The baby bust is here. The reality is clear: Americans are having fewer kids. In 2023, America had 2% fewer births than in 2022, hitting a record low, according to newly released finalized data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While Americans haven’t had enough kids to keep population levels stable for decades, there has been a steep decline in recent years: The number of 2023 births was 17% lower than the number of births in 2007. Yet at the recent Democratic National Convention, Planned Parenthood provided free vasectomies and abortion pills. An 18-foot inflatable IUD, a type of birth control device, was placed on display near the convention by Americans for Contraception. In her speech, Oprah Winfrey negatively highlighted GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s 2021 quip about “childless cat ladies.” (Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio, has said the remark was sarcastic and about political leaders, not individuals struggling with fertility.) Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., told the New York delegation, per the Washington Examiner, “The cat ladies of America are united, OK?” USA Today reported, “What’s the hot merch at the DNC? ’Cat lady’ T-shirts and ’my black job’ buttons,” a reference to a remark Donald Trump made to black journalists about “black jobs.” America’s Future Is Filled With Seniors, Not Children So much for caring about the future of the country, which looks bleaker if births don’t increase. A shrinking population doesn’t bode well for any nation. A smaller tax base will affect government spending and benefits or lead to increased taxes, and fewer workers will create economic challenges. “Low U.S. fertility combined with an aging population have the potential to generate significant headwinds to economic growth,” admitted the Biden administration in a brief this March. Yet a shrinking population is what we’re on track for. By 2029, there will be more seniors, adults 65 or older, than children in the United States, according to a November estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau. By 2038, the U.S. is expected to have more deaths than births. Furthermore, the data suggests that it’s conservatives, not liberals, who are having more children, making the Democrat convention’s focus even more concerning. “The 17 states with the highest general fertility rates are all designated by Cook Political Report as Republican, or GOP-leaning, including such Republican strongholds as North Dakota, Nebraska, Louisiana, Utah, and Texas,” writes Steven Malanga, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, in City Journal. “By contrast, the bottom six states—and nine of the 10 states with the lowest fertility rates—are all either Democratic or Democratic-leaning.” Republicans also seem to prefer larger families. A 2023 Gallup Poll found that 50% of Republicans, compared to 40% of Democrats, wanted three or more children. So maybe it’s time for less “childless cat ladies” rah-rah rhetoric from the Left and more pondering about how we can increase the birthrate. To put my cards on the table: I’m a 36-year-old woman who has no children (and while I don’t have a cat, I do own an absurd mini poodle). One of my brothers is a Catholic priest, and another one is studying to be one, and given the Catholic Church’s position on priestly celibacy, neither of them will have children. I don’t think my life or their lives are less valuable because we are childless. I don’t think Mother Teresa made the wrong call by not having biological children, and I certainly don’t think Jesus Christ was a failure for not having kids. But a nuance that seems to be increasingly lost in our childish political squabbles is that you can see that all people, regardless of parenthood status, have inherent value and dignity and that, at the same time, it would be better for our society if we had more children. Why Americans Aren’t Having Children Not everyone can or should have children. But more Americans should reconsider their reasons for not having children. In July, Pew Research Center released an extensive survey of childless Americans. When it came to younger Americans, those 18-49, only 13% citied infertility or other medical matters as a major reason they didn’t have children.  The top major reason, identified by 57% of respondents, was “they just don’t want to.” Other reasons cited as major (respondents were allowed to pick multiple major reasons) were wanting to focus on job or other interests (44%), concerns about the state of the world (38%), concerns about affording a child (36%), concerns about the environment and climate change (26%), and not finding the right partner (24%). Some of these we as a society can help address, from pushing corporations to be more family-friendly to promoting sensible economic policies that make housing and food more affordable. If the corporate media would start allowing a more honest conversation about the environment and climate change, Americans would realize it’s possible to both protect our world and welcome more children, instead of succumbing in despair to the Malthusian mindset. But as shown by the 57% saying “they just don’t want to” have children, this is also a cultural and spiritual crisis. Missing the Magic Children Bring When did we lose the sense of the joy children bring? Sure, as anyone who is a parent or who has observed a parent knows, parenting is incredibly hard work. It involves insane levels of patience, wisdom, and, well, grit. But what happened to talking about the good stuff of parenting? Recently, on Reddit, which generally is a place where the dialogue skews toward recognizing the downsides of having children, there was a thread in a forum for women aged 30 and older from a user asking people to make the case for why she should have kids. Another user responded by talking about how her mindset had shifted after she had become an aunt, after her brother and sister-in-law had an unplanned pregnancy. The user, “heylookoverthere_,” wrote that she thought during the pregnancy the couple was being “weird and irresponsible” and worried about the baby being “annoying and an inconvenience.” “But then he came along, and my worries just … didn’t feel relevant anymore. He wasn’t just an abstract idea of a baby. He was an actual baby. He was a real human being with a head full of hair and little fingers and toes that were just learning to grab things,” she wrote, adding: He slept with his mouth open in my arms for two hours while I worked at my laptop with one hand, letting them just take their first shower and have a nap, and I just looked at him and thought, how incredible is this? An adorable baby who is so loved, a brand new human. A year ago, he didn’t exist and now, he’s sleeping in my arms, and it’s going numb, and I’m working incredibly slowly but I wouldn’t have put him down for anything. How lucky are we to have him? And every day and every week since then, I’ve watched him change. I was the first person he learned to smile at. I watched him grow out of clothes that were once too big for him within like 2 weeks. I watched him go from a blob to opening his eyes and recognizing people. I watched him at baby swim classes and how excited he was when he figured out how to splash his hands in the water. I watched him start to stand, I watched him hear music for the first time and start bouncing where he was sitting. I watched him start to discover things. I watched him develop a personality. He’s brave and daring like his mum, and strong and curious like his dad. He has the best chuckle. The happiest belly laugh. He finds everything so funny, so entertaining. I want to make him laugh all the time. And they love him so much. Both our families love him so much. There is so much more love than I anticipated could be possible. My brother says he never thought he was capable of love like this, never thought it was possible to love something so much. I would move mountains for this child. I would upend my life if he needed me. It’s brought both sides of parents closer together, both families closer. It’s changed my own relationship with my partner, and we’re not even his parents. That’s when it started to feel magical to me. … And yeah, they’re tired all the time, but for the first time, I can see why it’s worth it. These are the kinds of “magical” stories we need to hear more about. In my own life, my reason for not having children has been not finding the right man (until I met my wonderful fiancé). Yet I also, looking at the struggles, sometimes felt ambivalence. However, in recent years, between acquiring nieces and dear friends having babies, I’ve spent more time with kids in any time since my own childhood. I’ve found myself joyful just because my niece stood up in her crib and breathed “Hi” when she saw me, just because my friend’s toddler said my name, just because another friend’s daughter shared her first birthday cupcake with me. In an interview with Megyn Kelly last month, Tucker Carlson spoke about the Vance comment, which Vance made during an interview with Carlson when he was still on Fox News. “I’m pretty sure I egged him on to say something like that … I think I’m responsible for that,” Carlson said about the remark. But he went on to discuss the heart of the matter: how our culture is missing out because we aren’t having children. “I feel sorry for childless people, whether they have cats or not,” Carlson added. “And I mean it as someone who has four children who are the root of my happiness. I really feel compassion. And the whole point, well, the intended point—I may have distorted it in getting cable newsy and being nasty to people—but the whole point is, we should be encouraging people to experience the things that make them the happiest. “And I think any parent will tell you, as hard as it is having kids, that is one of the main sources of happiness for people from the beginning of time. And if we’re discouraging that or making it impossible for people to have kids, that’s on us.” Carlson’s right. Sure, we might be losing out on economic prosperity because of our child-avoidant culture, but even more so, we might be losing out on one of our best chances at a happy, fulfilling life. The post Left’s ‘Childless Cat Ladies’ Focus Overlooks America’s Need for More Kids appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Jazz-funk, solo hits and near-bankruptcy – this is the turbulent story of Ian Gillan’s post-Deep Purple career

Unless you were in a coma for nearly four years or working deep in the Amazon, you surely know that Kamala Harris was Vice President under Joe Biden for those years. She even assumed responsibility for those decisions and raved about Bidenomics and being the last person in the room when the Afghanistan decision was […] The post Like the Phoenix Rising, a New Kamala Springs Up appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

The Israeli military found Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old American-Israeli taken by Hamas from The Nova Music Festival in October, and five other hostages dead in Gaza on Sunday. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops found the bodies of the six hostages in a tunnel underneath Rafah, a city in southern Gaza that the Biden administration had previously pressured Israel to refrain from invading. A spokesman for the Israeli military said the hostages were killed not long before their bodies were found. “According to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a statement. “Their bodies were found during combat in Rafah in an underground tunnel, approximately one kilometer from the tunnel from which we rescued Farhan Alkadi a few days ago.” Israeli forces rescued Israeli captive Qaid Farhan Al-Qadi from a tunnel underneath Rafah on Tuesday. Alongside Goldberg-Polin, IDF forces found the bodies of Master Sgt. Ori Danino, 25, Carmel Gat, 40, Alexander Lobanov, 32, Almog Sarusi, 27, and Eden Yerushalmi, 24. All six were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 and were believed to be alive, according to The Wall Street Journal. President Joe Biden released a statement expressing his “devastated and outraged” reaction to Goldberg-Polin’s death. Vice President Kamala Harris released a separate statement calling Hamas “an evil terrorist organization” with “even more American blood on its hands.” “I strongly condemn Hamas’ continued brutality, and so must the entire world. From its massacre of 1,200 people to sexual violence, taking of hostages, and these murders, Hamas’ depravity is evident and horrifying. The threat Hamas poses to the people of Israel — and American citizens in Israel — must be eliminated and Hamas cannot control Gaza,” Harris said. The Biden administration repeatedly pressured Israel to stay out of Rafah, the final stronghold of Hamas in Israel’s war to exterminate the terror group. Vice President Kamala Harris said during a March interview with ABC News that she and the president believed military action in Rafah to be a “huge mistake.” “We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake,” Harris said. “I have studied the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go,” she continued, referring to civilians moved into Rafah as the IDF fought Hamas in other parts of the enclave. “We’ve been very clear that it would be a mistake to move into Rafah with any type of military operation.” KAMALA HARRIS warns against an Israeli offensive in Rafah: "I have studied the maps." She is then unable to articulate anything substantive beyond her left-wing talking points. pic.twitter.com/XBDhkU2XG3 — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 24, 2024   The IDF offensive into Rafah began in May after Israel set up refugee camps and safe travel corridors for civilians to escape the city. Israeli forces have rescued a handful of hostages since, and while ceasefire negotiations have been ongoing, Israel has repeatedly rejected any deal that would foreclose Israel’s ability to destroy Hamas as an organization. Elected Democrats have faced pressure from the left flank of their party to push for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war regardless of whether the terror group is left intact. Thousands of pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas protesters marched on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago last week to pressure Harris and others to take a tougher stance against Israel. Goldberg-Polin was spotlighted at the DNC in an address to the conference given by his parents, who have been vocal proponents of a ceasefire deal to rescue hostages still captive in Gaza.