[unable to retrieve full-text content]Jimmy Carter is the first U.S. president to reach the age of 100. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Georgia on the historic milestone.

WASHINGTON, DC—After learning about devastating floods caused by Hurricane Helene, Biden agrees to send $15 billion more to Ukraine and another $8 billion to Israel. At a press conference, Biden appeared…

During any campaign, it is crucial that voters and candidates have a way to measure the state of public opinion. Polling — surveying representative samples of the electorate — allows everyone to understand…

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"The nerves which comes with happiness." The post ‘Stranger to Stranger’: Paul Simon’s study of love in modern times first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Since the 2000 presidential election, when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore despite losing the popular vote, the left has insisted that the Electoral College is undemocratic and structurally biased in favor of the GOP — never mind that it was enshrined in the Constitution two generations before the Republican Party was founded. The notion that Trump enjoys an intrinsic Electoral College advantage is just BS. Calls to abolish or reform the Electoral College have become particularly shrill since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential race with fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton received. The latest “evidence” cited by those who would change the way we elect our presidents involves the relatively small number of genuinely competitive states. As Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote in a recent column, “There are really only three states that will decide the presidential election: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia.” This is nonsense, yet Martin offers it as evidence that the Electoral College favors the GOP. It’s true that, if Trump wins these states plus every other state he won in 2020, he will reach 270. But this isn’t about structural bias in the electoral system. It’s about Trump’s polling compared to the last election. In 2020 he consistently trailed Biden by 5-10 points. Now, the RCP average shows Harris struggling to rise above a 2-point national lead and a virtual tie in the swing states. Thus Martin’s obsession with Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia: It’s the most obvious route for the former president and a reminder of the advantage the Electoral College can confer on a Republican. Should Trump defeat Harris in Pennsylvania, a state President Joe Biden spent much of his childhood in and still only carried by about 80,000 votes, her hopes then hinge on a pair of slightly right-of-center states Democrats have carried once each in this century: North Carolina (won by Barack Obama in 2008) and Georgia, which lined up with Biden in 2020. Martin never explains how the Electoral College “confers” an advantage to Trump, of course. Like most critics of that much-maligned feature of our constitutional structure, he simply asserts that it is somehow biased in favor of Republicans as if the validity of the claim is self-evident. The purveyors of this nonsense never bother to explain how voters “trapped” in such an unfair electoral system managed to produce a roughly equal number of Democratic (17) and Republican (19) presidents. In reality, that unlikely balance is directly attributable to the Electoral College, and the most probable result of meddling with it will be heavy-handed rule by a small cadre of powerful politicians from the high-population states. Nonetheless, a decades-long drumbeat of Democratic propaganda seems to have convinced a majority of Americans that the Electoral College should be replaced with a system whereby the President is directly elected by a nationwide popular vote. According to a survey conducted by the “nonpartisan” Pew Research Center, “More than six-in-ten Americans (63 percent) would instead prefer to see the winner of the presidential election be the person who wins the most votes nationally. Roughly a third (35 percent) favors retaining the Electoral College system.” Fortunately, a constitutional amendment is required to make such a change in the way we elect presidents. But, as CBS reports, there is a movement to bypass the amendment process: For two decades, there’s been an effort to change the way the U.S. has always elected its presidents by creating a workaround to the Electoral College, the indirect popular election process that’s been used in every American presidential election.… Under the nonpartisan National Popular Vote Compact, the most prominent of the Electoral College reform proposals, states would agree to give their electoral votes to the national winner of the popular vote, even if it doesn’t match the outcome in their state. For a sense of how “nonpartisan” this movement is, a list of states that have agreed to this end run around the Constitution is instructive: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. Can anyone guess what is missing from this catalogue of collusion? It contains precisely zero Republican-controlled states. According to the proponents of the National Popular Vote Compact, it cannot go into effect until the states that have signed on possess a collective total of 270 electoral votes. In reality, if they ever reach that number, the whole project will be deep-sixed by the Supreme Court. This will force the Democrats to search for yet another way to avoid the pesky constitutional guardrails that protect the Electoral College. And they do seem to possess an aptitude for getting around the rules. Meanwhile, the upcoming election will be conducted — more or less — in accordance with the vision of the Framers. Does this mean that Donald Trump and the Republicans have an unfair electoral advantage as November looms? Only in the sense that they are attempting to win by convincing voters their policies lead to peace and prosperity. The notion that Trump enjoys an intrinsic Electoral College advantage is just BS. READ MORE from David Catron: Teamsters Expose Fatal Harris Weakness The Most Important Question Harris Can’t Answer The post The Imaginary Electoral College Advantage for Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I recently did a pleasant interview with Daily Wire about my new political thriller novel The Washington Trail. At the end, the interviewer asked me every author’s dream question, but which I had a hard time answering. If, and when, The Washington Trail gets made into a movie, which actors do you see playing Mark Slade and Neil Cork (my two private-eye heroes)? My trouble, I said, is that Slade and Cork are straight young (32) white men who like pretty women, and I haven’t seen a recent movie featuring the type in a decade. Most current actors play asexual often minority acolytes to some ubiquitous and ridiculous Girl Boss protagonist. This trend applies to even formerly male-driven franchises like Mad Max. A working young superhero franchise star, Zachary (Shazam) Levi, just openly and fearlessly endorsed Trump for President. In Mad Max: Fury Road, Tom Hardy’s Max is second fiddle to Charlize Theron’s Amazonian Furiosa. The picture did just well enough to spawn a prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, totally absent Max. Naturally, the film bombed when the target audience, young men, stayed away in droves. The same went for the female-led Star Wars disaster The Acolyte, which normal men mocked off the TV screen. (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: Trump the True Barbarian) It’s not just entertainment they’re turning off. It’s the entire mainstream culture that hates them, represented by a political party which demonizes them while lauding the shrill feminist elite and their obsequious beta-male contingent. The Democrats had a sufficient number of the latter to ignore the alphas as deplorables. They thought they could pass the empty, unctuous DEI-hire Vice President who slept her way into politics as an impressive leader, along with their clueless notion of a masculine running mate. The liberal media dutifully did its part to boost them, projecting Kamala Harris as Hillary II and Tim Walz as Nick Saban. Every regime journalist swooned in sync over the couple’s “campaign of joy” almost like a sitcom laugh track. But anyone outside their mass hypnosis could see the reality. And baby-boomer men like me could quote from a once popular old poem: And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout/But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out. So has the Harris-Walz campaign, thanks to men. The desperate attempt to masculinize spasmic weirdo Walz — infamous for mandating Tampons in schoolboys’ bathrooms — has been the greatest source of humor in the race. Because those shaping the image have a cliched concept of normal male behavior. They think guys are dumb enough to swallow a video of Walz in cap and black T-shirt changing the carburetor of his truck complete with dog inside. Why the poor animal is stuck in the truck while Walz does his macho mechanic shtick is something no imagemaker considered. But regular guys will and do. By contrast, all Donald Trump had to do last Saturday was walk into Bryant-Denny Stadium during the Alabama-Georgia game to get a rousing ovation. Conversely, Walz got booed entering the Michigan game. This election is no longer just about Republicans versus Democrats, conservatives versus liberals, or minorities versus white people. It’s increasingly about real men and women, of all ethnicities versus unpleasant, unhappy feminist women — those whom James Carville called “preachy females” and J.D. Vance “single cat ladies.” And you can feel the testosterone rising and recognize the signs. In 2016, 51 percent of young men identified as or leaned Democrat. The number dropped to 39 percent in 2023. An NAACP poll found over a quarter of black men under 50 support Donald Trump. And Latinos, led by men, have overwhelmingly shifted to Trump. According to the New York Times, “Mr. Trump has found new support among Latinos who work in law enforcement along the Mexican border, Cuban Americans in Florida averse to policies they view as approaching socialism, evangelical Christians attracted to Christian nationalism and second- and third-generation U.S.-born Latinos who are more likely to identify with and vote like their white peers. Gen Z men are pouring into church pews more than same age women, also according to the New York Times. “For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious.” (READ MORE: Hollywoke Heroes and Movies We’ll Never See) A working young superhero franchise star, Zachary (Shazam) Levi, just openly and fearlessly endorsed Trump for President. “We don’t live in a perfect world,” Levi said. “In fact, we live in a very broken one. We live in a country that has been hijacked by a lot of people who want to take this place way off the cliff, and we’re here to stop that.” Kamala Harris may have the group of cringeworthy male wimps called White Dudes for Harris. Even their recruitment ad totally misses the point by starting with an apology for their white manhood. “Hey, white dudes. So, I think we’re all pretty sick of hearing how much we suck. Every time we go online it’s the same story. ‘We’re the problem.’ And, yeah, some white dudes are.” While Trump has the hysterical upbeat Frat Boys for Trump. Wonder Who They’re Voting For: “Donald J. Trump, all the way baby!” The Alabama frats are ready to Make America Great Again! #Alabama #Georgia pic.twitter.com/UQARoh0oGG — John Cremeans USA (@JohnCremeansUSA) September 29, 2024 As for which actor I’d like to see my detective hero, Mark Slade, I finally cited one to the Daily Wire interviewer. “If there’s a young Sean Connery out there, then I’d love to hear him say, “My name is Slade — Mark Slade.” Get the perfect mystery novel for Christmas — my timely new detective thriller, The Washington Trail. “Slade and Cork are on the case! An old fashioned tough-guy detective novel with a modern twist, The Washington Trail will keep you guessing until the very end.”   — Faith Moore, author of Saving Cinderella and Christmas Karol Lou Aguilar, author of ‘The Washington Trail’ The post Real Men Vote for Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

An Israeli air strike managed to kill Hassan Nasrallah, the top boss of Hizballah — the Iranian proxy terrorists — who had been its chief for at least three decades, obeying the orders of the ayatollahs in Tehran. The Iranian nuclear weapons program is close to producing deployable nuclear weapons. How close no one knows. The death of Nasrallah came about a week after Israeli intelligence operatives managed to detonate thousands of Hizballah pagers and hundreds of their walkie-talkie radios. It was also the week in which President Joe Biden, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly. While Biden made another pitch for diplomatic resolutions in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, Pezeshkian said that Israel and the U.S. were the troublemakers in the Middle East, not Iran. He also said that Israel was dragging Iran into a war that no one could win. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: The World, Israel, and Our Diplomacy of Dunces) That was a typical Iranian lie. Tehran firmly believes that it can win the long-term war with Israel and that the Jewish state must be destroyed. All of this set the context for a visit by my wife’s last college pal last week. I look forward to his visits because he is the only liberal I can talk to without getting into a shouting match. No Peace While Iran Wants Israel’s Destruction He and I email each other occasionally to talk about some of the things I write. His attitude reflects the 1992 statement by Rodney King: can’t we all just get along? We can’t and we don’t because the natural state of mankind is war, not peace. Some nation — or despot or religious dictator — always wants something that another nation wants to protect. In this case, it is Israel’s desire to keep its people safe from terrorist attacks which Iran and its proxies — Hizballah and Hamas — want to continue until Israel is overcome. There was not a word in Biden’s UN speech about the U.S. hostages still being held by Hamas presumably in the Gaza Strip. He only had words for Israel, urging it to accept some idealistically idiotic cease fire. He urged the same for the coming war in Lebanon. It’s no wonder that neither he nor Kamala Harris have any effect on Netanyahu, Hizballah, or Hamas. They do not ignore us at their peril: they can comfortably ignore us because no American force compels them to do otherwise. Hizballah has been raining missiles on Israeli civilians for years. The tempo of the launches has greatly increased since the Hamas massacre of Israelis last October. In answer to that, Netanyahu has managed to kill Nasrallah in Beirut, Ismail Haniyeh (a top Hamas commander) in Tehran, and taken the aforementioned actions with Hizballah pagers and two-way radios. After the airstrike that killed Nasrallah and the other actions, Hizballah’s command structure has been at least decimated if not destroyed. Iran will replace it. Israeli commanders warned this week that they were planning a ground invasion of Lebanon to ensure that Hizballah’s capacity to attack Israel is destroyed. Netanyahu and his government understand that there can be no long-term peace and that they cannot keep up the pace of war that the Hamas attack triggered. Israel’s economy has suffered because hundreds of thousands of young men and women are fighting the wars instead of doing their civilian jobs. No nation, not even Israel, can be perpetually at war. But Israel’s neighbors keep attacking them. Wars are about winners and losers. If Israel attacks Lebanon we must wish it well and help them as much as we can. They didn’t start this war but it has to end — temporarily — on their terms. Netanyahu understands what Biden & Co. do not: that there can be no peace in Gaza or Lebanon or anywhere else in the Middle East while the vultures still roost in Tehran. There was a report earlier this week that Iran was moving troops in Syria to directly threaten Israel. To my knowledge, that report was false. Iran wants only to attack Israel by proxy until it has been able to deploy nuclear weapons. Its direct attack on Israel last April was a failure because its missiles and drones were almost entirely destroyed before they hit their targets. Biden, like most presidents before him, has promised that Iran will never be allowed to deploy nukes. But he has done nothing to prevent it from doing so. Neither has Kamala Harris. All they have done is to try to revive Obama’s 2015 nuclear weapons deal with Iran. The Iranian nuclear weapons program is close to producing deployable nuclear weapons. How close no one knows. (READ MORE: ABC News Blew It. Crime Is Up.) Deterrence Fails With Iran As I wrote last week, our deterrent strategy has failed. In the latest example, U.S. warships came under attack in the Red Sea by Houthis — another Iranian proxy force — who had launched about two dozen missiles and drones which were shot down. Biden has made no effort to punish the Houthis. There’s no two ways about it. The Houthi attack on American ships was an act of war. Biden — or Harris or whoever is actually running our government — would be entirely justified were he to order a strike on the Houthis by air, missiles, or however. Yet they do nothing. The Houthis are in control of Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. There is no reason why we shouldn’t bomb the hell out of their leadership and command structure there. We have the forces in the area to do precisely that, but the Biden-Harris-Blinken-Sullivan crew is ignoring the Houthi attack. This is why we are no longer a global superpower, a nation that enemies treat seriously or that allies can rely on. As this column is fond of reminding its readers, the late Donald Rumsfeld often said “weakness is provocative.” Three-plus years of Biden and Harris have proven him right again and again. The post Iran Stokes Endless War, US Does Nothing appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.