THE GHOST OF WALTER DURANTY SMILES: The New York Times Asks Why ‘Fiery’ Iran Hasn’t Killed All the Jews Yet.

ABOUT TIME: FAA wraps up safety review of SpaceX’s huge Starship rocket.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced today (Oct. 31) that it has wrapped up its Starship safety review, which assesses the risks that a launch might pose to public health and property.

However, there’s still another regulatory box to check before SpaceX can get a license for the next Starship liftoff.

“The FAA is continuing to work on the environmental review,” the agency wrote today in an emailed statement. “As part of its environmental review, the FAA is consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) on an updated Biological Assessment under the Endangered Species Act. The FAA and the USFWS must complete this consultation before the environmental review portion of the license evaluation is completed.”
…
The ongoing review apparently centers on the potential impacts of a water deluge system, which SpaceX installed beneath Starbase’s orbital launch mount after the April test flight.

This sure looks like footdragging designed to hurt a free-speech-loving political rival — and the national interest in Starship be damned.

JUST ANOTHER DAY UNDER THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: Wray Warns of Possible Attacks, While Mayorkas Harbors Hamas Sympathizer.

UH-OH: RFK Jr. Has Taken Something That Belongs to Trump. “If Kennedy wants my vote, he’s going to have to do it the old-fashioned way: go back to being a Dem and wait until I’m dead.”

HMM: Biden tries to stanch Democratic losses in rural America. “Privately, allies hope the White House outreach — part of a two-week blitz of rural America — can also help claw back voters in a part of the country where Democrats have hemorrhaged support in recent years. While party strategists are under no illusions they can win majorities in rural counties, they desperately need to lose by less next year.”

FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES: Hilarious Trick-or-Treaters Roast Joe Biden. “First place for Halloween 2023 was a tie between two sets of magnificent young men who had the same idea: one of them dressed as Biden while his buddies transformed themselves into his Secret Service detail/care providers. Watch these comic wizards destroy the pretenses of the leftist establishment in seconds.”

I HAD BEEN TOLD THIS KIND OF THING NEVER HAPPENED: Boston Children’s Hospital given $1.4 MILLION in taxpayer money for child sex changes.

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Vile Cornell Anti-Semite Arrested, and He/Him Isn’t a White Supremacist.

OH: U.S. All but Stopped Spying on Hamas in Years After 9/11.

U.S. intelligence agencies all but stopped spying on Hamas and other violent Palestinian groups in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., instead directing resources to the hunt for the leaders of al Qaeda and, later, Islamic State, according to U.S. officials familiar with the shift.

Calculating that Hamas had never directly threatened the U.S. and burdened with other spying priorities, Washington ceded the responsibility to Israel, confident that its aggressive security services would detect any threat, the U.S. officials said. It should have been “a well-placed bet,” said one senior counterterrorism official.

With more than 30 Americans dead and 10 missing, mounting fears of a regional war, and billions of dollars in U.S. military hardware headed to the Middle East since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, some officials say the U.S. misjudged the threat to U.S. national security.

Well, yes. Mossad is great but nobody is perfect — and there’s often no replacement for your own intel.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Another Monty Python Sketch Just Came to Life. “Providing they’re both perfectly fit, I can see nothing wrong with one healthy man beating the daylights out of a little schoolgirl.”

MOB TACTICS: Carlsberg cuts ties with ‘stolen’ Russian business. “Carlsberg was in the process of selling its Baltika Breweries subsidiary in Russia before management was taken over by the state in July.”

CORN, POPPED: Hunter Biden Better Get Ready to Testify Before Congress.

AND NOW FOR SOME GOOD NEWS: Hamas commander who ‘directed’ October 7 terror attack killed in airstrike.

ROBERT SPENCER: Jihad, Nazism, and the Cult of Masculinity. “It all points up a fact that Islamic apologists in the West do their best to conceal: Islam in general is a religion for males, and in particular, for sexually avaricious adolescent males. Islam is a cult of masculinity, and in this, its appeal is very much like that of National Socialism. Both indulge in a kind of idolatry of masculinity, confusing genuine masculine strength with brutality, bloodlust, domination, and the exaltation of violence and brute force. This is why both National Socialism and Islamic jihad groups such as Hamas often attract weak men who are overcompensating for their lack of real masculinity and who often also wish to deny and suppress their homosexual inclinations.”

Read the whole thing.

QUESTION ASKED…: Auto strike settlements will raise costs for Detroit’s Big 3. Will they be able to raise prices?

And answered: New cars increasingly out of reach for most Americans.

WHEN PEOPLE TELL YOU WHO THEY ARE, BELIEVE THEM: Hamas Official: We Will Repeat the October 7 Atrocities Again and Again. “Nobody should blame us for the things we do.”

I HAD BEEN ASSURED BY ALL THE SMARTEST PEOPLE THAT THE BUD LIGHT BOYCOTT WOULD GO FLAT: Beer giant AB InBev’s US sales plunge more than 13% on Bud Light fiasco. “The US is the brewer’s largest market – and where it seemingly cannot overcome the disastrous fallout from a marketing campaign in April with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.”

It wasn’t the marketing campaign. It was the disdain that motivated it.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Welcome to Far-Right Extremists Extremism Land. “Johnson’s rise to power at the end of October gave the Democrats a new monster under the bed just in time for Halloween.”

CHANGE? Muslim immigrant running to unseat Ilhan Omar, speaks out from Israel: ‘We are not like her.’

A Muslim immigrant and Minnesota Republican congressional candidate joined “Fox & Friends” to call out far-left Democrats for their failure to stand with Israel against Hamas terrorists.

“I’m telling you, Hamas is a terrorist group, and whoever supports these terrorists don’t belong to the United States of America, the land of the free,” said Dalia al-Aqidi, who is running to unseat Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who she called the “No. 1 antisemitic lawmaker in the United States.”

“When they call for a free Palestine and call ‘from the river to the sea,’ this is a call for a genocide. Black Lives Matter and all these far-left progressives have no clue what they’re chanting about.”

Al-Aqidi, speaking from Israel, said she traveled there three days ago to “show my support and solidarity with the Jewish people,” declaring that the people of Minneapolis – where Omar was raised – support Israel.

“We are not like her (Omar). We support the Jewish people, and we are fighting the same fight,” she told host Ainsley Earhardt, explaining that Omar’s district has become “ground zero for antisemitism” under her leadership.

Sadly, that doesn’t say much about al-Aqidi’s chances against Omar.

WIN-WIN: GOP Demands Cutting IRS Budget to Pay for Aid to Israel.

IRAN’S ALLIES IN YEMEN: Houthis say they launched ballistic missiles, drones at Israel.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim they launched a “large number” of ballistic missiles and drones towards Israel and warned of more attacks to come.

Israel earlier said it destroyed an unidentified “aerial target” over the Red Sea on Tuesday morning.

“There was no threat or risk to civilians,” the Israeli military said.

The incident triggered air raid sirens in the popular Red Sea tourist resort of Eilat and sent residents running for shelter.

Separately, the Israeli military said that it used the “Arrow” aerial defence system for the first time since the October 7 outbreak of the war with Hamas to intercept a surface-to-surface missile in the Red Sea fired towards its territory.

Yahya Saree, a spokesperson for the Houthi’s military, said the operation was the third targeting Israel and threatened to carry out more strikes “until the Israeli aggression stops.”

Previously: Progressive activists get a big foreign policy win. It’s been an uphill battle.

The House passed a resolution Wednesday, February 13, to end US support for the war in Yemen. It’s the culmination of a years-long effort by progressive activists and lawmakers to claw back war-approving authority from the president and end US participation in a war that has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.

The war in Yemen, directed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (or MBS, as he’s commonly referred to in Washington), has killed more than 50,000 people, according to one independent estimate, and has left more than 20 million Yemenis in need of humanitarian assistance.

Progressives have long sided with Iran’s Houthi terrorist outfits.

BLUE ON BLUE: Muslim Group to Biden: ‘Ceasefire by 5PM Tuesday or We Walk.’

KRUISER: Netanyahu Succinctly Explains Things to the Low-Info Ceasefire Idiots.

COMMIES ALWAYS HAVE TO BUILD WALLS TO KEEP PEOPLE IN, EVEN IF THEY’RE VIRTUAL: China’s billionaires looking to move their cash, and themselves, out. “China’s elites have long looked for ways to take their money overseas. Officially, individuals are only allowed to transfer $50,000 (£41,000) out of the country each year. But in practice wealthy people have a range of official and unofficial ways of shifting their funds, whether that is through money exchanges in Hong Kong, where capital controls do not apply, or funnelling cash into overseas businesses.”

HE GOT A LOT OF BAD PRESS: Count Dracula: Undead Bloodsucker or Anti-Jihad Hero? “Before the world learned about fake news, there was fake history, and its goal was always the same: to demonize Western elements by exaggerating and stripping them of context and, above all, expunging or demonizing their Christian aspects while leaving aggressive Islam out of the equation.”