I THINK SO. Could Trump win 20% of the black vote in 2020?

Blacks aren't as stupid as Democrats would like them to be.

YES, LET'S OPEN PANDORA'S BOX. For every elected official.

IT'S PAST TIME to quit lying about immigration.

MAYBE THEY'RE TOO BUSY ACTUALLY PLAYING FOOTBALL? Amy Schumer wonders whether white NFL players who don't kneel are complicit in racism.

MORE: Amy Schumer won’t appear in any Super Bowl ads in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. Er, did anyone ask her to appear in any?

THERE'S THAT DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD THINGY AGAIN: Conservatives are using identity politics to destroy liberalism from within.

Please, please don't tell them that swords have two edges....

NIMBY ALERT: Californians love the homeless - just not around their homes.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN, the New York Times columnist, doubles down on magical thinking.

Magical thinking is a Democrat specialty. It's also easy in the fantasy world in which they live....

AUTUMN LEAVES, INSTALLMENT VI: Today was a mostly rainy day, and the photos show it. Let's begin with the usual view from the deck:

The haze and high humidity from the earlier rains make this one a little less appealing that last week's photo, but the striking part is that the leaves are far fewer this week. Autumn struck with a vengeance mid-week.

Again, the chief difference is far fewer leaves than last week. It seemed like leaves were falling off green and hitting the ground brown.

The house view from down the pond path is the only one that doesn't seem dramatically different from last week, yet the house is clearly becoming more visible.

The tree line above the pond is clearly thinner, and the color changes are evident. Our neighbor's house is almost coming visible. By next week I expect it will, at least in part.

Here's the 'normal view' of the pond. Note the stair is clearly visible running up the hill (the cats use the stair rail as their highway to and from the pond) and the house roof is beginning to show behind the trees.

Last week's pictures are here.

AMERICA'S GHOST LEGIONS: idle men.

[T]his is a serious moral issue.... It is bizarre that the hardest-working country in the world should harbor a huge pool of able men whose lives are slowly being destroyed through idleness.

Here's the nut graf:

The death of work has ushered in additional costs at the personal and social levels that may be difficult to quantify but are easy to describe. These include the corrosive effects of prolonged idleness on personality and behavior, the loss of self-esteem and the respect of others that may attend a man’s voluntary loss of economic independence, and the loss of meaning and fulfillment that work demonstrably brings to so many (though admittedly not all) people. Thus, the great male flight from work may well have increased our nation’s burden of misery in an incalculable but nonetheless immediate manner. Should this come as a surprise? Hardly. The surprise would be if a social emasculation on this scale had increased the happiness of those concerned.

And that, my friends, is the Democrats' plan: government cheese.

It's not too late: VOTE!

ANOTHER INSANE DEMOCRAT IDIOT SELF-IDENTIFIES: Jared Kushner put Jamal Khashoggi on a hit list for the Saudis.

And I used to be proud to be a (now former) Texan....

POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures 0.098% (1/1024) Victim Edition has published. My favorite is the photo gallery ...

... but there are so many others to choose from. Go see them all.