GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE MEAN THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TO EACH OTHER: Another Move Against Vaping Hurts Smokers Trying To Kick The Habit.

Quitting smoking is difficult but very good for you. Vaping makes it easier.

CLIFFORD D. MAY: The Kurdish test. “Iran’s mullahs are betting that Trump, like Obama, will choose appeasement.”

Now the Kurds are imperiled. Here’s what’s happened: On Oct. 13, President Trump announced his Iran strategy. He declined to recertify the nuclear arms deal concluded by his predecessor. Among the reasons: Iran’s compliance cannot be verified so long as international inspectors are barred from the regime’s military facilities.

The president also is unwilling to turn a blind eye to Iran’s continuing development of missiles designed to deliver nuclear warheads, the “sunset” clauses that legitimize the mullah’s nuclear weapons program over time, and the terrorism that those mullahs sponsor. Notably, he designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization.

The Iranian response has been more than merely rhetorical. On Oct. 16, Iraqi forces, over which Iran’s rulers now exercise considerable influence, and Shia militias, many of them Iranian-backed, drove Kurdish troops out of oil-rich Kirkuk. According to credible reports, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of foreign operations for the IRGC, was on hand to personally coordinate the operation.

Though Kirkuk is beyond the de facto borders of the KRG, Kurds have long viewed it as the Jerusalem of their homeland. It was a Kurdish-majority city until the Saddam regime determined to “Arabize” it, not least through population transfers.

In 2014, however, when the Islamic State was on the march, Iraqi government forces abandoned Kirkuk. The Peshmerga quickly filled the vacuum, defending the city and holding it ever since.

By orchestrating the taking of Kirkuk, Iran’s rulers are testing Mr. Trump. They are betting that, despite the tough talk, he won’t have the stomach to do what is necessary to frustrate their neo-imperialist ambitions.

Lending full material support to the Kurds is the best and fastest way to check Iran’s territorial ambitions.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Halperin Allegations, JFK Files, and Much, Much More.

NASTY, BRUTISH, AND NOT VERY SHORT: This Is What a NATO vs. Russia War over the Baltics Would Look Like.

Unless it were to go nuclear. That would bring about a speedier solution — for everybody.

OH: Red Cross Warns of ‘Dehumanizing’ Rhetoric in ISIS Fight.

The organization is concerned about rhetoric that “dehumanizes” and “demonizes” the enemy or suggests that a particular adversary is “outside the bounds of humanity” and can be treated “as if humanitarian law doesn’t apply,” the group’s deputy director for the Middle East, Patrick Hamilton, told reporters via a telephone conference call.

Language that could appear to justify or encourage war crimes and illegal treatment of detainees has become more common on all sides of the sprawling conflicts in Syria and Iraq, Mr. Hamilton said, to the point that the Red Cross felt it necessary to remind all combatants that international law requires due process and humane treatment of detainees “with no exceptions.”

It isn’t so much that the Red Cross is wrong, but that it’s probably impossible for civilized people of any religion to share a planet with the genocidal likes of ISIS.

TO BE FAIR, THAT’S PROBABLY HER LONGTERM GOAL FOR EVERYONE: Sen. McCaskill Wants To Strip American Indian Tribes of Sovereign Immunity.

ROLL LEFT AND DIE: Positive views of NFL down 18 points since 2013.

Today, 46 percent of voters have a positive view of the N.F.L. while 41 percent view it negatively. Four years ago (the last time the question was asked), 64 percent had a positive view of the league and 19 percent were critical.

“If the NFL were a political candidate, alarm bells would be going off in campaign headquarters,” says Democratic Pollster Chris Anderson who conducts the Fox News Poll with Republican Pollster Daron Shaw.

The downward shift on favorability comes mainly from Republicans (-37 points), whites (-23 points), men (-23 points), and independents (-14 points).

White men weren’t racist in 2013, but have become increasingly racist over the last four years.

RELATED: ESPN bracing for another round of widespread layoffs.

GOOD QUESTION: Why don’t more women come forward when they experience sexual harassment and even assault in the workplace?

Ed Morrissey:

Women have a tough time figuring out who their friends will be if and when they blow the whistle. The Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove reported earlier today that Ronan Farrow got a lot of attention from attorney Lisa Bloom when he began digging into Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults and harassment. At first, Bloom tried diverting his efforts into an esoteric look at non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), but changed tactics when Farrow resisted. Instead, Bloom — who claims to be a feminist activist — allegedly warned that she had dirt on actress Rose McGowan, one of Farrow’s sources, specifically about her sexual history.

For the record, Bloom denies this, telling the Daily Mail (via Stephen Green), “Attorneys must maintain confidentiality even when awful, untrue things are said about us.”

If it’s true, it’s despicable. Bloom didn’t disclose her connections with Weinstein to Farrow until later in their interactions, according to Grove, but Farrow had already suspected it. Bloom had represented Weinstein, and also had a development deal in place for a limited-run series based on the Trayvon Martin case. Her representation of Weinstein was not a recent development, either. Grove’s sources tell him that Bloom, the daughter of feminist legal activist Gloria Allred, had been on Weinstein’s team since last year, and had helped bury a New York magazine piece on the Hollywood mogul.

When Farrow confided in Bloom about the direction of the story, the high-pressure onslaught began.

Men on many college campuses are presumed guilty of rape by those in power. Women in many entertainment workplaces are presumed to be sexual playthings by those in power. Both industries are dominated by the Professional Left, who also presume to lecture the rest of us about lawlessness.

SUZANNE VENKER: When It Comes to Sexual Harassment, Women (and Men) Have Options.

OR AT LEAST THE FORMER: Ted Cruz Calls on Colleagues To ‘Shut Up and Do Your Job.’

AND YET IT PERSISTS: The universe shouldn’t exist, according to science.

WELL, GOOD: House Passes Sanctions on Iran’s Ballistic Missile Program.

JOHN KASS: New focus on Clinton, dossier on Trump rocks Democratic Media Complex.

Once you lose your name and credibility, where are you?

I hope all this worries you, no matter what political tribe you belong to, because for more than a year now, that Democratic Media Complex has been shrieking about Russia this and Trump that and collusion this and collusion that.

The Trump-Russia collusion theme has been a chorus of barking dogs everywhere you turn, in online news hyped to feed anti-Trump appetites, on cable, where the appetites are sated, and even in happy-talk banter of radio and TV news anchors.

The driving force has been a partisan desire to excuse Hillary Clinton for losing her 2016 election to Trump. It’s been aggressive and passive and all Russia-Trump all the time.

Many, but not all, of the Russia stories have been debunked, and precious little, if any, evidence has come out of the congressional investigations directly linking the president to an alleged effort by the Russians to steal Clinton’s presidency.

The irony is that the New York Times broke the Clinton Foundation/Russia/uranium/pay-to-play story back in 2015, yet the media still went whole-hog for Hillary’s post-election Russia narrative. So if the media has indeed lost its credibility, they have no one to blame but themselves.

LOOKS LIKE AMERICAN FRACKERS JUST GOT ANOTHER MARKET-SHARE BOOST: Oil Rises as Saudi Prince Backs Longer OPEC Production Cuts.

CHANGE: Vice President Mike Pence says the Trump administration will subvert the UN and send help directly to Christians in Iraq.

It’s telling that a nation must “subvert” the UN to prevent a genocide or ethnic cleansing.

21ST CENTURY LAWYERING: Lisa Bloom wanted to hand over ‘files’ on Rose McGowan’s sexual history and listened to Harvey Weinstein boast of sleeping with actresses who wanted Academy Awards back in January.

The Daily Beast reports that Bloom told Ronan Farrow of the dossier while he was writing his exposé on Weinstein, who McGowan has accused of raping her in 1997 at the Sundance Film Festival.

Bloom wanted to hand over this material despite the fact that McGowan cannot legally speak about the incident because she signed an NDA after receiving a $100,000 settlement from Weinstein.

‘I don’t know if you’ve talked to Rose McGowan, but we have files on her and her sexual history,’ Bloom allegedly told Farrow according to NBC sources.

Bloom would not comment on that claim, but did write on Twitter: ‘Attorneys must maintain confidentiality even when awful, untrue things are said about us. Welp, I did sign up for this.’

It’s a dirty job.

NARRATOR VOICE: “IT IS A CREATION OF THE CONSTITUTION.” Tom Perez Says ‘Electoral College Is Not a Creation of the Constitution.’

PATRICK POOLE REWIND: FBI Used Clinton Campaign’s Steele Dossier To Get FISA Warrant on Trump Campaign.

SOCIAL MEDIA: “Dave The Period Fairy” Has Become A Viral Sensation After A Woman Shared A Nightmare Hiking Experience On Reddit.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Bot-hunting Twitter bot sniffs out bogus political tweets.

STEVEN RATTNER: Why ‘Medicare for All’ Will Sink the Democrats.

Privately, many moderate Democratic senators are harshly critical of Sanders’s tactics. “It’s radioactive for me,” one Democrat facing re-election in 2018 told me.

But publicly, even Democratic senators who have declined to endorse Medicare for All have done so in measured terms to avoid antagonizing the progressives.

“The first thing has to be to protect the health care people have now and stabilize markets,” said Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

Instead of Medicare for All, we Democrats should be focused on “Better Jobs for All” — big ideas for addressing our most pressing economic challenge. That is: the wage stagnation that has left too many Americans behind, particularly white working-class men.

That’s not an easy problem to solve, but we know the solutions revolve around people-centric initiatives like improving education, providing more training and retraining and increasing worker mobility.

To buttress those programs, it’s time to move ahead with rebuilding our infrastructure and restoring government investment spending on research and development.

In doing so, let’s not forget that only about a quarter of voters consider themselves liberals; the balance self-identify as moderates or conservatives.

Our model of democratic capitalism has stood us well for more than two centuries; now is not the time to embrace the kinds of ideas, often involving deep government economic intervention, that have often fallen short elsewhere, notably in much of Europe.

Usually even moderate Democrats seem eager to hold up Europe as an example for us to emulate. There must be something in the polling winds.

IRAN DOESN’T CARE WHAT WE THINK: Accepting Nuclear North Korea Tells Iran it’s OK, Warns Expert.

Of course, regarding the headline, it’s been decades since we gave them reason to care.

SUMANTRA MEITRA: Europe’s Imperial Dilemma.

The British exit and the Spanish crackdown are both a direct consequence of the EU shaping up as an empire, without having the requisite will or capability to manage order across the continent or control the backlash resulting from its idealist and incoherent policies. Undermining state sovereignty has only empowered differing forces within EU. The culturally Catholic conservative Central Europeans, for example, are opposed to Brussels and Berlin meddling in their domestic affairs with unchecked migration or energy deals with the United States. Britain, on the other hand, left the EU due simply to a rational fear of Germany’s Angela Merkel opening the whole of Europe to millions of migrants. Now, ethnic groups like the Catalans have decided if they are going to be ruled by Brussels anyway, why bother listening to the middle man in Madrid? Also, there’s no logical coherence in the policy of EU supporting humanitarian interventions in Libya, and self-determination of other ethnic groups like the Kurds and Irish, while simultaneously and hypocritically opposing Catalonian independence.

A great Machiavellian paradox now tests Europe. It is too diverse, differing in language and culture, and never united before other than through forced imperium, to be bound together in the way the EU has envisioned. An empire, or its modern jargon-oriented equivalent, ultimately cannot be sustained, or defended without using brute force. After all, Westphalian nation-states came into existence as the old empires faded. That led to imperial colonial powers, which then ruled the world for centuries, before being dismantled by other regional nationalists. The last empire to fall was the Soviet Union, which kept the Warsaw pact countries under their power not by the strength of Marxist ideology, but by sheer military force. As soon as Soviet economic power collapsed, so too did the strength of their military, resulting in an opening for a nationalist tide. If the EU tries to morph into a full empire, the result would be more nationalistic backlash and chaos—to say nothing of heightened wariness and tensions with the United States, the UK, and Russia. If the EU doesn’t act like an empire, the regional ethnic groups will rebel against their national states.

And that’s the dilemma for humanity’s greatest liberal utopian project.

“Utopia” of course means “no where,” and I’m afraid “liberal” in this case is the modern, illiberal meaning of the word. But this is a solid, big-picture peace — highly recommended.

WHAT’S HAPPENING? Twitter has been miscounting user growth since 2014.. But, “It still delivered for Wall Street,” and the company “thinks it might achieve profitability by the end of the year.”

How?

It’s a bizarre scenario in what was an otherwise modest earnings report. Twitter reported $590 million in revenue for the quarter, a decline of 4 percent year-over-year. That marks the third straight quarter of year-over-year revenue declines. Wall Street expected the company to generate $587 million last quarter.

One positive sign: It finally expects to turn a profit by the fourth quarter — that’s bottom line profit. It stands to reason since Twitter reported the lowest quarterly loss in Q3, about $21 million, than it has in three years.

One big reason for potential profitability: Twitter is spending much less on stock-based compensation for employees than it was a year ago. Twitter spent $101 million on stock-based compensation last quarter, down 36 percent from a year ago.

Twitter’s operating expenses are still too high for what probably ought to be a low-overhead microblogging service.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Dems Play Dumb on Dossier, DOJ Releases Whistleblower and Much, Much More.