BULLY: Elizabeth Warren Promises Quid Pro Quo with Israel if Elected To Stop Settlements in West Bank. “Just days after Mick Mulvaney’s controversial comments that military aid to Ukraine was held up in exchange for cooperation with a corruption investigation, Elizabeth Warren promised that she was open to making aid to Israel conditional on how the Jewish state handles settlements in the West Bank.”

Hey, it isn’t like she’s asking them to investigate criminal activity by well-known politicians or anything awful like that.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for October 21, 2109. “Biden’s going broke, Clinton accuses Gabbard of being a Russian agent, Angry Amy came to play, Tom Steyer’s the Make-A-Wish candidate, and Messam pulls in a whole $5 in Q3 campaign contributions.”

LIVING HISTORY: Researchers find second warship from WWII Battle of Midway.

A crew of deep-sea explorers and historians looking for lost World War II warships have found a second Japanese aircraft carrier that went down in the historic Battle of Midway.

Vulcan Inc.’s director of undersea operations Rob Kraft and Naval History and Heritage Command historian Frank Thompson reviewed high frequency sonar images of the warship Sunday and say that its dimensions and location mean it has to be the carrier Akagi.

The Akagi was found in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument resting in nearly 18,000 feet (5,490 meters) of water more than 1,300 miles (2,090 kilometers) northwest of Pearl Harbor.

The researchers used an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, equipped with sonar to find the ship. The vehicle had been out overnight collecting data, and the image of a warship appeared in the first set of readings Sunday morning.

Akagi was scuttled by Japanese destroyers on the morning of June 5, 1942, after being severely damaged the day before. She was done in by a single bomb dropped by SBD Dauntless pilot Lieutenant Richard Halsey Best, flying from the USS Enterprise.

UNLESS HE’S DOING THIS FROM WELL-PROTECTED EXILE OR FROM BEHIND THE BARBED WIRE OF A CONCENTRATION CAMP, HE’S AN IDIOT: O’Rourke Again Compares Trump Administration to Hitler’s Third Reich.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: ‘Rolling Stone’ Produces Terrible List of the 100 Best Singers, Hilarity Ensues. “If you want to put together a list of 100 rock/country/R&B/soul/blues singers, Rolling Stone’s list isn’t quite terrible — but why rank them? What makes Buddy Holly (#48) exactly one better than Donny Hathaway (#49)? (Also, he isn’t.) The whole notion is ludicrous.”

Bonus: “Joe ****er.”

UPDATE: Link was missing before. Fixed now — sorry!

I BALANCE IT OUT WITH RED MEAT, RED WINE, AND COFFEE: Overthinking can shorten your life, according to a new study.

CLARITY: The Deep State Comes Out Of The Shadows.

What, exactly, are these career State Department bureaucrats angry about?

They’re mad that several of them “were demoted or sidelined following attacks by the conservative media.”

They complain about what they see as Trump’s “dangerous brand of diplomatic malpractice.”

They’re upset that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo didn’t publicly support Marie Yavonovitch after Trump removed her from her post as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and that Pompeo “is willing to sell out the department to keep favor with Trump.”

They’re also enraged that Pompeo gave a speech to the American Association of Christian Counselors and talked openly about the importance of his faith. That, according to Politico, “troubled many diplomats.”

William Burns, deputy secretary of State under President Barack Obama, declared in an article in Foreign Affairs said to “turned heads” in Washington that Trump’s treatment of State Department officials was akin to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s “savage campaign against ‘disloyalty’ in the State Department.”

Burns conveniently overlooks the fact that there were communists in the State Department. And Pompeo remarked that he appeared to be auditioning to be Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s secretary of state.”

The AP story is more of the same. Diplomats are fuming because of Trump’s push to cut budgets and staff, and this is “a moment of catharsis.”

It’s all about iron rice bowls — the Constitution, rule of law, and political tradition be damned.

These are the same people, as Glenn has pointed out, shrieking that Trump is the one ignoring the constitution, rule of law, and political tradition.

THE CONTINUATION OF FAILED POLITICS BY OTHER MEANS: 2020: The Left Goes to War.

Antifa’s belligerence is happening during good times with the economy humming and with them having full control of the press and social media. They are going to absolutely freak out at the prospect of four more years of a president they’ve been assured for four years wouldn’t even finish his first term.

Of course, the Democrats and the media will do all they can to foment riot — beginning the morning after the election. Expect talking heads and politicos to flood the airwaves 24/7 with a message to the world that refusing to seat Trump for a second term is not only bravery in motion, but democracy in action because it’s the “Will of the People.”

They are delusional now — after losing they will be even more so.

The past is prologue; they clearly believe that screaming loud enough and stamping their feet hard enough will give them the power to negate the election. They also believe they will accomplish this without any opposition. When it doesn’t happen as they envision, they will quickly transition from beating the weak to spilling blood.

As Lazarus Long advised: Keep your powder dry — and keep lots of powder.

YOU MIGHT NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOUR CHICKEN SANDWICH: ‘Bigotry and Hatred’: First UK Chick-fil-A to Close After LGBT Protest.

IT’S ZERO PERCENT UNLESS THE HOUSE VOTES TO IMPEACH: ’20 Percent Chance’ GOP Senate Will Remove Trump, Fox Source Says.

CLAIRE BERLINSKI PRESENTS: On Mexican State Collapse: a Guest Post by El Anti-Pozolero.

You may have read the news just a few days back: the Mexican military captured not one but two of El Chapo’s sons in the heart of Culiacán, the Sinaloan capital. One son freed himself—which is to say his entourage and retainers at hand overpowered and killed the soldiers at hand—and then, in a decisive riposte, seized the entire city center of Culiacán to compel the liberation of his brother.

The forces that emerged were in the literal sense awesome and awful. Heavy weaponry that would be familiar on any Iraqi, Syrian, or Yemeni battlefield was brought to bear. More and worse: custom-built armored vehicles, designed and built to make a Sahel-warfare technical look like an amateur’s weekend kit job, were rolled out for their combat debut. Most critically, all this hardware was manned by men with qualities the Mexican Army largely lacks: training, tactical proficiency, and motivation.

Then the coup de grace: as the Chapo sons’ forces engaged in direct combat with their own national military, kill squads went into action across Culiacán, slaughtering the families of soldiers engaged in the streets.

Cowed and overmatched—most crucially in the moral arena—the hapless band of soldiers still holding the second son finally received word from Mexico City, direct from President AMLO himself: surrender. Surrender and release the prisoner.

It’s an absolutely extraordinary episode even by the grim and bizarre annals of what we mistakenly call the post-2006 Mexican Drug War. The Battle of Culiacán stands on a level above, say, the Ayotzinapa massacre, or the Zetas’ expulsion of the entire population of Ciudad Mier. Killing scores of innocents and brutalizing small towns is one thing: seizing regional capital cities and crushing the national armed forces in open fighting in broad daylight is something else.

This is getting very little coverage in the US, so do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

TAIWAN ISN’T RUN BY DEMOCRATS. NEXT QUESTION? Taiwan built high-speed rail, why can’t California?

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Beto Is Wrong About Everything and He’ll Soon Be Gone. “What Beto doesn’t understand is that he is nothing more than a product of the mainstream media’s ‘Turn Texas Blue’ fever dream. He was never going to win his Senate race against Ted Cruz and now he is a weaker version of Pete Buttigieg, offering no real tactical advantage to Democratic voters.”

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s Water System is Collapsing.

In Venezuela, a crumbling economy and the collapse of even basic state infrastructure means water comes irregularly — and drinking it is an increasingly risky gamble. Venezuela’s current rate of infant mortality from diarrhea, which is closely related to water quality, is six times higher than 15 years ago, according to the World Health Organization.

But the government stopped releasing official public health data years ago.

So The New York Times commissioned researchers from the Universidad Central de Venezuela to recreate the water quality study they had conducted regularly for the water utility in Caracas from 1992 until 1999.

The scientists found that about a million residents were exposed to contaminated supplies. This puts them at risk of contracting waterborne viruses that could sicken them and threatens the lives of children and the most vulnerable.

“This is a potential epidemic,” said Jose María De Viana, who headed Caracas’s water utility, Hidrocapital, until 1999. “It’s very serious. It’s unacceptable.”

It isn’t unacceptable — it’s damn near inevitable, given the lack of maintenance.

HMM: China Makes A Move On OPEC’s No.2. “Following a political backlash in Iran over details of its plans to make Iran effectively a client state through various multi-layered oil and gas deals, China has switched its attention – for the time being at least – to Iran’s equally oil and gas-rich neighbor, Iraq. China has the advantage in Iraq that the northern part of the country – the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan – is already under the control of its increasingly close ally, Russia, with its corporate proxy Rosneft having secured control over Kurdistan’s oil and gas infrastructure in a deal in November 2017.”

The more we frack, the less any of this matters.

PROGRESS? The US nuclear forces’ Dr. Strangelove-era messaging system finally got rid of its floppy disks.

In 2014, “60 Minutes” made famous the 8-inch floppy disks used by one antiquated Air Force computer system that, in a crisis, could receive an order from the president to launch nuclear missiles from silos across the United States.

But no more. At long last, that system, the Strategic Automated Command and Control System or SACCS, has dumped the floppy disk, moving to a “highly-secure solid state digital storage solution” this past June, said Lt. Col. Jason Rossi, commander of the Air Force’s 595th Strategic Communications Squadron.

It’s tough to beat the security of a format nobody else can read anymore.

SMART: Home builders ditch Nest products after Google takeover.

This year, we finally started seeing results from Nest’s 2018 demotion from a standalone Alphabet company to a merger with Google. “Nest” is no longer a line of products developed by a company or division and now seems to be a general-purpose sub-brand for any of Google’s smart home devices. We’ve seen several existing product lines be rebranded from “Google” to “Google Nest” like the Google Nest Mini (formerly the Google Home Mini), the Google Nest Hub (formerly the Google Home Hub), the Nest Wifi (formerly Google Wifi), and the Google Nest Learning Thermostat (formerly the Nest Learning Thermostat).

In addition to the death of Nest the company, we’re also seeing the death of the Nest ecosystem. The “Works with Nest” smart home program is being shut down in favor of Google Assistant compatibility, and that means devices that used to communicate with Nest now work differently or not at all. Nest’s account system is also being shut down, and in the future, users will need a Google account.

Even if you’ve never had an account with Google or any of Alphabet’s other subsidiaries, you’re much deeper in with the company than you might realize.

PARANOID MUTTERING ABOUT RUSSIANS, RUSSIANS EVERYWHERE ISN’T A GOOD LOOK: Hillary’s Attacks on Tulsi Gabbard Appear to be Backfiring.

BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER: Apple under fire from AOC and Ted Cruz for censoring App Store in China.

BLUE ON BLUE UP NORTH: Justin Trudeau Exploited the Culture of the ‘Woke.’ “A former member of the prime minister’s foreign-policy staff encourages Canadian progressives to consider other candidates.”

Holding Trudeau up as a progressive paragon, Marche then lays down the pragmatist’s verdict: “Canadian progressives, like progressives all over the world, must decide whether they care more about the pursuit of social and cultural change, through the eradication of racist and sexist imagery, or the pursuit of transformative policies.” Notice the false dichotomy presented here as inevitability. Framing the progressive dilemma as a choice between “style” (wokeness) and “substance” (policy) is too simplistic. An officeholder’s style—in my opinion, their character, judgment, reasons for seeking power, and the story they tell and persuade you to believe in—is a perfectly legitimate area for investigation and critique. And if anyone benefited from and exploited the culture of the “woke,” it was Trudeau himself.

Voters were drawn to Trudeau in the first place because of his style as well as his substance. It is a mark of deep lament that Trudeau bears the distinction of getting so many young people excited about politics for the first time and then disappointing them within a single term. “I wasn’t cynical before Trudeau,” a Palestinian Canadian friend remarked to me last month. He was resigned, not even angry. It is a sentiment that could be echoed by many people in the vital suburbs outside Toronto where the upcoming election will be decided.

A little cynicism towards politics, politicians, and government itself is a healthy outlook, so by that measure Trudeau did wonders to improve the health of his fellow Canadians.

HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (EVERLASTING): Kaiser Permanente Ad Promotes Drag Queen Story Hour.

TO BE FAIR, NO ONE BELIEVES HER ABOUT A LOT OF THINGS: Nancy Pelosi Says She Prays for Trump’s Mental Health. No One Believes Her.

EVERYTHING IS RACIST: Dan Crenshaw Slams Dem. Who Called Him Racist For Not Wanting Illegal Aliens to Vote.

NARRATIVES DON’T SET THEMSELVES, YOU KNOW: NYT, Liberal Media Bury the Truth in Latest Mar-a-Lago ‘Hate Group’ Controversy.

HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Alleged Scientists at London Aquarium Seek Public’s Help in Naming Their ‘Gender-Neutral’ Penguin.

It’s Pat!