Wuhan’s latest disaster, cop critics’ crime hypocrisy and other commentary

China beat: Wuhan’s Latest Disaster

“All the troubles in the world apparently lead back to Wuhan,” muses National Review’s Jim Geraghty. The city that kicked off the COVID-19 pandemic “upending life for a year or two” and causing “27 million or so ‘excess deaths’ around the world” is now the site of a potential nuclear disaster: A Chinese attack submarine reportedly sank to the bottom of the Yangtze River last spring, but Beijing covered this up, too. And this follows a little-reported incident when Wuhan University researchers allowed an AI “to control an Earth-observation satellite, which led the satellite to start looking at Indian military bases and a Japanese port used by the U.S. Navy.” Huh! “What other kinds of experiments are they doing over there in Wuhan these days?” “Summoning demons” or “reaching out to say ‘hi’ to some hostile alien empire in outer space?” Suffice it to say, you’d be forgiven for not wanting to see Wuhan make headlines anytime soon.

Eye on NYC: Cop Critics’ Crime Hypocrisy

Mayoral wannabes Comptroller Brad Lander, state Sen. Jessica Ramos and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani have criticized NYPD officers who “fired on an agitated man armed with a knife after repeatedly warning him to drop his weapon” on Sept. 15, but “their thoughts are empty and unserious,” fumes Nicole Gelinas at City Journal. “To be sure, this episode is in need of some after-action scrutiny,” as two bystanders were injured. But the suspect, Derrell Mickles, had “a long arrest record.” “New York’s progressive criminal-justice system, the product of the policies supported by Lander and others over the past half-decade, had multiple opportunities to incapacitate Mickles” before the incident. “Shouldn’t the mayor’s challengers wonder what went wrong with the policies they support,” since “not incarcerating Mickles failed to deter him from the actions that led him to be shot?”

Campus watch: Yale’s ‘False Equivalencies’

Yale University will commemorate Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre “in familiar fashion,” thunder students Netanel Crispe & Sahar Tarak at The Wall Street Journal — with a vigil for “all Israeli and Palestinian lives lost” over the past year. That aligns with Yale’s “track record” on antisemitism: consistently addressing “calls for Jewish death by condemning both ‘antisemitism and Islamophobia’ ” and “drawing false equivalencies” between them. “Yale either doesn’t understand or chooses to ignore that prejudice against Muslim students on campus doesn’t compare to the repeated instances of blood libel and calls for genocide against Jews.” The vigil “dishonors Oct. 7’s victims by equating Israel’s self-defense with Hamas’s horrific massacre.” Will Yale commemorate “the Holocaust at a shared vigil for Nazi lives lost in World War II”?

Libertarian: Budget-Balancing Gets Tougher

The Senate just rejected Sen. Rand Paul’s bill “to balance the federal budget by trimming a few pennies from every dollar that the government spends,” reports Reason’s Eric Boehm. Hmm: “Paul’s ‘Six-Penny Plan’ would balance the budget within five years.” Back in 2018, it was “the ‘Penny Plan” as “Paul was asking for a $400 billion cut in government spending followed by 1 percent annual increases.” But this year Uncle Sam “will spend well over $6 trillion” borrowing “nearly $2 trillion in the fiscal year that ends later this month.” So the national debt is “more than $12 trillion higher” than in 2018. “Fixing that mess is no longer possible by cutting a penny or two or three. It now requires six.”

From the right: Harris Plan = More Bidenomics

“The details” of Kamala Harris’ new economic plan show “she’s offering the same policies as Mr. Biden, only more so,” argue The Wall Street Journal’s editors. She “endorses the $5 trillion in tax hikes” in his budget, but adds “new and bigger entitlements,” including “more transfer payments,” “housing subsidies” and “student loan forgiveness.” Don’t forget “sweetened ObamaCare subsidies,” “more union gifts” and “more subsidies for solar panels and EVs.” So: “ If you loved Bidenomics, she’s your candidate.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board