN THREAD: Thank God it’s Friday.

CHANGE: Air France plans to connect entire fleet to Starlink Wi-Fi. “Air France said Starlink would enable ‘ground-like’ ultra-high-speed connectivity, enabling passengers to play video games online, stream TV and access other services requiring a low-latency connection via LEO satellites orbiting much nearer Earth than GEO.”

HAHA:

My city my people 😂🇮🇱 Tel Aviv

“Yalla ya Nasrallah,
We will f*ck you Inshallah,
We will return you to Allah,
With the entire Hezbollah” pic.twitter.com/bMa6VuQwXH

— Emily Schrader – אמילי שריידר امیلی شریدر (@emilykschrader) September 27, 2024

The Devil hates to be mocked. Also blown up.

UPDATE: Yep. Compare and contrast.

While Israel uses brains, peerless ingenuity, and fearlessness to fight its enemies, the American military wastes far too much on the DEI bull#%€> of meaningless racial and sexual politics. Let the reality of Israel be a wake up call.

— Eli Steele (@Hebro_Steele) September 27, 2024

ANALYSIS: TRUE. West Point Needs a Reset. “The U.S. Military Academy was the nation’s first engineering school, and rightly so, because engineering is a crucial skill on the battlefield. Soldiers must plan and build fortifications, bridges and other infrastructure as well as find ways to destroy them. But over the last few decades, the Academy has become more of a Liberal Arts College, offering battlefield-irrelevant course materials in such areas as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies. West Point now offers a minor in Diversity & Inclusion Studies. . . . Each cadet company now has cadet ‘Respect Officers’ reminiscent of Soviet Political Commissars, to ensure that all bow to the Academy’s now-woke culture. Admissions and advancement are now governed by race and gender over merit. The school’s Diversity and Inclusion Department has been renamed (for political reasons) but still exists. None of the speakers at last year’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Equal Opportunity Leadership Conference expressed any divergent views regarding DEI. Boxing, a warrior’s sport if ever there was one, no longer is on the intramural schedule.”

LOTS OF RAIN AROUND HERE: Dozens airlifted from Tennessee hospital roof amid flooding.

Related: Cocke County, Newport evacuations ordered after false alarm over ‘catastrophic’ dam failure.

Tennessee town flooded due to dam failure after Hurricane Helene.

BRADLEY THOMPSON: Commerce and the Birth of a Free Society.

Post-Founding Americans embraced commerce and a free-market economy like no other people in history. In 1795, Phineas Hedges exuberantly sang the praises of commerce: “In a free government, commerce expands her sails; Prompted by a spirit of enterprize and a desire of gain, men venture the dangers of a boisterous ocean in pursuit of new commodities. With wider acquaintance of man the elements of the monk and the barbarian dissolve into the sympathizing heart of a citizen of civilized life.” Likewise, Republican congressman Edward Livingston toasted America’s rising glory this way: “The Colossus of American Freedom,” he exclaimed, “may it bestride the commerce of the world.” Commercial expansion in America’s nineteenth-century liberal society was rapid and mostly unregulated as America’s new-model man embraced hard work, competition, and the spirit of enterprise.

Jeffersonian republicans came to view commerce as more than just the economic transactions of businessmen via money in the pursuit of profits. In 1811, Jefferson translated and had published in America A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws by the French Idéologue, Comte Destutt de Tracy. Tracy and his American students took a latitudinarian view of commerce as consisting of all forms of exchange. All exchanges, wrote Tracy via Jefferson, “are acts of commerce, and the whole of human life is occupied by a series of exchanges and reciprocal services.” In other words, commerce is what brings discrete individuals together in a harmonious relationship of give and take. The exchange of both material and spiritual values is, according to Tracy, “not only the foundation and basis of society, but . . . it is in effect the fabric itself; for society is nothing more than a continual exchange of mutual succours, which occasion the concurrence of the powers of all for the more effectual gratification of the wants of each.” Jefferson’s translation of Destutt de Tracy was one way for the former president to explain his political philosophy to his fellow Americans.

Now it’s different, and we’re less free in many respects.

IF SO, IT WAS SUICIDE, NOT MURDER: Is Higher Education Doomed?

RAZIB KHAN: All together now: did human joiners outcompete rugged Neanderthal individualists? Humans are pack animals.

But in light of the theory that Neanderthals were so enamored of modern humans that we apparently seduced them into extinction, perhaps those greater social skills gave us irresistible rizz.

REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: “Only in Hawaii would prosecutors arrest an armed homeowner who stopped a violent neighbor who had just rammed several cars with a front-end loader, shot and killed three women, wounded two others, and posed an immediate threat to shoot more.”

YES:

If you want to fix a broken system, you have to pull money OUT, not put more money IN.
If you put more money IN, the system interprets it as a reward and uses the money to become even more broken.
We get this for businesses. We forget it for nonprofits and governments. 🤔

— Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 (@pmarca) September 26, 2024

WAR BY OTHER MEANS: Newport News Shipbuilding suspects intentionally faulty welds on multimillion-dollar Naval vessels.

TO BE FAIR, I WAS KINDA EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM HERE: BREAKING: Israel Takes Out Hezbollah Headquarters. “The strike took place shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York City.”

SPACE: When manned crew lifts off for ISS this weekend, public can take part interactively.

FROM CONSPIRACY THEORY TO JUDICIAL ORDER: EPA must address health concerns about fluoride in water, judge rules.

HER NEW, GUN-LOVING POSE IS JUST THAT, A POSE: Unearthed Post-Heller Video Reveals the Real Kamala Harris. “Notice how this Kamala Harris bears little resemblance to the person we’re seeing now on the campaign trail. She spoke off the cuff, without a teleprompter, and was far more articulate and self-assured than anything she displays now. There was none of the word salad she’s now known for. That’s likely because that was the real Kamala Harris. She was expressing her true opinions on a subject about which she had actually thought. She’s wasn’t trying to pretend to be something she isn’t as she now does daily.”

Just after Heller was decided, Kamala Harris gave a presser with Newsom criticizing the decision. Thankfully, Chuck had saved the link to the video in an old memo. The video only had 4,200 views on Youtube, so we assume few have seen it.

I downloaded it, incase it vanishes from… pic.twitter.com/b9XebJ3HES

— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) September 26, 2024

INCOMPETENCE, OR POLITICAL BIAS? WHY NOT BOTH? A Secret Service Story.

Tim Walz did show up, a little later, accompanied by the Secret Service. Howe observed that once they arrived, the Secret Service agents began wanding those who entered the church. But they never did anything about the 75 to 100 who were already inside the church when they showed up. No effort whatsoever was made to assure security with respect to those people.

This was particularly striking to Senator Howe because he was carrying at the time. Given the location, it is likely that others who attended the funeral, and were already inside the church when the Secret Service arrived, were also armed.

This is the kind of absurd failure of security that typified the Secret Service’s actions in Butler, Pennsylvania: the most obvious security precautions were not taken. This time, the protectee was a Democrat.

Regardless, the Secret Service should be stripped of its protective responsibilities and replaced by somebody else. Maybe Junior ROTC.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Parts of the Sahara Desert are turning green amid an influx of heavy rainfall. The Sahara was once green and fertile.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Arizona State U. scholars condemn ‘white ownership’ of Shakespeare.

CAMPUS HATE: Students for Justice in Palestine plans ‘Week of Rage’ on anniversary of Oct. 7 attacks.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: George Mason Law School: $13m Budget Deficit In FY25 ($38m Over 6 Years); Dean Charged With Balancing Budget And Maintaining #28 U.S. News Ranking.

THE WAR ON WARHAMMER: Nothing is safe from the new cultural Red Guards.

HISTORY OF THE AMERICANS: Sidebar Interview: David Beito on the New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights.

DON’T GET COCKY: Trend holds: Trump up by 2 points over Harris.

EVERYTHING IS OKAY IF IT HELPS DEMOCRATS: Election Interference by a Foreign Leader Is Now OK. The Biden-Harris administration facilitates Zelensky’s attempt to influence our election.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG:

“1% of voters in the bluest county in a swing state got duplicate ballots

But don’t worry our political opponents caught us so we had to tell you all

You can trust us that this won’t happen anywhere else” pic.twitter.com/Cp4MYD6pXS

— Shaun Maguire (@shaunmmaguire) September 26, 2024