BELMONT CLUB: Excellence in the Service of Mediocrity. “The problem of controlling Elon is an example of the dilemma of mediocrity controlling talent. How can Kamala Harris, who, according to Senator Ted Budd, has not connected a single person to the internet ‘using the $42.45 billion allocated for the BEAD program,’ meaningfully supervise a man whose Starlink satellite constellation had 4 million users worldwide? It would be like putting the Detroit Public Schools in charge of Albert Einstein.”

IS THIS THE IDF OR THE TRAILER FOR OCEAN’S 14?

“Tonight, I am going to declassify intelligence on a site that we did not strike—where Hezbollah has millions of dollars in gold and cash—in Hassan Nasrallah’s bunker. Where is the bunker located? Directly under Al-Sahel Hospital in the heart of Beirut.”

Listen to IDF Spox.… pic.twitter.com/SjMZQpKqoJ

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 21, 2024

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Dear Pennsylvania: Harris 100% Supports Fracking (Unless She Doesn’t) “The Harris camp’s Climate Engagement Director (really!) Camila Thorndike tried to walk back the walk-back.”

WINNING: Key Pennsylvania County Must Provide Paper Ballots to Voters in Major Election Integrity Victory.

Blame paper ballot shortages for disenfranchising dozens of voters in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

Some 40 precincts in this critical county southwest of Scranton, which broke heavily for Trump in 2016 and 2020, ran out of paper ballots on Election Day, forcing poll workers to turn away voters in the 2022 midterm election and outraging residents who didn’t wish to vote via electronic voting machine. While some voters were able to return later and cast a ballot at their local polling place—which were ordered by courts to remain open for two extra hours—many did not, meaning their vote was effectively suppressed by election mismanagement.

This disproportionately affected Republican voters.

“Someone definitely failed to do their job,” one self-described “appalled [and] disheartened” volunteer said. Indeed, Luzerne Co. had no plan to resupply precincts that ran out of paper ballots in 2022.

But that won’t be a problem in 2024, thanks to a critical legal settlement secured earlier this week by the Center for Election Confidence (CEC), an election integrity watchdog.

More like this, please.

JOY CAN’T BE MANUFACTURED: Kamala’s Campaign Tried to Manufacture Joy. It Hasn’t Worked.

BY ANY MEANS FAIR OR FOUL: Democrats Regret Congressional Nominee So Much They Move To Torpedo Her With Write-In Campaign.

The Democratic Party has launched a write-in campaign against one of its congressional candidates in Georgia after discovering she may have run to provide a more conservative alternative to the Republican incumbent.

Katy L. Stamper, a lawyer who won the Democratic nomination for Georgia’s 11th House District, describes herself as an “independent candidate running on the Democratic ticket,” and holds some conservative views such as believing transgenderism conflicts with reality and illegal immigrants should be deported, The New York Times reported Monday. Due to these non-progressive beliefs, the Democratic Party has launched a campaign encouraging voters to write in Tracy Verhoeven — a rental property owner who moved from California to Georgia three years ago — with Verhoeven’s campaign claiming the website domain name TheRealDemocrat.com.

“What she did was not right, and I want to rectify it,” Verhoeven told the NYT, with her website describing Stamper’s nomination as “The Stamper Fraud.”

So Stamper won the nomination fair and square but party bigwigs disagreed with their voters’ decision, so they’re working furiously to undo it.

Democracy!

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Great Democrat McMeltdown of ’24 Might’ve Supersized Trump’s Chances. “As any social media veteran knows, the Number One rule when being trolled online is to not take the bait. It applies to conventional media as well. What Trump and his team did at McDonald’s was a master class in trolling and it is obvious that Kamala and the Dems don’t know Rule One.”

FLASHBACK TO NOVEMBER 2019: Kamala Harris occasionally struggles with ‘performance anxiety,’ current and former aides say.

One of her issues has been what several current and former aides described to Politico as a “kind of performance anxiety that washes over in her tense times.” That’s led to struggles in big moments, such as when Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) attacked Harris’ record as a prosecutor during the second Democratic primary debate. Harris appeared indecisive in her response to the criticism, and Markos Moulitsas, the founder and publisher of the Daily Kos, points to the exchange at the moment Harris’ campaign began its downward trend. “Why wouldn’t you take that head-on in a prime-time audience?” Moulitsas told Politico.

The aides say Harris can sometimes have trouble listening to questions and comments — at least three times since beginning her campaign, the senator has said she misheard a question, Politico notes. Most notably, she said she didn’t hear a man call President Trump’s agenda “mentally retarded” even though video shows her laughing right after he said it. Harris apologized after the video was played back to her, calling it “upsetting.”

She also reportedly can be overeager in attempts to please her questioners and will sometimes revert to “comfortable scripts in her head” because she’s afraid she’ll flub an answer.

That last bit is a quirk of hers I’ve noticed on more than one occasion but it’s worse than just reverting to a script. Harris seems unwilling to contradict whoever is speaking and go along with it.

It made her an ineffective senator and, no doubt, would make her an even worse president.

THERE’S USUALLY A SHOCKER OR TWO IN EVERY ELECTION: Wargaming the Electoral College: Prepare to Be Shocked.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Catching the Starship: A Breakthrough for Humanity.

Many of the barriers to interplanetary travel and colonisation that feature in popular science articles—such as the threat of cosmic radiation and the difficulties involved in running bioregenerative life support systems—are in fact mass problems in disguise. Radiation can be mitigated by travelling faster through deep space—which uses more propellant, so it’s a mass problem; and by employing additional shielding, also a mass problem. A closed-cycle bioregenerative life support system, which recycles all human waste products into consumables, is beyond our technology at present—but the gap between what is needed and what can be produced through recycling can be made up with supplies from Earth—and so that, too, is a mass problem.

There are still many engineering problems to be solved, but there is also an ample supply of problem solvers on Earth, whose work will be enabled by the coming dramatic drop in launch prices. Just as the density of transistors was the fundamental problem that had to be solved to enable the entire computer industry to rapidly solve software problems, cheap mass to orbit is the fundamental problem which, when solved, will allow rapid solutions to all the other problems of living in space. If the Starship development program succeeds, it is going to unlock this for us.

Starship flight test 6 could come before the end of the year.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Gun Control Paradise: 21 Shot in Chicago Over Weekend.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESS MODEL: Wordle With a Side of Propaganda.

BILL WHITTLE: Mr. Trump Goes to McDonald’s.

Bill nailed it (again) with this one.

THE SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED: Easter Island findings change everything we know about the Earth’s mantle and how it moves beneath the crust.

FORSWEAR ALL COCKINESS: Trump overtakes Harris for first time in Decision Desk HQ/The Hill election forecast.

WITH APLOMB: I’m Lovin’ It! How Trump Stole the Democrats’ Joy.

THAT HIGH? Democratic VP nominee Walz’s Minnesota ranked last for fiscal policy out of 50 states.

WARGAMING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: Prepare to Be Shocked.

BATTLESWARM BLOG: Two Approaches To Drone Defense.

The Russo-Ukrainian War has nailed down the fast forward button on drone evolution. The success both sides have had with taking out expensive equipment with cheap drones has prompted a lot of the usual suspects to dust off their standard “the tank is obsolete” talking points.

But military technological evolution is always a two way street. Offense pulls ahead for a while, only for defensive countermeasures to quickly catch up. Such is the case with drone warfare, and now we’re seeing some promising approaches to cost-effective anti-drone weapons.

But wait, there’s more: A Third Drone Defense System: Microwave EMP.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Indiana Kids Ignored in Schools as Migrants Flood In.

WELL, AT LEAST THEY’RE WAGING OPEN LAWFARE:

The lawfare against @elonmusk, as gleefully described by the New York Times: pic.twitter.com/jPLtLyaYaK

— Stephen Pimentel (@StephenPiment) October 21, 2024

“Toe the line,” they explained.

JON STEWART DOES NOT SEEM TO HAVE GOTTEN BACK TO ELON MUSK:

The Woke Mind Virus in graphical form.

It is very quantifiable.

Hey @jonstewart, why did you say at that dinner in Aspen that it’s fake?

And why did you advocate censorship? https://t.co/11G3dDkEar

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 21, 2024

THEY CERTAINLY DIDN’T MAKE IT EASY TO CHOOSE: Is This the Lamest, Most Hysterical Reaction to Trump’s McDonald’s Drive-Thru Event?

“MELTDOWN” SEEMS STRONG, BUT WE’LL SEE: Putin turns to North Korean troops as Russia’s economy heads for a ‘meltdown.’

Moscow and Pyongyang have denied any troop exchanges.

But analysts are increasingly pointing to the underlying weakness of Russia’s economy, which appears stronger due to enormous defense spending, and predicting that it will struggle to sustain its war on Ukraine.

In addition to the Western sanctions that have largely shut out Moscow from the global financial system, Russia has suffered a massive brain drain of talent fleeing the country as well as hundreds of thousands of war casualties.

That’s contributed to a tight labor market and high inflation as the defense industry and military mobilization occupy a greater share of the working-age population—representing obstacles in President Vladimir Putin’s ability to raise more troops for his war.

In an op-ed for The Hill on Monday, Rutgers University-Newark political science professor Alexander J. Motyl predicted the Russian economy will suffer a “meltdown” next year.

Despite my pessimism over a “meltdown,” the Russian central bank did raise the prime interest rate to 19% last month — hardly a sign of strength — and it’s expected to go over 20% during 2025.

PLEASE, STOP, I CAN ONLY VOTE FOR HIM ONCE:

BREAKING: Former FBI Director James Comey says that former President Trump “is coming” for the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Your thoughts? pic.twitter.com/0bK3t1b97F

— Donald J. Trump News (@realTrumpNewsX) October 21, 2024