The verdict is beginning to settle in on the new Ronald Reagan biopic, and, like RR himself, the jury is split. For the pundits and the critics who find everything about the 40th president cloying and simplistic, the movie is irritatingly pat. Look as closely as one can, they say, there isn’t a single nuance or complication at hand on which to dwell. For the audience attending “Reagan,” these qualities of sweet simplicity are among the film’s virtues. The movie is a smash, currently the third-highest grossing film in America. Anyone looking for an objective take on this version of Reagan’s life will have to continue looking elsewhere. I rest easily among those who, like Paul Kengor who wrote the book on which “Reagan” is based, regard the 1980s as an era of American renewal that came about not only because of Reagan’s creedal optimism but because of his profound convictions about America as a moral project. I was a relatively new arrival in Washington when I joined the Reagan administration as a writer in the correspondence shop in 1981. I had been drawn to the city not out of a desire for political engagement per se but as a reaction to a set of issues that required a national reset. Primary among these was the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, which had declared open season on children before birth. I had ethical views on the issue but more simply than that, the ruling struck me as grossly unfair, a purchase of power over the most vulnerable at the service of a ruthless elite devoted to population control and quality control of their “inferiors.” These topics, which Kengor has explored elsewhere in his voluminous historiography on Reagan, are not the subject matter of the new film. The many other areas where Reagan had impact—deregulation, tax cuts, judicial appointments, patriotism, social policy—are only glancingly touched upon in the two-plus hours of “Reagan.” This biopic is a Cold War story, as evinced by the narrative device of having an older-and-wiser former KGB man named Viktor Petrovich relate the history of the conflict with the Soviet Union that motivated Reagan’s rise. That said, the film offers insights into that motivation, which deployed both Reagan’s native optimism and his deep Christianity, a fact I am persuaded helps feed the political and media critics’ inability to perceive him accurately. His biography combines these factors as well. Reagan emerged on the political scene through his communication gifts, both as an actor and beyond that as a gifted writer who wrote his own scripts for decades. He was known as a man of the West, who loved the novels of Louis L’Amour, to whom he awarded a Congressional Gold Medal at a White House event in 1982. But Reagan’s ride on the open range of American promise was rooted in the small-town values of his youth in the American Midwest. He struggled with the alcoholism of his father Jack but drew from his parents, especially his mother Nelle, a hatred of racial prejudice and a deep faith in biblical Christianity. His opposition to communism, which above all substitutes an omnipotent state for the sovereignty of God and opens the door to atrocity, set the stage for his actions as the president of the Screen Actors Guild and then of the United States. This was by no means simple, of course. The film captures effectively how Reagan’s faith carried him through actual and potential calamity, from the March 1981 assassination attempt at the Washington Hilton to a tense confrontation with a mystified Mikhail Gorbachev, who makes an arms reduction offer he believes Reagan can’t refuse. “Nyet,” Reagan says. The goal for Reagan was not the political bonus at home Gorbachev dangled before him but an end to the regime of Mutual Assured Destruction—MAD—that had brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of annihilation over Cuba and, as the film shows, a Soviet misinterpretation of an atmospheric event in 1983. Portraying Reagan is in many ways an impossible task. The film is at its best in its depictions of his Christian character and unwillingness to accept the status quo. In one of his encounters with Secretary Gorbachev, the Soviet premier describes the Orthodox Christianity of his own grandmother and Reagan responds with a description of Nelle’s faith, saying he was sure the two women would have gotten along very well. An actual clip of Gorbachev in 2004 at the U.S. Capitol, laying his hand on the American flag as it drapes Reagan’s casket, is one of the film’s many moving moments. “Reagan” could have done more to elucidate the depth of Ronald Reagan, a point on which both liberal and conservative critics of the movie agree. The challenge, despite the film’s length, is the timespan it covers and the pace required to visit his childhood, lifeguarding and college years, stint in Hollywood, governorship, loss to Gerald Ford in 1976, two terms as president, and beyond. The worst of his political critics often dismissed him as uninformed, and the film could have done more to dismiss such nonsense. Reagan read widely and filled yellow legal pads with writing throughout his public life and his presidency, as his archives and books like “Reagan: In His Own Hand” scrupulously document. Seeing his correspondence every day as I did in his second term, I easily attest to his familiarity with issues across the domestic and international spectrum. His was a great presidency peopled with men and women who shared his vision for a nation of moral purpose committed to self-governance at home and peace, through strength, abroad. But he was also a man gifted with connection as well as communication skills, a trait the film captures in one of its best vignettes, where he delays an official event to write a letter to a young boy over the demise of a goldfish the boy had entrusted to Reagan’s care. The Reagan I worked for had thousands of such moments with people in his orbit. The full title of Kengor’s book is “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.” Reagan’s warning about “freedom never being more than one generation away from extinction” still applies. A revanchist Russia under the Putin regime has East and West at each other’s throats with drones raining death and mutual destruction from Kyiv to Moscow. There are no urgent questions of the past that are not questions today. What would Ronald Reagan do now? He would certainly see that communism has not fallen. But he would likewise see the evils of war, and the dread nightmare of nuclear conflagration, and he would be praying, leading, and working for peace—as he said in his First Inaugural, “Peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for it, now or ever.” The best Ronald Reagan biopic has not yet been made, but this latest effort is still timely and powerful. It echoes his vision, inscribed on the Reagans’ memorial looking westward to the sea in Simi Valley: “I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.” Chuck Donovan joined the White House staff in April 1981 and served as deputy director of presidential correspondence from 1986-88. Originally published by The Washington Stand We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post ‘Reagan’ Is a Simple, Powerful, and Timely Film for Our Cultural Moment appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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A recent study based on observations of space has provided renewed support for a century-old theory, challenging the widely accepted Big Bang model. The findings, published in the journal Particles, suggest that the hypothesis of “aging light” may be correct, casting doubt on the belief that the Universe is expanding. The study’s authors used data from multiple telescopes to analyze more than 30,000 galaxies and measure their redshift — the phenomenon where light shifts toward the red part of the electromagnetic spectrum as an object moves away from Earth. Redshift has long been used by astronomers to estimate the speed at which galaxies are moving away from us. In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies farther from Earth appear to be receding more rapidly, leading to the development of the Big Bang theory. According to this model, the Universe has been expanding since its formation approximately 13.8 billion years ago. However, around the same time, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky proposed an alternative explanation for redshift, known as the “aging light hypothesis.” Zwicky suggested that galaxies weren’t actually speeding away from Earth; instead, the photons emitted by these galaxies were losing energy as they traveled through space. In other words, redshift was the result of photons “aging” over vast distances, not the motion of the galaxies themselves. According to this hypothesis, the Universe is not expanding but is static. Zwicky’s theory was largely dismissed for nearly a century in favor of the Big Bang model, which gained broad acceptance. But the launch of the Webb Space Telescope in 2022 has led some astronomers to reexamine the Big Bang theory. The telescope has provided new data that challenges current cosmological models, including images of fully formed galaxies that appear to exist only a few hundred million years after the supposed birth of the Universe. These galaxies would have required billions of years to evolve, raising doubts about the timing and nature of the Big Bang. Using Webb’s data, the researchers behind this new study analyzed the redshift of galaxies moving at different speeds relative to Earth. They discovered that galaxies rotating in the opposite direction to the Milky Way have a smaller redshift than those moving in the same direction. The difference in redshift grows as the distance between Earth and these galaxies increases. According to the study, the Earth’s rotation speed relative to distant galaxies is constant, but the variation in redshift is due to the galaxies’ distance from Earth. This finding supports the aging light hypothesis: the redshift is not a result of galaxies moving away but rather the gradual loss of energy by photons over time. The post 100-Year-Old Hypothesis That Challenges Big Bang Theory Is Confirmed appeared first on Anomalien.com.

European Union officials in May approved radical legislation that could severely harm the U.S. economy, undermine individual rights, and force thousands of American businesses to adopt left-wing values. If this law takes full effect in America, the country may never recover. The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive attempts to transform business practices globally by imposing environmental, social, and governance requirements on large businesses operating in the European Union. The law applies regardless of whether a company is headquartered in a country outside the EU. Virtually every US industry will be impacted by the CSDDD, including vital industries like America’s massive agricultural sector. Under the CSDDD, covered businesses will be required to adopt a long list of “due diligence” practices, many of which align with left-wing ideological views. Covered companies will not merely be mandated to change their own operations, however. They will also be required to coerce many of their business partners to alter their practices too, no matter where they are located. Large businesses covered under the terms of the CSDDD include European Union-based businesses with at least 1,000 employees and a net worldwide turnover greater than $489 million. (Net turnover is similar to revenue.) Non-EU companies are covered under the law if they have a net turnover of $489 million in the European Union. This includes U.S. businesses. Among the many requirements in the law are limits on land use, water consumption, and biodiversity loss. The CSDDD also demands that companies transition their operations so that they are dependent on “green energy” — no matter how economically disastrous the transition is — and forces companies to restrict certain kinds of “disinformation” too. Labor unions are also provided with substantial legal protections, and numerous binding EU and U.N. agreements are imposed on private businesses. The CSDDD requires EU companies to adopt national policies that comply with these and other baseline rules established by the legislation, but EU countries are free to adopt even stricter standards at the national level. Businesses that fail or refuse to comply with the law will face gargantuan fines that could equal 5% of a business’s net worldwide turnover. The CSDDD also allows individuals or activist organizations to sue violators of the law for alleged damages, opening the floodgates to left-wing lawfare. The law would be phased in over several years, beginning in 2027, and many of the largest corporations in the United States will be required to comply with its terms. Effects on America Based on publicly available financial reports, it’s likely that many iconic American brands — such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Ford, Cargill, McDonald’s, Meta, Microsoft, and Sysco Foods, among many others — would be subjected to the CSDDD. This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. The directive requires that covered large companies force many of the businesses upstream and downstream in their “chain of activities” to adhere to many of the CSDDD rules as well, regardless of how much business those smaller companies do in Europe. For example, a hypothetical U.S. steel manufacturer in Texas that sells its products to Ford would be mandated to adopt EU ESG rules because Ford’s revenue in the European Union places it under the requirements of the CSDDD. The same is true for warehouses and transportation companies that do business with Ford, along with dozens of other businesses in Ford’s chain of activities. The CSDDD requires Ford and other large covered American companies to use contractual agreements to enforce the law’s ESG mandates on business partners. Nowhere to hide Virtually every U.S. industry will be impacted by the CSDDD, including vital industries like America’s massive agricultural sector. For instance, consider the impact of Sysco Foods, the largest food distribution company in the United States. Through its subsidiary, the International Food Group, Sysco operates in numerous regions outside America, including in EU countries like France. In France, Sysco’s revenues in 2023 were $1.6 billion, which means it would be a covered company under the new EU ESG law. Sysco has thousands of suppliers, all of whom will need to comply with the EU ESG law in some form. According to Sysco’s 2023 annual report, the company’s supply network includes “large corporations selling brand name and private label merchandise, as well as independent regional brand and private label processors and packers.” It also includes “specialty and seasonal products from small to mid-sized producers to meet a growing demand for locally sourced products. Our locally sourced products, including produce, meats, cheese, and other products, help differentiate our customers’ offerings, satisfy demands for new products, and support local communities.” All these suppliers, including the local farmers mentioned in Sysco’s report, would need to comply with the novel EU ESG law. A massive wealth transfer Not only would Europe’s new ESG law crush the U.S. economy by forcing businesses to adopt countless regulations and by imposing a transition to more expensive, less reliable energy sources like wind and solar, but it would also mandate one of the largest wealth transfers in history. Under the terms of the CSDDD, covered companies “should … provide targeted and proportionate support” for a small or medium-sized business partner, including: by providing or enabling access to capacity-building, training or upgrading management systems, and, where compliance with the code of conduct or the corrective action plan would jeopardise the viability of the SME, providing targeted and proportionate financial support, such as direct financing, low-interest loans, guarantees of continued sourcing, or assistance in securing financing. In other words, covered U.S. companies will be mandated to transfer wealth to small and medium-sized businesses all over the world, including China, so that they can also adopt the EU’s ESG rules. The real victims will be American families, who will endure the higher costs passed on to them. The end of sovereignty The EU’s new ESG law is nothing short of a direct assault on the sovereignty of the United States. Americans have no interest in or use for Europe’s failing policies. Unfortunately, though, the fundamental transformation of America and other nations outside the EU imagined by the framers of the CSDDD is inevitable — unless, that is, U.S. politicians push back hard and fast against it. You’ve heard it before: Elections have consequences. But thanks to the terms of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, the consequences of the 2024 election could be greater than ever. Let’s hope voters make the right choice in November.

Surveillance footage taken Tuesday evening on Nashville's John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge shows a woman in a blue shirt on the wrong side of the railing, looking down at what could have been a deadly plunge into the Cumberland River. Whereas some pedestrians walked past the distressed woman without showing any signs of slowing, rock star Jon Bon Jovi made his way over to talk her off the ledge. According to the Tennessean, Bon Jovi was filming a music video on the bridge for his song "The People House." The musician can be seen walking up to the distressed woman in the company of a production assistant while the rest of his crew keep their distance. Bon Jovi engages the distressed woman while his female production assistant makes physical contact, placing a reassuring hand on her back. 'It takes all of us to help keep each other safe.' Soon, Bon Jovi and the production assistant can be seen gripping the woman, then helping her over the railing and onto the right side of the pedestrian bridge. As the video crew begins closing the distance, Bon Jovi hugs the woman in blue. The Metro Nashville Police Department noted on X, "A shout out to @jonbonjovi & his team for helping a woman on the Seigenthaler Ped Bridge Tue night. Bon Jovi helped persuade her to come off the ledge over the Cumberland River to safety. MNPD Chief John Drake stated, "It takes all of us to help keep each other safe." The Tennessean indicated that Bon Jovi has declined to speak in detail about the incident out of respect for the privacy of the woman. A source told the New York Post, however, that the musician did what anybody in that situation would have done: lend a helping hand. The bridge where the incident took place was named after John Siegenthaler, a journalist who once saved a suicidal man's life on the same span. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A gun-toting son who was checking into a possible burglary at his mother's vacant West Virginia home in the middle of the night this week told authorities he indeed encountered an intruder — who turned toward him with an object in his hand.Unwise move on the part of the intruder.The alleged intruder he shot was identified as 38-year-old Joshua Boone of Williamsport, Maryland. The Berkeley County Sheriff's Office said a male called dispatch around 3:45 a.m. Wednesday saying he just shot an intruder in his mother's Inwood home on Winchester Avenue.Deputies responded to the scene and found a male with a gunshot wound lying face down in the residence. Deputies performed life saving measures until emergency medical services arrived, and the sheriff's office said the male was pronounced dead shortly after the arrival of EMS.The sheriff's office said the Department of Criminal Investigators was called to the residence to process the scene for evidence and conduct an investigation into the shooting death. The investigation revealed that the man who pulled the trigger responded to the residence after being told about a possible burglary.The alleged intruder he shot was identified as 38-year-old Joshua Boone of Williamsport, Maryland. Police said Boone's next of kin were notified about his death.WDVM-TV identified the man who shot Boone as Michael Marshal, noting that he told deputies Boone turned toward him “with something in his hand” after which Marshal fired his handgun. The station said Boone was found with a gunshot wound in the garage of the residence.The case will be presented to the Berkeley County Prosecutors Office upon the completion of the investigation. Anyone with information about this case is advised to contact the Criminal Investigations Division at 304-267-7000. Image source: Berkeley County (W. Va.) Sheriff's OfficeLike Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

WATCH: Crowd Shouts Their Support For Trump as He Stands With Biden and Harris at 9-11 Ceremony in NYC

Level Lock incorporates all the smart tech into a deadbolt that can be retrofitted into an existing lock. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Smart locks may still be a niche product, but lock behemoth Assa Abloy is clearly betting on a digital future for our doors. Despite being sued by the US Department of Justice for trying to buy too many smart lock manufacturers, the Swedish-based company just bought another one: sleek smart lock maker Level Lock. With this latest purchase, Assa Abloy, which owns a staggering 190 brands in the “access control” space, may now have a significant piece of the puzzle it needs to push the market into a digital future. “Their innovative platform provides an easy transition from mechanical locking to digital access solutions with minimal effort,” said Lucas Boselli, executive vice president of Assa Abloy, in a press release. Level’s technology... Continue reading…