Democrats fret as longshot candidates pull money, attention . . . Longshot challengers to Democrats’ most reviled Republican foes are starting to be seen as threats by some in their own party who fear they are distracting from midterm efforts to protect the majority. Just over a year out from what will be a referendum on President Biden’s first two years in office, Democratic strategists are expressing frustration that a handful of candidates looking to oust some of the GOP’s most high-profile incumbents – Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) among them – in deep red areas are using valuable resources that could otherwise be used to strengthen the party’s hand in more competitive races. The Hill

 

 

Trump calls into Take Back Virginia Rally to hype Youngkin . . . Former President Trump called into the "Take Back Virginia Rally" on Wednesday ahead of the state's gubernatorial and House of Delegates elections next month, praising GOP nominee Glenn Youngkin.  "Glenn Youngkin is a great gentleman. Really successful, he loves this state, we gotta get him in," Trump told rally goers before calling Democratic nominee and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe "a lousy governor." Youngkin was never slated to attend the rally, which was hosted by Virginia-based conservative talk show host John Fredericks in Glen Allen, Va. The event featured other well-known GOP figures in the state, including lieutenant governor nominee Winsome Sears and state Sen. Amanda Chase (R). The Hill

Chinese military seeks to dominate from space, deploys war-fighting tools into orbit . . . China’s People’s Liberation Army is building and deploying an array of space warfare tools, including anti-satellite missiles and cyberweapons, which will be used to dominate Earth by controlling space, according to an Air Force report. The report by the China Aerospace Studies Institute, part of the Air University, also blames China for spreading a huge amount of space debris, mainly from a 2007 anti-satellite missile test. The ASAT test destroyed a weather satellite and left more than 3,400 pieces of floating space junk that will threaten satellites and manned spacecraft for years.
“China’s military has designated outer space as a warfighting domain — described as a ‘new commanding height of war’ — that China must fight for and seize if it is to win future wars,” the report stated. “People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officers and analysts assert that space is the ultimate high ground, and that whoever controls space controls the Earth.” Washington Times

 

Why Is Taiwan a Focal Point in U.S.-China Tensions? . . . 
Strategically and economically, the island is crucial to the ambitions of both. Discord between the world’s two superpowers increasingly revolves around Taiwan, a self-ruled island of 24 million people roughly 100 miles off China’s southeastern coast. Communist Party leaders in Beijing see Taiwan as a part of China and have vowed to take control of it, by force if necessary. The U.S. views Taiwan as a bulwark of democracy and strategic buffer against China’s ambitions in the region. Here’s a quick look at the friction between Beijing and Washington over the island, the history behind it and what it could mean for the future of the Asia-Pacific region.

China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, has been sending aircraft on sorties around Taiwan since September 2020. The number of flights exploded the first week in October, when the PLA sent 150 fighters, bombers and spy planes into the island’s air-defense identification zone. China says the flights are intended as a warning to supporters of Taiwanese independence. At the time of the October blitz, two U.S. carrier strike groups were conducting joint exercises off the coast of Okinawa, not far from Taiwan, with ships from the U.K., Japan and other allies. Wall Street Journal

 

Russia Shows Its Growing Sway Over Global Energy Markets . . . The natural gas shortage that drove prices to records in Europe has exposed Russia’s rising leverage over global energy markets, with Moscow now playing a key role in everything from OPEC negotiations to coal exports to China. Russia, the world’s largest exporter of gas and the source of more than a third of Europe’s gas, has emerged as a critical supplier with the power to quickly alleviate the continent’s gas deficit. Western officials accuse the Kremlin of trying to score geopolitical points by withholding extra supplies, a charge Moscow denies. Moscow instead says it is the troubleshooter in volatile global energy markets. It denies it is exploiting its huge energy reserves for political gain. Moscow’s leverage was on display last week when gas prices dropped suddenly following comments by President Vladimir Putin that Russia would help stabilize the energy market. Wall Street Journal

 

Putin says relations with Biden 'working and stable' . . . Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that the Kremlin has "constructive" relations with Washington and voiced hope that mutual interests would eventually help normalize U.S.-Russia ties. Putin, speaking during a panel discussion at an international energy conference in Moscow, also said that Russia stands ready to boost natural gas supplies to help assuage nervous energy markets in Europe, insisting that his country wants prices to remain stable. He angrily rejected the allegations from some European experts and politicians that Russia has been holding up gas deliveries and causing energy prices to spike as "baseless political chatter," noting that Russian gas supplies have risen 15% over the year and are set to reach another record. Fox Business

 

Britain has become the capital of bank fraud . . . An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain, where you're more likely to be a victim of online fraud than any other crime. The country is the global epicentre for such attacks, according to five of the biggest British banks and more than a dozen security experts who said scammers were buying up batches of consumers' personal details on the dark net to target the record numbers shopping and banking online since the pandemic.  The country's super-fast payments infrastructure, relatively light policing of fraud-related crime, plus its use of the world's most widely used language English, also made it an ideal global test bed for scams, the banks and specialists added. A British record of 754 million pounds ($1 billion)was stolen in the first six months of this year, up 30% from the same period in 2020, according to data from banking industry body UK Finance, and up more than 60% from 2017, when it began compiling the figures. Reuters

 

Huge Social Security cost-of-living increase could accelerate trust's depletion . . . Social Security recipients in 2022 are in line to receive the big payment increase in nearly four decades, reflecting a pandemic-drive inflation surge – but the boost could ultimately deplete the fund a year earlier than expected.  The Social Security Administration said Wednesday that next year's cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, will be 5.9%. That amounts to a monthly increase of $92 for the average retired Wednesday, bringing the amount to $1,657, the administration said. A typical couple's benefits would climb by $154 to $2,754 per month.   But the increase – the steepest annual adjustment since 1982, when recipients saw a 7.4% bump – could push Social Security closer toward insolvency. This comes as the national debt hovers at $28 trillion and the deficit sits at $3 trillion, per the CBO, for fiscal 2021. Fox Business

 

Babbitt shooting internal police docs reveal 'no good reason for shooting,' according to Judicial Watch . . . More than 500 pages of internal documents from DC Metropolitan Police concerning the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt in the Capitol on Jan. 6 reveal witness accounts stating she was not holding a weapon at the time of her death and how "upset" the officer was after shooting her. 
"These previously secret records show there was no good reason to shoot and kill Ashli Babbitt," stated Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which obtained the documents through a May 2021 FOIA lawsuit. Fox News

 

Daily Wire launches conservative book publishing imprint . . . A publishing division started by the conservative media company the Daily Wire will include releases by Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, former “Mandalorian” actor Gina Carano, and a book by one of the officers involved in the Breonna Taylor shooting that was dropped by its original distributor. DW Books will officially launch next spring, the Nashville-based Daily Wire announced Wednesday. The new publishing arm continues a trend of conservatives setting up channels outside of the New York houses, which in the wake of the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump supporters have become increasingly reluctant to take on authors - including Trump - seen as promoting extremist views. Washington Times

 

 

US sending hashtags to Taiwan to fend off Chinese invasion . . . China has made over 140 sorties with combat aircraft near Taiwan's airspace in a four-day period. The act of provocation was met swiftly and decisively by our Defense and State Departments. At a White House press conference, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned, "First, we are going to vet all of our senior officers to assure that none of them have made any racially motivated jokes about Asians since kindergarten. If anything inappropriate is found out, they will be relieved of command immediately. We want the world to know that we will not tolerate extremism.

 

Secondly, we are going to demand that the People's Liberation Army use gender appropriate pronouns throughout all their ranks. Let Beijing be warned not to take us lightly on this. We have #respectallgenders hashtags ready to deploy in both English and Mandarin, and we're not afraid to use them." Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, followed with equally stern warnings: "We are in a stare-down with the Chinese military, and we're not going to blink. As we speak, military transport aircraft are en-route to Taiwan with #pleasedontbombus and #gunfreezone hashtags. These too are written in both English and Mandarin and make our message clear to allies and potential foes alike." Peoples' Cube