RE-FUND THE POLICE: The FBI Has Released 2020 Crime — And the Murder Rate Increase Will Shock You.

DON’T TRUST CHINA. CHINA IS ASSHOLE: Did China Just Steal $31 Billion From Alibaba and Tencent Shareholders?

This year, China’s leaders have embarked on an aggressive campaign to rein in its technology giants to promote more “common prosperity,” in a bid to reverse the wealth inequality rising in China’s economy.

Recently, China’s two biggest companies, Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) and Tencent (OTC:TCEHY), announced large RMB100 billion ($15.5 billion) social equity funds, aimed at addressing many of Beijing’s concerns. These funds are meant to help underdeveloped areas and industries, but with an uncertain financial payoff. While the companies touted both funds as voluntary, the timing and size does seem to indicate that both were the result of pressure from China’s Communist Party.

So, should shareholders in these stocks view the new funds as a “theft” of their investment, and should it make them worried about further actions?

But did China’s big guy get his ten percent?

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: No Racism? No Problem! College Racial Hoaxes Are Back.

THE ATLANTIC: Facebook is acting like a hostile foreign power; it’s time we treated it that way. “Perhaps Americans have become so cynical that they have given up on defending their freedom from surveillance, manipulation, and exploitation. But if Russia or China were taking the exact same actions to undermine democracy, Americans would surely feel differently. Seeing Facebook as a hostile foreign power could force people to acknowledge what they’re participating in, and what they’re giving up, when they log in. In the end it doesn’t really matter what Facebook is; it matters what Facebook is doing.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Hitting Back at the Democrats’ Corrupt Media Enablers. “As Biden and Co. continue to ruin everything they touch, the media will only get worse, giving a pass to the administration’s ceaseless tragedy of errors. The White House will continue to not only show no compunction about lying but feel comfortable doubling down on those lies.”

As Glenn advised the press last night, “If you don’t want people to think of you as garbage, stop being garbage.”

ANOTHER 11-MINUTE, SUBORBITAL JOYRIDE: Blue Origin NS-18 launch date and first space crew revealed.

HEH: Matt Walsh Trolls Woke Loudoun County School Board—and It’s a Sight to Behold.

RIP: George Frayne a.k.a. country rock maverick Commander Cody dead at 77.

IT’S ON: John Stossel Suing Facebook Fact-Checkers for Defamation.

MUST BE ONE OF THOSE NATURE-HATING MAGA TYPES: Ex-forestry student-turned-‘shaman’, 30, is arrested on suspicion of starting California wildfire that’s burned 8,500 acres and destroyed 41 homes.

I LOVE THIS COUNTRY: The ‘F*** Joe Biden’ Chant Is EVERYWHERE.

GIULIANI’S NEW YORK IS DEAD; DEMOCRATS KILLED IT: ‘City of the Walking Dead:’ Junkies shoot up in broad daylight in Midtown.

DON’T GET COCKY: Odds for a Republican Takeover of the Senate Keep Getting Better. “A more fired-up Republican base has already coalesced behind Herschel Walker and the crossover vote favors him, as well.”

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Mayorkas Admits At Least 12K Out Of 17K Illegals From Del Rio Bridge Have Been Released Into U.S.

PLAYING BY THE LEFT’S NEW RULES: FedEx Driver Announces He Won’t Deliver to People Supporting Biden or BLM in Viral TikTok Video.

UM…: Chernobyl’s Blown Up Reactor 4 Just Woke Up. “Scientists don’t understand why.”

SAY ANYTHING: Biden’s Math for Dummies: Five Trillion Dollars Equals Zero Dollars. “Biden’s ‘adds zero dollars to the national debt’ pledge is only off by about THREE TRILLION DOLLARS.”

CLIMATE PANIC INDOCTRINATION: ‘Humanity is doomed,’ say 56% of youth. “Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed felt ‘very worried or extremely worried,’ and more than 45 percent said their anxiety about the climate affected their daily lives. Three-quarters said they thought the future was ‘frightening.'”

I don’t see any of this fear in the kids I talk to. I wonder how much of it is genuine, and how much is just young people telling grownups what they think they want to hear.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Collapse of Biden’s World.

The fate of large parts of the U.S. economy consequently depends not on regulatory actions in Washington but on bureaucratic decisions in China. The global world that Joe Biden had hoped to inherit is falling apart right under him, like a comedy car shedding its parts as it rattles down the road. As Niall Stanage of the Hill put it, “President Biden’s biggest vulnerability isn’t any single issue. It’s the risk that he could be seen as losing control of events.”

The dissolution of the landscape means the Biden administration isn’t plagued by any one malady anymore but by multiple organ failure.

At a time when America and the West need firm and imaginative leadership, we got Joe Biden.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): We didn’t “get” Joe Biden. Joe Biden was foisted on us by a “cabal” of insiders whose grift and graft and self-worth was threatened by an outsider president. This is the establishment’s doing, and the consequences will be their fault, and there should be an accounting.

NIFTY: FAST lets lunar landers make their own landing pads pre-touchdown.

Being developed in collaboration with Honeybee Robotics, Texas A&M University, and the University of Central Florida under a Phase 1 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts award, the in-Flight Alumina Spray Technique (FAST) project has completed its year-long preliminary study of the concept.

In FAST, alumina ceramic particles are injected into the rocket plume as the lander descends. These particles coat the surface beneath the lander, consolidating the regolith into a hard pad that has more thermal and ablation resistance. This protects the lander not only during descent, but also when it takes off again to return to lunar orbit.

To make this idea work, Masten and its partners explored the best thickness for the pad, how to determine how the ceramic particles will stick together, how they will survive the heat inside the rocket plume, what the best deposit rate should be, how the particles will adhere to the regolith to form the solid pad while the lander hovers above, and how effective the pad would be in stopping cratering and dust scattering.

In addition, the team conducted hot-fire landing simulation tests using Masten’s vertical takeoff and landing rockets. From these tests, it was determined that the idea is feasible even for a craft as large as the Artemis crew lander and that the pad building can be controlled by the size and temperature of the engine plume.

Previously: How will NASA deal with the moon dust problem for Artemis lunar landings?

Mars, too.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Yet Another Dr. Fauci Deception for Those of You Keeping Track.

OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: Jayapal On Democrats’ $3.5 Trillion Bill: It’s ‘A Zero-Dollar Bill’ Since It’ll Be Paid For With Taxes. “But President Biden also said something very important the other day, which is, this is a zero-dollar bill because it’s going to be completely paid for with taxes on the wealthiest and the largest corporations.”

Spoiler: No, it won’t be.

THE ADMINISTRATION IS AT WAR WITH FIRST RESPONDERS ON SEVERAL FRONTS: From Heroes to Zeroes: How Vax Mandates Are Purging Our First Responders.

NIALL FERGUSON: Evergrande’s Fall Shows How Xi Has Created a China Crisis.

“The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in “The Old Regime and the Revolution.” “And experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.” I often thought of that passage as I watched Gorbachev inadvertently destroy the Soviet Union by trying to reform it. Only recently did it occur to me that it might also apply to Xi, the anti-Gorbachev. Although his reforms go in the opposite direction from Gorbachev’s — turning back the political clock to Marxism-Leninism, rather than forward to liberalism — the effect may be the same.

Xi’s crackdown on the property developers is just the latest blow he has struck against “capitalism with Chinese characteristics.” First in line were the big tech companies — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and ride-sharing leader Didi Global Inc. Then it was the turn of the for-profit education sector. All of this reflects Xi’s conviction that China needs to move from “fictional growth” to “genuine growth,” and his determination to make the old CCP slogan of “common prosperity” a meaningful antidote to the rampant inequality of the “get rich quick” era. Investors who have ignored this anticapitalist turn in China have only themselves to blame if they have lost money.

While I doubt Evergrande will bring Xi down with it, Xi’s economic clampdown doesn’t look much like a sign of strength.

This is a longer piece, technical in places, but as is usually the case with Ferguson it’s thought-provoking and worth your time.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Yeah, Biden’s a Mess But Republicans Can’t Get Cocky. “Many of us are fond of reminding people that one should never underestimate the ability of the Republican party to completely screw things up. GOP history is littered with missed layups. While next year is looking pretty idiot-proof at the moment, the train wreck potential should not be forgotten.”