Updated November 3, 2024 How do the 2024 presidential candidates compare when it comes to foreign policy? With tensions high across the globe, foreign policy is front and center of this year’s presidential race. A majority of Americans support Ukraine against Russia, but isolationism has resonated with a part of the electorate who believe that aid will only fuel a conflict that appears to have no end in sight. Both Trump and Biden agree on seeing China as a world competitor, but...

"So it changes, depending on the situation.” The post “They deserve to have their fridge full of beer”: Eddie Vedder on the one band that should sell out first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

The Black Vote Slips In 2016, one of the first signs Hillary Clinton might be in trouble was weak polling among Black voters. Shortly before the election, during an interview on the “Tom Joyner Morning Show,” Barack Obama issued this warning: “The overall vote is up. But the African-American vote, right now, is not as solid as it needs to be.” Clinton ended up winning 89 percent of the Black vote — six points down from the 95 percent Obama won in 2008. But her tepid support among Black voters is a nationwide phenomenon that includes the so-called “blue wall” states. In 2020, the slippage continued when Joe Biden garnered 87 percent. Most Democrats assumed that Kamala Harris would improve on that performance but various polls have shown her drawing far less support among Black voters than they expected. This reality has manifested itself in early turnout. In Georgia, for example, Democrats typically need 30 percent of Black voters to cast early ballots to offset robust Election Day turnout by Republicans. In 2024, early turnout in the Peach State has been strong but the percentage of ballots cast by Black voters was low enough to alarm Georgia Democrats according to a report in the Capital B Atlanta: “State Rep. Carl Gilliard, D-Savannah, joined an emergency Zoom call with about 70 other Black Georgia faith leaders Monday night to discuss their concerns about the state’s latest early voting figures.” As early voting ended last Friday, their percentage was only 26.5 percent. Politico describes a similar story in North Carolina: As of Wednesday, Black voters make up 18 percent of the electorate in early voting, and some Democratic operatives said they must bump that up to about 20 percent for Harris to be competitive statewide. In 2020, Black voters were 19 percent of the electorate, when Donald Trump narrowly won the state. And Democrats acknowledge that without a swing in their favor in the last days of early voting or on Election Day, it may not be good enough … Harris is expected to win a majority of African American voters in North Carolina, and nationally, but any slippage with this group would be a blow to the vice president. As early voting ended Saturday evening, the percentage of Black voters who cast early ballots in North Carolina had stalled at 17.8 percent. Moreover, as is usually the case in Georgia, turnout in the Tar Heel State on Election Day will likely favor Trump. Meanwhile, The Carolina Journal reports, “According to ad tracking firm AdImpact, the Harris-Walz presidential campaign has changed much of its remaining ad spending in North Carolina in the last week of the election, pulling millions of dollars worth of ads from the major North Carolina media markets.” Trump held rallies in the state on Saturday and Sunday. He will return Monday to close the sale while the DNC tries to rouse Black rural voters with a new ad campaign. Georgia and North Carolina are, of course, among the seven crucial swing states in which the election will probably be decided. The RCP Top Battlegrounds average, shows Trump leading in Georgia by 2.3 percent and ahead in North Carolina by 1.4 percent. If he wins in these two states, Harris will be left with only one plausible route to victory in the Electoral College. Because Trump also enjoys modest leads in three of the remaining five swing states, she will probably need to run the table in the Rust Belt — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But her tepid support among Black voters is a nationwide phenomenon that includes the so-called “blue wall” states. A recent report in the New York Times explains her dilemma: Much of the erosion in support for Ms. Harris is driven by a growing belief that Democrats, who have long celebrated Black voters as the “backbone” of their party, have failed to deliver on their promises … Ms. Harris’s problems with African American voters rest on the same issue that her struggles with other constituencies do: the economy. Nearly three-quarters of Black voters rated the economy fair or poor, and the economy and abortion were rated their most pressing concerns. More than seven in 10 Black voters said they had cut back on groceries because of cost; 56 percent said they had cut back often. It’s Not Only the Black Vote Another phenomenon that has affected lower than normal Black turnout percentages for Harris involves the record-breaking number of early ballots cast by Republican voters. In swing states that report voter registration data, GOP voters outnumbered Democrats. In North Carolina the Raleigh News & Observer reports, “Registered Republicans slightly outnumbered Democrats in early voting and mail-in totals, currently accounting for 33.3 percent of votes cast so far, compared to Democrats’ 32.4 percent.” In Nevada the Reno Gazette Journal reports, “After the final day of early voting, registered Republicans have cast almost 50,000 more votes than Democrats statewide, according to Secretary of State data released at 9 p.m. Friday.” This more or less mirrors what has been happening in most of the seven swing states. Unfortunately, considering their importance to the outcome of the 2024 election, most have clunky election websites that provide incomplete and often incoherent information on early voting. The good news is this: In every state that provides coherent data, the Republicans appear to be ascendant and the Democrat coalition is disintegrating. Black voters are the most obvious defectors, but they are by no means alone. As former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer put it on Sunday, “30 of 31 states that register voters by party have become either more Republican or less Democrat than they were at the time of the 2020 election.” When the Democrat-run states are finally forced to stop creating … er … counting votes, it will already be obvious who will be taking the oath of office on January 20, 2025. READ MORE from David Catron: Whoever Yells ‘Fascist’ First Loses In Georgia, GOP Districts Dominate Early Voting The post Early Turnout: Harris Falters Among Black Voters appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I never shared the awe of fantastic screen heroes forged by Star Wars and its legacy, though I appreciated the return to nobility after a decade of murky antiheroes. At least you knew where Han Solo and Indiana Jones stood against clear-cut evil like the Empire and the Nazis, which appealed to the kids. Maybe because I was an older movie afficionado, I found both characters and the actor who played them just okay. Harrison Ford was no Sean Connery, Steve McQueen, or Clint Eastwood, but a likeable enough successor. Then, 20 years behind him came a renaissance of superheroes culminating in the asexual Avengers. Their portrayers’ cringeworthy endorsement of cackling empty pantsuit Kamala Harris last week lowered my original opinion of the lot of them. Heroes of Hollywood’s Golden Age Hollywoke, I knew, was a far cry from classic Hollywood. During the four years between 1942 and 1945, there was also a dearth of familiar heroes. Because the actors who embodied them weren’t on the screen, they were in the War, in real combat. When the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, almost every top male star took a huge pay cut to share hardship and mortal danger with nameless grunts. They included Clark Gable — aerial gunner, five missions over Germany; James Stewart — fighter pilot, 20 missions over Europe; David Niven — British Army Lieutenant-Colonel, D-Day Normandy landing; Henry Fonda — Quartermaster 3rd Class on a Navy Destroyer. “I don’t want to be in a fake war in a studio,” Fonda said before he enlisted. Yet even his peers who did fight in the fake war served a patriotic purpose: inspiring men into military or homefront service, and women to cherish them. Audiences cheered John Wayne in The Fighting Seabees and Back to Bataan, Errol Flynn in Desperate Journey and Objective, Burma, Cary Grant in Destination Tokyo, and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca and Across the Pacific. At the end of Across the Pacific, Bogie watches a group of eastbound U.S. warplanes and says to Japanese spy Sidney Greenstreet, “Any of your friends in Tokyo have trouble committing hara-kiri, those boys’d be glad to help them out.” (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: The Last Halloween for Democrat Witches) While making They Were Expendable in 1945, honoring the brave PT Boat warriors in the Pacific theater, the brilliant yet combative director John Ford constantly tormented star John Wayne for ducking the war still in progress. Wayne was the sole superstar for Republic Pictures, which got him a deferment in order to save hundreds of studio jobs and continue the morale-boosting movie product. Wayne’s costar Robert Montgomery, a genuine naval war hero, chewed Ford out, telling him to cut the crap. Ford complied for the rest of the shoot. Fall of the Hollywood Hero I loved all those guys and their films growing up — even contemplated enlisting myself. Only I was too young for one ongoing war. Everything about the Vietnam War appeared ugly, especially the movies, TV shows, and news referencing it. On Hawaii Five-O, for example, it seemed every other psycho killer was a deranged Vietnam veteran. And America showed little respect for real-life returning servicemen. Students and hippies protested to their faces. By contrast, screen “heroes” were all societal misfits like The Graduate, Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, Bonnie and Clyde, and the M*A*S*H medics. I didn’t much like them either. The return to the heroic male tradition begun by Star Wars, Superman, and Raiders of the Lost Ark in the late Seventies exploded with the rise of Ronald Reagan. Recognizable macho men and vets were back — Rambo, Thomas Magnum, Martin Riggs (Lethal Weapon), Chuck Norris, even Dirty Harry. Not by coincidence, the stars who embodied them — Sylvester Stallone, Tom Selleck, Mel Gibson, Norris, and Eastwood are conservative Republicans. Harrison Ford hung with them through the Nineties, concealing his progressivism until the 21st Century, when the pull to the Left became too much for him to mask. In 2002, he began dating Ally McBeal Calista Flockhart, whom he married in 2010 at a wedding officiated by Bill Richardson, the liberal Democratic then Governor of New Mexico. Soon, Ford went full woke, offscreen and on, turning his two legendarily masculine characters into loser weenies, diminishing their stature and his. In 2015’s Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens, Han Solo suffers the stupidest, most ignoble death imaginable. He doesn’t go down fighting. He enables his villainous son to commit fratricide. But The Force Awakens is Cyrano de Bergerac compared to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Indy spends the entire picture as a worn-out old man bested by his cleverer Girl Boss goddaughter (the inescapable Phoebe Waller-Bridge). Last week, Ford dropped one more career embarrassment — a video ad for Kamala Harris. The video is so artificial and phony: black-and-white photography, dramatic cuts, somber tone, painful overacting, and total BS. “When dozens of former members of the Trump Administration are saying, “For God’s sake, don’t do this again, you have to pay attention.” Would that be anything like 51 former intelligence operatives signing a letter ascribing the Hunter laptop story to Russian disinformation, Professor Jones? (READ MORE: To Be or Not to Be America — After Election Day) Then comes the seppuku thrust. “The truth is this,” Ford says. “Kamala Harris will protect your right to disagree with her.” Which must be why she picked Tim Walz as her Vice-President. “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech,” Walz told MSNBC. “Especially around our democracy.” Good call, Indy. This Tuesday, we don’t have to storm Normandy Beach like David Niven did or land a shot-up bomber like Jimmy Stewart did. But we can sure as hell ignore the sad likes of Harrison Ford and the Avengers actors. We can vote for someone who got shot at for real, unlike them, and stood up in defiance. And we can save America. We can be heroes, just for one day. __________ “If you appreciate Lou Aguilar’s column, Washington, DC intrigue, and film noir mystery, you will also enjoy The Washington Trail. It is a true page turner.” —Leonora Cravotta, The American Spectator, on my new political thriller, The Washington Trail, the perfect Christmas read. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever exciting mysteries are sold. The post We Can Be Heroes for One Day — Election Day appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In his appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, former president Trump said that the biggest mistake of his first term was choosing “bad” and “disloyal” people to be part of his administration. Some of those he lumps into that category were neither bad nor disloyal. Former senator and then attorney general Jeff Sessions and former director of national intelligence — and retired SEAL vice admiral — Joe McGuire come to mind. I knew them both and they deserved better fates than they suffered under Trump. And then there’s former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director Gina Haspell. Comey should have been fired as soon as Trump took office. Haspell — who Trump had been warned against — should never have been chosen as CIA director. A reader who remembered my columns from years ago asked me to review what I wrote then and give my take on the new information that is coming out thanks to whistleblower revelations. Here goes. I’m sure I’d written about Haspell and Comey before, but the only columns I could find were the following. One explained how Haspell ran a big part of the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump and his campaign while she was CIA station chief in London. Another was about the Comey-Brennan conspiracy to violate Trump’s civil rights to interfere in his 2016 campaign. If the whistleblower’s allegations are true … they will have thoroughly ruined the FBI’s already shot-to-hell reputation. Gina Haspell is not a disloyal person. To the contrary, she is entirely loyal but to the wrong people. As I wrote in 2019, she was a protégé of John Brennan, a past CIA director and a hyper-partisan anti-Trumper. As CIA station chief in London Haspell had no problem with Comey’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign and Trump himself. She ran the overseas part of it. We have to remember that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was based entirely on the fraudulent “Steele Dossier,” which no part of the intelligence community (IC) ever verified. It was the means by which the IC declared war on Trump. Both Trump and the IC have been at odds ever since. Oblivious to all this — and despite warnings he received from intelligence community veterans — Trump nominated Haspell to be CIA Director. That was clearly Trump’s worst personnel decision. Not only was she loyal to the wrong people, Haspell ensured that the intelligence community continued to oppose Trump during her tenure. There is no excuse for the IC to be politicized, though it very much is. The IC still holds a big grudge against Trump. If, as we hope, he is reelected tomorrow, he’ll have to deal with that quickly because it is a real crisis within the government. If any president cannot rely on the IC for accurate information, foreign policy is mere guesswork. We’ve had enough of that under Biden/Harris. It must not be allowed to continue. Former FBI director James Comey was an anti-Trump partisan from the start. If you need any proof of that you need only remember that in July 2016 he gave Hillary Clinton a pass for obvious, serious crimes while he served in the top FBI job. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: What Great Allies We Are) Clinton had, for the four years she was Obama’s secretary of state, used her unsecured email system — “Clintonmail.com” — to discuss with her staff and others (including Obama) secret and top secret information. Included among the top secret information was an unknown amount of “SITK” — “Special Intelligence Talent Keyhole” satellite intelligence — which is some of the most closely-held intelligence data, equal in sensitivity to information received from spies in enemy governments. The only other classified information that is as closely held is the information about Presidential Directives, which was another subject of conversation on “Clintonmail.” Presidential Directives are top secret documents which give presidential authorizations of covert operations, some of which leave blood on the walls. Anyone could — and some foreign governments must have — tapped into those “Clintonmail” conversations. Hillary and her staff communicated regularly — hundreds or thousands of times — about those subjects over the “Clintonmail” system. Every time they did this it was a serious felony, and they did it — hundreds? thousands? — of times. Nevertheless, in his big press conference that July day, Comey said that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges against Clinton for the classified information on her unsecured emails. It was an enormous dereliction of his duty. Comey’s decision was entirely political, meant to help Clinton’s campaign. Trump fired Comey in May 2017. And now we have evidence that Comey ran a “honeypot” operation to spy on Trump’s 2016 campaign. According to a Washington Times report, Comey ran that operation personally. According to the whistleblower, two female FBI agents were planted in Trump’s campaign to act as “honeypots.” During the Cold War we referred to Russian female spies who were willing to have sex with a target “honey traps,” and “honeypots” are no different: the method and the objective are the same. How many female FBI agents were willing to prostitute themselves to help James Comey spy on the Trump campaign? The whistleblower said there were two. If the whistleblower’s allegations are true, and however many there were, they will have thoroughly ruined the FBI’s already shot-to-hell reputation. So what can Trump do if he’s elected tomorrow? First, he needs to have a conservative experienced in personnel matters at the helm of presidential nominations and appointments and a staff to match. As president he can appoint over 8,000 members of the government from cabinet members on down. As I learned from more than one friend who went through the Trump process the first time around, Trump had the worst presidential appointments staff ever. As the First Law of Governance says, personnel is policy. Someone who has that as his or her guiding principle — and their like-minded staff — will be essential this time around. Second, Trump needs to clean up the IC. That’s an enormous task but there can be a few steps taken immediately. Trump needs to appoint someone in each federal agency — every one, including the Defense Department, State Department, the IC agencies, and White House operations such as the National Security Council — who has the clout to remove people who are loyal Democrat operatives. (READ MORE: The Real Forever War) As for DoD, that will also require firing all the generals and admirals who have bought into Biden’s “woke” policy that is destroying our military. Most senior IC members and cabinet members such as Hillary keep their security clearances for years after they leave office. Trump could — and damned well should — cancel all of those clearances immediately for Clinton, Obama, Biden, Harris, and everyone who worked for them. He may not be able to cancel the clearances of former presidents or vice presidents but he can cancel all the rest. Those steps are just the beginning. If Trump can come to understand that personnel is policy, his second term — if there is one — will be a lot more successful than his first. The post For Trump, Personnel Decisions Will Be Crucial appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The other day, former Wyoming congresswoman and member of the January 6th Committee Liz Cheney called on former President George W. Bush to endorse Kamala Harris for president. Cheney and her father Dick Cheney (who served as Bush’s vice president) have endorsed Harris and joined the choir of never Trumpers who claim that Trump is a threat to democracy. Bush 43, some may recall, was a strong proponent of NATO enlargement. Up to now, Bush 43 has been publicly silent, though his daughter Barbara has endorsed and is actively campaigning for Harris. “I can’t explain why George W. Bush hasn’t spoken out,” Liz Cheney said, “but I think its time, and I wish that he would.” But while a George W. Bush endorsement of Harris would make headlines, it is doubtful that it would help her win the election. (READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: The Garbage Election) Bush: A Good Man and Flawed Leader By all accounts, Bush 43 is a good man, and his leadership during the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks will always be something to admire. Of course, those attacks happened on his watch and he can no more escape responsibility for preventing them than Franklin Roosevelt can escape responsibility for failing to prevent the Pearl Harbor attack or John F. Kennedy the Bay of Pigs debacle. As Harry Truman said, the buck stops at the president’s desk. And Bush eventually sullied his response to the 9/11 attacks by launching an ill-fated war in Iraq and an even more ill-fated global crusade for democracy that had this country and its soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines fighting in endless peripheral wars that distracted us from the real geopolitical threat that was emerging in the Indo-Pacific. Moreover, many of those supporting Harris are the same crowd that used to chant “Bush lied and people died” about the Iraq War. There are even some never Trumpers who claim that Bush’s lies about the Iraq War created a “blueprint” for Donald Trump’s presidency. In fact, Donald Trump has said “Bush lied, people died.” Donald Trump has for eight years been consistent in his criticism of the “endless wars” prosecuted by the Bush 43 administration. A major theme of his “America First” approach to foreign policy is to avoid wars of choice that are at most peripheral to U.S. national security interests while deterring great power threats like China’s. Trump sees the Ukraine-Russia war as one of those peripheral conflicts that is draining our resources even as China becomes ever more threatening in the western Pacific. What is more, Trump seems to understand that the war hawks promoting escalation in Ukraine are simultaneously pushing Russia closer to China and risking the outbreak of a global war between nuclear powers. Bush 43 supports the Ukraine war and America’s support for a Ukrainian victory. Like Biden, Harris, and others Bush has invoked the specter of Munich to justify U.S. support for Ukraine. He has called Ukrainian President Zelenskyy the “Churchill of the 21st Century.” He also thinks we should still be in Afghanistan. (READ MORE: 46 Years Ago, the Soviet Empire’s End Was Set in Motion) Bush 43, some may recall, was a strong proponent of NATO enlargement. During his presidency, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Romania joined the alliance. In 2008, he spoke publicly about having Ukraine and Georgia join the alliance, despite warnings from Russia experts that such a move would infuriate the Russians and possibly lead to conflict. So at the same time that Bush 43 was fighting wars to attempt to transform Middle Eastern countries into democracies, he was pledging on behalf of the American people to wage war — including if necessary nuclear war — to defend the independence of all of those countries that were admitted to NATO. It is a sorry record and should place him among the ranks of our worst presidents because leaders should be judged by the consequences of their policies, not their “good” intentions. The voters who reject an America First approach to foreign policy are not going to vote for Trump in any event. And an endorsement of Harris by George W. Bush is unlikely to change any minds at this late stage in the campaign. But in the intellectual political bubble where Liz Cheney resides such an endorsement would be a confirmation that she has tread the right course in joining the very political forces that once called her father a war criminal. Politics indeed makes strange bedfellows. The post Would Bush’s Endorsement Help Harris? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Although we’re well into our 70s, my wife and I still greatly enjoy riding our motorcycles. We’ve ridden long enough — and known enough other similarly dedicated riders — to appreciate the potential dangers. As the saying goes, when something goes wrong on a motorcycle, you’re “very close to the scene of the accident.” [P]utting the full authority of the state behind forced Covid vaccination represented a form of tyranny. While we understand, sadly, that no precaution can protect against the worst case scenario, we are sensible to the value of trying to protect ourselves against the lesser events. We never venture out of our driveway without the “second skin” provided by leather or Kevlar fabric — we’ve both seen what “road rash” can mean. And we always —always, always — wear full-face helmets. (READ MORE from James H. McGee: Is Walz Vanishing in Virginia?) I’m often appalled at what I see other riders wearing, the men in their T-shirts and shorts, the women sometimes in bikinis. However much they wish to project a “cool” image, to me that simply looks ridiculous. But I reserve my deepest ire for those I see riding without helmets, or wearing some of the ridiculous little devices designed not for protection, but simply to get around laws requiring helmets to be worn. I know a little bit about brain injuries, and I think that riders who fail to take even minimally reasonable precautions are simply idiots. You may then be surprised to discover that I am also adamantly opposed to helmet laws. As I said, those who fail to wear good helmets strike me as idiots, but I believe that the proper solution lies in persuasion, not in legislation. I’ve heard all the arguments, many times over. Someone who survives an accident with severe brain injuries becomes a burden on the health care system, both practically and financially. That burden on the taxpayer gives the state an obligation to protect them from themselves. The same argument can be heard about many other activities. Extreme sports, for example, such as mountain climbing, or even less extreme sports such as skateboarding or snowboarding, or skydiving. Skiing gets a pass, it seems, partly because it’s so widely popular, partly because it’s chic, still regarded as the province of the “beautiful people,” or at least the wannabes. Nonetheless, the skiing accident deaths of the famous, Sonny Bono, for example, or Natasha Richardson, sometimes provoke a spasm of calls for “enhanced safety requirements.” One need hardly add that the same goes for activities such as smoking; noxious, to be sure, deeply unhealthy, but still, one would think, a matter of personal choice, at least to the extent that one controls for the effects of second-hand smoke. Yet one now reads of measures proposed — and then rejected — in New Zealand, to effectively ban all cigarette purchases, starting with young adults and carrying forward, with a rolling requirement, until all cigarettes have been banned. A similar measure, even now, seems to have captured the support of the new Labor government in the U.K. Prohibition, then, is precisely the right word, even though it’s association with the notoriously failed alcohol prohibition in the 1920s makes America’s current crop of busybodies squeamish. That too was promoted as society looking out for those incapable of looking out for themselves. But the impulse isn’t simply about forbidding certain activities. Our recent experience with Covid serves as an object lesson in the active imposition of “health and safety” mandates. The most visible of these was masking, widely required despite the lack of evidence that it made a difference in the spread of the disease. The most notable of these active requirements, however, was vaccination. One doesn’t have to be an anti-vaccine fanatic — I’m not — to recognize that putting the full authority of the state behind forced Covid vaccination represented a form of tyranny, one scarcely justified by the unproven efficacy of the shots. The same with the lockdown regime, with all its destructive effects, above all on schoolchildren. The ever-insightful C.S. Lewis once observed, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies…. those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” Busybodies and the State The curse of our times, and very much the curse of our current politics, lies in the rise of these moral busybodies, and, above all, of their insistence on capturing the powers of the state for the purpose of imposing their beliefs upon those around them, filled with the conviction that they act for the good of all, without allowing the rest of us to decide for ourselves. We see this from the climate change fanatics — can there be anything more terrifying than a world obedient to the fever dreams of Greta Thunberg and her ilk? We see it from those P.J. O’Rourke famously christened as “safety Nazis.” We saw it with Fauci and his many acolytes. Most recently, we’ve seen it in the sad tale of Peanut the Squirrel. Peanut, a pet squirrel and his companion, a pet raccoon, had become cherished internet figures. But then, acting on an improbable rumor that the raccoon might have been rabies infected, the New York State health authorities invaded their owners’ home, conducted a five hour search that would have done justice to a raid on a meth lab, and then ultimately took the animals away and killed them. (READ MORE: Hurricane Outrage: Where is Harris?) This is the health and safety busybody impulse elevated to sheer madness. But Peanut and his friend may not have died in vain. Their martyrdom has now captured the internet, and has even become an election theme. In the admittedly unlikely event that the Democrats get a political comeuppance on Tuesday in New York State, one might reasonably believe that the state-sanctioned murder of Peanut will have played a part. We’ve already seen widely-distributed internet memes featuring the Gadsden “Don’t tread on me” flag with the coiled snake replaced by the image of a squirrel. Rest in peace, Peanut — this morning I pray that your sacrifice will not have been in vain. James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His recent novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. A forthcoming sequel finds the Reprisal team fighting against terrorists who’ve infiltrated our southern border in a conspiracy that ranges across the globe. You can find Letter of Reprisal on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited.       The post Peanut the Squirrel and the Coercive State appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The “garbage controversy” of this campaign’s final days embodies the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Far from a parallel, it highlights the separation between unscripted and scripted across an ideological chasm. Hidden beneath their relativism, Democrats, Left, and establishment media have exploited incidents to construct false narratives and advance extremist policies. They have vilified Trump from the beginning and have continued to do so, despite two assassination attempts on him. On Sunday October 27, Donald Trump held a sold out rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden.  It featured celebrities like Elon Musk, Hulk Hogan, Tucker Carlson, and RFK Jr.  However, it was a comparatively obscure standup comedian by the name of Tony Hinchcliffe who got the establishment media’s biggest coverage, when during his routine he called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.”  Trump and his campaign distanced themselves from the remarks; so too, numerous elected Republicans. (READ MORE from J.T. Young: Americans’ Justified Media Mistrust) Two days later, at the same time Kamala Harris was giving a “unity speech” on Washington’s Ellipse, President Biden spoke on a campaign call hosted by Voto Latino, “the nation’s premier Latinx voter registration organization.”  During his call, Biden said “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.” Harris and other vulnerable Democrats sought to distance themselves from the President’s remarks — White House spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, even tried to distance Biden from them. The establishment media would have us believe that the two sets of remarks cancel each other out, just the latest examples of a coarsening of America’s political debate.  However, even in the Left’s revisionary relativism, the two are far from equivalent. Hinchcliffe’s remarks were dumb.  Period.  And it was dumb to have a standup comic who works on the edge at a political rally. Standup comics riff, following their feel of their material’s flow.  Trump’s campaign should have seen the potential for danger and chosen better and Trump should have stepped hard on the comments. That Hinchcliffe’s comments, out of all the others uttered by others, were seized on is also not a surprise.  Democrats, the Left, and the establishment media were looking for something to seize on.  After all, they are losing and are desperately looking for something, anything, to change this race’s trajectory. Trump’s team shouldn’t have made it easy for them. Yet, in the end, this was a standup comic. In contrast to Republicans’ standup comic, the Democrats’ malefactor is the President of the United States.  Biden is a professional politician and has been for over half a century. He is America’s highest elected official. Biden had 48 hours to prepare his remarks, and he clearly prepared off Hinchcliffe’s “garbage” line.  Biden’s remarks called “his supporters” — not Trump himself — “garbage.” That is half of America.  An America Biden was elected to represent. Nor was Biden’s remark an isolated one.  He had said about Trump “we gotta lock him up” not long before. There is no equivalence here. What there is, is a pattern — a Democrat, Left, and establishment media pattern — that has been followed throughout this campaign, and accelerated lately.  It is one of calling Trump a fascist and likening him to Hitler.  Far from unscripted, it clearly is their script. Kamala Harris has said it — and she has doubled down on it.  Numerous elected Democrats have echoed it. They have vilified Trump from the beginning and have continued to do so, despite two assassination attempts on him. Nor do the precedents for Biden’s “garbage” comment end there. They go back years. They go back to Hillary Clinton’s line about “basket of deplorables” in 2016. They go back to Barack Obama’s comments about “cling[ing] to guns, religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” years before that. Democrat Intolerance for the ‘Other’ There is an inescapable Democrat antipathy toward people who aren’t like them,” who do not think like them, and who will not support — or at least acquiesce — to them and their policies. It is equally impossible to not see the parallels to their Cancel Culture in broader society. Democrats, the Left, and the establishment media simply see their opponents this way. The elitism is equally unmistakable, because they clearly look down on them: “garbage” and “deplorables.” This pattern also extends beyond politics to policies. Democrats and the Left have habitually exploited incidents, constructed a narrative from it, excluded other interpretations, and pursued policies to address their narrative.  Defund the Police, Sanctuary Cities, a radical DEI agenda, an extremist environmental onslaught — all just some among many examples. (READ MORE: Americans’ Justified Media Mistrust) Far from a distraction, the campaign’s “garbage controversy” is a revelation. It illustrates clear distinctions: unscripted versus scripted, unrepresentative versus elected representatives, unintended versus premeditated. For Democrats, Biden’s comment was more faux pas than fault: his sin being one of candor. It extends throughout the Democrats, the Left, and the establishment media: seizing on an anomalous incident that Americans don’t condone, to enforce their narrative and impose pervasive policies that Americans oppose. J.T. Young is the author of the upcoming book,Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, Department of Treasury, and OMB, and representing a Fortune 20 company. The post What the ‘Garbage Controvery’ Says About Democrats appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Former president Donald Trump says Elon Musk may serve as the “Secretary of Cost-Cutting,” and Musk foresees a Department of Government Efficiency under his command. The SpaceX boss might dial it back to a previous attempt during the Carter Era. Like government employees in general, SES bosses enjoy an array of special protections against dismissal. The victor over Gerald Ford in 1976, Carter tackled inefficiency in the federal bureaucracy with the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. According to Office of Personnel Management, the “keystone” of the Act was the Senior Executive Service, (SES) established to “ensure that the executive management of the Government of the United States is responsive to the needs, policies, and goals of the Nation and otherwise is of the highest quality.” SES leaders “possess well-honed executive skills and share a broad perspective on government and a public service commitment that is grounded in the Constitution.” The SES bosses also “serve in the key positions just below the top Presidential appointees. SES members are the major link between these appointees and the rest of the Federal workforce. They operate and oversee nearly every government activity in approximately 75 Federal agencies.” Taxpayers had a right to wonder how it worked out. “When Jimmy Carter set up the Senior Executive Service nearly three years ago, it was touted as the ideal place for the government’s top managers, an elite niche where Uncle Sam’s best and brightest would toil at greater risk but with the promise of greater rewards,” wrote Karlyn Barker of the Washington Post in October, 1981, “but it hasn’t worked out that way.” Many SES members complained about pay, promotions, and the bonus system. On the other hand, Barker provided little assessment of SES job performance that would merit higher pay. The SES represented less than one percent of the federal workforce but between 2008 and 2011 SES bosses received more than $340 million in bonuses, on top of annual salaries that ranged from $119,000 to $179,000. The bonuses were not subject to budget cuts and SES influence continued to surge. According to a 2015 report, the SES boasted 217 members in the army, 318 in the Navy, 179 in the Air Force, 473 in the Department of Defense, 594 at Homeland Security, and a full 786 at the Department of Justice. “All other” federal agencies accounted for 1,785 SES members, with a grand total of 7,791. In his 2015 executive order, “Strengthening the Senior Executive Service,” President Obama set out to “facilitate career executive continuity between administrations.” By May 31, 2016, agencies with 20 or more SES positions were to develop a plan “to increase the number of SES members who are rotating to improve talent development, mission delivery, and collaboration.” And so on, all without any long-term assessment of job performance. For all but the willfully blind, the SES had become another bureaucracy, but hardly the only evidence of government waste, fraud, and abuse. John C. Beale, once the highest-paid employee at the Environmental Protection Agency, told his bosses he was a CIA spy working in London, India, and Pakistan when he was actually holed up at his vacation home. Beale pulled off this ruse for 20 years, performing little if any work. The fraudster continued to draw his government paycheck and retention bonuses even after he retired. SES Employees Are Still Government Workers Like government employees in general, SES bosses enjoy an array of special protections against dismissal. Elon Musk would have a hard time firing them, but the SpaceX mogul may not get the chance. Donald Trump would have to win the election, hardly a done deal, and there’s more to consider. The SES operates in 75 government departments including the Department of Homeland Security, which now controls the United States Secret Service, before 2003 part of the Treasury Department.  As it turns out, the SES also deploys personnel in the Secret Service, responsible for protection of the president, and since the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, presidential candidates as well. At a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Secret Service failed to prevent a 20-year-old with no tactical experience from scaling a rooftop and unleashing eight shots, one wounding former president Trump, and other shots killing one attendee and wounding two others. Not much SES efficiency was on display, but government agencies have succeeded in making the election season more exciting. READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: California’s Identity Problem California vs. the Space Force Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. The post Government Efficiency Is a Tall Order for Musk appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In late October, 37 nations met in the Russian city of Kazan, capital of the Tartarstan Republic, on the banks of the Volga River. Russian president Vladimir Putin hosted this summit of BRICS, an alliance established in 2009 originally including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — but now numbering ten nations including  those who have joined or been invited to do so. This has added Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the U.A.E.; Saudi Arabia has hesitated to ratify its membership. BRICS represents another anti-Western block similar to China’s vaunted Belt and Road Initiative announced in 2013 to create a command and control system run by Beijing.  We can expect to hear more from BRICS as the member nations seek a countervailing force against the West. The purpose of BRICS is to collaborate on economic and diplomatic affairs; circumnavigate sanctions imposed by the West; reduce the influence of the U.S. dollar and set up an alternative payments system; and end the dominance of certain Western institutions. With the exception of Russia, the BRICS countries generally constitute part of what is known as the Global South. (READ MORE from Frank Schell: From Harris, America Needs Action, Not Pablum)  BRICS is borne of resentment by emerging economies of their former colonial rulers and Western dominance of the prevailing rules for trade and investment designed after the end of World War II. Further, BRICS nations are disenchanted with Western dominance of the clubby G7, IMF with its stringent medicine, World Bank, and G20 —  believing that the needs of developing economies are not being sufficiently recognized by these multilateral bodies.  The ten countries (including Saudi Arabia) represent one-fourth of world GDP, 40 percent of world trade, 40 percent of crude oil production and exportation, and half of the world’s population, according to the Boston Consulting Group.  While united in their view of challenging the West, they are by no means overtly supportive of Russia’s war on Ukraine. There is much media hype about BRICS, particularly the summit in Kazan which allowed President Putin to demonstrate his appeal and stature among several dozen countries, proving that he may be persona non grata in the West, but not in much of the rest of the world. Questions continue to swirl around the value added of BRICS, and whether it can disrupt Western economic influence? The answers are nuanced, but in general BRICS has potential for diplomatic leverage in world forums, and it could, if it chose to do so, embargo some strategic minerals for the technology and defense industries of the West. However, the financial leverage of BRICS is uncertain at best — and various members of BRICS are dependent upon trade and investment with the West. Further, to have credibility BRICS would need a lender of last resort to intervene should there be a liquidity crisis. Some Western central banks, however, do have currency swap lines with the People’s Bank of China to support trade and to constitute a stabilizing force.  First, there is no question that BRICS members can assist each other to evade Western sanctions. India, for example, ranks second in the world after China in oil importation, with imported oil constituting nearly 90 percent of its total requirements in 2023. Currently, India imports about one-third of its oil from Russia by one estimate, and India has enjoyed discounts for these purchases. But India, like other countries, can buy discounted Russian oil without being a member of BRICS, so there is no value added of this loose alliance in terms of evading oil sanctions. Second, there is the question of political risk, generally defined as the availability of foreign exchange and the potential for decrees, fiats, confiscation of private property and direct investments, and civil commotion. To the West, BRICS hardly enhances the attractiveness of participating countries with regard to their cross-border risk profile, which is unchanged by membership.  Nonetheless, the BRICS nations are free to invest and trade among themselves, assuming that product quality, price, and after sales service are competitive with the West. For many BRICS countries, this competitive equivalence would constitute a leap of faith.  Third, there is the initiative to undermine the U.S. dollar, which represents almost 90 percent of transactions denominated in foreign exchange (FX) and nearly 60 percent of global FX reserves, according to the Atlantic Council. Few currencies are in a position to challenge the U.S. dollar, with the possible exception of the Chinese Yuan over the long term. Not only that, the U.S has substantial influence over the Society for Worldwide Financial Transactions (SWIFT), which is headquartered near Brussels. SWIFT constitutes the backbone of international currency transfers — settlements can be easily impeded through sanctions.  The value of BRICS currencies is set by a central bank, or linked to a single or group of hard currencies. The BRICS currencies are generally not traded much outside the countries of issuance, and accordingly there is no free market reference for their value. Western exporters are not about to accept these so-called soft currencies in payment of trade, and they will continue to require the U.S., Canadian, or Australian dollar, pound sterling, the Euro, Swiss Franc, or Yen. Moreover, BRICS countries will continue to welcome hard currencies in incoming direct investment for obvious reasons.  (READ MORE: India’s Modi Wins a Third Term — But No Majority) In “Fed Notes” published last year, the Board of Governors Federal Reserve affirms the stable dominance of the U.S. dollar over the past 20 years in terms of trade, capital flows, and currency reserves — the U.S. dollar continues to be an attractive store of value.  The Fed is quick to note that the dollar has declined from 71 percent to 58 percent of reserves since 2000, with the Euro now at 21 percent and attractive to Europeans and to China, with some smaller hard currencies added to official holdings. However, since world trade has nearly quadrupled since 2000 according to the German data firm, Statistica, at 58 percent the dollar has commanding scale.  Nonetheless, in its “Notes,” the Fed points out several long-term factors that could diminish the role of the U.S. currency — but with little impact by BRICS.  Indeed, the use of sanctions exposes countries with U.S. holdings to asset freezes, for example. However, if our European allies and Japan cooperate, as they have with regard to Russia, our adversaries will have limited alternatives to Western currencies. Further, increased European integration could limit the use of the dollar. Thus far we have seen currency integration and some effort toward political integration, but banking is still predominantly national in Europe. Moreover, the ascent of China could be a long-term factor. However, reserve currency status requires scale of capital, free trade and capital accounts, credibility, and adherence to the rule of law, without fear of central bank or treasury intrusion — China does not qualify by these accepted criteria.  Fourth, the Fed Notes acknowledge the rise of cryptocurrencies, although world monetary authorities have expressed skepticism for years. (READ MORE: Facebook’s Cryptofantasy Is a Crypto Setback and Facebook’s Cryptofantasy).  We can expect to hear more from BRICS as the member nations seek a countervailing force against the West.  While we will see more diplomatic initiatives and possibly pressure from BRICS in the United Nations and other forums, the economic and financial effects of this loose alliance are likely to be modest.  Frank Schell is a business strategy consultant and former senior vice president of the First National Bank of Chicago. He was a Lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago and is a contributor of opinion pieces to various journals.   The post Separating Fact From Hype About BRICS appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.