OpenAI and Microsoft (MSFT)’s multibillion-dollar partnership is one of the most significant and envied in A.I. But, despite its mutually beneficial rewards, the relationship between the two tech players has been occasionally strained by the rapid pace of A.I.’s development, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. “I will not pretend there are no misalignments or challenges, obviously there are some,” conceded Altman yesterday (Dec. 4) during The New York Times’ Dealbook Summit, where he also...

Dec 5 (Reuters) - California Governor Gavin Newsom stressed the importance of trade with Mexico and immigrant labor at a press conference near the border on Thursday, striking a contrast with President-elect Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs and mass deportations. Newsom, a Democrat, portrayed the Republican president-elect’s planned 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada as a tax on Americans who could see increased prices if the plan moves forward when Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump...

Technology entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy held initial talks with key Republicans in Congress on Thursday about the “Department of Government Efficiency,” the group they are heading up at the direction of President-elect Donald Trump, honing plans to shrink federal employment rolls and challenge the constitutional limits of Trump’s ability to control spending.

We’re going to get character assassinations and sex scandals concerning Donald Trump’s presidential appointees, and sanctimonious chin-wagging from “thoughtful” and “prudent” members of the Senate GOP caucus as they simp for the discredited Propaganda Press and their pals at the Democrat National Committee. What we’re really getting is the Old Game for Christmas. And the American people have had it with the Old Game. It started with Matt Gaetz, the original nominee for attorney general in the new Trump administration. Gaetz didn’t last long when it became very obvious that he wasn’t going to be able to gather up a requisite consensus among the Republicans in the Senate to get to the 50 votes that would allow incoming Vice President JD Vance to push his confirmation over the top, so he ejected. When Gaetz did, the president-elect replaced him with former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose stature and background are unimpeachable enough to take her confirmation out of the realm of controversy. Bondi’s main negative was, as Jack Cashill noted here at The American Spectator a few days back, her mishandling of the Trayvon Martin–George Zimmerman case a dozen years ago. But naturally, none of the establishment Washington Generals in the Senate GOP caucus will ding her for that. Instead, it’s going to be others who are bearing the brunt of the current Old Game media assault. And these utterly talentless cloakroom lounge lizards Republican voters have saddled ourselves with, who still don’t know what time it is in America, have so far made it pretty clear that they aren’t on our side. They’re still on the side of the Old Game. Pete Hegseth and Joni Ernst You’re aware that Ernst, Iowa’s junior senator, has very little room to talk about the personal behavior of anyone else, correct? From 2019… U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, who said Wednesday she was forced into talking about her private pain once her divorce documents were made public, adamantly denied her ex-husband’s accusation that she had an affair. “That is not accurate and I was a company commander overseas and took that job very, very seriously,” Ernst said of allegations by her ex-husband that she had an affair with a subordinate while serving in the military. The senator on Wednesday answered a range of personal questions from reporters about her recent divorce. In the divorce documents, she said that her ex-husband physically assaulted her. She called herself “a survivor” and said that while it is difficult for her to talk about her own experience, she will continue supporting survivors of abuse. “What I want people to understand is that I am the same person as I was last week. You just know more about what’s inside of me now,” she said, getting choked up. Joni Ernst denies her ex-husband’s allegations that she cheated on him with a soldier under her command. And maybe she’s telling the truth. Similarly, Pete Hegseth denies the allegations that are now coming out of the woodwork about him — and that have been put on display by the disgusting sludge-blob that is the legacy corporate media. The most emblematic of those comes from NBC News, which presented a story earlier this week claiming that some 10 current and former Fox News employees have come forth to describe Pete Hegseth as a drunkard on set during the network’s morning show that he’s hosted for the last several years. Not a single one of those accusers, seven of whom apparently no longer work at Fox News, have the courage of their convictions enough to go on the record with their allegations. Meanwhile, multiple Fox News personalities who have worked directly with Hegseth have denounced the allegations as trash, or something else. (READ MORE: Hegseth’s On-Record Defenders Crush Baseless Drinking Claims by Nameless Sources) This was in the wake of a media firestorm about a supposed sexual assault Hegseth committed against a woman who it turned out had sex with him in a Monterrey, California hotel room while her husband and children slept in another room at the same hotel. He was between wives at the time; she was obviously attempting to escape the consequences of her adultery. The police didn’t believe her and no charges were brought. The point is that Ernst probably ought to be sympathetic to Hegseth’s plight of having to fend off a blizzard of allegations about his personal life which are awfully tired and not particularly relevant to the job he’s been nominated for. She claimed to be a victim of the Old Game five years ago, so why is she playing it now? The public keeps telling the media and political class that we’ve had it with the usual dragging people through the mud of their private sins. They refuse to listen and then they wonder why they’re held in such low regard. The Old Game is a loser’s game now. People are sick of it. But Joni Ernst is nonetheless saying she hasn’t been convinced to support Pete Hegseth even after a meeting the two had on Wednesday. Republican U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, a combat veteran and sexual assault survivor, said on Thursday she is not yet ready to back Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense, dimming the confirmation hopes of President-elect Donald Trump’s embattled nominee. Ernst, a senior Armed Services Committee member, said she had not yet gotten to “yes” on the nomination and wanted more investigation of allegations against him, after a lengthy discussion with Hegseth during their meeting on Wednesday. “I think you are right,” Ernst said in an interview on Fox News, when asked whether she had got to “yes” yet. “I think for a number of our senators, they want to make sure that any allegations have been cleared. And that’s why we have to have a very thorough vetting process.” Considering that Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski actually voted four years ago to confirm an open transvestite responsible for killing thousands of senior citizens by introducing COVID-infected patients into their nursing homes, we really shouldn’t be in the mood to see these people talking about a “very thorough vetting process” for Trump’s appointees — which, naturally, Collins and Murkowski are now fully on board with. The “very thorough vetting process” apparently includes Joni Ernst hounding Donald Trump about getting the job of secretary of defense herself… Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, has been leading an “aggressive” personal jihad against Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, multiple sources within Trump world with direct knowledge of her outreach to Trump told The Federalist on Wednesday. Ernst’s efforts included personal calls to Trump to urge him to dump Hegseth ahead of her meeting with the Army veteran on Wednesday afternoon. Ernst did not tell Hegseth during her meeting with him about her efforts to derail his nomination, sources told The Federalist. “She’s waging a campaign to replace Pete with herself,” a Trump source familiar with her phone calls with Trump said… Sources told The Federalist that Ernst began calling Trump within the last two days threatening to get all the female senators to vote against Hegseth if the president-elect didn’t pull his nomination. When asked when exactly Ernst called Trump this week to deliver her anti-Hegseth ultimatum, a source in Trump world sighed and said, “It wasn’t just one time.” “She’s constantly calling and nagging him,” the source said. Ernst is not working alone in her efforts to tank Hegseth’s nomination, however. Another source added that the Republican senator dispatched Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., over the weekend to nag Trump to ditch Hegseth and replace him by nominating Ernst. Graham gave credence to the slanderous allegations against Hegseth on Tuesday, telling CBS News he finds the allegations “very disturbing.” “I think some of these articles are very disturbing. He obviously has a chance to defend himself here, but some of this stuff is going to be difficult,” Graham said. “Some of the things have to be addressed, and we’ll see.” Ernst’s people later told The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood that reports of her attempting to replace Hegseth as Defense Secretary are “just more Washington whispers.” Yeah, OK. This is the Old Game. People are very, very tired of the Old Game. How come Joni Ernst wasn’t willing to play the Old Game four years ago? She was awfully docile when the most disastrous secretary of defense since Bob McNamara came through his confirmation process. Ernst had no problem confirming Lloyd Austin… Senator Joni Ernst (R) voted to confirm Lloyd Austin for Secretary of Defense who turned our military into a woke laughingstock but is refusing to say if she will confirm Pete Hegseth. So she supports all this trash but doesn’t support a strong Conservative who will strengthen… pic.twitter.com/F2nKpoIQy6 — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 5, 2024 And it appears that when 2026 rolls around there will be repercussions of the Old Game. This morning Iowa Senator, Joni Ernst, made the horrible mistake of still refusing to confirm support of Pete Hegseth’s nomination. Since then we’ve discovered she: -Voted to confirm Lloyd Austin for Secretary of Defense (responsible for the horrific Afghanistan withdrawal,… pic.twitter.com/JDFqPBzd23 — Savanah Hernandez (@sav_says_) December 5, 2024 The days of the Stupid Party Republicans playing petty Old Game Beltway politics are over. Joni Ernst and Lindsey Graham appear too slow to understand this. The American people have spoken and continue to speak. Trump’s transition team has an approval rating of around 60 percent in recent polls; these people can’t claim anything close. Probably because most of us know how much they hate us. Wake up, Joni. Nobody gave you a mandate. They gave Trump one, and it was to drain the Swamp. Hegseth, for whatever dirt might be on him, is committed to doing that at the Pentagon, and the reason you aren’t going to be defense secretary is that absolutely nobody trusts you to do it. (RELATED: Mitch McConnell Did Not Win a Mandate) John Fleming and Bill Cassidy As bad as Ernst is, and she’s definitely bad, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy is worse. Cassidy was one of seven Republicans voting to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 debacle, and we now know that all of the elements of his justification for that vote were fraudulent. That impeachment vote came only a few days after Cassidy had voted in favor of a motion declaring the impeachment unconstitutional. So first he said the impeachment was unconstitutional and then he voted against the constitution. A couple of days after that, Cassidy did an interview with Bill Clinton propagandist George Stephanopoulos in which he said he was committed to upholding the Constitution. He’s had a 12 percent approval rating with Republicans in Louisiana ever since. Cassidy predicted Trump would fade from the political scene. He hasn’t. And now former Congressman John Fleming, Louisiana’s current State Treasurer and a veteran of Trump’s first administration — he was deputy White House chief of staff — has jumped into the 2026 race against Cassidy. And when Fleming announced he was running, the first thing Cassidy’s camp did was to bash him through a spokesman who said… I thought he wanted to be State Treasurer? John Fleming wants to get out of Louisiana. He publicly said he wanted a job in the Trump administration, and apparently, they didn’t want him. So after less than a year as State Treasurer, he’s looking for another job to return to Washington. Again, I thought he wanted to be State Treasurer, but apparently not. Team Cassidy is immune to irony, it appears, because Cassidy ran and won re-election in 2020 as the Trumpiest Trump Who Ever Trumped, and then not two months later he was voting for what he’d already called an unconstitutional impeachment. Maybe try not to impugn the consistency of anybody else if you want the voters, who already think you’re a man of weak character and suspect intellect, not to be inflamed against you. The political insiders are warning that Cassidy, who already has $6 million in Washington donor-class money in his war chest, will have $10 million or more to spend on the Republican primary (Louisiana has, thank God, ditched its notorious jungle primary system for federal elections beginning with the 2026 cycle). I’m not sure that money is going to help him. People are very, very sick of the Old Game and Cassidy, like Ernst, seems oblivious to that fact. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Robert Reich’s Ravings Against Musk Are Pure Lunacy Well, Then, by All Means, Let’s Put Hunter Under Oath Now Dear Kamala, Please Stick Around   The post The Old Game Continues Among the Worst GOP Senators appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

It all began with Robert Bork. Nominated for the United States Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1987, Bork was superbly qualified for the job. In his career, he had been a professor at Yale Law School, solicitor general of the United States, acting attorney general, and then served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He was enormously respected by his legal peers. And then. Bork would later write this of what happened after his nomination was announced: During all of this time there was the incessant barrage of negative advertising, media coverage, a daily flood of mail, and constant telephone calls. The media varied, of course, but the reporting in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the three network news programs was almost unrelievedly hostile, as, of course, were the advertisements. The campaign was having its effect. Indeed the “Get Bork” campaign did in fact have a major effect. What was not foreseen on the day was that the campaign against Bork would, in fact, set the pattern for campaigns against not only future Republican nominees for the Court but for Cabinet positions as well. Court nominees Clarence Thomas and, later, Brett Kavanaugh were targeted for what had become known as “Borking” — virulent media campaigns designed to smear and defeat the nominee of the moment. This time the target in this latest “Borking” campaign is President-elect Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. Any rational person would be impressed with Hegseth’s background. He received his bachelor’s degree in politics from Princeton University, then went on to earn his Master of Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He signed up for the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps while at Princeton, and while working as an equity analyst at Bear Stearns was a commissioned officer in the Minnesota National Guard. He was part of a unit sent to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. Later he volunteered for service in Iraq, was an infantry platoon leader, and earned the Army Commendation medal. He later was awarded the Bronze Star, the Combat Infantry Badge, and another Army Commendation Medal. He became a captain, volunteered for duty in Afghanistan, and was made a Major. He has gone on to be a Fox News television host, has written books on the military, and served as executive director for the Concerned Veterans for America. (READ MORE: Three Cheers for Pete Hegseth) In short, as with Judge Bork’s work in the law, Pete Hegseth has decidedly shown himself to be a seriously accomplished military man, with a considerable knowledge of the military in which he has served with distinction. And as with Judge Bork, Hegseth is now under a massive political and media assault that is designed first to smear him and then defeat his nomination with allegations of alcohol and sexual abuse and more. Beyond that, you can believe that a Borking campaign is waiting in the wings to deny Trump nominee Kash Patel the job of FBI director. There are also some stirrings to Bork Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The real question now is whether Senate Republicans will let the Borking of Pete Hegseth result in his defeat. And whether they will stand up for Patel and RFK Jr. as well. A look back at American political history since the Borking of Bork clearly illustrates that Borking has become a staple of the American Left. The targets may vary — a Supreme Court nominee here, a Cabinet nominee there. In 1988 it was Indiana Republican senator and GOP vice presidential nominee Dan Quayle. But what does not vary is that this is how the Left targets those they consider to be threats to what they see as a Leftist hegemony over whatever institution the nominee has been proposed for. Hegseth’s latest book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, is a prime example of exactly why he is being targeted. Hegseth writes of a military brass that “are following the rest of our country off the cliff of cultural chaos and weakness.” He is personally determined to put a halt to that journey “off the cliff of cultural chaos and weakness.” And make no mistake, it is precisely because of that belief that he has been targeted for the latest Borking, with all manner of allegations of what the New York Times calls “a growing series of disclosures about his past, including allegations of sexual impropriety, alcohol abuse, and financial mismanagement.” The fact here is that the critics have no credibility precisely because they have kept going the Borking route repeatedly over the years. Robert Bork first, later Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, then Bush 41 Vice President Dan Quayle, and so on — and on and on. This time the Borking target is Pete Hegseth. And the Borkers should not be allowed to get away with it. Or, most assuredly, it will happen again. READ MORE from Jeff Lord: Three Cheers for Pete Hegseth The Biden Corruption Draining the D.C. Swamp Picks Up Steam Trump v. Washington The post The Borking of Pete Hegseth appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In early May of 1940, the British public had had enough of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, whose fecklessness at Munich two years earlier had allowed Hitler to dominate Europe. Not even the pleas of Winston Churchill, the then-First Lord of the Admiralty, for unity in the face of the enemy could save him. Conservative Member of Parliament Leo Amery summed up the public’s ire by quoting Oliver Cromwell in a fiery speech in the House of Commons: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” Last Sunday, our own beleaguered republic reached its own “Amery moment” with its leader. When he chose to broadly pardon his son Hunter Biden despite his repeated claims that he would not, President Biden once again revealed his utter contempt for the rule of law and the American people. As bitter as this pill is to swallow, it is the price we must pay to turn the page on his disastrous presidency. In a just world, we would never have had to suffer through a Joe Biden presidency. The 2020 “October surprise” of Hunter Biden’s laptop should have killed his candidacy just as cleanly as his plagiarism did back in 1988. It took an unholy alliance of the deep state, the legacy press, and social media companies to guarantee that the truth would not come out in time to tip the election in Trump’s favor. But try as he might, President Biden could not hide the truth forever. When questions kept coming up about the relationship between Hunter and the “Big Guy,” stalling and obfuscation became the order of the day. The president’s Department of Justice slow-walked tax evasion charges related to Hunter’s years working for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and later offered him the sweetest of all plea deals. Only the testimony of IRS whistleblowers and the integrity of a federal judge stopped the truth from being buried. Despite all the legal doublespeak and maneuvering, the American people know when something stinks. At the beginning of this year, only 22 percent of likely voters believed that Joe Biden was somehow innocent of any involvement with Hunter’s corrupt dealings. Reporters asked Karine Jean-Pierre about the possibility of a pardon for Hunter as early as July of 2023. The same question came up multiple times after Hunter’s conviction on federal gun charges in June of this year when his father was still the Democrat nominee. Their need for reassurance on the matter reveals that even these devout partisans sensed that they could not trust the president’s repeated denials. Hunter’s surprise guilty plea to federal tax charges in September, after his father was forced to abandon his campaign in July, is also evidence that he knew that he would never be sentenced for that crime, no matter what lies were used to mollify the public and whitewash the mess. Given the chaotic nature of Vice President Kamala Harris’s replacement of President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, it is probable that pardoning Hunter was a key element in negotiating the president’s endorsement that forestalled any “mini-primary” or convention floor fight. Even President-elect Trump floated the idea of a pardon back in late October. Taking all this into account, absolutely no one should be surprised by the president’s change of heart on this matter. Hunter’s entire life has been an exercise in using his father’s position to both prosper and dodge accountability; this is just the latest and most egregious example of the pattern. The president-elect was right to call this pardon “an abuse and miscarriage of justice.” What’s more, its vague covering of all crimes over the past eleven years is tantamount to an admission of not only Hunter’s corrupt dealings but his father’s involvement in them. But as much as this situation offends any sane person’s sense of justice, the political realities of the moment forbid any substantive effort to circumvent the pardon. An attempt by the incoming Trump administration to do so would needlessly play into the left’s hypocritical narrative that Trump is planning to weaponize the justice system to punish his opponents. It would also bleed time and resources from the much-needed housecleaning he has promised at the Department of Justice and other law enforcement agencies. Others have noted that the precedent for the broad Hunter Biden pardon is Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon in 1974. Though that pardon was controversial at the time, the American people came to understand that the pursuit of justice for Watergate was not worth the societal cost. Trump came to a similar conclusion in his first term when he reconsidered prosecuting Hilary Clinton for her email scandal. Ford was inspired in part by a 1915 Supreme Court decision (Burdick v. United States) in which the court ruled that the acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt. If this is true in a court of law for Hunter Biden, then it is certainly so in the court of public opinion for Joe Biden. We may not get the satisfaction of seeing either of them do a perp walk, but at least come January, this corrupt family will slither back to Delaware and never be allowed to darken the door of American politics again. You’ve gotten away with it, President Biden. Now, in the name of God, go! READ MORE from Robert Busack: Radical Feminists Misread ‘Lysistrata’ Is the Educational Establishment Finally Starting to Crack? Democracy Dies in Demagoguery The post Pardoning Hunter Biden Is the Unjust Price America Must Pay to Turn the Page on Biden’s Presidency appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I don’t spend a lot of time in my La-Z-Boy being hypnotized by daytime TV. Ok, I’ve spent some time in my La-Z-Boy being hypnotized by daytime TV — at least enough to pick up that “hypnotized” line from the Tom Cruise/Jamie Foxx movie Collateral. But anyway, I did catch a Dec. 4 segment on CNBC. It was an interview between “journalist, author, and co-host of CNBC’s Squawk Box” Andrew Ross Sorkin and centibillionaire Jeff Bezos. Yeah, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Blue Origin, Washington Post, Bezos Expeditions, Bezos Earth Fund, and Bezos Academy fame. In contrast to Sorkin’s performance as a blushing ingénue, Bezos came across as a real mensch. As Sorkin squirmed and wormed in his seat, crossing and re-crossing his legs in some kind of flirty semaphore, Bezos sat foursquare, comfortable in his own skin, responding to Sorkin’s often shrill queries in calm, low tones. In fact, Bezos’s measured responses were so measured and so thoughtfully delivered that the actual content of his replies was tedious to follow. But follow I did. When Sorkin played the mischievous pixie and tried to draw out the centibillionaire on the Washington Post’s “cowardly” failure to endorse Kamala Harris, Bezos calmly and convincingly responded that it was indeed the opposite of cowardly: “You can’t do the wrong thing because you’re worried about bad PR.” (RELATED: Three Cheers for Jeff Bezos) When Sorkin pushed Bezos on Trump’s so-called “hatred of the press,” and how Bezos would move forward as owner of the Washington Post, he smiled and said that he would try to “talk him out of it.” When Sorkin tried to bait Bezos about his “historic clashes” with President Trump during his first term in office, Bezos struck a confident chord. “I am actually very optimistic this time around,” said Bezos, referencing the incumbent’s “lots of energy around reducing regulations.” Adding, “He’s more confident. More settled.” Painting Elon Musk as an insider and hyping the possibility that Musk would use his newfound access to the Oval Office to “harm competition” (Musk’s SpaceX vs Bezos’s Blue Origin), despite Musk’s assurances to the contrary, Sorkin still failed to get a rise out of Bezos. “I believe him,” responded Bezos. “I take him at his word.” (RELATED: Can Musk Dismantle the Deep State?) Confronted with Sorkin’s repeated attempts to enlist Bezos as a voice of despair and gloom at the prospect of four (more) years of Trump, Bezos remained upbeat and positive. And despite Sorkin’s attempts to weaponize the interview in favor of the “mainstream medium’s” party line, Bezos provided true insights into the workings of his own mind and his own life philosophy. “If you think you know a public figure, you probably don’t,” said Bezos, when discussing wealth and influence. “Except for Oprah Winfrey,” referring to her daily exposure to the public during her popular TV show. I particularly enjoyed Bezos’s recounting of an early interview (he couldn’t remember the name of the pundit) when he shared the stage with Bill Gates. The question was how Gates felt about losing the title of “wealthiest man in the World” to Bezos. Bezos answered first, “You are welcome,” before turning to Gates and repeating, “You are welcome.” When it came to Blue Origin and the potential of Space exploration, Bezos waxed enthusiastic about a potential future with Lunar colonies serving as refueling stations to launch colonists to Mars. Of course, he thought it would be “a couple of generations in the future.” (RELATED: Jeff Bezos to Become First Multibillionaire in Space) Maybe not. President Donald J. Trump’s NASA, under the leadership of NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and the active engagement of Vice President Mike Pence as National Space Council chair, worked with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to break Russia’s monopoly on U.S. astronaut access to and from the International Space Station. Fully expecting a second term, Trump gave the thumbs up to returning U.S. boots on the Lunar surface no later than 2024. We know how that turned out. The Biden White House lost no time in defunding NASA’s space exploration missions in favor of diversity, employment equity, and “World Peace.” The Moon Mission was diverted to 2026, to 2028, and now? Who knows? Who knows? Well, I bet Trump knows. And with Vice President JD Vance at the helm of the National Space Council, and tech billionaire, jet pilot, and civilian astronaut Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator, you can bet money we’ll be back on track to return to the Moon within the next four years. And Jeff Bezos wants Blue Origin to play a role. Why not? READ MORE from Mike Howard: By Triggering Israel, Terrorists Made Peace a Possibility Elon Musk for President? Whatever Happened to Camel Cigarettes? The post Being Bezos in the Era of Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created by Congress in 1983 to promote democracy and democratic institutions abroad. It performed valuable ideological and propaganda services during the last decade of the Cold War as part of the Reagan administration’s effort to conduct political-subversive warfare against the Soviet empire. With the prolonged collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989-91, NED’s real mission was achieved. But like any organization, NED, which receives government funds as a non-governmental organization, wanted to continue its work and to continue to feed off the taxpayers, so it looked to broaden its mandate. As James Pierson notes in a piece in The New Criterion, the NED has become a highly partisan, anti-Trump organization that promotes endless wars, censors opposing views, and conceals its work in what Pierson characterizes as “opaque reports” that render it something less than “open and transparent.” An “America First” foreign policy approach should include the defunding of NED. NED is a Cold War relic, like its predecessor the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a CIA-funded enterprise that used Western intellectuals to wage a cultural Cold War against the Soviet empire. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Congress for Cultural Freedom attracted the likes of Sidney Hook, James Burnham, Arthur Schlessinger Jr., John Dewey, Melvin Lasky, Bertrand Russell, Benedetto Croce, Karl Jaspers, Jacques Maritain, Arthur Koestler, and many others — all committed anti-communists. The focus of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, like the original focus of the NED, was to wage political-subversive warfare against the Soviet empire. It was in America’s national security interest to do so. But, unfortunately, the Wilsonian strain of American foreign policy often results in our government leaders phrasing foreign policy missions in broad, idealistic terms (like “making the world safe for democracy”). So it is with the NED. In the post-Cold War world, NED broadened its real mission to encompass the promotion of democracy around the world. The intellectuals associated with NED are neoconservative and neo-liberal interventionists like Victoria Nuland, Robert Kagan, Ann Applebaum, Larry Diamond, and others who have embraced an ideological agenda that views the world as a never-ending struggle between democracy and autocracy. That worldview was also embraced by the Bush 43 administration after the attacks on 9/11, which resulted in a “Global War on Terror” and endless, futile wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that sought to spread democracy in those countries and elsewhere. The Obama administration added to this foreign policy failure with its promotion of the so-called “Arab Spring.” For these ideologues, Russia’s failure to transform into a democracy in the 1990s was reason enough to expand NATO to the Russian border and treat Russia as an enemy. It was also a justification for fomenting so-called “color revolutions,” including in Ukraine, that helped to revive the worst aspects of Russian nationalism and aggressive behavior. NED’s Victorian Nuland is one of the most vociferous supporters of “color revolutions” and U.S. involvement in the Ukraine war. Even worse, some of the intellectuals associated with NED joined the Democrat and media campaign to characterize Donald Trump as an autocrat — in some instances comparing Trump to Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. So NED-affiliated intellectuals effectively meddled in U.S. domestic politics in the name of “democracy.” Pierson points to Larry Diamond’s claim that Trump’s recent electoral victory means that the United States is now a “backsliding democracy” due to his “autocratic tendencies,” and to Rachel Kleinfeld’s statement that “Trumpism” and “Christian nationalism” are being used to build a “wink-and-nod ” base in the Republican Party, and to Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way’s assertion that the GOP under Trump is an “antidemocratic force that imperils the U.S. Constitutional order.” In August 2024, the Heritage Foundation released a revealing report about the funding and domestic political partisanship of the NED. It shows that NED staff and associates contribute significantly more to Democratic candidates for office than to Republican candidates. The NED board is dominated by Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans, and the organization as a whole “acts in the service of the Democratic Party, promotes its politicized memes concerning conservatives as threats to democracy, and poisons conservative reputations overseas.” The ideologues associated with NED want to remake the world in America’s image, except if that America has Donald Trump as President. Democratic elections, it seems, only count as promoting democracy when the NED’s favored candidates win those elections. NED is infested with Wilsonians who are willing to send the sons and daughters of Trump supporters to fight in endless wars abroad. Congress has spent over $1 billion funding this partisan and dangerous organization since 2020. We won the Cold War. The Soviet empire collapsed. The NED’s work was done in 1991. It’s time to defund it. READ MORE from Francis Sempa: Trump Needs ‘Bismarcks’ to Steer Our Foreign Policy James Burnham: the Sage of Kent, Connecticut Rejuvenating the Monroe Doctrine The post The National Endowment for Democracy Should be Defunded on Principle appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

by Kurt Schlichter, Townhall: I, for one, am delighted that alleged President Joe Biden pardoned his scumbag, perverted, drug-addled corrupto-kid. I might as well be because there’s not anything I can do about it. We all knew this was coming. We knew it from the beginning. We especially knew it when Joe Biden promised he […]

by William M Arkin and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research: This incisive article by William Arkin summarizes the key elements of America’s nuclear doctrine, formulated both before and in the immediate wake of September 11, 2001.  The article was originally published by the Los Angeles Times on March 10, 2002, a few months prior to the official […]