Books book review Too Much is Happening in The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton A review of Emily Hamilton’s new science fiction novel By Liz Bourke | Published on September 4, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share The Stars Too Fondly is Emily Hamilton’s debut novel. It’s a fast-paced, entertaining science-fiction romance romp, replete with pop-culture riffs and references. But underneath the smart-arse asides, witty banter, and sexual-romantic chemistry, I’m not sure it has any real core of meaning beyond the platitudinous. Not everything has to be deep and meaningful, of course, but it’s good to set your expectations appropriately. Cleo McQueary and her well-educated mid-twenties friends Kaleisha Reid, Abraham Yang (of whom the first thing we learn is that, “He was Chinese American”), and Ros Wheeler, didn’t intend to steal the Providence I spacecraft. They only wanted to break in and see for themselves the vessel that, twenty years prior in 2041, had been humanity’s best hope for establishing a human population on another world and perpetuating the species beyond Earth’s seemingly-inevitable rapid decline.1 At least it was, before the Providence’s entire crew simply vanished from aboard her in the middle of the launch sequence. Cleo and her friends hope to find out why—a question that the very thorough investigation of twenty years before could not answer. But the dark matter engine—the proprietary, experimental technology that was supposed to allow the Providence to travel to Proxima Centauri B,2 and a technology that has since been abandoned, along with a crewed space program—starts all on its own as soon as Cleo and her friends get close to the engine. The Providence takes them automatically and unstoppably through launch, into space, and well on their irreversible way to Proxima Centauri—a seven-year voyage. Their only assistance is the holographic artificial intelligence built from the mind and memories of the ship’s captain, Wilhelmina Lucas, or Billie to her friends. Apart from being holographic, Billie is otherwise indistinguishable from the original Captain Lucas, and she’s not thrilled that her entire crew, including her little brother Elijah, are vanished-presumed-dead. Meanwhile, except for Cleo, the friends are coping pretty badly with the idea that they’re going to spend fourteen years trapped aboard the Providence with only each other for company before they could possibly return home, and even Cleo’s not exactly coping brilliantly well. Matters only become more complicated when it transpires that their brief brush up close and personal with the dark matter engine has given them strange abilities, abilities which in Cleo’s case appear to let her see into parts of the past. Buy the Book The Stars Too Fondly Emily Hamilton Buy Book The Stars Too Fondly Emily Hamilton Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget They need to be able to control their abilities, for their safety and the safety of the ship, and while learning to do so, Cleo a) starts to get hints about how and why the entire crew vanished, and b) starts falling in love with the literally untouchable Billie, who also reciprocates her feelings, even though she no longer has a body. An awkward state of affairs, to be sure. Between Billie’s memories and Cleo’s new powers, the friends slowly begin to figure out what actually happened with the Providence all those years ago. It involves interaction with another dimension—the “Other Place,” as Hamilton’s characters call it. The crew of the Providence are not dead, after all, but rather they—including Captain Lucas—were translated to this Other Place, where they have been kept ever since, unharmed but unchanging. We learn this in Captain Lucas’s point of view, in interludes interspersed with the rest of the narrative, and we learn, too, that Captain Lucas can see into her original dimension. She’s been falling in love with Cleo even as Cleo and Billie have been falling in love with each other. Captain Lucas wants the Other Place to let her and her crew go, and she wants Cleo and her friends to use their abilities to a) stop a terrible threat to the Other Place, and b) let the crew out, if the Other Place won’t release them on its own. Love, as they say, is the most powerful force in the universe, and this is a love story, so you know it will all come right in the end. I had thought that Hamilton would do something clever and plausible within the constraints of the universe she developed, and have the AI Billie turn out not to be AI at all, but rather a projection of Captain Lucas from the Other Place. The novel sets itself in 2061; it seems deeply implausible that someone could copy their entire consciousness into digital form, a true artificial person indistinguishable from the original, in 2041. A projection of a real person would make the romantic happy ending—in which AI-Billie sacrifices herself to save the four friends, but also in which Cleo ends up with the real Billie, who’s aware of everything that happened with AI-Billie, so the happily-ever-after remains in prospect—seem less pat and unearned. But this is not the case: AI-Billie is a true AI, after all. In the face of that required suspension of disbelief, the fact that all the equipment aboard the Providence is still in situ and working reasonably well, rather than removed during the course of the investigation, or sold off and repurposed in course of the two decades since, and that the crew’s next of kin has not claimed their effects, is a much smaller hurdle to clear. Perhaps I’m too demanding in wanting the set dressing for this story of friendship, superpowers, space and romance to make sense within its own context. Hamilton writes with verve and style, and makes it easy to overlook the novel’s flaws. The Stars Too Fondly reminds me of the fluffier end of Star Trek, and in its tone, of Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Its explicitly diverse cast, with its trans and nonbinary characters and their care for and connection to each other, is pleasant to read, and its narrative trips entertainingly along. I’m too jaded to be its ideal reader, but I expect plenty of others will find it heart-warming and delightful.[end-mark] The Stars Too Fondly is published by Harper Voyager. I don’t know about you, but in my case, the more I learn about space, the more my attitude towards Earth—even an Earth suffering under the hellish consequences of 6 degrees Celsius or more of global warming—is you will pry me off this Edenic paradise world when the sun cooks it and not before, since it seems that even the best case scenario for inhabiting other worlds would involve living in tunnels like moles with extremely restricted resources. Let’s try that here, first. ︎Hamilton’s Proxima Centauri B is tidally locked, with a narrow band of barely-survivable temperatures in its twilight zone, but possesses a human-breathable atmosphere and was, apparently, reachable by probes that returned prior to 2041. ︎The post Too Much is Happening in <i>The Stars Too Fondly</i> by Emily Hamilton appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts romantic fantasy Read an Excerpt From Abigail Owen’s The Games Gods Play The gods love to play with us mere mortals. And every hundred years, we let them… By Abigail Owen | Published on September 4, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Games Gods Play, a new romantic fantasy novel by Abigail Owen, out now from Red Tower Books. I have never been favored by the gods. Far from it, thanks to Zeus.Living as a cursed office clerk for the Order of Thieves, I just keep my head down and hope the capricious beings who rule from Olympus won’t notice me. Not an easy feat, given San Francisco is Zeus’ patron city, but I make do. I survive. Until the night I tangle with a different god.The worst god. Hades.For the first time ever, the ruthless, mercurial King of the Underworld has entered the Crucible—the deadly contest the gods hold to determine a new ruler to sit on the throne of Olympus. But instead of fighting their own battles, the gods name mortals to compete in their stead.So why in the Underworld did Hades choose me—a sarcastic nobody with a curse on her shoulders—as his champion? And why does my heart trip every time he says I’m his?I don’t know if I’m a pawn, bait, or something else entirely to this dangerously tempting god. How can I, when he has more secrets than stars in the sky?Because Hades is playing by his own rules… and Death will win at any cost. 3 The Last Mistake I’ll Ever Make Raw emotions bubble inside me like a poisonous potion in a witch’s cauldron. I haven’t entirely decided what I’m going to do when I get to the temple. I’m either going to beg that egotistical fucking god Zeus to remove his punishment or I’m going to do something worse. One way or the other, my problem will be solved. And, unlike earlier, now I don’t give a shit that midnight is the start of the Crucible and all the “rules” that come with the cryptic festival. We mortals know only how the festival begins, how it ends, and how we celebrate in between. They begin with each of the major Olympian gods and goddesses choosing a mortal champion during the rites at the start. The festivities end when some of the mortals selected return. Some don’t. The ones who do make it back don’t remember a thing, or maybe they’re too scared to talk about it. And the ones who don’t, well, their families are showered in blessings, so it’s supposedly an honor to be chosen either way. Regardless, mortals have been throwing this festival every hundred years since what feels like the dawn of time, everyone hoping they’ll be chosen by their favored god. What can I say? Humans are foolish. Zeus is probably in his heavenly city on Mount Olympus, busy preparing for the start of the Selection Ceremony, but I’m having it out with him right now. It can’t wait. I just need to get his attention is all. Luckily, everyone knows the one thing Zeus is most attached to in our world—his fucking temple. Adrenaline pumps in my veins as I hurry through the trees. The temple is already cordoned off, but at least I’ve got enough thief training to be able to get around the barriers with no one noticing. I skirt past a row of perfectly manicured bushes and approach the place from the back, where I’m less likely to be seen. The arcs of lightning overhead fill the air this close to the temple with charged electricity, masking the sounds of my footsteps as the hairs on my arms stand on end like toy soldiers. I should take that as a warning. I don’t. I keep going. Buy the Book The Games Gods Play Abigail Owen Buy Book The Games Gods Play Abigail Owen Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Staring at the pristine columns surrounding the walled-off inner temple rooms in the center, I try to formulate a plan. Praying and begging first would be the smart move. But now that I’m standing here, alone in the dark, with my hands clenching and unclenching at my sides, every unbearable, excruciating millisecond of misery caused by Zeus’ curse flashes through my head. I’m shaking so hard with a vile concoction of anger and heartache and mortification that I rock on my feet. But the worst part of all is that, maybe for the first time ever, I admit to myself how fucking lonely I am. I’ve never known what it’s like to whisper secrets to a friend, or hold someone’s hand, or have someone to just sit with me when I’m feeling low. We wouldn’t even have to talk. And I just… In a haze, almost as if I’m watching myself from the outside, I search the ground around me and grab a rock. Cocking my arm back, I go to hurl it at the nearest column. Only, a hand clamps around my wrist mid-throw, and I’m jerked back against a broad chest. Strong arms encircle me. “I don’t think so,” a deep voice says in my ear. I forget every self-defense technique drilled into me and instead thrash against my captor’s hold. “Let me go!” “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, and for some reason, I believe him. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to be free, though. I have shit to deal with. “I said”—I grit out each word—“Let. Me. Go.” His grip tightens. “Not if you’re going to hurl rocks at the temple. I don’t feel like dealing with Zeus tonight.” “Well, I do!” I kick out, trying to twist away. “He’s an asshole, I get it. Trust me,” my captor mutters in a low voice. “But if I thought throwing a tantrum would change that, I’d have brought that temple down with my bare hands years ago.” It’s not just the words—something in his tone makes me still in his arms, almost as though the two of us are sharing the same emotion. The same anger. The feeling steals my breath, and I find myself leaning back, reveling in the moment. As if, for the first time in my life, I don’t feel utterly alone. Is this what it’s like to connect with someone? Crickets chirp in the distance, their slow cadence in sync with his even breaths. In sync with mine now, too, I realize. “If I let you go, do you promise not to attack a defenseless building again?” he asks softly. “No,” I admit, and I feel a sigh rumble in his chest. So I add, “That fuckhead doesn’t deserve any prayers.” “Careful.” His voice wobbles. Is he laughing? “Why?” I ask, a surprising grin spreading across my lips when only a few seconds ago, I was ready to throw down with a god. “You worried someone might want to hit me with a bolt of lightning while I’m in your arms?” “Talk like that could win a few hearts.” His voice is soft, his breath rustling the hair at my ear. I go stiff against him, my chin falling to my chest. “Highly unlikely,” I mutter at the ground. “Zeus made sure no one can ever love me.” A gaping hole of silence greets my bitterness. My interfering do-gooder drops his arms and takes a step back, probably worried curses are contagious. I immediately miss his warmth and shove my hands in my pockets. “I…” He trails off as if considering his words. “Find that hard to believe.” I’m so desperate to escape this whole scene, the change in his tone doesn’t entirely penetrate as I round on him. “Listen, I’m fine now. You can move on…” The rest of my words wither on my lips. If I went dead still earlier, I might as well have looked Medusa in the eyes now. The only thing about me that moves is the blood pumping through me so hard and fast, my ears thrum. My mind races to make sense of what my eyes are telling me. Oh no. This can’t be happening. Suddenly, it’s as if all the emotions that drove me here like a banshee with a bone to pick blow themselves out, leaving me empty. I finally felt a smidgeon of connection with someone, and it’s… I mean… I did come up here to have it out with a god. Just not this one. Even in the dark, only illuminated by constant strobes of lightning, I can see the perfection of his sculpted face—with its hard jaw, a high brow, dark eyes, and lips almost too pretty for his otherwise harsh features—as a clue of what he is. Only the gods and goddesses boast that kind of beauty. But it’s the pale lock that curls up off his forehead into the blackness of the rest of his hair that gives him away. Every mortal knows the story of how his brother tried to kill him once by taking an axe to his head while he slept, but only succeeded in leaving a scar that changed his hair in that one spot. Unmistakable. Not to mention unforgettable—and extremely unfortunate for me. Tangling with this god is so much worse than my original plan. Run. The instinct finally punches through me, urging me to make my legs move. But there’s no point. Besides, the instinct to freeze in place is stronger. “I’m afraid one of us shouldn’t be here,” I quip, my mouth always filling in for my brain when I’m nervous. Not helping, Lyra. I’m also not entirely wrong. What is he doing at this particular temple? He says nothing, standing with his arms crossed, taking me in the same way I did him, only with a tension that fills the air with more electricity than Zeus’ lightning. I know what he sees—a slip of a woman with short raven hair, a smallish face, pointed chin, and catlike eyes. My one vanity. They are deep green with a darker outer ring and gold at the center, fringed by long, black lashes. Maybe if I bat them at him? Except beguiling is not in my list of skills, so I nix that thought. He’s still staring. There’s an intensity to him that sets me more on edge with every passing second, every part of me prickling. Silence fills the gaps between us for so long that I reconsider running as an option. “Do you know who I am?” he finally asks. His deep voice would be smooth except for the harsh growl at the bottom of it. Like a silky, still lake broken by ripples from something under the surface. Is he serious with that question, though? Everyone knows who he is. “Should I?” Holy hells, stop popping off, Lyra. The god’s eyes narrow slightly at my flippant response. Face assuming a hard cast, he takes two slow, long strides directly into my space. “Do you know who I am?” Everything inside me shrivels like my body already knows I’m dead anyway and is just getting a head start. Fear has a taste I’m more than familiar with—metallic in the mouth, like blood. Or maybe I just bit my tongue. The gods have punished mortals for much less than what I’ve done and said so far tonight. My entire body quivers. Merciful gods. “Hades.” I swallow. “You are Hades.” The god of death and King of the Underworld himself. And he does not look happy. Excerpted from The Games Gods Play by Abigail Owen. Reprinted with permission from Red Tower Books, an imprint of Entangled Publishing. All rights reserved. The post Read an Excerpt From Abigail Owen’s <i>The Games Gods Play</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News A Minecraft Movie Witness Jason Momoa’s Pink Leather Jacket & Smeared Eyeliner in A Minecraft Movie Trailer By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on September 4, 2024 Screenshot: Warner Bros. Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Warner Bros. The live-action (kinda) adaptation of Minecraft is creeping ever closer to theaters, and today we got a trailer that gives us our first good glimpse of what the heck this film will look like. For those who don’t know, Minecraft is the best-selling game of all time, where players create worlds out of block-shaped pieces. According to the teaser for the film, which is accurately titled A Minecraft Movie, it looks like some humans played by Jason Momoa, Emma Myers (Wednesday), Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple, Peacemaker, Orange is the New Black), and the young Sebastian Eugene Hansen (Just Mercy), find themselves in Minecraft land. What are they doing there? Here’s what the synopsis tells us: Welcome to the world of Minecraft, where creativity doesn’t just help you craft, it’s essential to one’s survival! Four misfits—Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Momoa), Henry (Hansen), Natalie (Myers), and Dawn (Brooks)—find themselves struggling with ordinary problems when they are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld: a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they’ll have to master this world (and protect it from evil things like Piglins and Zombies, too) while embarking on a magical quest with an unexpected, expert crafter, Steve (Black). Together, their adventure will challenge all five to be bold and to reconnect with the qualities that make each of them uniquely creative… the very skills they need to thrive back in the real world. The teaser does give us a glimpse of some of the block-shaped characters (including a square-faced llama) that are unsurprisingly disturbing though not quite as bad as the original Sonic the Hedgehog we saw in those film adaptations. We also see Jack Black as Minecraft Steve in full live-action form, even though his video game counterpart is the first avatar that players could take on. A Minecraft Movie is directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre). It also features actors Kate McKinnon, Jermaine Clement, and Jennifer Coolidge, and is set to come out “sometime in 2025.” Check out the teaser trailer below. [end-mark] The post Witness Jason Momoa’s Pink Leather Jacket & Smeared Eyeliner in <i>A Minecraft Movie</i> Trailer appeared first on Reactor.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Climate change activist Greta Thunberg was arrested by Danish Police in Copenhagen, Denmark, during a pro-Palestine protest, The Guardian reported Wednesday. Thunberg and five others associated with Students Against the Occupation were arrested during a 20-student protest that blocked the entrance to a building at the University of Copenhagen, demanding an “academic boycott” of Israel by the university, according to The Guardian. Thunberg has recently been an outspoken critic of Israel, calling the war a “genocide” in a 2023 op-ed in The Guardian and saying she wanted to “crush Zionism” in a 2023 protest. The Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing over 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages into the Gaza Strip. The war ignited protests that swarmed university campuses across the U.S., some of which turned violent, with some advocating for Israel’s dissolution as a state. “This morning Students Against the Occupation entered an administrative building of [the University of Copenhagen], that also houses the rector’s office, to demand an institutional academic boycott of israeli universities! We were joined by [Thunberg], who was quickly arrested along with students,” Students Against the Occupation said on Instagram Wednesday. “Danish media is only covering her arrest at the university and giving no attention to why we were occupying the university in the first place. OUR UNIVERSITY CAN NO LONGER BE COMPLICIT! ACADEMIC BOYCOTT NOW!” Danish Police told the Daily Caller News Foundation that “six people have been charged with breach of domestic peace and is [sic] released again.” It declined to officially reveal the identities of anyone arrested, including Thunberg. Thunberg was arrested in July 2023 during a climate protest outside the oil port of Malmo, Sweden. Swedish authorities found her guilty of disobeying police and fined her 1,500 Swedish Kronor ($144). Students Against the Occupation also organized a hunger strike in June, as well as an encampment at the university in May, according to the group’s Instagram. “While the situation in Palestine only gets worse, The University of Copenhagen continues cooperation with academic institutions in Israel,” Students Against the Occupation said in a press release. “We do not have three more years to wait for UCPH’s management to do [the] only right thing. We are forced to act. We are occupying Museumsbygningen in the central administration with one demand: ACADEMIC BOYCOTT NOW! [sic].” The Greta Thunberg Foundation and the Students Against the Occupation did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. This article, originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation, was modified on the day of publication to clarify that the grant program does not use taxpayer funds. The post Greta Thunberg Nabbed by Cops During Anti-Israel Protest appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sigh. Here we go again. The 2016 Democratic Party platform proudly proclaimed, “We believe as Democrats that health care is a right, not a privilege.” In 2020, the party doubled down, saying, “We must guarantee health care, not as a privilege for some, but as a right for every single American.” The drumbeat continued in the 2024 Democrat platform: “Health care should be a right in America, not a privilege.” This is nothing new. Decades before Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris began chanting the mantra, leftists all kinds have seemed to believe endlessly repeating “health care is a right” will somehow make it true. But it’s not. And claiming it to be one is lazy, ignorant of natural law, or just plain deceptive. It’s important to first clarify that proponents of health care being a right are ultimately advocating for universal health insurance. All Americans already have access care at some level. More than 90% of the population is covered by private plans, Medicare, or Medicaid, and even those with no insurance whatsoever can’t be turned away from an emergency room for financial reasons. Admittedly, that’s a limited and inefficient option that satisfies no one, but it’s the paying for health care, not the provision of it, that’s the core issue. That pinpoints the problem of claiming health care as a right; namely, it ain’t cheap. I don’t know anyone who isn’t in favor of all Americans having convenient access to high quality care, but its provision, like the provision of any service, requires the labor of others. That’s something no one can presume. As the cliché goes, your rights to swing your fist stop at the tip of my nose. “Free” health care requires doctors, nurses, techs, and all the people who provide the equipment, machinery, medicine, and supplies in the vast health care system to unwillingly bear the cost. That’s not only immoral, it’s unsustainable. If beer, bread, and basketballs were free, there would soon be no beer, bread, and basketballs. English Enlightenment-era philosopher John Locke wrote that we are all born with inalienable natural rights that are God-given and can never be taken away. Among the rights Locke cited were “life, liberty, and property,” the latter of which was exchanged for “the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. Note, however, that none of those rights require the labor of others. Even the last one is a right only of pursuit, not attainment. Government is there to protect our rights, not provide them. The confusion in our understanding of what constitutes a right dates to the early progressive movement. It was expressed in full illusory flower by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1944 State of the Union address. “As our nation has grown in size and stature,” Roosevelt said, our “political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.” He proposed a “Second Bill of Rights” that included the right to “a useful and remunerative job,” to “earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation,” to “a decent home,” to “a good education,” to “adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment,” and yes, to “adequate medical care.” What a wonderful world it would be if all these things could be ours simply by declaring them to be rights. Unfortunately, somebody must pay for them.   Roosevelt’s folly was never introduced in Congress, but it did inform the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified in 1948. This international wish list guarantees, among many other things, “the right to rest and leisure,” including “periodic holidays with pay” (Article 24); the right to “food, clothing, housing and medical care” (Article 25); and “the right to free elementary education” (Article 26). It’s interesting to note that Article 26 goes on to say that “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children,” which is not something you’ll see quoted by today’s progressives. All of this demonstrates the untenability of claiming rights based on human aspirations rather than natural realities. All rights are good things, but not all good things are rights. If our duly elected legislature one day passes a law that somehow finds a way to deliver health insurance for all, that’s its prerogative (assuming it passes constitutional muster). But that still won’t make it a right. In the preamble to his laundry list, Roosevelt said, “People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” What he failed to mention is that government seizing the fruit of people’s labor without their consent is what dictatorships do. His Second Bill of Rights was, in every sense of the phrase, a bill of goods. Ambitious politicians to this day are still asking us to buy it. The post Why Health Care Is Not a ‘Right’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—A whistleblower told Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri in a letter released on Tuesday that the Homeland Security Investigations agents assigned to former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, were “egregiously under-prepared.” The whistleblower told Hawley that the HSI agents were taken off child exploitation cases and reassigned in partnership with U.S. Secret Service to work security at the rally, according to the letter. Ahead of the event, the HSI agents received just a two-hour “webinar” that lacked substance and was “riddled with technical mishaps,” with the whistleblower claiming that the training is unchanged even after the assassination attempt. “In other words, all of these allegations together suggest that a significant number of personnel tasked with providing security for former President Trump at the July 13 rally were egregiously under-prepared by the Secret Service to carry out this mission,” Hawley said in the letter. The agents assigned to President Trump in Butler PA were pulled off child exploitation cases and thrown onto Trump’s protective detail with nothing more than a 2hr online training. And we know this ONLY because of brave whistleblowers pic.twitter.com/m8CY5eqmUl— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 4, 2024 “Imagine 1,000 people logging onto Microsoft Teams at the same time after being informed at the last minute that everyone needed to login individually,” the whistleblower said in the letter. “Once it got rolling, the Secret Service instructor couldn’t figure out how to get the audio working on the prerecorded videos (which I’m told are the same videos as last year). All told, they restarted the videos approximately six times …. The content was not helpful.” “Nothing new, nothing improved since the assassination attempt on former President Trump,” the whistleblower continued. Hawley previously addressed Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas about allegations that there were more HSI agents present on July 13 than Secret Service agents, according to the letter. Another whistleblower also alleged that some of the HSI agents at the rally had never worked a protective security detail before and were unaware of the proper procedures. One of the HSI agents working at the rally “only receive[d] one power-point presentation for training,” according to the letter. Due to these security lapses, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to fire multiple shots from a rooftop positioned 130 yards away, wounding the former president, killing volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore and injuring two attendees. Crooks was reportedly spotted by witnesses, flagged by Secret Service agents, and even identified by a local countersniper over an hour and a half before Trump went on stage. In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle provided an evasive testimony on July 22 before the House Oversight Committee, which resulted in bipartisan scrutiny and calls for her resignation. Cheatle resigned from her post just a day after her testimony and 10 days after the assassination attempt. “The U.S. Secret Service respects the role of oversight,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “To date, we have provided over 1,500 pages of responsive documentation to Congress and have made employees available for transcribed interviews. These efforts will continue as our desire to learn from this failure and ensure that it never happens again is unwavering.” The U.S. Secret Service and Homeland Security Investigations did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily caller News Foundation. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post ‘Woefully Unprepared’: Whistleblower Alerts Hawley That Security Agents at Trump Rally Lacked Proper Training appeared first on The Daily Signal.

ERIE, Pennsylvania — The chaser last Wednesday in Sen. JD Vance‘s, R-Ohio, trip to this all-important county in the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania came when the Republican vice presidential nominee said Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris can “go to hell” for her handling of the 2021 attack at Abbey Gate in the final days of President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Harris, for her part, has claimed that she was the last person in the room when Biden made the decision that led to the death of 13 American soldiers. It was a decision that Harris pointedly said she was “comfortable with.” Vance said that if he was going to discuss any questions related to Abbey Gate, “It’s that Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won’t even do an investigation into what happened, and she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up. … She can go to hell.” His remarks came in response to a reporter’s question about an alleged incident that occurred when former President Donald Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery with family members of those who were killed in the attack. While the “go to hell” quip made headlines, it was all the other things Vance did last Wednesday and the groundswell of support he received that are important in understanding where voters’ sentiments lie toward either ticket. While the national audience read about Afghanistan, what was not written but will definitely be talked about by voters in Erie was Vance’s well-received off-the-cuff speech at Team Hardinger, a local logistics and trucking company, where he talked about the dignity of work and the importance of community. It was a speech that connected so well with those in attendance that one woman wondered out loud where the heck his teleprompter was, to which Vance quipped, “Ma’am, I don’t need a teleprompter. I’ve actually got thoughts in my head, unlike Kamala Harris.” There was also nothing written about his visit to Firestone’s Kitchen, located at Gordon’s Butcher Shop, where one of the cooks, Mark Spagel, gave the former Marine a beer after everyone around the bar asked Vance to join the group in a toast. An ice cold beer he downed to cheers. The standard narrative coming from the national media is that Vance is weird, that he doesn’t connect with Midwest voters, that Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., is everybody’s father and coach, and “Oh look, he wears plaid,” because that is what the national media is writing. Or they are writing about one incident in which a woman became uncomfortable when Vance walked into a bakery and there were dozens of cameras on her because he was there. These are the same blind spots in the media that were in place in 2016, and they really haven’t changed. If, by chance, Trump and Vance do win and the national media are again surprised, it is because they only wrote about Arlington and did not balance it out. What they do not understand is that the majority of people who were at the events in Erie will be talking about what they experienced and heard there, not what happened in Arlington, Virginia. The happy-warrior vibe Vance gives out comes from a place of gratitude, he told me in an interview. “I’m here, and I’ve been given this incredible opportunity, and I’m going to try to make something of it, and the way to make something of it is to actually get out there and talk to people,” he said. “And yeah, sometimes that’s mediated through a really hostile interviewer, but I’m not going to sit here and whine and complain because somebody asked me a tough question,” he said. “There are still a lot of people who are going to hear the answer. It’s very amazing to know that I get to make this case directly to the American people, and you should take every opportunity you get.” Vance said that on his drive into Hardinger, he was struck by how similar the post-industrial city was to Middletown, Ohio, where he was born. “I just think it is important to go where a lot of politicians often don’t go and make the case directly to people, and hopefully, they feel seen,” he said of places such as Erie. Once upon a time, the General Electric plant here employed 18,000 people. Just about everyone who lived here had an uncle, father, grandfather, sister or mother who worked there. Today, after being known as GE Rail, it is now called GE Transportation and owned by Wabtec. The most recent report by the Erie County Data Center found that Wabtec employed 2,240 people in the county. Like Middletown, Erie is a region left behind by globalization, automation and technology. The locomotive, tool and die shops, machine shops and factories that once prospered here have struggled to rebuild and rebrand the region. Voters here matter, and they want to hear what Vance and Trump have to say, as well as Walz and Harris. Whatever way Erie County goes, so goes Pennsylvania, and so go places such as Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Georgia. “Not everybody’s going to agree with me on every issue, not everybody’s going to agree with Donald Trump on every issue, but I hope that after the campaign, what they’ll at least be able to say is they cared enough to show up and they cared enough to take questions and they cared enough to come to the places where we work and where we live, because that’s what a person who wants to be our president or vice president should do,” Vance said. Christopher Borick, political science professor at Muhlenberg College, said it cannot be overstated how important Erie is. “It also cannot be overstated how important showing up and meeting people where they are and connecting with them on issues that impact their lives, like the economy, (is),” Borick said. Borick said that while Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have larger populations than Erie, “it is counties like this and Northampton, Luzerne, Cambria and Beaver who will decide the election because, as I say all the time, in our state, it is the margins in those places that matter.” Vance said one of the things he hears a lot from people he meets and talks to on the trail is the struggle to achieve the American dream of homeownership. “It is the most common complaint that I hear, and I hear the same exact complaint coming from younger people versus more elderly people, but the perspective on it is slightly different,” he said. Vance said he hears frustration from the young people and heartache from the elderly. “Young people tell me that when their parents were their age, they could work and as long as they played by the rules and did a good job, they could afford to buy a home,” he said. “They could put down some roots. They could send their kids to a nice school. And they can’t do that anymore. “When you talk to their grandparents they’ll say, ‘Well, we just want our kids to be able to have as good of a life as we did, and we’re worried they’re not going to.’ And we are worried that they have no prospects of homeownership, and they’d like to build a life down the street from us but they can’t because they can’t afford it. “It just makes you realize that we really have failed in a very big way in this country,” he added. Vance said one way to think about Trump’s presidency is that it was a brief respite from 25 years of things broadly going in the wrong direction. “And I think it’s always possible to overstate these things,” he said. “There’s still a lot of joy, and there’s still a lot of great things in this country, and people are still raising families, and it’s not all bad, but it’s a hell of a lot harder than it should be, and I think people feel that in a very acute way.” Vance said one of the things that has surprised him as he is going across the country trying to earn votes happened just the day before and involved his mother. “We were in Big Rapids, Michigan, and we go to this A&W root beer stand at Big Rapids — one of these places that’s open six months out of the year because the other six months out of the year, it’s way too cold — and the very first person wants to give my mom a hug,” Vance explained. “And the person said to Mom, ‘You’re such an inspiration, and a lot of us have struggled with addiction and the fact that you and your son kept at it, that’s an inspiration.'” He said with a smile, “When you come from a nontraditional or nonconventional background, I think there’s a certain tendency to want to hide it a little bit and not to tell the story. And obviously, I told the story in ‘Hillbilly Elegy.’ But even then, you don’t necessarily want to talk about it so much because it feels a little uncomfortable. You realize that there are a lot of people who take, not even from my story, but from my mom’s story, take some inspiration from that. “And that is definitely something that I’ve learned, and it’s been a very cool thing to watch it unfold.” After Vance’s speech and press conference, which included local and national press questions, he visited Gordon’s Butcher Shop, which, despite the power outage across the entire city block, was packed with people wanting to take a selfie, shake his hand or just say hello. Vance took the time to fulfill every request. On the 3-mile drive to the retail stop, people stood outside their homes, businesses and cars to wave at him. The same thing happened on the 7-mile drive through neighborhoods and business districts to the airport where his campaign plane was waiting to take him to Wisconsin. What mattered at this stop was the people of Erie and how they responded to Vance. That is the thing people will be talking about for weeks. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post What Really Happened to JD Vance in Erie appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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Walz Keeps Going AWOL

MSNBC’s Al Sharpton joined colleague Joy Reid on Tuesday’s edition of The ReidOut to allege that the reason why some people still support Donald Trump is because they seek to take the country back to a time when women and minorities had no rights. Reid led Sharpton with a completely unrelated statement. Discussing Lara Trump’s latest singing video, she declared, “I love people who have a dream. I am not knocking her having a dream. I'm saying Simon Cowell used to tell folks on American Idol this might not be your dream. That you can have a dream, but this might not be the appropriate dream for you.”     Sharpton used Lara’s singing to harken back to Donald Trump’s recent appearance at a Moms for Liberty event that Reid previously mentioned, “It might be a nightmare, and probably, though, when she looks at how their campaign is unraveling and Donald Trump, her candidate and relative, has become unhinged, you said it right. We would be demanding the 25th Amendment if Joe Biden said anything remotely as unhinged and just totally incoherent as that.  At the event, Trump claimed that schools were sending children to have gender reassignment surgeries without their parents’ knowledge. Trump overstated the matter, schools are not giving kids surgery, but some schools absolutely are keeping gender identity-related secrets, such as preferred pronouns, from parents. As it was, Sharpton continued, “But he is going around, still high in some polls, not where he was because Kamala Harris has certainly unseated him as the front runner, but he has certainly still being able to, for other reasons, have this grip on a lot of voters that think this is the only way to bring America back to the days before women had rights and blacks and browns and other people of color had rights. And now he's imagining, hallucinating that children are being made to change their gender.” After smearing millions of people, without evidence, of being racists and or sexists, the unserious Sharpton lamented, “We're acting like this is a serious candidate or like this is a serious threat to this country.” Sharpton further claimed, “I think that we are seeing a man absolutely becoming other than his best self and even his best self wasn't great. But he's lost the ability to even think while he's talking. It just comes out. It’s like a baby just spitting up. And I think that because of that, even his most ardent followers have to scratch their head.” Reid agreed, “You would think. And the fact he's even in the 40s is shocking given the stuff that he says." Here is a transcript for the September 3 show: MSNBC The ReidOut 9/3/2024 7:08 PM ET JOY REID: I love people who have a dream. I am not knocking her having a dream. I'm saying Simon Cowell used to tell folks on American Idol this might not be your dream. That you can have a dream, but this might not be the appropriate dream for you. AL SHARPTON: It might be a nightmare, and probably, though, when she looks at how their campaign is unraveling— REID: Yeah. SHARPTON: — and Donald Trump, her candidate and relative, has become unhinged, you said it right. We would be demanding the 25th Amendment if Joe Biden said anything remotely— REID: Yeah. SHARPTON: — as unhinged and just totally incoherent as that. But he is going around, still high in some polls, not where he was because Kamala Harris has certainly unseated him as the front runner, but he has certainly still being able to, for other reasons, have this grip on a lot of voters that think this is the only way to bring America back to the days before women had rights and blacks and browns and other people of color had rights. And now he's imagining, hallucinating that children are being made to change their gender. REID: In school. SHARPTON: In school, with the instruction of their teachers. We're acting like this is a serious candidate. REID: Right. SHARPTON: Or like this is a serious threat to this country. I think that we are seeing a man absolutely becoming other than his best self and even his best self wasn't great. But he's lost the ability to even think while he's talking. It just comes out.  REID: Yeah. SHARPTON: It's like a baby just spitting up. And I think that because of that, even his most ardent followers have to scratch their head. REID: You would think. And the fact he's even in the 40s is shocking given the stuff that he says.