In all modern elections, you’ve heard politicians in both parties speak in existential terms. This will be the “last election;” this time, “democracy is on the ballot;” vote like “your life depends on it” — and still, we always have another election. We’ve become so accustomed to the hyperbole that we find ourselves in the […]

Blood everywhere

'Free from fear'

Now Minnesota schoolchildren and taxpayers are devastated. 

A flying instructor in Alaska, has taken on a second gig as manager of an “airplane amusement park” complete with luxury accommodations built out of old, decommissioned aircraft. John Kotwicki says there’s little red tape interfering with getting old airplanes up to his flight school and converting them into Airbnbs to use as a base […] The post Plan a Trip to Alaska and Stay in These Classic Airplanes Converted into Luxury Accommodations – (LOOK) appeared first on Good News Network.

News Vision What is This? James Spader to Voice Ultron for Vision Series The series is meant to be the third part of the trilogy after WandaVision and Agatha All Along. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on August 23, 2024 Credit: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Marvel Studios It looks like the new Marvel series based on a version of Vision will have Paul Bettany’s character deal with an old Marvel Cinematic Universe foe. According to The Hollywood Reporter, James Spader will be reprising his role in voicing Ultron for the coming Vision series spearheaded by Picard showrunner Terry Matalas. We met Ultron in 2015’s Avengers: The Age of Ultron. In that movie, the titular character is an artificial intelligence created by Tony Stark who turns and tries to kill humanity. In its process of attempting to do so, it creates a high tech body that Tony, Bruce, and Thor imbue with J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony’s AI system, and the Mind Stone. The upcoming Vision series centers on the other version of Bettany’s character (aka White Vision) we met at the end of WandaVision. It’s not clear how Ultron, who presumably died at the end of the 2015 movie, will appear in the series. Several options are possible, of course, given this is the MCU. Perhaps he’ll be another variant from the multiverse. Or perhaps it’s the OG timeline Ultron who managed to survive somehow. Whatever the case may be, we’ll get an answer of some sort whenever the Vision series makes its way to Disney+. THR also reported that the show will be the last part of a trilogy, with WandaVision and the upcoming Agatha All Along comprising the first two installments. No news on when the Vision series will premiere, but the show is targeting to film in England in early 2025.  Agatha All Along premieres on Disney+ on September 18, 2024. [end-mark] The post What is This? James Spader to Voice Ultron for Vision Series appeared first on Reactor.

Canadian journalist Andrew Lawton’s “A Political Life” examines the life and career of Pierre Poilievre, a rising conservative star in Canada who is the odds-on favorite to become that country’s next prime minister. Focusing on a politician who is relatively new on the national scene—Poilievre just turned 45—and little known outside Canada, Lawton’s biography does an outstanding job of recapping Poilievre’s personal life and political career. Lawton concludes by contemplating what the future of Canada could be should Poilievre become prime minister.  Donald and Marlene Poilievre adopted young Pierre when his biological mother couldn’t care for him. Otherwise, he had a fairly normal childhood, but his parents separated when he was 20 and his father came out as gay. Poilievre makes it clear that he loves both his parents as well as his father’s gay partner. By this time, Lawton writes, Poilievre knew he wanted to be involved in politics. In fact, he knew this since age 14 and he sought to impress his fellow Western Canadians rather than the so-called elites. Poilievre officially expressed his political ambitions at age 20, when he wrote an essay for a contest held by Magna International, the Canadian auto parts manufacturer, on the topic: “As prime minister, I would … ”  He ended up as a finalist, receiving a cash prize and an internship with Magna International. His essay’s title: “Building Canada Through Freedom.”  Although Lawton notes that Poilievre prefers to keep his family life private, his book he gets into personal detail about how the conservative politician met his wife Anaida—also called Ana—as well as when the couple found out their daughter was autistic. In introducing the reader to Poilievre, the author explains Canada’s political system and contrasts its parliamentary system, in which the party with a majority in parliament chooses its leader as prime minister, with that of the U.S., in which the president and Congress are elected separately.  Poilievre’s wife Ana has supported his political races, which made him a member of Parliament for nearly two decades before he became leader of the Conservative Party of Canada in 2022 and thus the leader of what Canadians call the Official Opposition. The Canadian media sometimes refers to Poilievre as the “Canadian Donald Trump” despite many tangible differences on the issues as well as style.  One cause with which Poilievre was identified closely is the so-called Freedom Convoy of early 2022. Canadian truckers were fed up with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates and chose to protest in the capital city of Ottawa to send a strong message to Trudeau. Poilievre took to the highway to cheer on the truckers as they made their way to Ottawa to protest. He even gave coffee to them. There was already a Conservative Party leader with whom a growing number of party activists were getting fed up: Erin O’Toole. O’Toole described himself as a “true blue” conservative rather than a progressive conservative, and many thought him to be former Foreign Minister Peter MacKay’s rival for the party helm. O’Toole narrowly won the Conservative Party’s leadership post over MacKay, but those on the right dominated the party and increasingly thought O’Toole wasn’t serving them as they expected. One issue on which grassroots conservatives were particularly upset was COVID-19 vaccine mandates, and they said O’Toole didn’t respect their view. Instead of doing what many Canadians wanted, they argued, O’Toole followed what others in the Trudeau government wanted—continuing imposition of government restrictions on the unvaccinated. Lawton’s biography of Poilievre goes into rich detail about his rise to power, his disposing of O’Toole as party leader, and his chances of becoming prime minister. The author concludes by envisioning Canada under a Prime Minister Poilievre and just what he would do with a majority in parliament to change domestic and foreign policy. (His slogan, “Bring It Home,” refers to making Canada a great country once again.) How and when Pierre Poilievre gets the opportunity to try to make Canada great again remains to be seen. For now, though, readers inside and outside Canada have a good guidebook to his thinking. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post A Good Look at Canada’s Future Prime Minister: Pierre Poilievre’s ‘Political Life’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Learning isn’t necessarily cumulative. Human experience over the centuries provides lessons, some clearer than others. But each generation has to learn lessons anew, and some do not. The lessons about economic growth taught over the long run of history are clear. Growth is not inevitable, and while riches may be accumulated, or appropriated, by the few in high positions, the lives of the very large majority throughout the centuries have been nasty, brutish, and short. The exception, the Great Enrichment, began some three centuries ago around the North Sea in the Dutch Republic and in England, according to economic historian Deirdre McCloskey, in societies when people began respecting and encouraging commerce rather than resenting and scorning it. They discovered that when people exchanged goods and services in free markets, with property rights secured by limited government and the rule of law, economies could grow in ways that improved the lives of not just the few but the many. Suddenly, and not just for a moment, the great masses of people went from living on $3 a day, just barely subsistence—and in times of famine or war, not even that—to $130 a day. The 20th century proved full of lessons for how to produce extended and widely distributed economic growth—and how to squelch it. Growth occurs when free markets are allowed to operate in societies with high levels of trust and the rule of law. It ceases, and living standards plummet, in societies where governments flood the economy with currency, try to control wages and prices, impose centralized economic planning, and outlaw voluntary market transactions. Governments sometimes impose such measures temporarily in wartime, with various results depending on the course of the war. In peacetime, the results are destructive—in Weimar Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong’s China, and, most recently, oil-rich Venezuela. And, perhaps, in Kamala Harris’ America. Since President Joe Biden ended his candidacy for reelection four weeks ago, the vice president has said remarkably little about what policies she would pursue as president. Her website has had no issues section. She has taken almost no questions and has undergone nothing like an intensive interview from the press—most members of which, in their enthusiasm for her candidacy, have shown no discomfort at her neglect. Only last Friday did she begin talking issues, announcing “the first-ever federal ban on price gouging”—she read the word as “gauging”—on food and groceries. Presumably, this was an attempt to address an obvious vulnerability for any candidate with a Biden-Harris pedigree, the fact that administration policy, by showering money on consumers already flooded with lockdown-accumulated cash, stoked inflation that no voter under 60 had experienced as an adult. But of course, this made no sense. The grocery business is highly competitive, with low profit margins. If one firm “gouges” consumers too much, they can go elsewhere. “It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is,” wrote The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell. “At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets, and hoarding.” Rampell has since taken a different view after Harris’ actual speech backpedaled from her campaign’s fact sheet, but her initial take remains persuasive and in line with historic experience, including with the price controls imposed by former President Richard Nixon 53 years ago this month. Similarly economically illiterate is Harris’ proposal to give first-time homebuyers a $25,000 government subsidy. Just as colleges and universities have vacuumed up government-subsidized college loans for their own purposes, so obviously developers and home sellers are going to raise their asking prices by $25,000 and pocket the subsidy. As Jason Furman, head of former President Barack Obama’s second-term Council of Economic Advisers, said of the price gouging announcement, “This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality.” Is it fair to argue that Harris has learned nothing from the dismal history of price controls on the basis of just one proposal? Yes, if it’s just the only thing she has proposed in a whole month as the de facto and de jure Democratic nominee for president. And yes, as she has never personally renounced the similarly outlandish promises she made in 2019 in her campaign for the 2020 nomination—a ban on fracking, defunding the police, abolishing private health insurance, “snatching” drug company patents. Tweets from anonymous staffers ditching these policies don’t count. The delicious irony here is that the party favored by college graduates, many of them smugly confident of their knowledge and wisdom, is nominating a candidate who has shown no sign of learning from the dismal history of economic ukases. Learning isn’t necessarily cumulative. 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 The College Graduates’ Presidential Candidate Doesn’t Know Economic History appeared first on The Daily Signal.

High Drama: Canadian Gov Says Railroads Back to Work, Arbitration to END Strike That Fidelito...Caused?!

BREAKING: RFK Withdraws, Endorses Trump in Court Filing; UPDATE: RFK Speaks