VIRGINIA: Hampton Roads Black Caucus endorses Glenn Youngkin for governor. “This is the first time the caucus has endorsed a Republican for governor since they were founded in 2012.”

NOBODY LISTENS TO THE CDC ANYMORE AND THE CDC HAS ONLY THE CDC TO BLAME: The CDC Wants to Ruin Your Holidays (Again).

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Can the future of comedy be found in socialism?

JOE BIDEN’S RETURN TO DIGNITY: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema Hounded by Lefties in Public Bathroom Stall, At Her Home.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: School boards see protests as ‘domestic terrorism.’ “Angry protesters at school board meetings may be guilty of ‘domestic terrorism’ or ‘hate crimes,’ the National School Board Association (NSBA) believes.”

If you don’t want to be labeled a terrorist, maybe you shouldn’t send your kids to public schools.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: ‘It Doesn’t Cost Zero’: Chris Wallace Pushes Back Against Democrats’ Myths.

RE-FUND THE POLICE: George Soros Just Dropped Half A Million Dollars To Oppose Hiring More Police In Austin.

STACEY LENNOX: Dr. Fauci Fear Mongers While Biden Resorts to Begging. “Maybe the administration needs to come clean and develop a plan for living with COVID, communicate it clearly, and admit it will be a seasonal visitor along with a host of other seasonal illnesses we live with every year.”

MISS TRUMP YET? Biden’s approval among Black voters plunges more than 20 points in one month.

Previously: Black Poverty Hits Record Low Under President Trump.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: ‘A Giant Can of Worms’: Refugee Afghans Are Walking Off U.S. Bases, No One Knows Where They Are.

COMMIES GOTTA COMMIE: China tightens political control of internet giants.

The crackdown reflects Xi’s public emphasis on reviving the party’s “original mission” of leading economic and social development, said Steve Tsang, a Chinese politics specialist at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He said it could also help Xi politically if, as expected, he pursues a third five-year term as party leader.

Chinese leaders don’t want to reimpose direct control of the economy but want private sector companies to align with ruling party plans, said Lester Ross, head of the Beijing office of law firm WilmerHale.

“What they are worried about is companies getting too big and too independent of the party,” said Ross.

This is good news — for us.

Tech firms that need to please the Party instead of their customers will fail to innovate.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: The Obedient, the Brainless, and the Woking Dead. “If I had worn a t-shirt five years ago that read “All Lives Matter,” I would have taken first place at the Mark Ruffalo ‘Enlightened White Guy’ Contest. Janeane Garofalo would have slept with me (eww) and then made me a tofu sandwich. Today, such a shirt would get me fired for being a bigot.”

DETERRENCE: Russia and China are Already Winning the Nuclear Arms Race.

How did America’s leaders allow the country to become so vulnerable? U.S. leaders began a policy of nuclear disarmament at a pace far exceeding Russia’s following the end of the Cold War, naively believing the existential threat had passed. This exposed the United States to unnecessary and increasingly intolerable risks. By 2016, the U.S. nuclear arsenal had been reduced from 30,000 nuclear weapons to only 1,750 operational warheads. Many of these weapons are deployed on aging delivery systems of increasingly questionable reliability. Today, only 720 of America’s warheads are ready to launch at any given time, of which 50 percent would likely survive a full-scale nuclear first strike. The reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile is also a major concern. Successive administrations have failed to ensure it will function as designed in the event of a crisis.

Over the past decade, the United States has allowed itself to be overtaken by the Sino-Russian alliance in virtually every recognized measure of strategic military power. This includes offensive nuclear weapon systems, national missile defenses, hypersonic weapons, super-EMP weapons, and cyberwarfare capabilities. America has fallen behind its adversaries in terms of their combined economic and industrial manufacturing might, their ability to produce major weapon systems without foreign components, their hardening of critical infrastructures against EMP/cyberattack, their civil defenses, and overall nuclear war survivability.

The Department of Defense estimated in 2017 that the Russian Federation was in the process of building its own nuclear arsenal to total 8,000 deployed warheads, which is over four and a half times more operational nuclear warheads than the United States possesses. Russia has also deployed six strategic nuclear “superweapon” systems of a type the United States does not even possess that are not limited by existing arms control treaties. Former Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence officer Rebekah Koffler has stated, Putin believes war with the United States is “unavoidable.”

Read the whole thing.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Fauci’s Pathetic, Low-Rent Mussolini Shtick Has Got to Go. “The person with the biggest vested interest in keeping the drama going is the dictatorial snake oil salesman, Anthony Fauci. The alleged physician is a pathological attention whore who has been turned into the kind of celebrity that only the diseased minds of American leftists could create. Appearing on the Sunday shows has become his crack and he is a full-on addict.”

WEIRD. THEY’RE ACTING MORE LIKE THE LEGISLATION THAT’S SUPPOSED TO SOLVE THE CLIMATE CRISIS IS A MORE GENUINE CRISIS THAN THE CLIMATE CRISIS THEY’RE ALWAYS TELLING US ABOUT: Apple, Amazon and others back groups trying to kill US climate legislation.

HMM: Remember that ‘Emergency Funding’ the States Needed Last March? Here’s What Happened to It. “Now, an analysis by the Associated Press has found that nearly 7 months after Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, precious little of that $350 billion for state and local governments has been spent.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Blue Origin employees say they wouldn’t feel safe riding the company’s rockets and that it’s ‘lucky that nothing has happened.’

Jeff Bezos, who founded the company in 2000, launched to the edge of space aboard its New Shepard rocket in July. Since that flight, Blue Origin has opened ticket sales, and four customers are scheduled to launch on October 12. But the new letter says that Blue Origin’s leadership has ignored employees’ safety concerns in favor of “making progress for Jeff” and accelerating New Shepard’s launch schedule.

The only named author on the letter is Alexandra Abrams, who used to head Blue Origin’s employee communications. She published the essay on the website Lioness on Thursday but said that 20 other current and former Blue Origin employees cowrote it. None of those coauthors were named, but CBS News has spoken with five of them. The letter also made claims of a culture of sexism, harassment, and intolerance to dissent at Blue Origin.

New Shepard has flown successfully 15 times without people on board and once with passengers, when Bezos went. The rocket has an emergency system that can jettison the passenger capsule away from a failing rocket if necessary.

But, the letter said: “In the opinion of an engineer who has signed on to this essay, ‘Blue Origin has been lucky that nothing has happened so far.’ Many of this essay’s authors say they would not fly on a Blue Origin vehicle.”

Two former Blue Origin employees confirmed to CBS News that they would not feel comfortable riding a Blue Origin spacecraft.

The open letter said that safety was “the driving force” behind the decision to publish for many of its coauthors. It also said that in 2018, when someone new took over one particular team, the manager discovered that the team had documented “more than 1,000 problem reports” related to the company’s rocket engines. None of those reports had been addressed, the letter said.

Going into space is inherently dangerous and not for everyone — not even everyone who works for a space company.

But this letter, if correct, makes it plain that Blue Origin has a toxic corporate culture that has become a safety problem.

HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Woke CDC Cancels Women, Urging Vaccinations for Pregnant ‘People.’

SOMEHOW, NOT THE BEE: This woman made a video to prove her dog is a vegetarian and it did NOT go as she planned.

THE POLITICS OF THE STOMPY FOOT: Rolling Stone Lefty Loses It, Shrieks ‘Joe Manchin Just Cooked the Planet.’ “As the West Virginia Democrat Senator holds fast against Presidentish Joe Biden’s $5 trillion “Build Back Better Soviet” reconciliation bill, Goodell is far from the only lefty in full-bore panic mode.”

CRISIS BY DESIGN: DHS Says Being in the U.S. Illegally ‘Should Not Alone Be the Basis’ of Detaining or Deporting Illegals.

SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: Student booted as newspaper’s editor-in-chief over mask mandate editorial.

HEH: Imagine That: Kyrsten Sinema Enrages Democrats by Representing Her Constituents.

COLLUSION, STRAIGHT UP: Classified Briefing on Nord Stream Pipeline Renews GOP Concerns That Biden Is Caving to Russia.

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.) said that a classified briefing on Wednesday about the contested Nord Stream 2 Russian energy pipeline renewed concerns that the Biden administration is bowing to Russia, which is completing a massive energy project that Republicans worry will solidify Moscow’s grip on Europe’s energy needs.

Hagerty, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Washington Free Beacon that information provided by U.S. officials in a classified setting confirmed the Biden administration will continue to ignore congressionally mandated sanctions meant to stymie the completion of Nord Stream 2. Congress, he said, will not sit by as the administration bucks the law.

“The Biden administration continues to ignore mandatory congressional sanctions that would significantly delay and even halt the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,” Hagerty said. “If the Biden administration will not enforce the law in good faith, Congress will need to act very soon to counter Vladimir Putin’s malign influence energy project.”

I’m so old I can remember when Biden was going to heal our fractured alliances and stand up to Russia.

HOW ABOUT SOME GOOD NEWS FOR A CHANGE? Japan’s Navy Is Getting Aircraft Carriers and Stealth Fighters — and China Isn’t Happy. “Prickly feelings aside, once the Marine version of the F-35 became available, there would be nothing stopping Japan from reinforcing the flight deck and almost instantly turning their “destroyers” into light aircraft carriers armed with fricken stealth fighters — and that’s exactly what Japan is doing.”

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