SEEM LEGIT: Rhode Island’s Gov. Raimondo Pushes No-Bid Billion-Dollar Video Lottery Terminal Contract.

FACE, MEET PALM: Warren’s ‘Billionaire Tears’ Mug Is Sold Through A Billionaire-Run Company.

THE CHINA SYNDROME: U.S. manufacturing group hacked by China as trade talks intensified.

“OH, GROW UP” WOULD MAKE AN EXCELLENT TRIGGER WARNING: Disney Plus Issues Stupid Wokeness Warning About Old Movies.

CYBERCRIME: A Hacker Wants About $5 Million in Ransom From Pemex By End of November.

TO BE FAIR, LANCET WENT FULL WOKE A LONG TIME AGO: The ‘Woke’ Lancet Asks If It’s Acceptable To Have Children.

I TAKE IT THAT MEANS GOOGLE CAN GET MORE VALUE OUT OF YOUR DATA FOR THEMSELVES: Google will offer checking accounts, says it won’t sell the data.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Tom Steyer Spending 67% of All TV Ad Dollars, Still Getting 1% in the Polls. “ He’s a simple billionaire, just trying to get the filthy corporate stink-dollars out of politics. When it comes to Steyer’s own money —- step back. He’s got Sam Jackson’s BMF wallet from Pulp Fiction, and you don’t want to stand too close when he whips it out.”

This is my regular, daily PJMedia column — no VIP paywall. If you’re not a VIP member but are interested in the extra content, the coupon code VODKAPUNDIT still works for a nice little discount, they tell me.

EXPLAINER: Jim Jordan Explains Why Trump Held Up the Money to Ukraine Without a Quid Pro Quo.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Day 1 of the Trump impeachment hearing was a lost day for Democrats.

UNLESS THE DEMOCRATS GET THEIR WAY: Oil And Gas Development To Boost Front Range Property Tax Revenue By Up To $2 Billion In Coming Decade.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Dear Hollywood, Stop Ruining Fun With Wokeness. “Some may say I dream too big, but I one day hope to be able to sit down, turn on my television, and watch something without fear of hearing a liberal talking point painfully shoehorned into the script.”

But this is not that day.

UPDATE: Link was missing. Fixed now — sorry!

SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: We Likely Won’t Cut Carbon Dioxide Emissions 45 Percent by 2030.

AND THAT’S THE OFFICIAL, INFLATED FIGURE: China’s 2020 growth will drop below 6.0 per cent says Chinese think tank – first government-linked body to make such a prediction.

21ST CENTURY WARFARE: Hypersonic Weapons: Tactical Uses and Strategic Goals.

Are these weapons and their employment simply an evolution of existing missiles? Or a revolution that threatens to upset the balance of power? The answer still depends on decisions yet to be made. Russia appears closest to fielding hypersonic missiles, as it aspires to deploy the Avangard glide vehicle before the year is out. The United States has ambitious goals for accuracy and precision, but its most viable programs are not expected to reach operational capability until 2022. Meanwhile, China has been characteristically vague on their hypersonic weapons while still letting it be known that they are firmly committed to their development.

For now, it seems hypersonic weapons’ predominant value is to give user countries a Clausewitzian capability (i.e., reaching a limited culminating point of victory quickly and decisively) in support of a Sun Tzu-inspired strategy (i.e., to win without fighting).

Everybody seems to think that a big enough knockout blow in the opening stage of a war will lead to rapid victory. But modern history — the Schlieffen Plan, Barbarosa, Pearl Harbor, Korea 1950, 9/11, “shock and awe” over Iraq — indicates otherwise.

HARD PASS: ‘Charlie’s Angels’ – Kicks, Punches and Feminist Lectures. “The unnecessary reboot for a marginal TV series exists for two reasons. Branded properties remain Hollywood’s higher power. Plus, writer/director Elizabeth Banks wanted to send a message about girl power over and over again. The studio handed her $48 million to do just that.”

Christian Toto, so worth your click.

BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY DO: Canada’s SPLC-Style ‘Anti-Hate’ Watchdog Carries Water for Antifa.

TYLER O’NEIL: I’m an Evangelical Christian. Here’s How Some Lesbian Feminists Became My Heroes.

I really enjoyed this piece.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Schiff Show: Impeachment Going Forward on Calvinball Rules.

That’s my regular, free daily column. But for PJMedia’s VIP members, there’s also this old-school fisking: Thanks But No Thanks: Author Wants You to Give Thanks to the USSR.

If you’re interested in joining but haven’t, the coupon code VODKAPUNDIT is still good for a nice little discount.

SAD: Mooney Shuts Down, Employees Furloughed. “To those watching Mooney’s sales numbers over the first half of this year, the shutdown is probably not a huge surprise. According to GAMA sales records, Mooney sold two Acclaim Ultras in each of the first two quarters, after selling 14 aircraft at a value of $10.7 million in 2018. For context, Cirrus sold 203 aircraft in the first half of 2019, while Mooney’s output trailed Extra, Pipistrel and Quest’s.”

The Acclaim was a really sharp-looking small plane, and quite the performer, too.

JIM HANSON: Alex Vindman Is Living, Breathing Proof That The Deep State Exists, And It Is Corrupt.

The game is fixed in DC: politicians come and go, but the bureaucracy chugs along protecting and advancing its own interests. Two perfect examples unfolded in the most recent presidencies. Barack Obama chose a nuclear deal with Iran as the legacy achievement of his foreign policy. He pursued it relentlessly to our detriment, both in actual ability to stop Iran from getting nukes, and in subjugating our entire foreign policy to this one goal.

The Deep State loved it. They were all in on his side, and the media had never more completely acted as palace scribes dutifully parroting every administration talking point and obfuscating or attacking contrary views. They faithfully misinformed the public to the best of their ability, and in the end Obama, the bureaucrats, and the media rammed the deal through while the American public showed 2-1 disapproval. It was a victory for the Deep State.

Shift forward to the 2016 election campaign and the collusion between Democrats and Deep Staters to stop the Trump train and then, after it left Inauguration Station, to derail it. The Trump-Russia witch hunt is an egregious example of the power of the state being abused for partisan political purposes.

Read the whole thing.

BAN ALL THE THINGS! It Might Be Time to Get Rid of Gas Stoves in Order to Fight Climate Change.

Yesterday we had to eliminate white people or something to fight climate change, so maybe this is progress of a sort.

NO. NEXT QUESTION?

VIDEO: Devin Nunes Condemns ‘Impeachment Sham Drama’ in ‘Search of a Crime.’

WOW: Sub That 80 Americans Died on Found After 75 Years. “Tim Taylor, who runs a project dedicated to finding the 52 US submarines lost in action during World War II, says his team has found the USS Grayback off Okinawa, the New York Times reports. The sub, which sank more than a dozen Japanese ships and rescued a group of downed American airmen, left Pearl Harbor on Jan. 28, 1944, for its 10th combat mission and never returned. Japanese records translated after the war said a plane had hit the sub with a 500-pound bomb and gave the latitude and longitude. But last year, Yutaka Iwasaki, a Japanese researcher who works with Taylor’s team, discovered that one digit had been mistranslated.”