ANTITRUST: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier.

A number of Facebook’s current and former competitors are talking about the company’s hardball tactics to investigators from the Federal Trade Commission, as part of its broader antitrust investigation into the social-media giant’s business practices, according to people familiar with the matter.

One of them is Snap Inc., SNAP 0.95% where the legal team for years kept a dossier of the ways Facebook was trying to thwart competition from the buzzy upstart, according to people familiar with the matter. The title of the documents: Project Voldemort.

The files in Voldemort, a reference to the fictional antagonist in the popular Harry Potter children’s books, chronicled Facebook’s moves that threatened to undermine Snap’s business, including discouraging popular account holders, or influencers, from referencing Snap on their Instagram accounts, according to people familiar with the project. Executives also suspected Instagram was preventing Snap content from trending on its app, the people said.

In recent months, the FTC has made contact with dozens of tech executives and app developers, people familiar with the outreach said. The agency’s investigators are also talking to executives from startups that became defunct after losing access to Facebook’s platform in addition to founders who sold their companies to Facebook, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Assimilate or die.

I SWEAR I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP: Sheila Jackson Lee Confuses AR-15 for 10 Moving Boxes and a Heavy Machine Gun.

AMERICA: We’re Not as Divided as the MSM Would Have Us Believe: Hero Stories from Tropical Storm Imelda.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG. Joe Biden’s Son Hunter Contradicted Father’s Claim They Never Discussed Ukraine Deal.

Meanwhile, the media and the Left (but I repeat myself) are all aghast that Trump might have wanted an investigation into what looks like some pretty blatant corruption they’re doing their best to ignore.

HOMOPHOBIA, STRAIGHT UP: Trump tries (again) to confirm gay federal appeals judge.

Trump initially nominated Bumatay for a seat on the Ninth Circuit last year, but was thwarted by objections from the nominee’s home state senators. Both Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Harris recommended other judicial picks for the Ninth Circuit, but Trump ended up ignoring them and choosing his own, including Bumatay.

The standoff ended with Trump rescinding Bumatay’s nomination for the Ninth Circuit and nominating him instead to become a trial judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

But things changed after the retirement of U.S. Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who left the bench amid allegations of sexual misconduct and abusive employment practices.

Speculation emerged Trump would once against nominate Bumatay to the Ninth Circuit — this time to replace Kozinski.

Harris in a statement made clear she continues to hold the same opposition to Bumatay’s nomination she held the first time around.

You’d think this would be a bigger story, if it weren’t for the part where it disrupts the Left’s narrative.

I THOUGHT THIS WAS AMERICA: ‘Rambo: Last Blood Falls’ to ‘Downton Abbey’ in Opening Weekend at the Box Office.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Let’s Put the Climate Hoax Kids In a Time Out. “Climate hoaxer truant Greta Thunberg has dominated the news for the last several days, largely thanks to the fact that none of the adults around her seem to care if she gets an education. In fact, the little spectrum girl finally admitted that her antics are mostly about having an excuse to play hooky from school.”

MONORAIL! California High-Speed Rail board votes to bring trains to San Francisco.

Out of four route proposals, board members favored a Merced-to-San Jose connection designated Alternative Four, one that “blended configuration between San Jose and Gilroy in the existing Caltrain and Union Pacific Railroad corridors before continuing to a dedicated high-speed rail alignment through Pacheco Pass” through a tunnel.

For the future San Jose-to-San Francisco route, board members also picked a “blended configuration between…within the existing Caltrain corridor.”

As Caltrain explains it, “blended” means that future bullet trains will use a combination of existing rail infrastructure from regional transit agencies along with newly built trackways laid down specifically for high-speed rail, potentially shaving billions off the final price.

And three figures off the top speed on the unimproved sections.

DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: In Which The New York Times Straight Up Lies About Ed Buck. “According to Excel, minus the returns, that’s a total of $114,900 accused serial murderer Ed Buck doled out to Democrats. I don’t think that fits most ordinary Americans’ idea of a ‘small time donor’.”

Getting gay men to overdose and sometimes die in pursuit of one’s own sexual gratification probably doesn’t fit most ordinary Americans’ idea of a victimless crime, either. Yet that’s exactly what the MSM-DNC spent so long trying to hush up.

OH: Venezuela-FARC Drug Trafficking Alliance May Explain DEA Expulsion.

New evidence suggests that late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez allied with the FARC to “flood” the United States with cocaine, potentially explaining his expulsion of the DEA from the country.

The plan was presented to Chávez’s senior intelligence officials in 2005, according to US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) files seen by El Mundo. Its alleged aim was to combat the United States with an onslaught of illegal drugs, trafficked through Venezuela with the collaboration of security forces. The cocaine was sourced from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia – FARC) in exchange for weapons.

Former intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal, who defected earlier this year and has made key revelations about the Venezuelan government, was allegedly responsible for coordinating the operations.

Why, it’s almost as if socialist regimes are inherently criminal.

DON’T INTERRUPT THEM WHEN THEY’RE BUSY MAKING A MISTAKE: Revolt Against Moderate Dems Helps Trump. “Democrats seem determined to hurtle left, right over the cliff.”

WATCH WHAT THEY DO, NOT WHAT THEY SAY: Dems Grill Up 10,500 Steaks While Lecturing Us to Eat Less Meat.

WELL, YES: Biden Dealings With Ukraine Raise Troubling Questions, despite Dem criticism.

The proposed investigation involves Hunter Biden’s involvement with a controversial Ukrainian natural gas company while then-Vice President Biden was overseeing America’s Ukraine policy.

Critics of the president have accused Trump of attempting to “extort” Ukrainian officials for “dirt” on Biden, the current front-runner for the Democratic nomination to run against Trump next year.

But why would Ukraine have dirt on Joe Biden? For answers, one must look at Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company which, until earlier this year, employed Hunter Biden.

Yes, but the media has been pretty ruthless in avoiding looking into the Biden family’s dealings with Ukraine or China. Trump, however, is fair game for perhaps trying to push the Ukrainians into doing what the American press won’t.

Old school media: “It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.”

New school media: “It’s not the crime, it’s the investigation.”

HMM: Did Mark Judge’s Memoir Cause Christine Blasey Ford to Revise Her Assault Story?

Good stuff from Matt Margolis.

RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: Trump’s Approval Rating Better Than Obama’s Eight Years Ago.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Florida Man Friday: DUI Couple Gets It On in Backseat of Police Cruiser.

JONATHAN KAY: Conservatives shouldn’t unleash cancel-culture insanity on the wounded Trudeau.

Oh, hell no. The right needs to collect scalps the way the left has done for years, until they decide to start playing by the old rules again.

AND YET NOTHING WILL CHANGE: Zuckerberg Admits ‘Bias’ in Decision to Penalize Live Action’s Pro-Life Facebook Posts, Sen. Hawley Says.

GULP: Navy SEAL who oversaw the bin Laden raid says China’s massive military buildup is a ‘holy s—‘ moment.

YES: Censure Vote Against Kyrsten Sinema Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things. “Democrats’ very public reprimand of Sinema is not about addressing dissatisfaction among the electorate. It’s about shaming someone for not prioritizing uniformity over the interests of voters.”

I WONDER WHAT THEY’LL USE TO DEFLECT FROM HIS CHINA SCANDAL: Deep state deflecting Biden’s Ukraine scandal with whistleblower complaint.

WELL, YEAH: ‘I just wanted the day off’: School children admit they used climate change protests as an excuse to skip class – as Melbourne crowd hits 100,000 during mass ‘save the planet’ strike.

Everybody knows this, even the organizers. The real message being sent isn’t to the viewers, but to the young participants: “Mouth our platitudes and we’ll cut you some slack.”

TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Offers to Buy Out an Entire Texas Village for Triple the Value.

HMM: Colt to Stop Manufacturing AR-15 Rifles for Consumer Market… for Now?

Colt’s been in trouble for a while now, and this is just a market retrenchment — nothing political.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Critics Say ‘Rambo: Last Blood’ Is Racist Call for Trump Wall.

Easy call: It won’t turn out to be nearly as intolerant as “Knives Out.”