THE NEW SPACE RACE: China discovers new mineral – and a possible energy source – on the Moon.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Democrats Still Don’t Know Who the Real 9/11 Terrorists Were. “We’re now sending people to Washington to make laws who are outright terrorist sympathizers. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and their idiot bartender queen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are all pro-jihad.”

COLD WAR II: China’s economy is slowing, its population aging. That could make it dangerous.

Two foreign policy scholars, Hal Brands of Johns Hopkins and Michael Beckley of Tufts, have offered a frightening thesis: China’s leaders know their power is about to diminish, and that will make them more likely to take risks in the short run — to invade Taiwan, for example.

China “is losing confidence that time is on its side,” they write in a recent book, “Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict With China.”

“China will have strong incentives to use force against its neighbors … even at risk of war with the United States,” they warn. The “moment of maximum danger,” they suggest, is this decade: the 2020s.
A chorus of other China scholars have disagreed.

First, they note, there’s no evidence that Xi or other leaders believe their power is declining; they continue to predict the rise of China and the decline of the West.

Even if China’s economy slows down, it will be growing — still the second-largest in the world.

“Countries can muddle along with a great deal of poor economic performance and still be a major force in international politics,” noted Aaron L. Friedberg of Princeton, author of “Getting China Wrong.”

Besides, Xi and other Chinese leaders have a strategy for solving their economic challenge, he argued. “They see advances in technology as the key to solving all their problems,” he told me. “That’s how they plan to achieve higher productivity and reasonably high economic growth.”

Hopefully, recent developments in Ukraine will convince Xi that jaw, jaw is much better than war, war.

HEH: Lawyers Mock Feds’ Claim That Trump Had ‘Classified Docs’ at Mar-a-Lago.

YOU DON’T SAY: United Kingdom Data Show the U.S. Public Is Badly Served by the FDA.

In the United Kingdom, people who smoke have the choice of thousands of different vaping products, flavor choices and nicotine strengths, which are greatly succeeding in tempting many away from combustible tobacco and onto consuming nicotine in a far safer manner, as the latest ASH data show.

This is because manufacturers in Britain need only notify the regulatory body which vaping products they intend to market, ensure they are free of certain harmful ingredients, and ensure they are sold only to adult smokers to help them quit.

By contrast, the FDA is preventing the United States from enjoying a “vaping revolution” similar to that of the U.K. by only authorizing a handful of vaping products made by three companies, all of them only in tobacco flavor. This is in complete disregard to governments worldwide that recognize that vaping is at least 95 percent less harmful than smoking and that there have been no reported deaths from nicotine vaping use anywhere in the world since their introduction 20 years ago.

So why is the FDA taking such an over-precautionary approach to vaping, peddling dangerous misinformation at every opportunity? This has resulted in the United States essentially forgoing the huge public health benefits enjoyed by the British population thanks to its establishment’s embrace of harm reduction when it comes to nicotine use.

Nicotine is enjoyable and mostly harmless when you don’t inhale smoke with every drag. But scolds don’t like people enjoying themselves, and the FDA is full of scolds who would apparently rather see people suffer from cigarettes than enjoy vaping.

Previously: Democrats Want to Ban Vaping Because They Want People to Die.

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

Matt Margolis: Here’s How Trump Can Protect Himself From Joe Biden’s Bogus Criminal Investigation. “Now more than ever, it looks like this will be Joe Biden’s Hail Mary effort to thwart Trump’s 2024 campaign.”

A Megan Fox podcast: Fitness Over 50 with Paula Bolyard.

Yours Truly: What Ukraine Got Right, What I Got Wrong. “I have yet to see this item confirmed by Russian sources, but if true, it’s a very big deal — a tacit admission that Putin’s gambit has failed.”

ACT NOW: A Proposal Is Set to Add ‘Gender Identity’ to Title IX. You Have Until Midnight EDT To Comment.

AND WASHINGTON STILL RAN A MULTITRILLION-DOLLAR DEFICIT: Americans Spent More on Taxes Last Year Than on Food, Health Care, Education, and Clothing Combined.

BATTLESWARM BLOG: Scenes From A Russian Rout. “Things in Ukraine are moving so fast that the only thing I can be sure of is that what I post here will probably be obsolete before I press the Publish button.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY, RUSSIA EDITION: Ukraine Strikes Multiple Targets INSIDE Russia, More Deputies Call for Putin’s Ouster.

QUESTION ASKED: Ukraine Invades Russia? “Panic by ones enemies is a thing to treasure and exploit and an invasion of Russia would definitely do that because there are even fewer trained armed units inside Russia than there are (were) in Kharkiv Oblast. So it seems highly likely that in the short term at least a marauding force could wreak havoc with little opposition.”

DON’T GET COCKY: November Is Looking Even Brighter for Georgia Republicans.

COME SEE THE ANTISEMITISM INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Teachers unions are helping anti-Semitism gain a foothold in K-12 public schools.

Efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state are now moving from higher education to K-12 public schools. Attempts to falsely label Israel an “apartheid state” and promote similar forms of defamation are being aided and abetted by teachers unions and normalized by mainstream Jewish groups.

Last year, California became the first state to pass a law mandating that public school students must complete an ethnic studies course before receiving a high school diploma. The Liberated Ethnic Studies Curriculum Consortium, which includes teachers unions, advocated on behalf of the new standards.

The Wall Street Journal reported that embedded in the Consortium’s materials are references to Israel as a “colonial settler state” founded “through genocide.” Responding to Governor Gavin Newsom’s signing of the legislation, Jewish opponents of the requirement filed a federal lawsuit challenging the new educational guidelines.

But prominent teachers unions have overwhelmed parental opposition. These organizations include the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA).

Teachers’ unions serve their own interests, not the students’.

I wonder what interest of theirs antisemitism serves.

MATT MARGOLIS: Viral Photo Raises New Questions About John Fetterman’s Health.

You should hear him give a speech.

WHEN PEOPLE SEE A STRONG HORSE AND A WEAK HORSE…: Russian referendum on annexing Ukraine oblasts on hold ‘indefinitely.’

TO BE FAIR, HE DOES THAT A LOT: Biden’s 9/11 Speech Was an Ominous Socialist Dogwhistle.

PRIORITIES: Pentagon Tells Struggling Army Soldiers, Families To Apply For Food Stamps. “Eaglen said the Pentagon received more federal funding from Congress than it had requested, but ignored inflation concerns and short-changed the men and women who serve.”

LET THE HEALING BEGIN: On September 11, Kamala Harris Likens Trump Supporters to the 9/11 Terrorists.

WELCOME BACK, CARTER: U.S. Economic Freedom Index Collapses to Carter Administration Levels.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Credit Card Companies Go Full Commie With the Gun Grabbers. “The Democrats in charge want your guns. Never doubt that.”

HMM: Russia is facing defeat in Putin’s gas war against the European Union.

A week after Russian energy giant Gazprom suspended gas exports to Germany via Nord Stream 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened on September 7 to cut remaining supplies and leave “the West to freeze” if it attempted to cap oil and gas prices. Such statements would have thrown markets into a spin and created political panic only a few months ago but that is now no longer the case. Instead, there are signs Putin may have overplayed his hand and could be about to lose his gas war against Europe.

For more than a year, Gazprom has kept European energy markets on tenterhooks. The Russian company reduced this year’s overall gas supplies to Europe by 40% compared to 2021, limiting exports to major buyers or completely suspending deliveries to companies or countries that refused to yield to political pressure. The tactic has pushed European gas prices to all-time highs, soaring ten times above the five-year average as companies and governments scrambled to find immediate solutions and avert an energy crisis of unprecedented proportions with winter looming.

However, Europe appears to be adjusting to Russia’s tactics. Although prices remain very volatile and well above the averages witnessed in recent years, they have already dropped more than 40% since reaching record highs at the start of September. Meanwhile, there are growing indications that markets are finding solutions to the new circumstances, inspiring cautious optimism that the coming winter season may not be as bleak as many in Europe initially feared.

I’m not buying this until we see what happens once the temperatures drop.

Regardless of how it turns out, the Germans were fools to shutter their nuclear plants — and even bigger fools for refusing to start them back up.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Achtung, Baby! Your Historical Proof the Democrats Are Using the Nazi Playbook. “I’ll get into the timeline in a moment, but let’s peep at some other similarities that are crucial to what’s going on — and what could happen — based on the Democrats’ increasing dedication to their Nazi-riffic leanings.”

JOHN TAMNY: The Myth That Mikhail Gorbachev ‘Ended the Cold War.’

All of this and more came to mind while reading the various obituaries and commentary on Mikhail Gorbachev, who died last week. Almost without fail the remembrances of Gorbachev indicated that he “ended the Cold War.” What a laugh. Gorbachev did no such thing.

As George Will put it in his own commentary, commentary that near uniquely didn’t embrace the Gorbachev hagiography, the man who oversaw the dismantling of the Soviet Union didn’t want to. Gorbachev very much believed in this intensely cruel, freedom suffocating, historically murderous nation, and wanted it to survive. Which is a reminder that Gorbachev didn’t “end the Cold War” as boldfaced thinkers like Maureen Dowd strangely asserted as much as reality intruded on Gorbachev’s anti-human, and rather naïve understanding of humanity. Really, imagine wanting to maintain such a failed country defined by what Hedrick Smith described in The Russians as “lines for everything.”

With Reagan, it wasn’t about whether the Soviet Union would survive. Reagan knew it would not.

Read the whole thing.

PAY CASH: Credit Card Companies Will Now Categorize Gun Store Sales Separately.

MATT MARGOLIS: 9/11 and Biden’s Destruction of America’s Soul. “America no longer stands united. We are two different countries repeatedly proving we can’t coexist peacefully.”