CHUTZPAH:

Frighten Finland into joining NATO by invading another neighbor, demand lands you haven’t managed to conquer after almost five years, and also that Finland leave NATO.

RIP: A Celebration of Life for Colorado’s Grand Old Party.

You may deny that the GOP has passed on. Trust your eyes.

Democrats will now occupy a greater share of the Colorado House than Democrats do in the California Assembly. In Colorado’s House, they have a super-duper majority, owning more than 75% of the seats.

Since voters elected Dick Lamm in 1974, Colorado has elected only one Republican governor: Bill Owens, who served for eight years. Nearly half-a-century of Democratic governors, who choose judges, has also produced a judiciary shaped by Democrats.

Democrats have held the state House continuously since 2012 and the Senate since 2018. And now only a very lonely Jeff Hurd will be Colorado’s sole Republican in Washington.

Finally, Republican voter registration has plummeted to roughly 22%. Unaffiliated voters make up 51% — and their ranks are growing. At this rate, it will not be long before the Libertarian Party eclipses the Republicans.

I thought I’d die in Colorado, but now I’m dying to leave.

KRUISER: My Balkanization Plans Are Much Clearer After Last Week. “The reality is that I love where I’m at, commie though the politics be. I was born in the Sonoran Desert, but I spent a lot of years away. When I moved back here in 2018 I realized just how much I missed dirt, heat, and reptiles that can kill me. I’m not in the mood to leave just yet.”

WHAT A DISSERVICE TO THEIR KIDS: Parents demand perfect report cards.

Parents are lawyering up to challenge a bad grade — or a teacher’s unflattering comment — on their child’s report card, reports Zusha Elinson in the Wall Street Journal.

In affluent Palo Alto, my daughter’s old district, one mother is suing because her third-grader’s report card said he needs to work on “cooperating with others.”

A Palo Alto father filed suit after AI-detection software flagged his 10th-grade son’s essay on The Crucible as “76% AI,” writes Elinson. The teacher “gave him a D on the retake, bringing his final grade down to a C.”

Takashi Kato, a Silicon Valley CEO, submitted a 1,162-page packet showing the sophomore’s “drafting and revision process,” and claimed detection software can be biased against non-native English writers. “He offered to accept a B to resolve the dispute,” writes Elinson. He dropped the suit in September. The district says there was no settlement.

Tried sitting down with your kids to help with the homework? Hiring a tutor?

“RINO” DIDN’T COME OUT OF THIN AIR:

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Idaho Election Officials Find 2,675 Ballots Left Out of Results. “The ballots, representing a portion of early voting, had been tabulated by election machines but were not included in the county’s publicly reported results. The discrepancy was discovered during the county’s review ahead of its official canvas.”

This should never happen.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Sen. Slotkin’s ‘deterrence message’ backfires as UChicago student demands Senate ethics investigation. “A University of Chicago student who exposed remarks by Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., about deterring young conservatives from working in the administration of President Donald Trump told Campus Reform in an interview that her warning has only motivated students to stand up for their political beliefs. Michael Bicksel, a second-year student and senior editor of The Chicago Thinker, has since filed a formal Senate ethics complaint against the Michigan Democrat for threatening political persecution against young Americans interested in serving in a Republican administration.”

WELL, GOOD: ULA’s Vulcan set to return to flight with first Amazon Leo payload. “A Vulcan VC6L, the most powerful configuration of the Vulcan rocket with six solid rocket boosters, an extended payload fairing, and a low-Earth orbit-optimized Centaur V upper stage, is scheduled to fly the Amazon Leo LV-01 mission. Launch is set for Friday, Nov. 13, at 12:54 PM EST (17:54 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The launch window lasts half an hour and closes at 1:24 PM EST (18:24 UTC). Launch weather is currently 90% favorable.”

WHILE CHINA PLAYS TO WIN, POPULIST AMERICAN POLITICIANS PLAY TO VOTERS’ WORST INSTINCTS:

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: What’s One More? Maybe We Can Give Thune to The Democrats. “Thune hit Fox News for an interview with Brett Baier and, once again, he didn’t sound terribly upset about the election. He is also remarkably bad at making excuses. Given how long he’s been in office, one would expect him to be much better.”

HMM: I’m sure it’s a coincidence that Howard Lutnick’s sons have $362 million in Nvidia.

In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent President Donald Trump and top Cabinet members a classified memorandum detailing the relationship between the Huangs and the intelligence indicating that Alice Huang was a Chinese spy. The White House directed the Commerce Department to put Alice Huang’s Megaspeed on the entity list of companies that pose national security concerns. Lutnick refused this request in May; he refused a second attempted crackdown order from Trump in August; and on Nov. 5, Lutnick reportedly stonewalled Trump again. And evidently, this wasn’t because Lutnick knew too little. Rather, the Commerce Department spent months last year conducting an investigation into Megaspeed and specifically whether it was illicitly smuggling Nvidia chips into China, only for Lutnick’s direct underling, Jeff Kessler, to invite Nvidia to reach out to Commerce about the case, bringing the department’s inquiry to an effective end.

I am sure it is just a coincidence that Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm that Lutnick led for 35 years before passing it off to his 20-something-year-old sons Brandon and Kyle, has a $362.3 million stake in Nvidia, which makes up 7% of Cantor’s entire portfolio.

Full details at the link, but here’s the important part that came out earlier this week: Lutnick stalled Trump’s Nvidia–China chip curbs after Oval talks.

WELL, THIS TAKE IS NOT ONLY FUNNY, IT’S CONSISTENT WITH THE COVERAGE: