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.

The 2024 presidential election is rapidly becoming the most polled election in Pennsylvania history. As the most important battleground state political observers scour every poll taken in Penn’s woods for some hint as to the status of what again is likely to be a very close battle for the commonwealth’s 19 Electoral votes. All else being equal, which of course it is not, these three sets of numbers must be causing great angst in the Harris campaign. Almost without exception every poll has Donald Trump and Kamala Harris within the margin of error. As such, the drama that surrounds every point or half point change in the polling has made for interesting parlor speculation. But, polling is so imprecise and the race is so close that the polls are in fact meaningless in terms of discerning who is winning the horse race. (READ MORE: Where Did All the Yard Signs Go?) There are three other sets of numbers that carry far more significance than polling and these numbers should be watched far more closely than opinion polls. One of the key predictive factors as to how a person will vote is their party registration. At one time there were over 1.1 million more registered Democrats than there were registered Republicans statewide in Pennsylvania. By the November 2020 presidential election the Democrat voter registration advantage had shrunk to 685,818 voters. Fast forward to September 2024 and the Democrat voter registration edge has been sliced in half since the 2020 election — down to just 338,396 voters. Tellingly, 48,618 Democrats have switched their party affiliation to Republican; two and a half times more party switches than Republicans to Democrats. Although Democrat registrations gained steam after the party switched out Joe Biden for Kamala Harris Republican registrations climbed even faster. Putting a cherry atop the registration sundae for Republicans both Bucks County in the Philadelphia suburbs and Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania flipped from blue to red. No county has flipped from red to blue. Democrats have dominated Republicans in mail-in balloting since the advent of no excuse mail-in voting in 2020. Here too Democrats are underperforming. As of September 23rd there are 360,101 fewer Democrat applications for a mail-in ballot than at the same time in 2020. Republican mail-in ballot requests are down by 60,963 giving the GOP almost a 300,000 voter net advantage. Another major change is the GOP’s approach to mail-in balloting. While the party fought and attacked mail-in voting in 2020 it is embracing the practice in 2024. In 2020 many Republicans — 141,000 — who applied for and received mail-in ballots failed to follow through and vote. It is likely some number of those voters instead went to the polls in person, but there is no doubt that a large number of GOP votes were literally left lying on the table. There are concerted efforts to ensure those votes are cast this year. Projects like the Pennsylvania Chase have deployed an army of 120 full-time paid door knockers who are fanning out across the commonwealth to make sure voters send in their ballots. Green Party at the Polls Finally, there is the impact of the Green Party. In 2020 Democrats successfully convinced the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to strike Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein from the November ballot. The Green Party’s nominee for state Auditor General received 78,588 votes in the 2020 General Election while the Green Party nominee for state Treasurer received 81,984 votes. (READ MORE: Save the SAVE Act: A Necessary Solution to a Real Problem) Keep in mind Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes. Making the plausible assumption that most of the Green Party presidential votes ended up in the Biden column with Stein off the ballot and that decision alone contributed significantly to the Biden victory. All else being equal, which of course it is not, these three sets of numbers must be causing great angst in the Harris campaign. Further, polling shows that inflation/the economy and illegal immigration are the top concerns of voters — and Trump consistently leads when pollsters ask who can best address those issues. Most polls are subject to a margin of error of at least +/-4% which means that any lead of four percent or less is essentially meaningless. But registration and mail-in ballot requests are not subject to a margin of error and therefore represent a far better snapshot of where the election stands. Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal. His e-mail address is lhenry@lincolninstitute.org. The post Forget the Polls: Here Are the Numbers That Matter appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Britain is floundering, there’s no getting away from it. As to why, you could write an encyclopedia on the subject: The critical absence of conservatism since Thatcher, to the extent that a third of the electorate mistook Keir Starmer for a viable political option outside of North Korea; insane virtue signals like Net Zero, which sees Britain playing “Save the Planet” while the rest of the world wisely gives Greta the finger, and laughs all the way to the bank; an Exchequer bankrupt to the tune of 3 trillion quid, while the Chancellor dithers over rounding errors like the Winter Fuel Allowance. Being forced to fund your own destruction on the basis of a stupid lie is damning in so many ways. Then there’s the world’s most significant exodus of millionaires — aka taxpayers, courtesy of the highest tax burden since the Blitz (notably lacking an air force capable of lighting up the Luftwaffe); a criminal amnesty excused as “diversity,” because any deeper analysis would prove to be “racist”; the willful destruction of everything British, in favor of absolutely anything else — no matter how repugnant; two-tier policing, justice and indeed society — where white Brits are persona non grata in their own homeland etc, etc. A smorgasbord if ever there was one, but at its heart the fall of Britain can be distilled down to one single word: Immigration.  I don’t mean selective immigration, which most countries take advantage of according to need. By all means, let’s have the debate about the flow-rate and precise form such policies ought to take; no issue there. But mass, unchecked, illegal immigration (or “invasion” as it was referred to prior to 1997) has been the grim reality sovereign nations have honestly negotiated for millennia. In the case of Britain herself, the English Channel and the North Sea have long-proved a sufficient deterrent to all but the most persistent forces; the majority of whom soon changed their minds once introduced to the persuasive qualities of the stiff upper lip, and the even more persuasive bayonet at the end of it. The idea that in 2024, the capacity to enforce our borders is suddenly beyond us, is so moronic a lie, it should have been laughed out of court on its first outing.  And yet, Britain it seems can no longer defend her honor against the sperm-like dinghy ejaculations emanating from Calais; at least, according to Westminster. As disgusting a charade as this is, it’s not the worst part. Infinitely more egregious is the connivance that has sprung up in order to justify the obvious invasion as an unquestionable civic “benefit,” “If anyone needs to integrate, it’s the far-right,” claims race-baiter extraordinaire David Lammy; “If white Britons learned more from the Muslim community the UK would be a better country” wrote a particularly gin-sodden Anna Soubry, who has never fully regained her sobriety after the trauma of Brexit. “We keep hearing about ‘legitimate concerns’ over immigration. The truth is, there are none” writes The Guardian with its customary balance. The establishment is nothing if not united in their calumny. If the topic of unchecked, mass immigration must be broached, the emphasis is always on the requirement of the racist white population to adapt to their own replacement; which of course Liberals simultaneously deny is happening and approve of in the same breath. (READ MORE: America’s Immigration Implosion) As media outlets grudgingly acknowledge the Birmingham walls daubed with astute political commentary such as “No Whites” and “No Whites Allowed,” Britain is now so anti-British, it could just as easily be the BBC mission statement or Labor Party slogan, rather than mere unedifying graffiti.  It’s time to put this farce to bed once and for all: principally, the nature of who precisely is in the boats. They’re not women and children, despite what UNICEF claims, neither are they “refugees,” “asylum seekers” nor fleeing “warzones” (although granted, Gay Paris ain’t what it once was). Even the Home Office admits that 90 percent of the small boat arrivals are male. That fact alone is game, set, and match for the pearl-clutchers and the left-wing NGOs. The implication that warzones are so bad only women and children can be expected to brave them, would not pass muster in a kindergarten. At best, the illegals flocking to Britain are on the cadge — courtesy of successive governments, three times more likely to grant their “asylum” claims than the rest of Europe, while simultaneously furnishing them with a wealth of social security benefits. At worst, they’re here for nefarious purposes — which is why two-thirds of unaccompanied “minors” when questioned about their age, turn out to be adults; why 98 percent of Channel migrants mysteriously lose their passports en route, and why Britain will soon boast a higher Albanian prison population than Albania itself. Britain is the softest of soft touches, and everyone inside Westminster (with precious few exceptions) knows and denies it. Given that the scam of mass immigration is so self-evidently ridiculous, every government since Blair has felt the need to talk tough (while willfully delivering net zero in terms of border security). In order to explain their ineptitude, they have cited everything from the intricacies of international law, the ECHR, the need to maintain the goodwill of the French (how much more “goodwill” do we need after half a billion quid’s worth?), and even the moral obligation of Britain as an excuse. The solution of course is simple, vouchsafed not just by history but by Tony Abbott in Australia. For me, the first 24-hours of a genuinely conservative administration would look something like this: install the Navy in the Channel, and tow any stray dinghies back to France. Who cares whether the French like it — what are they going to do, invade us? Honestly?! (READ MORE: The Virtues of Immigrant Assimilation) All illegals in Britain would start being returned to their country of origin as a matter of urgency, no ifs no buts. If the ECHR doesn’t like it, they can kick us out — we’re inevitably going to leave anyway. Anyone within the chain of command who refuses to enact the will of the people, can simply be replaced by those who will. Naturally such action would be anathema to a Starmer administration, but they could comfort themselves by pretending the illegals had committed serious crimes like espousing the wrong opinions on FaceBook, shouting at the Old Bill, or attending a Tommy Robinson rally, (rather than merely breaking international law, raping the elderly, or butchering little girls).  The great question re mass immigration is not whether it is deliberate, but why? It’s also the question we’re least likely to ever get an answer for. In Tony Blair’s day, we knew the answer: “to rub the Right’s nose in diversity,” But with immigration so out of control even Blair is criticizing it, you might need another explanation. Whatever truly lurks behind the unstoppable dinghies (imported voter base, white replacement, an attempt to influence the birth rate, or the simple destruction of Britain), we are going to require an explanation — because this lie is utterly unsustainable. Until such time as the government of the day, or at the very least the “opposition,” A) acknowledges the issue of mass immigration, B) outlines and adopts the simple solution or C) comes clean on precisely what outside interference is being exerted on them, Britain cannot be classified as a sovereign nation, leaving its people bereft of a homeland.  Being forced to fund your own destruction on the basis of a stupid lie is damning in so many ways. Not only does it make fools of us all, it makes all-out civil war inevitable. Thus far, (short-lived riots notwithstanding) the public response has in no way been commensurate with the scale of the crime committed against them. That dam will not hold forever, and even an ideologue like Starmer should have the wit to realize it.   The post Britain’s Mass Immigration Scam appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I recently had the opportunity to interview actress Jennifer O’Neill who plays Nelle Reagan in the film Reagan which is based on The American Spectator Editor-in-Chief Paul Kengor’s volume  The Crusader: Reagan and the Fall of Communism. [T]he multi-talented Jennifer O’Neill is still making a difference by lending her powerful voice to improve the lives of others. Like many people, I first became acquainted with Jennifer O’Neill via the 1971 coming-of-age film Summer of ’42  where she plays Dorothy, the older woman with whom teenager Hermie (Gary Grimes) becomes infatuated. O’Neill’s portrayal of  Dorothy is so memorable that it is hard to believe she is only on the screen for fifteen minutes. More than fifty years after the film’s release, Summer of ’42 remains the film for which she is most recognized. The actress speaks of meeting women who described their husbands as being in love with the Dorothy character. However, in recent years the conversation has shifted to their sons being in love with her, demonstrating the film’s continuing popular cultural relevance. O’Neill who made over thirty films was blackballed in Hollywood after she found her faith at age 37. During our interview, she talks about how faith transformed her personal and professional journey. She also discusses the regret that she experienced about having an abortion as a young woman and how that remorse served as a conduit for her becoming a voice for the pro-life movement. O’Neill’s empathy has long tentacles. She is the founder of Hope and Healing at Hillengade, an organization that deploys equine-assisted therapy to help mitigate PTSD for veterans, active duty service members, and first responders. O’Neill is also the author of over twenty books. We also discuss her involvement in Reagan, a project that was 18 years in the making. Apparently producer Mark Joseph first asked her about playing Nelle Reagan in 2004. More than 50 years after she first graced the silver screen, the multi-talented Jennifer O’Neill is still making a difference by lending her powerful voice to improve the lives of others. Watch the video here. READ MORE from Leonora Cravotta: Critics Be Damned: The Reagan Film Is Wonderful The Road Well Traveled: Exploring the History of Literary Journeys The post Catching Up With Actress and Author Jennifer O’Neill appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

College students will do just about anything to make a quick buck. Not long ago, I was in that exact spot, working various on-campus jobs at my alma mater, Arizona Christian University. The Arizona Republic recently released a report about football players from Arizona Christian who were caught in a migrant smuggling scheme two years ago. The report tells the story of two student-athletes who were paid — one made $1,000 — to drive “migrants from border towns to metro Phoenix” and were later arrested for doing so. A whole chapter of the Republic’s investigation is devoted to explaining what Arizona Christian is purportedly all about. It should go without saying, but there are many ethical and lawful ways college students can make money. This is a cautionary tale about avoiding schemes that promise quick money but hide the dangers associated with these activities.   The Republic’s report shines a light on an underreported issue happening in Arizona and other border states: migrant smuggling, which is when illegal aliens are snuck into the U.S. either knowingly or with reckless disregard.  Migrant smuggling is difficult to track due to the nature of the crime. The migration data portal reports that a “minimum of 2.5 million migrants were smuggled in 2016” for a profit of $5 billion.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement reports that smuggling is a daily occurrence in the Rio Grande Valley and that most smugglers “don’t take into account personal safety or comfort.” Those who make it across the border through smuggling can find themselves “at risk for assault and abuse such as rape, beatings, kidnapping, and robbery.”  Smugglers, often affiliated with transnational criminal organizations, have turned to social media to promote their business. The Border Report found social media accounts of smugglers on TikTok, enticing migrants to cross the border. The videos advertise their services as easy by using trendy audio clips and stating that their service is “100% guaranteed.”  John Modlin, Tucson’s chief patrol agent, told the Republic that high school and college-aged drivers are recruited by ads found on social media. “A lot of kids, to them, their first thought is, ‘Hey this is kind of like Uber. Like this is a rideshare thing. I’m just going to go and pick somebody up,’” Modlin said.  The report revealed that the two arrested football players were released without prosecution. Drivers involved in the scheme are often released without prosecution due to probable cause issues, the lack of witnesses willing to testify, or the “sheer caseload” of smuggling instances.  In response to the Republic report, Arizona Christian University condemned the incident. “Our goal, consistent with our Christian witness, is to ‘restore and redeem,’” Arizona Christian said in a statement. The university suspended the students involved from the football program and placed “disciplinary requirements” for them to continue their education.  Following the report’s release, former students and peers contacted me with concerns about how the story portrayed the university in a negative light. Former Arizona Christian football players I spoke to about the incident recalled it and insisted that it hasn’t happened since.  Arizona Christian University also claimed in a statement that the story was being used to make the school look bad. “To be clear, the conduct at issue in this report was and is unacceptable at ACU. No one turned a blind eye to it or acted like it was not a big deal,” the university said in its statement. “But it is truly unfortunate that this news story takes the actions of a handful, who were dealt with expeditiously by ACU, to tarnish an up-and-coming University known for the character and quality of its graduates.”  A whole chapter of the Republic’s investigation is devoted to explaining what Arizona Christian is purportedly all about, noting the university’s Christian identity that the football players supposedly represent. As an alumna of Arizona Christian, I can attest to my college’s commitment to having every student learn Christian beliefs and values. The statement of faith and the chapels students must attend are just a snippet of the university’s experience.  Arizona Christian caught national attention last year when the university filed a lawsuit against the Washington Elementary School district. The district’s board stopped a long-time partnership to train and hire teachers from Arizona Christian due to the university’s Christian values. Arizona Christian held no hatred or ill-manner toward the school board, and the board later reinstated the partnership, which allowed the university to drop the lawsuit.   While the “broke college student life” can be challenging, one shouldn’t need to turn to committing crimes to escape it. READ AND WATCH MORE from Lyrah Margo: ‘The Democratic Party Left Me’: A Fireside Chat With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Spectator P.M. Ep. 78: US Government Makes Move to Prevent China From Blowing Up Cars   The post Migrant Smuggling Is Not a College Pastime appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

On Friday, September 27, the Israel Airforce (IAF) eliminated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a number of other Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) leaders while they were meeting in an underground headquarters in the residential Dahia neighborhood of Beirut. Israel will act, alone if necessary, … and … a decisive display of force is the only way to defeat the enemy and ensure survival. The strike was carried out by a small fleet of F-151 jets from the IAF 69th Squadron out of southern Israel’s Hatzerim Airforce base acting on months of intelligence gathered by the IDF and Israeli Security (ISA). The aircraft flew undetected over southern Beirut and dropped 83 tons of explosives that penetrated the underground headquarters and leveled six buildings. Video footage shows billowing clouds of black and orange smoke covering the entire neighborhood. “Everything we planned was executed precisely,” noted the commander of the 69th Squadron (known only as Lt. Col. “Mem”), “with no errors, both in intelligence, the planning, with the planes, and the operation itself.” The airstrike can be viewed as the culmination of Israel’s covert pager bomb episode from September 17. Having successfully dismantled Hezbollah’s wireless communication network, top Hezbollah and IRGC officers were forced to meet in person causing the perfect scenario to locate and eliminate top brass during a single meeting. In addition to Nasrallah, more than 20 other officers have been reported killed, including the commander of Hezbollah’s southern front, Ali Karki, Hezbollah intelligence commander Hassan Khalil Yassin, and a number of IRGC officers including Quds Force commander in Lebanon, Abbas Nilforoushan. Nasrallah’s death was confirmed by the IDF on Saturday in a statement that ended with a pledge to “operate against anyone who promotes and engages in terrorism against the State of Israel.” The targeted killing ended Nasrallah’s 32-year reign as Secretary General of Hezbollah. He had been hand-picked by Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei in 1992. Under Nasrallah’s watch, Hezbollah effectively built a global network of terrorist proxies and expanded a world view of violent resistance and terrorism beyond the Israeli-Palestinian theater to include anti-US and anti-Western dictators as far as Latin America. Reckless repercussions to Nasrallah’s death soon followed. Overnight on Friday and into Saturday, 22 large rocket barrages covered the skies in northern Israel. Ironically, many of the rockets intended for Jerusalem either fell short or were intercepted over Samaria (the northern part of the West Bank) resulting in severe damage to several Arab towns, such as Umm-al-Fahm and Hwara, known to be hot beds of Palestinian terrorist activity. Surface-to-surface ballistic missiles from Hezbollah and the Houthi in Yemen also entered Israeli airspace targeting the highly populated central area of the country. The unpredictability of these high-altitude missiles put most of the country on high alert with many spending the Sabbath in bomb shelters. In response to Nasrallah’s assassination, the Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree pledged: “We will carry out more military operations against the Israeli enemy in victory for the blood of our brothers in Palestine and Lebanon.” The Houthi missile launch was timed with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s arrival at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport on Saturday from New York. The missiles were downed by Israel’s “Arrow” long-range missile defense interceptors. Debris from one fell in the Palestinian districts of eastern Jerusalem, and as far as the outskirts of Jericho, while another missile, intended for Eilat, was intercepted outside of Israeli territory with debris falling in Jordan. The Houthi has fired over 220 ballistic missiles and drones in over 11 months with relatively little Israeli retaliation, save the IAF strike on Yemen’s Hodeidah port in July. On Sunday morning, September 29, however, the chatter on Israeli and Arab news outlets began confirming successful IAF strikes on the Hodeidah port facilities, power stations, and oil depots. In early August, after the targeted killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Israel boasted of having more surprises and capabilities, leading many to presume this to be solely in context of an allusive nuclear arsenal. Over the past week, however — from pager bombs to precision strikes — Israel has shown that they keep their intelligence cards close, striking only at the opportune moment with conventional tactics that surprise the world. Within a day following Nasrallah’s assassination, the IDF hacked into the communication networks at the Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport control tower and broadcasted to an approaching Iranian cargo plane (Qasem Air, Flight QFZ9964) that it was not permitted to land. The aircraft subsequently turned around and returned to Iran. The Lebanese Transport Minister confirmed in the newspaper An-Nahar that the IDF intercepted radio frequencies and warned: “If the state of Lebanon allows it [Iranian civilian planes to land], the IDF will act.” Iran has been transferring weapons and personnel via civilian aircraft to Beirut. Israel declared a “no fly zone” over Beirut this weekend and ordered Beirut airport air traffic control to issue a “Notice to Airmen.” In continued airstrikes over the Dahia neighborhood, the IAF successfully penetrated a second underground facility on Saturday, September 28, destroying a massive arsenal of anti-ship missiles intended to threaten international maritime traffic and IDF naval vessels. To date, Israeli news outlets are reporting that more than 50 percent of Hezbollah’s military has been dismantled and 90 percent of its top brass eliminated. Additionally, one million residents have been displaced in Lebanon — 600,000 fleeing south Lebanon, and 400,000 from Beirut. Cities across Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen are on high alert, expecting an expansive wave of IAF strikes, while three reserve battalions have been activated in Israel. Mixed responses came from Israel’s allies in the international community following Nasrallah’s death. Many in the Biden administration and across Europe called the killing a mistake and touted the scripted policy line that a cease fire, rather than a decisive win, is the only measure for peace. Jared Kushner however took to X and spoke for many who see Nasrallah’s death as a positive step forward in dismantling Iran’s stronghold in the Levant and maintaining Israel’s security. The son-in-law of former President Trump stated: “Anyone who has been calling for a ceasefire in the North is wrong … the right move now for America would be to tell Israel to finish the job. It’s long overdue. And it’s not only Israel’s fight.” Israel has shown over recent weeks that appeasement will only work to the enemy’s advantage. The bold independence in recent days by acting without green light assurances from the White House is a reminder that Israel will act, alone if necessary, to protect its citizens and that a decisive display of force is the only way to defeat the enemy and ensure survival. READ MORE from Bennett Tucker: Unprecedented Operations and Attacks Intensify the Israel–Hezbollah Conflict Military Raids in the West Bank Help Thwart Terrorists   The post Nasrallah’s Death: Israel Takes Step Toward Victory appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Eric Weinstein is an interesting man. He has an impressive academic background with BA and MA degrees in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in mathematical physics from Harvard University. He described AOC as a straight-up Marxist and Kamala Harris as somewhere in-between crony finance and Marxist. Weinstein also has an accomplished business background having served as managing director of Thiel Capital, a venture capital firm owned by billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel, from 2013 to 2022. For the past several years, he has served on the research team of The Galileo Project at Harvard University and in 2019 he started his own podcast, The Portal. Politically, Weinstein is a bit of an enigma. He describes his own family as “far left” and it seems that he has been a life-long liberal Democrat. However, one of his closest friends and former boss, Peter Thiel, has been a big-time donor for Republicans, including Donald Trump, over many years. In addition, he describes Trump running mate J.D. Vance as a friend and someone he admires. Perhaps, then, it is fair to describe Weinstein as a non-ideologue who keeps an open mind on political issues. On September 22nd, Weinstein sat down for an extraordinarily riveting, in-depth interview with popular British podcaster, Chris Williamson, to discuss a wide range of topics. Some of the most fascinating moments over the course of the interview came when Weinstein made comments about Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris and the Democrat Party in general. During the interview, Williamson asked Weinstein about Kamala Harris’s weird, often-repeated speaking phrase, “What can be, unburdened by what has been.” In his response, Weinstein was clearly uncomfortable providing his answer, but, after a long pause, he replied that it was “a line from Marx.” He continued his answer by saying that AOC (Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) uses the phrase “We have a world to win,” which Weinstein explained is written (in German) at the end of Marx’s Communist Manifesto. “What can be, unburdened by what has been” Weinstein continued with his answer about Harris’s phrase: “It basically means you have to wipe out what has been to arrive at the new … it occurs in Karl Marx (writings) … if you think about what Mao had to do to wipe out Chinese history, what Pol Pot had to do [to wipe out Cambodian history], you’re trying to wipe out memory, because the memory has all of this burden … you’re looking for a blank slate.” Later in the interview, Weinstein responded to Williamson’s curiosity about the background of Harris’s father, Donald J. Harris. Williamson read from an internet search that Harris’s father is an economics professor emeritus at Stanford University known for applying “post-Keynesian ideas.” Both raised the question of what comprises post-Keynesian economic ideas. Weinstein offered that there was “a lot of Marxist thought” in post-Keynesian economics. Weinstein elaborated that as a man who’s family comes from the far left, there are certain sorts of recognizable commonalities, presumably referring to communist thought. He commented that the Democrat Party is not communist, but it has welcomed in a lot of neo-Marxist thought. He described AOC as a straight-up Marxist and Kamala Harris as somewhere in-between crony finance and Marxist. YouTube link: Eric Weinstein describes the Democrat Party and Kamala Harris as neo-Marxist The interview Chris Williamson conducted with Eric Weinstein helped expose the veiled Marxist ideology of Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats such as AOC. It revealed that the weird phrases that they use repeatedly may be a deliberate signal indicating their support of Marx’s communist ideology to like-minded followers in a way not obvious to the general public. It is a reminder of the long-term Marxist strategy outlined in a prescient speech given by Alexander Trachtenberg, a member of the Central Control Committee of the Communist Party USA at its national convention in Madison Square Garden, New York City, in 1944: “When we get ready to take the United States, we will not take it under the label of communism; we will not take it under the label of socialism. These labels are unpleasant to the American people, and have been smeared too much. We will take the United States under the labels we have made very lovable; we will take it under (the labels of) liberalism, under progressivism, under democracy. But, take it we will.” READ MORE from Steve Dewey: Massive Tax Hikes Coming Without GOP Sweep in 2024 Elections New York Businesses Are Fleeing Wall Street. Blame Bad Policy. Steve Dewey is a retired federal financial regulator and founder of GeoFinancial Trends, LLC (www.geofinancialtrends.org) and writes on Substack (stevedewey.substack.com).  He can be reached at steve@geofinancialtrends.org   The post Scholar: Kamala Harris Borrows From Karl Marx appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.