ANALYSIS: TRUE. No, It’s Not ‘People Experiencing Homelessness.’

UNEXPECTEDLY: As It Redefines ‘Rich,’ the IRS Is Coming Aggressively For You.

While there was a brief burst of news stories earlier this year alleging that African-American taxpayers were being audited at higher rates than others, and that poor taxpayers were as well, there’s really no question about what’s about to happen. “(The IRS) needs access to information about opaque income streams—like proprietorship and partnership income—that accrue disproportionately to high-earners,” read another IRS release.

So they’re making no bones about it. But the Tax Foundation’s data says that the top 1% of earners income level starts at $550,000 – which a successful two-earner family can easily reach these days. That means that it’s not just the private jet crowd that the IRS is coming for. The top 10% of earners in the U.S. pay 74% of all income tax collections in the US – and that income cohort starts at just $155,000.

That’s not “rich” by anyone’s definition except the IRS’s. A policeman married to a schoolteacher can easily hit this threshold – as can a solo income IT professional. So increasingly, all successful working people are “rich people” to the IRS.

They’re from the government and they’re here to help.

I TRY TO IGNORE ALL THE FORECASTS: Don’t Listen to Rosy Economic Forecasts: A Recession Is Coming.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Want to buy a gun in Colorado? You’ll have to wait 3 days.

JUSTICE: Ex-Loudoun County Superintendent Convicted on Charges From Trans Rape Coverup.

CORRECTION: COULD BIDEN’S HANDLERS DECIDE FOR HIM NOT TO RUN? Could Biden Decide Not to Run?

Things must be pretty panicky in Washington when Jonathan Alter has written a fantasy conversation of big-name Democrats trying to talk Biden into stepping aside.

KRUISER: Left Media’s Bottomless Well of Squish Republican Scolds Is on Full Display for 2024. “This recent shutdown brouhaha provided an extra special opportunity for the Dems and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media, as it was filled with an added dose of Republican infighting and the GOP primary season is already heating up. This gives them more opportunity to trot out Republicans of yesteryear to shake a stern finger at those who won’t roll merrily along with their preferred agenda.”

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Member of Iranian Influence Network Visited Biden White House Five Times.

Reminder: Iran Masterminded 1983 Beirut Attacks on Americans.

And from 2020: The Iran-al-Qa’ida Axis. “al-Qa’ida has a new home base: it is the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Last month: House Republican torches Biden admin ‘anti-American agenda’ after $6B Iran deal announced on 9/11.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: How to Disrupt a Black Conservative Event With This 1 Weird Trick. “Welcome once again, ladies and gentlemen, to Late-Roman/Mid-Weimar America, where you can’t be a black conservative without lefties literally losing their pants over it.”

MARKETING: A Conservative Company Put Trump’s Mugshot on Its Newest Beer. Sales Soared. “The limited edition six-pack, called ‘Conservative Dad’s Revenge,’ sells for $25. The company donates 10% of sales to Georgia’s GOP Defense Fund and the David Shafer Legal Defense Fund, an organization set up to support Shafer, a co-plaintiff in Trump’s Georgia election lawsuit, in what it says is an effort to defend ‘conservatives against the unconstitutional prosecution by the communist Fulton County district attorney.'”

CHRISTOPHER SKEET: 35,000 Morons: The Taylor Swift Problem.

There was a recent article from Newsweek that caught my eye. Entitled “Why Republicans’ War Against Taylor Swift Could Backfire,” it delves into an X (formerly Twitter) spat between The Federalist’s Sean Davis and left-wing activist Victor Shi. In response to an excellent piece by Mark Hemingway detailing the shallowness and vapidity, both technically and spiritually, of Swift’s music, Davis quipped, “Taylor Swift is dumb and her music sucks.” In response, Shi wrote, “Nothing says more about how little Republicans understand Gen Z than them now saying Taylor Swift is “dumb & her music sucks” after she registered more than 35,000 people to vote last week. If you attack Taylor Swift, you also attack Gen Z. Good luck, Republicans. You’re screwed.”

Sadly, they’re both right.

Taylor Swift is indeed dumb, and her music is beyond insufferable. As for her politics, they are a jumbled mess of tired cliches and contradictions. She remained amiably silent about her personal politics until 2018, when she succumbed to the woke mob and started parroting their platitudes. But she owes her astonishing success to the fact that she’s smarter than her dupable fan base. That’s not saying much, but that’s the point.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Swift isn’t at all dumb, and her music, while not really to my taste, is pretty good. And she has a lot of loyal fans. You won’t win by calling them, or her, names.

I JUST ORDERED A FRESH BATCH OF UNEXPECTEDLIES FOR WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: Los Angeles’ controversial new zero-bail policy takes effect after judge ruled that cash bail discriminates against minorities and the poor. “The new law comes as officials in LA say organized crime and the pandemic-era zero cash bail is to blame for a recent spate of smash-and-grab raids, with robberies jumping 10 percent last year and nearly 580,000 larcenies reported to the police. “

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Jamaal Bowman Doesn’t Have the Greatest Defense or Defenders. “Honestly, I hadn’t planned on doing anything with this Rep. Jamaal Bowman fire extinguisher story when I first read about it, but he keeps getting more desperate and weirder about it so, hey, why not mock a Democrat who is essentially begging to be mocked?”

DARK MONEY, DARK GOALS: New Group Attacking iPhone Encryption Backed by U.S. Political Dark-Money Network.

The Heat Initiative, a nonprofit child safety advocacy group, was formed earlier this year to campaign against some of the strong privacy protections Apple provides customers. The group says these protections help enable child exploitation, objecting to the fact that pedophiles can encrypt their personal data just like everyone else.

When Apple launched its new iPhone this September, the Heat Initiative seized on the occasion, taking out a full-page New York Times ad, using digital billboard trucks, and even hiring a plane to fly over Apple headquarters with a banner message. The message on the banner appeared simple: “Dear Apple, Detect Child Sexual Abuse in iCloud” — Apple’s cloud storage system, which today employs a range of powerful encryption technologies aimed at preventing hackers, spies, and Tim Cook from knowing anything about your private files.

Something the Heat Initiative has not placed on giant airborne banners is who’s behind it: a controversial billionaire philanthropy network whose influence and tactics have drawn unfavorable comparisons to the right-wing Koch network. Though it does not publicize this fact, the Heat Initiative is a project of the Hopewell Fund, an organization that helps privately and often secretly direct the largesse — and political will — of billionaires. Hopewell is part of a giant, tightly connected web of largely anonymous, Democratic Party-aligned dark-money groups, in an ironic turn, campaigning to undermine the privacy of ordinary people.

Ironic? No. Expected.

Democrats have been opposed to digital privacy at least since Bill Clinton was pushing the Clipper Chip 30 years ago.

HMM: Democrat Resigns From Congressional Leadership Over ‘Convictions’ About the 2024 Presidential Contest.

ROUTINE BUT NEVER BORING: SpaceX rounds out third quarter with 70 launches for the year.

So far we’ve seen SpaceX launch 70 rockets in the year, beating the company’s 2022 record of 61. This was the company’s fourth straight year of beating its year to date record from the previous year. In 2020 when this current streak started, SpaceX was only able to launch 26 times that year.

Starlink has played a huge role in getting SpaceX’s launch numbers so high. The company began launching Gen 2 “Mini” Starlink satellites to expand but also replace the now four plus year old Gen 1 satellites. Out of the 70 launches so far this year, only 27 were non-Starlink missions, including NASA crewed and cargo flights, some commercial satellite flights, and missions for the DoD.
Of course the Falcon 9 has carried the vast majority of those 70 launches.

However, 2023 has been a good year for Falcon Heavy flights from SpaceX. Practically a Falcon 9 with two extra first stages strapped to its sides as boosters, the Falcon Heavy laid dormant for several years since its first round of commercial launches in 2019. That changed when the Space Force launched its first mission on a Falcon Heavy at the end of 2022 and since then we’ve seen three more launches this year with a fourth, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, coming next week.

A close friend of mine spent many years building and launching rockets for ULA and, before that, Lockheed-Martin, and Martin Marietta. Before SpaceX proved reusability was feasible and profitable, he explained to me one of the reasons it would “never work.” ULA and others had looked into reusability for decades and determined there wasn’t enough launch demand to make it profitable. He was very sincere but, in the end, also very wrong.

SpaceX’s Starlink helps create the demand that SpaceX uses to generate the profits that keep SpaceX rockets a generation (or two) ahead of the competition. That’s about as slick a business model as any of us are likely to see in our lifetimes.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: I Can’t Believe What Biden Just Stole From Trump. “Today I discovered a case in which Biden quietly murdered one of Trump’s most successful policies only to resurrect it with much more fanfare..”

CATHERINE SALGADO: A U.S. Marine’s Story of Archangel Michael, the Korean War, and a Miracle.

THREAD: “One of the first indicators of Russia preparing for a full-scale turn into dictatorship and a global war was the mass production of books praising Stalin and Stalinism and welcoming upcoming war against the West. These books appeared on Russian bookshelves in early 2010s.”

THREAD Let's start a long thread about how Russian book market prepared Russians for a full-scale war against Ukraine, NATO, the West, and promoted stalinism and nazism, and how this was ignored by the West. Keep seat belts fasten, you will see a lot of nasty things here. 1/52 pic.twitter.com/uF1LvIuL3q

— Sergej Sumlenny, LL.M (@sumlenny) September 28, 2023

Politics is downstream from culture, a wise man once said, and much of popular culture is toxic — here and abroad.

ATHENA THORNE: Your Monday Polling Pick-Me-Up. “Polling data that showed voters’ preference for Democrats four years ago has been inverted as of now to reveal a country much more confident in the Republican Party’s competence to govern the United States.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Crippling Home Insurance Price Surges Squeeze American Homeowners.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is Biden Turning His Allies Into Immigration Hawks?

OF COURSE THEY ARE: Yes, they are coming for your gas furnaces too.

Granholm claims that these changes are designed to “save Americans money and deliver healthier communities.” Of course, as with almost everything coming out of the Biden administration, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Current regulations require gas furnaces to convert at least 80% of the natural gas they consume into heat. The new regulations would raise the bar to 95%.

The only furnaces that currently meet that requirement are the ones with condenser technology installed. Condensing furnaces work by incorporating a second heat exchanger that recycles the furnace’s exhaust fumes, burning the small amount of unspent fuel that would normally be released. So at least in theory, you would use a fractionally smaller volume of natural gas to heat your home to the same temperature. And an equally small amount of unspent gas would not go out the chimney.

However, high-efficiency condensing furnaces are not only far more expensive than non-condensing models, but they are physically larger due to the extra heat exchanger. That means that modifications may be required to fit the new furnace in where the old one is currently located, driving up installation costs in addition to the higher sale price. The difference for a typical 2,000-square-foot house can be as much as $8,000 dollars. And in most cases, you would be replacing a fully functional furnace that you might otherwise have gotten decades of service from. So even if you manage to drive your utility bill down by twenty or thirty dollars per month, it will be a very long time before you actually realize and sort of net savings.

Spoiler: You will not see any savings.

YOU CAN GUESS: Why Was a Violent, Gender Confused Boy Allowed to Stay in Portland School After Beating up Girls?

VIDEO: Scenes From San Francisco’s Decline. “In a deep blue city like San Francisco, when it comes to safety, I think you’re pretty much on your own.”