VIDEO: China’s Lockdowns: Even Crazier. “In Xining City in Qinghai province (next to Tibet), some people have been locked down in a wet market for over 40 days.”

That doesn’t seem very healthy.

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: In Horrific Move, Iran’s Parliament Votes to Execute 15,000 Protestors to Teach ‘Hard Lesson.’

A WELL-RUN COUNTRY BUILDS TRUST WITH THE VOTERS THAT GIVE IT LEGITIMACY: Voters Worry About Election Cheating, Don’t Trust Mail-In Voting.

KRUISER: Some Personal Reflections on the Death of ‘World Famous Improv’ Founder Budd Friedman.

Budd Friedman — the founder of the “World Famous Improv” comedy clubs — passed away over the weekend. He was 90 years old.

Calling Budd a giant is actually a bit of underselling. The comedy club world had already been dominated by just two people — Budd and the Comedy Store’s Mitzi Shore — seemingly forever when I first began performing in 1982. When young comics first got to Los Angeles, all they wanted to do was get a spot at either the Hollywood Improv on Melrose or the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard. That was the dream.

Budd helped mine come true.

Great tribute to the genius who made standup accessible.

LIBSOFTIKTOK: Michigan school board appoints ‘unhinged’ 23-year-old LGBTQ+ trustee who self-describes as having ‘several mental illnesses.’

UKRAINE WAR: The Liberation of Kherson Is More Important Than We’re Being Told. “Militarily, almost all you need to know is summed up in this one geolocated video from Russia’s crown jewel in the Black Sea.”

EUGENICS HAS BEEN A CORE PROGRESSIVE* TENET FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY: Trudeau Liberals to facilitate suicide for the mentally ill starting in March.

*Other leftist ideologies, too.

THERE DOESN’T SEEM TO BE MUCH “MAY” ABOUT IT: Puberty Blockers May Have Severe Longterm Effects on Kids.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: The oracle who predicted SLS’s launch in 2023 has thoughts about Artemis III.

So when, I asked my source, “Do you think Artemis III will actually happen?”

“My starting point is 2028,” he replied.

This does not seem like all that unreasonable of a prediction. This is not your grandparents’ NASA, which delivered the Apollo Program on time and on budget. The 1960s were a very different era, and NASA was operating with an outsized budget, a geopolitical imperative, and a presidential mandate to hit the end of the decade for a human landing on the Moon. Today, the agency receives far less budget relative to federal spending, and the external forces driving NASA toward a deadline to land on the Moon have far less pressure behind them.

The bottom line is that there are no real consequences for missing 2025. Congress may huff and puff a bit, but in reality, Artemis is a solid choice for the space agency’s human exploration ambitions. Its international partners are behind the plan, and there are no great alternatives. Most people will just shrug and accept the delays.

Given the bloat and delay baked into most big space programs today, 2028 is actually a pretty reasonable estimate for Artemis III. It would probably be my “starting point,” too. But the space prophet didn’t stop there. “It may happen in 2028, but I’m not sure it will be on SLS,” he said.

Even assuming Artemis 1 launches successfully tomorrow (godspeed!), at this point I’d be surprised if anything else ever goes to space on SLS.

LINCOLN BROWN: So, Where to Now?

Cruz is particularly irked that McConnell pulled $8 million from Blake Masters’ campaign. Masters has said that he would vote against McConnell. Cruz said McConnell would prefer to hang on to his position as minority leader rather than see a GOP majority in the Senate. On the House side, the Freedom Caucus has made it known that it is thinking about finding someone to challenge Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House.

And of course, much has been made about the negative impact of Donald Trump on the elections and the developing rift between the Trump and DeSantis camps. While there is a chance The Donald may announce he is not running in 2024, he wouldn’t stage an event to do that. Judging by the number of articles and comments, people seem to be moving in the direction of wanting to thank Trump for his service and ask him to move on.

So while we sweat the results of the last few races and fret about the outcome of the Walker/Warnock runoff, we need to ask ourselves what we do next. Despite factors like inflation, crime, and immigration, much of the country indicated that it prefers the status quo. Perhaps these voters could not bring themselves to admit that they were wrong and wanted to give the Democrats one more chance. Who knows. Republicans remain at a disadvantage when it comes to messaging and money, and sweat equity. Whatever else you want to say about the Left, its people work hard during election season.

We can campaign all we want, dethrone McConnell, block McCarthy, and even fire Trump. We can also learn how to maneuver in a world in which balloting has been made so convenient that now it takes days instead of hours to count the votes. But we have to change the game on the ground.

Read the whole thing.

ENEMIES OF CIVILIZATION: Protesters Pour Black Liquid On Klimt Painting In Vienna.

Climate activists on Tuesday poured a black liquid over Austrian painter Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece “Death and Life” at Vienna’s Leopold Museum, a spokesman told AFP.

“Restorers are working to determine whether the painting protected by glass has been damaged,” said Klaus Pokorny.

A group of Austrian and German climate activists called “Last generation” claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter.

In images shared by the group on social media two men can be seen pouring a black, oily liquid on the famous Klimt painting before being arrested by a museum employee.

They aren’t protestors; they’re nihilists bent on making the world as ugly and pointless as they are.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Someone Tell Pence to Take His 2024 Delusions and Go Home. “Not too long ago, I would have welcomed a Pence run for the Oval Office. Times have changed at a (pun intended) fever pace since the pandemic, however. Even though he was Trump’s second-in-command, Pence has a “square peg in a round hole” feel about him in the post-2020 GOP. As we saw last week, the party is struggling for an identity right now. This really isn’t a time to look to the past to get to the future.”

NOW CAN WE CALL IT A RECESSION? Jeff Bezos advises to ‘take some risk off the table,’ says economy currently ‘does not look great.’

WORSE, THEY BECLOWN US: Biden and Trudeau Beclown Themselves by Parading Around Asia in Commie Mao Jackets.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Secretive US space plane X-37B lands after record 908 days in orbit. “The USSF didn’t respond to a request for comment, but a statement issued by Joseph Fritschen at the organisation said: ‘The X-37B continues to push the boundaries of experimentation, enabled by an elite government and industry team behind the scenes. The ability to conduct on-orbit experiments and bring them home safely for in-depth analysis on the ground has proven valuable for the Department of the Air Force and scientific community. The addition of the service module on OTV-6 allowed us to host more experiments than ever before.’ Fritschen didn’t respond to a request by New Scientist for interview.”

Everyone is very hush-hush where the X-37B is concerned.

ATHENA THORNE: How Trump’s Big Announcement Will Help Republicans.

WHY I’VE BEEN MISSING THESE LAST FEW DAYS: On Grief.

BRANDON MORSE: Don’t Blame Gen Z for Voting Democrat, Blame the People Who Told Them To. “Once we accept that Gen Z voting Democrat by and large is the symptom then we can start focusing on the disease.”

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Rick Moran: Russia Orders Retreat From Kherson, the Only Regional Capital in Ukraine It Held. “The Ukrainian military had a series of successes as it advanced on Kherson, capturing town after town from the retreating Russians.”

Matt Margolis: Where the Polls Went Wrong or Right. “Oh my, Pennsylvania. … I had such high hopes.”

Yours Truly: So Long, and Thanks for All the Judges. “There’s enough blame to go around, this isn’t all on The Donald. All the Washington leadership failed us. A few state legislatures probably moved too far, too quickly after the Dobbs decision, scaring largely pro-choice GenZ young adults to vote in defiance of the polls. But as the de facto party head, Trump can’t escape his share of the blame. So it’s my unpleasant duty to examine the rot at the top.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: We’re Done – American Voters Are Idiots. “I worked on my first political campaign 38 years ago and I’ve never seen anything as baffling as what I witnessed last night. Do I think we’ve got fraud problems? Yes, especially here in Arizona. What’s worse, however, is this: half of the country is brain-dead.”

THE MARGIN OF CHEATING: ‘Illegal Electioneering’ for John Fetterman, Josh Shapiro Caught on Video.

SPENCER BROWN: Republican Voters Deserve Answers and Accountability.

So where will the real answers come from, and who will face accountability? Trump is clearly not going to acknowledge any issues that may have arisen from his picks or take any blame for the outcome. Will the RNC produce a post-mortem report like it did post-2012 that pointed to areas the party felt it missed the mark? Will Tom Emmer explain what happened and why he didn’t deliver a strong GOP majority in a cycle that should have been for Republican seat-flipping, like taking candy from a baby? Will Rick Scott explain why the Senate map did not go the way polls were showing in the final weeks? Why didn’t Republican candidates meet the 52-seat majority he’d predicted a week before Election Day? Will Kevin McCarthy explain why his Gingrich-esque “Commitment to America” didn’t win over voters as he claimed it would? Why his work as House GOP Leader and as a campaigner didn’t set his party up to win a significant majority? His no-show status for hours at his election night party suggests he’s not ready to answer for what happened.

These are all questions Republican voters are owed following Tuesday’s deeply disappointing outcomes. No one believed that “Democracy is on the ballot” was a winning argument made by President Biden and Democrats — and yet that argument seemingly won out over what Republicans were pitching as their final argument. “Democracy” wasn’t even in the top issues listed by voters, who exit polls in key states showed are deeply dissatisfied with Biden’s policies. Yet the economic, national security, and law and order pitches made by Republicans didn’t lead to wins.

Read the whole thing.

NAILBITER: Arizona Leaning Blue, But Game Day Vote Drops Indicate Looming Red Upset.

THE ELECTION NIGHT DRUNKBLOG IS LIVE AND ON THE AIR, EVEN IN THE TINY REPUBLIC OF TOGO: Judgment Day, the 2022 Midterms.

(Bumped, by Glenn.)

I HOPE HE’S RIGHT TO WORRY: Poor Al Franken Is Worried That Republicans Will Investigate Biden if They Win.