HARRIS DECLINED THE INVITE: Trump’s Interview With the Economic Club of Chicago Was Epic.

IT DOES FEEL LIKE A SEA CHANGE IS BREWING:

It wasn't long ago that Trump was completely ostracized. He wasn't even allowed to have a Twitter account. Now he's getting standing ovations from elite types. What an incredible comeback. https://t.co/3Bkvd8twpQ

— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) October 15, 2024

WARGAMING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: Is Pelosi Sharpening Her Knives for Harris?

The Polymarket betting odds quickly tilted so heavily in Donald Trump’s favor — bettors prefer him 60/40 over Kamala Harris this morning — that Nancy Pelosi just put in another order with Long Knives. She ordered two sets, one for doing in Harris and the second for Tim Walz.

Enter stage left, Gavin Newsom.

I’m kidding, of course. It’s much too late (I think) to pull yet another presidential candidate switcheroo. But you’d better believe it’s a notion Pelosi entertained last night while finishing off her first bottle of chardonnay.

Harris, you see, is flailing.

Much more at the link, including the most meth-fueled lefty wishcasting prediction ever.

HEADS I WIN, TAILS YOU LOSE: Democrats Are Launching A Judicial Power Grab In Case Of A Trump Victory.

Left-wing activists are now attempting to use the Judicial Conference, the supervisory body that essentially acts as the federal judiciary’s own Deep State, to end the use of single-judge divisions in all cases of injunctions against the federal or state government. Earlier this year, the Judicial Conference issued “advisory guidelines” to all the nation’s district courts, recommending that all cases be randomly assigned throughout the district in which they are filed — regardless of the division that actually receives the filing.

Conservatives have properly protested this thinly veiled ideological power grab. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for instance, reminded the Judicial Conference that the legally relevant congressional statute — 28 U.S.C. § 137 — clearly vests district courts with the power to decide how to divvy up their own case assignments.

Now, just weeks before a monumental election, leftists have once again ramped up their efforts to ram through a rule in the Rules Committee of the Judicial Conference that would make the previously “advisory” guidance outright mandatory, thus caving to the demands of, among others, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the Biden Justice Department. The Judicial Conference purports to locate such authority in the Rules Enabling Act, the 1930s-era statute that authorizes the Judicial Conference to prescribe rules of civil and criminal procedure for the federal judiciary.

Read the whole thing.

ROBERT SPENCER: Islamic Scholar Lets Slip the Truth: ‘If Preserving Life Had Priority, There Would Be No Jihad.’

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China launches second batch of 18 satellites for Thousand Sails megaconstellation.

A Long March 6A rocket lifted off from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, north China, at 7:06 a.m. Eastern (1106 UTC) Oct. 15. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced launch success over two hours after liftoff.

The Long March 6A upper stage deployed the flat panel Qianfan (or “Thousand Sails”) Polar Orbit-02 group of 18 satellites into polar orbit for Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST). The project is sometimes referred to as G60 Starlink.

The mission will be followed closely for a number of reasons. The Long March 6A, developed by the state-owned Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), has, despite successful launchers, suffered issues with its upper stage fragmenting. Its last launch—which carried the first 18 Qianfan satellites—broke up into a cloud suspected to number more than 700 pieces of orbital debris. SAST has so far not responded to requests for comment.

Furthermore, there are concerns over the apparent brightness of the Qianfan satellites and their potential impact on astronomy.

Another concern: using obsolete, disposable rockets it will be quite a long time before Thousand Sails achieves positive cash flow.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Bidenomics Wrecking Ball Continues Handing Campaign Ammo to Trump. “Yes, Bidenomics is helping. It’s helping a lot of people into the unemployment line. I wonder how many Walgreens and 7-Eleven employees who are fearing the loss of their jobs are feeling any of that joy that the Harris-Walz people are always going on about.”

MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Venezuelan Gang Now In Texas Middle Schools. “It’s bad enough that Venezuelan illegal alien gang Tren de Aragua is taking over apartment complexes in San Antonio and hotels in El Paso, but now they’re recruiting Houston middle school students.”

Martha Raddatz would like to remind you that it’s only a handful of middle schools.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Did Child Trafficking Explode Under Border Czar Harris? DUH!

THIS KIND OF THING IS INCREDIBLY COMMON: Viral Account Pushing Pro-Kamala Misinformation Was Launched By Biden Admin Employee.

Just over a year after launching the account praising Biden, Wolf had earned himself a job in the administration. In June 2023, Wolf was hired as a “communications specialist” in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration, where he makes $94,000 a year, according to disclosure forms.

The timing of these events raises questions about the Biden-Harris administration’s relationship with Wolf. The Harris campaign, responding to one of the many viral lies that originated with his account, told PolitiFact it is not affiliated with Kamala’s Wins, though it seems that Harris and the administration have worked closely with Wolf from the beginning of his career, when he was fresh out of Ohio State University.

An administration official posting from the Kamala’s Wins account while working at the Commerce Department would be an apparent violation of the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from engaging in political activity while on duty or in a federal building.

Democrats do an excellent job of finding and nurturing — not to mention, financially supporting — young talent. They won’t care what the laws say until there’s some penalty for breaking them.

DOG BITES MAN: Desperate Kamala Called Out for Blatantly Lying About a Trump Event.

HE’S STILL GOT IT:

Jerry Seinfeld. “The protesters are back!” pic.twitter.com/xvygobFfxw

— Luana Fabri (@LuanaGoriss) October 15, 2024

WAS IT AN ACCIDENT, REALLY?

We actually need to talk about how we accidentally created a world of insufferable morons who think everything, including language, reality, and other people's weddings, should be changed to accommodate them. pic.twitter.com/jnUUmqcmrP

— Billy Bragg (@Serena_Partrick) October 15, 2024

PRIORITIES: DOJ Tells Four Police, Fire Departments That It’s Racist To Expect Employees To Know Basic Math.

Most blacks generally pass the tests, and the lawsuits do not explain how the tests can be racist against only some blacks. Blacks who passed the tests are excluded from the financial payouts.

Last week, Durham, North Carolina settled with the DOJ, saying blacks failed the tests required to become a firefighter more often, and “Employers should identify and eliminate practices that have a disparate impact based on race.” It said the Durham Fire Department must pay nearly a million dollars to people who failed the test, and hire up to 16 of them.

While the DOJ said the tests were not relevant to actually being a good firefighter, an online practice test suggests that it is directly relevant, that people could die if such firefighters were hired. One question asks if a building is 350 feet away, how many 60-foot hoses would be needed.

DEI kills.

THE NEW SPACE RACE:

SpaceX’s last ~40 hours:

– launch of history’s largest and most powerful rocket, Starship, completing the first-ever midair catch of a rocket booster and an on-target ocean landing of the upper stage

– launch of Falcon Heavy with an interplanetary NASA spacecraft headed to one… pic.twitter.com/Xv9ZyBpkEG

— John Kraus (@johnkrausphotos) October 15, 2024

It’s pretty much SpaceX versus the world — and SpaceX is winning.

CHANGE: Walgreens to shut 1,200 stores as CEO Wentworth seeks turnaround. “The closures were announced in June but the company had not disclosed the number of affected stores at that time. It had over 8,000 stores in the United States as of Aug. 31 last year.”

So roughly one out of every seven stores.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: What, So Now We Can’t Even Buy Babies? “People generally aren’t allowed to buy babies and that’s probably for the best. But, as it turns out, governments can’t even pay people to have them — and that’s a problem.”

JUST ONE OF MANY FAILURES: The Failure of Biden’s ‘Just Say Don’t’ Foreign Policy.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Waking Up. “Perhaps the most subversive political movie of the 2010s was Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception.’ It is ostensibly about dreams, but the purpose of manipulating dreams is to bend time, which subjectively passes differently for those dreaming at different levels. Political illusion is like that also. It’s about bending time to seize power, which is very real. In politics the great moments seem always just around the corner, a vote away, instead of being decades of hard work distant.”

“Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never jam today,” the wise man once wrote.

MORE NUKES IS GOOD NUKES: Google Agrees To Buy Nuclear Power From Small Modular Reactors To Be Built By Kairos Power.

First it was Amazon, then Microsoft, now Google telegraphs why the “next AI trade” will generate obnoxious amounts of alpha in the coming years by sending the same message: i) it’s all about how all those data centers will be powered, and ii) in the future a growing number of data centers will be powered by small modular nuclear reactors.

On Monday, Google – picking up on what we discussed last week in “Google Turns To Nuclear To Power Its Data Centers” – announced plans to buy power from Kairos Power’s small modular reactors (SMRs) as part of a growing industry shift toward nuclear energy to meet rising data center demands. By purchasing energy from multiple SMRs, Google aims to send a strong market signal while supporting long-term commercialization.

According to CNBC, senior director for energy and climate at Google, Michael Terrell, said on a call with reporters that “we believe that nuclear energy has a critical role to play in supporting our clean growth and helping to deliver on the progress of AI.”

Even if a few years down the road, AI turns out to have just been a fad, at least we’ll have gotten nuclear power plants out of it.

SLOUCHING TOWARDS WORLD WAR III: Biden’s Parting Gift to the World: Nuclear Holocaust. “Forgive the headline. Hopefully, things in the Middle East won’t come down to a nuclear holocaust — but hope is not a plan and Presidentish Joe Biden has apparently leaned hard enough on Israel for them to take Iran’s nuclear program off their target list.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (WHITE HOUSE EDITION): Kamala Harris Spokesman Is Asked About Tensions With Joe Biden, His Answer Says Everything.

It doesn’t get any easier for a spokesperson than that. Sams is given two separate chances to just say, “No, there’s no tension and the president fully supports the vice president.” Instead, we get a predictable mention of January 6th before another deflection stating that Harris is her “own candidate.”

I didn’t think anyone was confused by that last part, but the fact that Sams refused to just come out and deny the reports, which have included quotes from inside the Harris camp, says everything.

Is Biden actively seeking to hurt Harris’ campaign? I wouldn’t go that far, but he has certainly taken a carefree approach regarding how his statements and actions affect her campaign. He has repeatedly tied her to his policies when given the chance to support her preferred narrative that she is her “own candidate.” More recently, he directly undercut her attacks on Ron DeSantis, making her look like a liar using a hurricane as a political prop.

Something is going on behind the scenes, and it’s not hard to figure out why. Biden feels betrayed. He’s announced that in no uncertain terms publicly several times. And while Harris has tried to present herself as disconnected from the backstabbing that occurred, she is the one who benefited from it. Senility aside, that’s not lost on Biden, who no doubt suspects she helped orchestrate the scheme that forced him out of the race.

Biden has always been petty and ego-driven — and maybe the worst human being ever to serve as president.

If Harris is on the receiving end of some of that, at least we get a tiny silver lining.

THIS IS THE DEEP STATE: The Tyranny of FEMA: Elon Musk Versus Biden-Harris.

THE REPLACEMENT THEORY IS JUST CRAZY RIGHT-WING CHATTER: 10% Of Texas Population Illegal Aliens? “Given that the entire population of Texas is some 31,000,000 people, that means that just under 10% of the population are non-citizens, the majority of which are probably illegal aliens, and most of them have probably been imported under the Biden-Harris administration.”

Good info at the link on what Texas is doing to prevent illegal votes from being counted.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Idiot Doesn’t Fall Far From the Moron — Kamala’s a Plagiarist Too! “OK, it’s embarrassing if a high school student is caught cribbing from Wikipedia. It’s sad if a college student does it. Kamala Harris was San Francisco’s district attorney when she got her embellishment jag on. That’s somewhere on the other side of pathetic. Kamala Harris is a never ending series of ‘hold my beer’ moments following revelations that lead us to believe that she can’t possibly be an even bigger trainwreck.”