TOM KNIGHTON: Harris Talks About Freedom That Doesn’t Exist. “She’s using the word freedom a lot, all while pushing things that will restrict actual freedom.”

STUNNING BUT DEADLY:

We flew over Hurricane Milton about 90 minutes ago. Here is the view out the Dragon Endeavour window. Expect lots of images from this window as this is where I’m sleeping while we wait to undock and return to Earth.

Timelapse coming in a separate post.

1/6400 sec, f8, ISO 500 pic.twitter.com/zkhJdTlag7

— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) October 8, 2024

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: As God Is My Witness, I Thought Roasted Chickens Could Fly.

SOME PARTS OF AMERICA STILL WORK — WHEN BIG GOVERNMENT LETS THEM:

FAA blocked helicopters carrying relief supplies from landing due to a law requiring contact info of people they’re meeting after they land.

This is why outdated laws need expiry dates and should be trashed. pic.twitter.com/0kRmvJSmhb

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) October 7, 2024

THEY CAN’T BE TAUGHT, ONLY KILLED: Teach Hamas ‘Don’t Start None, Won’t Get None’ & #BringThemHome, Israel.

ISRAEL WILL HAVE TO WIPE THEM COMPLETELY OUT: Hamas Leader Wants ‘New Fronts’ of Jihad.

DEAR HOLLYWOOD: Wokeness Or Profit. Choose One. “Social Justice destroys everything it touches. Disney spent billions acquiring valuable cash cow franchises and then woke employees turned them into money losing failures. The woke insisting that Lightyear needed more gay lost Disney tons of money and goodwill. The staffers who kept wokeness out of Inside Out 2 made Disney a billion dollars. That and Deadpool and Wolverine proved that fans will still flock to theaters if you just stop trying to shove ‘The Message’ down their throats and simply give them what they want.”

“All I want is a story. Let Western Union take care of the messages,” the wise man once said.

SLOW LEARNER:

Q on The View: Is there something you would have done differently than President Biden in the last four years?

HARRIS: "There is not a thing that comes to mind…"

— Kathryn Watson (@kathrynw5) October 8, 2024

That doesn’t quite jibe with her attempts at reframing herself as the “change” candidate, does it?

WHAT’S THAT DEFINITION OF INSANITY AGAIN? Did Democrats Take Control of China?

Obamanomics — borrowed from FDR and since resurrected as Bidenomics — was the fine art of taking an economy that had been knocked on its back, firmly stepping on its throat with the jackboot of regulation, and bashing it repeatedly on the head with a giant sackful of money while shouting, “WHY WON’T YOU DO ANYTHING?”

While we’re just four weeks out from learning whether Obamanomics will be rebranded once more as Kamalanomics, our friends in Communist China are learning the hard way what it’s like to be ruled by truly ambitious Democrats. Or Communists. It’s all so confusing sometimes.

The point is that China’s massive economy has been flat on its back for a while now, thanks in no small part to strongman Xi Jinping’s determination to restore Communist control. His severe COVID lockdowns only made things worse, convincing consumers that they’d better stuff all their money under the proverbial mattress.

This is where classic New Deal/Obamanomics comes in.

Much more at the link.

“MAKE ME A MARTYR, BUT NOT YET”:

🚨 Breaking: Sheikh Ibrahim Amin REFUSED nomination as the next Hezbollah leader.

LMAO 🤣 pic.twitter.com/CC08CpEwKy

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) October 6, 2024

Well, can you blame him?

ROBERT SPENCER: Khamenei Taunts Israel on Anniversary of Oct. 7 Jihad Massacre — and He Has a Disquieting Point.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Impulse Space wins $34.5 million contract for U.S. Space Force missions. “Under the contract, Impulse Space will deploy two orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs) that will carry space surveillance payloads for missions intended to enhance U.S. military capabilities in space domain awareness. One mission will be launched to low Earth orbit (LEO) while the other will go to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO). These efforts are part of the U.S. Space Force’s Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) program, which is designed to leverage commercial technologies for the rapid deployment of satellites and other assets in response to national security needs.”

I’m not sure $34.5 million even gets you a face-to-face meeting with an Old Space contractor.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: One Simple Way to Tell That the Dems Are Full of It Regarding FEMA Money. “It’s a safe bet that when the Democrats’ flying monkeys in the mainstream media quickly sync up on the talking points that they’ve gotten instructions from on high.”

I HAD BEEN ASSURED MORE A YEAR AGO THAT THE PANDEMIC WAS OVER:

BREAKING: @fema's Disaster Relief Fund monthly report reveals that nearly $4 BILLION was spent on "COVID-19 aid" in September of 2024, the most of any month since October 2023.

Billions of dollars are being spent on a pandemic that's been over for years while Helene victims are… pic.twitter.com/5fbmdSkvft

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 7, 2024

We need to see the receipts.

WATCH: Peter Doocy Humiliated Karine Jean-Pierre, Who Stormed Out of the Briefing.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Putin’s ‘Merchant of Death’ Is Back in the Arms Business. This Time Selling to the Houthis.

Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death,” walked out of a U.S. jail almost two years ago in a trade with Moscow for U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner. Now he is back in business, trying to broker the sale of small arms to Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants.

The 57-year-old, whose life reportedly inspired the 2005 Hollywood movie, “Lord of War,” starring Nicolas Cage, spent decades selling Soviet-made weapons in Africa, South America and the Middle East before being arrested in 2008 in a U.S. law-enforcement sting operation.

Since his release, Bout has joined a pro-Kremlin far-right party and won a seat in a local assembly in 2023, seemingly turning the page on his days as an arms broker. But when Houthi emissaries went to Moscow in August to negotiate the purchase of $10 million worth of automatic weapons, they encountered a familiar face: the mustachioed Bout, according to a European security official and other people familiar with the matter.

Heckuva trade, Joe.

SHE HAS LITERALLY NOTHING TO SAY, FOR STARTERS: Ron DeSantis Is Blowing Off Calls From Kamala — and for Good Reason.

“MISCONCEIVED AT VIRTUALLY EVERY LEVEL”: ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Review.

All of which is to say that even if you didn’t love Joker on a storytelling level, at the very least I think you have to acknowledge that it captured a sensibility. As such, it remains a vibrant reminder of an incredibly weird moment in the world mood. It has a reason for existing.

Joker: Folie à Deux does not have a reason for existing, and as such, it does not work. Like, at all. It does not work as a comic book movie despite references to Harvey Dent and other DC mainstays. It does not work as a courtroom drama, despite the fact the second half of the film takes place largely within a courtroom. It does not work as a romance movie or a romcom, despite the film’s nominal reason for being is the couple of Arthur Fleck, aka Joker, and Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga). It does not work as a musical, despite the numerous musical interludes. It doesn’t even work as an actor’s showcase, despite having great talents like Phoenix, Brendan Gleeson, and Catherine Keener.

Joker: Folie à Deux is as badly misconceived a movie as I can remember seeing.

Ouch.

Related (From Ed): The Critical Drinker on Joker: Folie à Deux:

UPDATE (From Ed): Who knew the title was so difficult to pronounce?

BY ANY MEANS FAIR OR FOUL: Democratic Dirty Tricks Are BACK: Green Party Accuses the DNC of Spying, Infiltrating, and Lawfare.

PERSONNEL IS POLICY:

BREAKING:

Telegraaf reports on an increasing trend of migrants serving in the Dutch police who refuse to guard Jewish sites and events.

Their superiors accommodate them by giving them other duties instead.

There have been cases where they don’t want to guard a Holocaust museum pic.twitter.com/gEX32fdSkX

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 3, 2024

THIS WOULD BE SO MUCH EASIER IF BIDEN WOULD STOP TRYING TO MAKE LAWS: After Greenlighting Student Loan Debt Relief by Georgia Court, Missouri Judge Blocks It Again.

SPACE: Vulcan competes second flight despite SRB anomaly.

United Launch Alliance’s second Vulcan Centaur lifted off Oct. 4 on a test flight needed to certify the vehicle for carrying national security payloads, but may have suffered a problem with one of its solid rocket boosters.

The Vulcan Centaur lifted off at 7:25 a.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The liftoff took place near the middle of a three-hour launch window after an initial half-hour delay to provide additional time for pre-launch checks.

The first countdown attempt was halted 1 minute and 51 seconds before liftoff. Tory Bruno, chief executive of ULA, said on social media that a “transient on a redundant data system” triggered the hold, and controllers resolved the issue and reset the countdown for the second attempt, which resulted in liftoff.

ULA said that the vehicle’s performance was nominal in the early stages of flight. However, the separation of the two GEM 63XL solid rocket boosters (SRB) took place nearly 30 seconds later than the timeline the company provided before launch. About 35 seconds after liftoff, there appeared to be material coming off one of the boosters, whose plume changed appearance, suggesting damage to the SRB’s nozzle.

Other reports claim the engine bell might have blown or burned completely off. But the Centaur second stage successfully reached orbit.

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: He Found a New Way to Ride Out Hurricane Helene. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news and this week we have Florida Man’s living room kayak adventure, how he turned a surfboard into a rescue boat, and I don’t even want to know what that was Tennessee Man got caught doing.”

HOWEVER MUCH YOU HATE THE MEDIA, IT IS NOT ENOUGH:

A Yazidi woman kidnapped from her home by ISIS terrorists in Iraq when she was just 11 years old has been reunited with her family after years stranded in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Iraqi and Israeli officials said Thursday. https://t.co/r1jQzHxxO3

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 3, 2024

Community Notes remains undefeated.

I DON’T TRUST THE POLLS: Here’s Why Trump Is ‘Favored’ to Win, Despite National Polls Showing Him Down.