KAROL MARKOWICZ: Ms Rachel said, ‘I am political.’ Parents should take her at her word.

Wearing a pink headband and talking in a sing-songy voice, Ms. Rachel’s “Songs for Littles” is a phenomenon among toddlers. She’s the new Mr. Rogers, according to some, a safe place to park your children while you do the dishes or laundry.

The reality is that Rachel Griffin Accurso, who plays the character of Ms. Rachel, should not be trusted with your kids.

She’s become a prominent anti-Israel activist, but that’s just one part of her overall political messaging. If you’re letting your child watch Ms. Rachel because her anti-Israel comments don’t bother you, it’s important to understand that those comments are part of a larger grouping of far-left opinions.

Don’t let her near your kids or grandkids.

WOEING: Boeing’s Starliner won’t launch astronauts until 2028 (and may need a new rocket), NASA says.

If all goes according to plan, Starliner will conduct an uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) this coming December or January, then carry astronauts up sometime in 2028, NASA announced in an update today (Sept. 28).

It’s a vote of confidence for a vehicle that has experienced some serious setbacks on its three test flights to date.

Except that Starliner was supposed to start delivering astronauts to ISS in 2017, when the space station still had a 13 years left of service life. It didn’t manage to do that until 2022 — and I’m sure you remember how badly that went — and now it won’t again until maybe 2028, just two years before ISS is scheduled to be de-orbited.

ROGER SIMON: Elon Musk and Why the Midterms Don’t Matter. (Or don’t matter much.)

Okay, I admit my headline is overstated, but not excessively.. The midterms are important, though they are not nearly as significant as many more important things occurring simultaneously on this planet. In fact, they may be what’s been called “small beer” in the end.

In this era of rocketing rocket development, not to mention myriad other forms of advancing technology, politicians have been superseded as the real difference makers. We are now in the hands of the techno elite, and no one fits that definition in a positive way better than Elon Musk.

AI is integral to this, and there are other names (Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Sam Altman of ChatGPT, both tarnished by being funded by the incarcerated Sam Bankman-Fried), but Musk is the best of the lot because beyond promulgating AI through Grok (and putting it in his cars), he actually manufactures things, an extraordinary amount of amazing things, while employing and expanding the new technology.

If one were to write a history of the most significant person of this century thus far, it would be Musk by a landslide.

Just today (Sep 28), his SpaceX successfully launched Starship for its first orbital mission. Starship happens to be the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built by humans. According to AP, it “carried 26 of the latest and most advanced [of Musk’s] Starlink satellites to join the 11,000 older models already providing internet service. They popped out of the spacecraft one by one, drawing more cheers from the SpaceX crowds looking on from the launch site at Starbase, Texas.”

Today’s launch was deliberately crashed by the flight crew after three hours as a precaution and we will not get to see one of those spectacular grabbings by giant pincers of this behemoth spacecraft. Maybe next time. It marked, however, what has been called a generational leap in satellite technology through SpaceX’s unique “Pez-style” dispenser.

In collaboration with NASA, Musk is clearly setting the pace, actually outpacing nation-states in space travel for our species, arguably the future of humanity. At the same time, his Starlink internet connection may be the most potent instrument for finally inspiring a revolution against the brutally sadistic Iranian theocrats—or so I am told by someone inside that country with whom I am in clandestine contact while researching the EMET sequel.

Related:

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Newsom signs law easing rules requiring students to learn English, change will impact 1 million. “They furthermore said too many students classified as English learners were held back months or even years after mastering the language. Under the new law, students will have to pass only one state-approved English assessment to show they are proficient, the newspaper also reports.”

You’d have to trust Sacramento’s figures to put any stock in that.

I look at the new law as just more sand in the gears of America’s once-might assimilation machine.

THIS IS SOME OF THE WORST REPORTING I’VE SEEN DURING DECADES OF BAD REPORTING:

The legacy media deserves nothing but contempt.

UGH: A Horrific Find in Mexico’s Mass Graves. “Given that the number of clandestine graves found in Mexico is also on the rise, it’s entirely possible that the number is much higher. The Mexican government likes to downplay this topic, but a United Nations committee on enforced disappearances has estimated that more than 4,500 graves have been found, containing over 6,200 bodies and 4,600 human remains, in addition to some 72,000 unidentified human remains. Other human rights organizations have cited similar numbers.”

FACT: The math at the pump: Before you blame Trump, follow the damn barrel.

What I reject is the lazy explanation that says, “There’s a war in Iran, therefore gas is expensive.” That is like explaining a hamburger’s price by showing me the cost of a cow while ignoring the slaughterhouse, trucking company, restaurant, taxes, labor, and the gentleman behind the counter who apparently believes adding bacon now requires financing.

Crude is the raw material, not the finished product. EIA breaks gasoline prices into crude-oil costs, refining costs and profits, taxes, and distribution and marketing. Showing only a crude-oil chart is showing one chapter of the book and pretending you’ve read the ending.

Refining is especially important because EIA reported in September that elevated crude prices and elevated crack spreads are contributing to higher pump prices. Crack spreads measure the difference between the value of refined products and the crude used to produce them. When those spreads become unusually large, refining becomes a much bigger part of what motorists pay.

You can’t fill’er up with gas nobody was able to refine.

GOOD TIMES:

Anyone else having flashbacks to when the media helped sell the 1992 economy as the worst since the Great Depression?

VICTORIA TAFT: Want to Kill Christianity in America? Try This One Simple Trick the State of Maine Pulled. “While mom was adjudicated to be a good mother, dad was working behind the scenes to establish that taking their daughter to church was harmful. He hired a cult expert out of California, and the expert began watching Calvary Chapel of Greater Portland’s Sunday sermons as they build a case against Ava attending church.”

I VOTED FOR THIS: Once Recession-Proof, D.C. Feels the Pain From Federal Workforce Reductions. “Downsizing of the federal workforce concentrated in the DMV area—the District of Columbia and parts of Maryland and Virginia—has hit many residents hard, and some are considering leaving or have already done so. While it’s not nice to wish troubles on anybody, there’s nothing wrong with introducing government employees to the same risks and uncertainty that participants in the private sector face every day.”

To say the very least.

GOOD NEWS:

ANACONDA STRATEGY UPDATE:

HENCE THE BLACK-PILL MOBYING ONLINE TO SUPPRESS THE VOTE:

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: AOC May Have Greatly Overestimated Her Political Shelf Life. “Ocasio-Cortez has to be struggling with the knowledge that she might not be the prettiest mean girl in the Dem commie clown car. She’s pretty much just been able to giggle her way through everything since she got to Congress. Now she wants to be a grown-up and there are candidates out there who need more from her than the ability to make unserious Instagram content.”