ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER HATE CRIME HOAX: Police Arrest Suspect in ‘KKK’ Vandalism Case.

WHAT’S GREEN ON THE OUTSIDE, RED ON THE INSIDE, AND DIRTY ALL OVER? China’s pollution is getting in the way of its solar energy goals.

NOT GOOD: F-35s Hobbled by Parts Shortages, Slow Repairs, Audit Finds.

Already, the agency said in the draft obtained by Bloomberg News, the Defense Department “must stretch its resources to meet the needs of continued system development and production while at the same time sustain the more than 250 aircraft it has already fielded.”

Upkeep of the F-35 fleet will become more challenging as the Pentagon prepares for what the manager of the program has called a “tsunami” of new production toward an eventual planned U.S. fleet of 2,456 planes plus more than 700 additional planes to be sold to allies.

The F-35 program office and Lockheed have identified steps to increase parts availability “to prevent these challenges from worsening” as aircraft numbers increase, the GAO said, but Pentagon documentation indicates “the program’s ability to speed up this time line is uncertain.”

The GAO also disclosed that the F-35B — the Marine Corps version of the fighter that’s scheduled to begin ship deployments next year — won’t have required maintenance and repair capabilities at sea and “will likely experience degraded readiness.”

This is akin to buying an exotic car you can barely afford, without also budgeting for insurance, repairs, and tuneups.

GOOD LORD: HIV-infected school aide accused of sexually victimizing 42 children in Maryland.

The Charles County State Attorney’s Office announced Monday a 206-count indictment for Carlos Deangelo Bell, 30, a stark increase from the 119-count indictment handed out in late July.

Bell is now accused of assaulting 42 juveniles after officials originally reported 24 victims in July.

“The ages of the alleged victims at the time the offenses were committed range from 11 years old to 17 years old,” the state attorney’s office said.

Of the 42 victims, officials said they have identified 28 juveniles, and 14 remain unidentified.

The ex-school aid is accused of sexually abusing his victims at Benjamin Stoddert Middle School, at his home and possibly at other locations between May 2015 and June 2017, police said.

While Bell allegedly sexually assaulted students while not wearing protection, the state attorney’s office said they were not aware of any of the victims testing positive for HIV.

Prosecutors will press for life in prison, which seems far too kind.

YOU DON’T SAY: Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier.

Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.

Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community.

Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the firm in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Prior to that agreement, Fusion GPS’s research into Trump was funded by a still unknown Republican client during the GOP primary.

The Clinton campaign and the DNC through the law firm continued to fund Fusion GPS’s research through the end of October 2016, days before Election Day.

FLASHBACK: Fusion GPS partners plead Fifth before House Intel.

Maybe it’s time for more subpoenas, this time with immunity.

FEAST ON THAT: Mark Wahlberg Asked God to Forgive Him for Boogie Nights.

EMILY ZANOTTI: Sorry, Cosmopolitan. Dressing As Moana For Halloween Isn’t Offensive.

MORE ON JEFF FLAKE from Stephen Kruiser:

It’s not the party that has changed so much (although it has changed some), it’s Flake.

Flake was a strong conservative when he was in the House. When he got to the Senate, he decided to be John McCain’s “Mini-Me” and has borne little, if any, resemblance to his former self. My many conservative and/or Republican friends back in my native state are completely mystified as to what happened to Flake during his first (and probably only) Senate term.

None of them are voting for him in the primary.

Read the whole thing — which Kruiser wrote last night, before Flake announced he was flaking out of the Senate.

DREAM ON: Republicans quietly craft Dreamers deal.

The quiet movement toward a DACA deal comes amid a significant public rift between the parties — particularly between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats — over the fate of nearly 700,000 current DACA beneficiaries.

Trump appeared to strike a tentative agreement in September with Democratic leaders that would pair modest border security measures (and no border wall) with permanent status for young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as minors. But his administration has since taken a sharp turn on its DACA demands — unveiling an extensive list of hard-line immigration provisions that are nonstarters with Democrats and even many Republicans.

“Most of [the Dreamers] went through our system. Many of them don’t speak the language of their country because they’ve never been to their country. We are going to try and solve that,” Trump said in a Fox News interview this month. “In order to solve that, we want a wall and we want great border security.”

Behind the scenes, Senate Republicans involved in the talks essentially ignore some of Trump’s top demands — the workplace verification system, for example — yet are finding other ways to accommodate the White House’s immigration wish list to appease conservatives but not alienate Democrats.

Melissa Mackenzie tweets, “The only legislation the GOP will pass will spit in the eyes of their voters and they’ll blame Steve Bannon for being primaried.”

MANSPLAINING WHAT IT FEELS LIKE FOR A GIRL: Singer Sam Smith Identifies Gender Non-Binary: ‘I Feel Just as Much Woman as I Am Man.’

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): This is gender appropriation! Stop appropriating my gender!

BRIAN GOFF: NFL Losing Viewers At Alarming Rate But Faces Limits On Its Response.

RENT-SEEKERS GOTTA SEEK RENTS: 300 Hours Training Required to Shampoo Hair In Tennessee.

The Beacon Center of Tennessee is trying to change this. The libertarian-leaning think tank is suing the state cosmetology board over its onerous occupational-licensing requirements for people who want to wash hair. At present, obtaining a government permission to shampoo hair requires taking two exams, at a cost of $140, plus a $50 annual fee. On top of that, someone must take 300 hours of training “on the theory and practice of shampooing,” at a cost of upwards of $3,000 for the tuition.

“Tennessee is one of only five states that require a license to wash hair, and this is just one of the many senseless licensing laws that the Volunteer State currently has on the books,” Beacon Center states on its website.

But—surprise!—nowhere in the state even offers “shampoo tech” classes at present. So even someone prepared to put in the time and money to become a pro hair-washer right now can’t. Their only options would be a) to go through the more rigorous and expensive process (1,500 hours and tens of thousands of dollars in tuition) of obtaining a cosmetology license, or b) to wash hair illegally.

Insane.

THE DAM HAS BURST: Former Harvey Weinstein employee breaks NDA to detail sexual harassment of her and assault of another woman.

GUERRILLA BREXIT: English Vigilantes Use Ladders, Sticky Letters to Exterminate the Metric System.

Tony Bennett took Brexit preparations into his own hands at dusk one Friday this month, defying authority to reinstate a venerable element of British culture.

All it took was glue and stick-on numerals.

The retired lawyer crept through a park, he said, and up to a footpath sign. It read “1.5km.”

Unacceptable!

He took a numeral and pasted it on to make the sign read, simply, “1.” That’s one mile, one glorious British imperial mile, rounding up a bit. No need to add an “m,” Mr. Bennett said, because Britons would know what it meant.

“We have our own very excellent system of weights and measures,” said Mr. Bennett, 70 years old and not the American crooner. “We don’t need big institutions in Europe telling us what to do.”

Mr. Bennett is a member of Active Resistance to Metrication, a tiny group that has for years been pushing England to go back to its old weights and measures. Britain’s planned exit from the European Union has breathed new hope into his campaign.

Godspeed.

I’LL BE IN MY BUNK: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life ‘In An Underslept State.’

VIDEO: Dem Senator Acknowledges Hillary Clinton’s Kiss of Death. West Virginia’s Joe Manchin says, “It wouldn’t be wise for Hillary to come [here]. It wouldn’t be a good thing for her or for me.”

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Xi Jinping Becomes China’s Most Powerful Leader Since Mao Zedong.

PRIVACY: Microsoft to drop lawsuit after U.S. government revises data request rules.

The new policy limits the use of secrecy orders and calls for such orders to be issued for defined periods, Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said in a blog post on Monday.

“As a result of the issuance of this policy, we are taking steps to dismiss our lawsuit,” Smith said. bit.ly/2gE3kDp

The company expects the changes to end the practice of indefinite secrecy orders.

Microsoft filed the lawsuit in April 2016 arguing that the U.S. government was violating the constitution by preventing the company from informing its customers about government requests for their emails and other documents.

The suit argued that the government’s actions were in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which establishes the right for people and businesses to know if the government searches or seizes their property, and the company’s First Amendment right to free speech.

The changes will ensure that secrecy order requests are “carefully and specifically tailored to the facts in the case,” Smith said.

“This is an important step for both privacy and free expression. It is an unequivocal win for our customers, and we’re pleased the DOJ (Department of Justice) has taken these steps to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans,” the statement said.

More like this, please.

RISING SUN: Japan Needs Long-Range Strike Capabilities.

To boost its deterrence capabilities, Japan should consider being even more proactive. It should, in fact, contemplate acquiring the capability to strike enemy territory with long-range strike capabilities. Under the notion that Japan should not simply wait around to die if an enemy were preparing to attack, the Ichiro Hatoyama administration argued in 1956 that having capabilities that could strike enemy missile sites was theoretically within the constitutional right of self-defense. This interpretation even applied to Japanese strikes against another country before a missile is launched at Japan. Subsequent administrations have adhered to this interpretation, meaning Japan can constitutionally possess long-range strike capability. As a matter of policy, however, its governments have not tried to acquire them. It may be time to move beyond the theoretical.

We wouldn’t be having a conversation about expanding Japan’s offshore military capabilities if China hadn’t allowed North Korea to go Full Rogue on nuclear weapons — but it’s not too late for Beijing to act.

YOU WILL LET ME KNOW WHEN THOSE LAMBS STOP SCREAMING, WON’T YOU? Anguished Liberals Plan to ‘Scream Helplessly at the Sky’ on Anniversary of Trump Election.

BILL GERTZ: DHS, FBI Warn Companies of Ongoing Cyber Attacks on Critical Infrastructure.

The detailed technical analysis of the cyber campaign highlights the growing danger of foreign states’ efforts to map networks that control critical infrastructures in preparation for future operations that could shut down the electric grid and other infrastructures.

Adm. Mike Rogers, Cyber Command commander and director of the National Security Agency, told Congress in May he is concerned about foreign nations using attacks against critical infrastructures that run the electric grid, financial systems, communications networks, the transportation systems, and others.

“We assess that several countries, including Iran, have conducted disruptions or remote intrusions into critical infrastructure systems in the United States,” Rogers said.

It seems safe to assume that’s because so far they’ve felt they could probe our systems and attack with impunity. We need to both harden our infrastructure and change their assumptions.

MATH IS RACIST: Algebra, geometry perpetuate white privilege.

“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White,” Gutierrez argued.

Gutierrez also worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.”

Math also helps actively perpetuate white privilege too, since the way our economy places a premium on math skills gives math a form of “unearned privilege” for math professors, who are disproportionately white.

“Are we really that smart just because we do mathematics?” she asks, further wondering why math professors get more research grants than “social studies or English” professors.

I see — it’s a shakedown.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Travel Ban, Niger, Hollywood Harassment and Much, Much More.

DEREGULATION: EPA plans to repeal emission standards for truck components.

Unlike some Obama-era regulations, the rule, which is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, has been widely embraced by the trucking industry.

The rule applies the standards now used for heavy-duty trucks to new truck components called gliders and trailers. A glider, or body, is the front of a truck, including the cab, which fits over the engine. Trailers are the storage components that make up most of the length of a truck.

Currently, trucking companies can install an outdated engine into a new truck body and avoid regulations that would apply to an entirely new truck. Engine manufacturers and public health advocates are in favor of closing that loophole and applying pollution controls uniformly. Heavy-duty trucks have faced tighter emissions standards since 2004, though they have become more stringent over time, thereby widening the gap between new ones and truck bodies that contain older engines.

On Sept. 11, executives from three major heavy-truck and engine manufacturers — Volvo Group North America, Cummins and Navistar — wrote Pruitt urging him not to reopen the rule.

I’m shocked, shocked to find that engine manufacturers oppose re-purposing older engines.

UPDATE: Putin critic cleared to travel to US.

Original item that Bill Browder had been barred is here.