The beginning of the big time. The post “Great way to start the show”: The disturbing concert that made Genesis superstars first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

We all know that there are a large number of conservatives and Republicans who entertain grave doubts about returning Donald Trump to the White House. Apart from their consternation about his volatile, sometimes nasty, personal decorum and the frequent undignified remarks (whether in person or via X), Trump has caused many of those who should be his supporters to be turned off by many of his policy-related statements.  The millions of Americans whose political values are given voice by the Heritage Foundation must be dismayed at Trump’s repeated disavowals of Project 2025. Trump has been treating that conservative wish list like political kryptonite. (Memo to Heritage: Remember the wisdom of 1994’s Contract with America, which focused on a small number of issues that enjoyed at least 60 percent support among the electorate. By overreaching and asking for what seems like everything, you gave the Left too much ammunition.)  Trump certainly isn’t campaigning in a way that free-market conservatives are comfortable with. While one could make allowances for countering a hostile Chinese leadership with targeted tariffs, a widespread use of tariffs will curb domestic economic growth, save some American jobs at the expense of other American jobs, and result in higher consumer prices. As for the federal budget, we know from Trump’s first term in office that reining in the deficit and taking a strong stand for fiscal responsibility is a political battle that he has chosen not to fight. Remember, the federal deficit rose during the Trump presidency, even before the arrival of COVID, and when he had a Republican-controlled Congress. He also readily gave Nancy Pelosi a budget-busting deal. Trump’s talk about raising or eliminating the SALT tax deduction (which gives a tax break to wealthy Americans in high-tax states) or abolishing the current tax on Social Security payments is disconcerting. Both proposals would, if enacted, add to federal deficits even as the federal budget careens out of control. On foreign policy, Trump is causing anxiety among conservatives with his glib comments about ending the Russian–Ukraine war with a snap of his fingers. Unfortunately, he declines to tell us what that means in practice. Does he believe in the moral rightness of America’s use of military force to defend the rights and borders of sovereign nations? That was the motive and goal of our Greatest Generation’s efforts in World War II. It was also the conservatism of Ronald Reagan, who believed that we — the good guys — should win and the bad guys should lose. (For the record, I opposed the neoconservatives in regard to Iraq and Afghanistan, so please don’t pin that label on me.) Yes, our European allies in NATO should contribute more, but we should not appease the murderous Putin by cavalierly carving up Ukraine to placate him.  The problem for conservatives and Republicans who are uncomfortable with Trump’s policies is: Do you really think Kamala Harris is an acceptable alternative? This is a woman who cast the tie-breaking vote that passed some of the worst legislation in American history. She was fully onboard with Joe Biden’s disastrous policies. She says she supports small businesses, but, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, solicited bail money to release the thugs who looted and burned small businesses. This is the desperate demagogue who is resorting to tired and absurd class-warfare rhetoric in the latter days of her presidential campaign.  Let’s compare Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in six crucial areas: The deep state: In his presidential term, Trump proved to be an enemy of the deep state, repealing reams of regulatory overkill. By contrast, it is impossible to conceive of Harris opposing or limiting anything that the executive bureaucracies would do. Taxes: Trump showed a mature understanding of economics when he chopped the top corporate tax rate to 21 percent — a policy shift that boosted economic activity and resulted in handsome wage increases for millions of workers. Harris, on the other hand, is completely committed to the economically destructive dogma of raising taxes on corporations. Commander-in-chief: The world remains a very dangerous place, and with the growing cooperation between the new evil axis (Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea), it is becoming even more dangerous. Trump is tough. The man hates to lose. He also has backbone. How can one not be impressed by his spirited reaction of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” just a moment after he was shot? Despite his disconcerting rhetoric about admiring or respecting Vladimir Putin (rhetoric that I believe is manipulative and not sincere) the “Putins” of the world are not going to be able to intimidate Donald Trump. I can’t say the same thing about Kamala Harris, who seems to be just another version of Obama and Biden, repeatedly wimping out by making unilateral concessions to enemies out of a fear of offending them, weakening and demoralizing our military by prioritizing DEI over effectiveness, and pressuring Ukraine and Israel not to fight for victory. Trump hates to lose. Harris, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have the guts or backbone to stand up to aggressive thugs. Immigration: Harris was fully onboard with Team Biden’s open border and resettle-masses-of-illegal-immigrants into the U.S. policy. By contract, Trump has shown by actions as well as words that he loves his country enough to defend its borders and to uphold the principle that not every human being on the face of the earth has a right to live in our country. (Interestingly, in his recent Wall Street Journal interview, Trump showed a soft side, saying that his tough talk about not letting families reunite is done not because he really wants to separate families, but because such a message dissuades many people from trying to enter the country illegally.)  Climate change: Trump would spend far more government money than I would, but at least he draws the line at the whole climate change cabal. He refuses to impoverish our country by restricting the necessary production of fossil fuels. He rejects the socialistic redistribution-of-wealth scheme cooked up by the United Nations and supported by socialistic internationalists (such as domestic progressives like Kamala Harris) in the name of a supposed climate emergency that has actually been benign.  The Constitution. Harris is the current figurehead for a party that wants to deep-six the Constitution. She wants to destroy the independence of the Supreme Court, whether by imposing term limits, increasing the number of justices so that she can appoint anti-constitutional liberals, or neutering justices with bogus “ethics” persecutions. Her running mate has targeted the Electoral College that prevents, say, California, from allowing so many illegal votes that they outweigh the entire populations of the smaller states. She shares, with leaders of her party, including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Tim Walz, a desire to scuttle the First Amendment and suppress what she calls “misinformation” (defined as beliefs that differ from Democratic orthodoxy). Trump, on the other hand, appointed three Supreme Court justices who uphold rather than try to dismantle the Constitution. This list could be longer, but herein have been mentioned a few major reasons why, despite his shortcomings, it makes more sense for Americans who aren’t progressive zombies to roll the dice and vote for Donald Trump rather than to stay home or even vote for a candidate who would flush America down the tubes.  RELATED: Kamala Harris Flunked the Job Interviews The Best Possible Outcome for Democrats: A Trump Win Harris and the Dems Have No Border Credibility The post Roll the Dice With Trump or Go Down the Tubes With Harris appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

If our nation’s top military and civilian leaders want to understand why military recruiting in the all-volunteer force is at an all-time low, they need only look in the mirror. Few young people want to be like them. The sight of former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley waddling out into the political arena this election season is unlikely to convince many teenagers to join up. In an insightful piece in the Wall Street Journal, Owen West and Kevin Wallsten explain how incompetent top-level leadership and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts are chasing away potential recruits, as well as the military’s historically best recruiters — veterans who have encouraged their kids and grandkids to follow in their footsteps. The decline of this kind of encouragement from senior veterans almost exactly parallels the decline in recruitment rates. Historically, 80 percent of recruits had a relative who had served. Today, 80 percent of veterans say they would not recommend military service under the present circumstances. This is not a coincidence. The Biden administration and its senior civilian and military leaders are in denial. They blame poor education, increasing juvenile drug abuse, and the sedentary lifestyle of the smartphone generation for reducing the pool of eligible recruits. The reality is that there are still plenty of high school athletes, young hunters, and farm kids out there who would otherwise join. Their parents and grandparents — I’m one of them — are either actively discouraging or just not encouraging them to enlist. Worse, the young people themselves see two decades of military failure culminating in the disgraceful rout in Kabul. They wonder if they want to be led by senior officers who spent 20 years fighting a war and not adapting their strategy to bring it to a successful conclusion.  Joe Biden holds that diversity is essential to success on the battlefield. That is not supported by military history. The army of the Persian Empire under Darius and Xerxes was the most incredibly diverse in history, but was trounced on the battlefield by homogenous Greek armies in two decisive battles. The Persian army was made up of drafted contingents from every nation in the empire — many of whom hated each other more than they hated the Greeks. Over a century later, Alexander the Great conquered the empire with an equally homogenous professional army. Likewise, the very diverse Austro-Hungarian army was a drag on its allies throughout World War I. In addition, DEI initiatives have made military promotions a joke. Who wants to join a military where you are likely to be passed over because a man wearing a dress, or someone less qualified but of a different ethnicity, will get promoted over you because they come from an underserved minority? In 2022, the Air Force mandated quotas based on race for officer promotions. But the administration’s policies have also eroded military service culture. Even the Marine Corps, once considered one of the world’s elite assault forces, has adopted a passive defensive mentality that is technology dependent. The Marines are making their recruiting quotas, barely, because their recruitment goals have gotten a lot smaller under the leadership of the Biden administration and two incompetent commandants. Both have actively encouraged the downsizing. (READ MORE: The Marine Corps Has Gone Off the Rails) The Biden administration has been laser focused on DEI at the expense of military readiness. If Kamala Harris becomes president, we can expect her administration to double down on DEI; she is, after all, the ultimate poster child for the movement. Unlike Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, she has never earned her national security chops. Potential recruits will likely not be unaware of the fact that the Biden administration has overseen an unbroken series of military and foreign policy disasters. I desperately want to support the armed services, but I cannot, in good conscience, encourage any young man or woman to serve under the likes of Kamala Harris and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.  Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps Colonel who served as a Special Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and as a civilian advisor in Iran and Afghanistan READ MORE from Gary Anderson: The Marine Corps Has Gone Off the Rails It’s Time to Fix Incompetence in the Pentagon What Will Replace the Marine Corps? Biden Has Allowed the Marine Corps to Become Irrelevant The post Wokeness Is Responsible for the Military Recruitment Crisis appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

by Pepe Escobar, Strategic Culture: We will need weeks, months, years to fully grasp the enormity of what took place in Kazan during the annual BRICS summit under the Russian presidency. For the moment let’s cherish arguably the most appropriate definition of BRICS as a laboratory of the future: this lab, against nearly insurmountable odds, is […]

by Charles Bausman, The Unz Review: Novorossiya will once again be a Russian economic powerhouse and a magnet for migrants from Europe and the US, as it has been for centuries. What? you say? Isn’t it a war zone? Well, yes, but it looks like the war might end soon, and certainly with Russia keeping […]

  As Boss Fight books go, Day of the Tentacle is unusual in that it is not, strictly speaking, an original composition about the 1993 LucasArts adventure game. Author Bob Mackey is a video game journalist who worked for USgamer.net among other publications, and thanks to this experience, was able to interview the production team behind Day of the Tentacle on multiple occasions. USgamer.net, incidentally, doesn’t actually exist anymore. Its content is archived on VG247, including Mackey’s relevant interviews, but the highly dispersed nature of all the work he’s done documenting Day of the Tentacle over the years doesn’t exactly make this work easy to reference. Consequently, the Boss Fight edition of Day of the Tentacle conveniently locates all of this work in a single print source, for anybody so interested in the history behind LucasArts’ last major 2D adventure game.   As to why anyone should be so interested…well…pretty much for that reason. Overshadowed by its prequel Maniac Mansion in the annals of 2D adventure game history, Day of the Tentacle is the culmination of everything that Dave Grossman, Tim Schafer, and pretty much everybody else at LucasArts learned about making such games before the march of progress made it so that 3D adventure games were all anyone wanted to produce. Bear in mind, of course, that the preference for 3D games wasn’t entirely arbitrary. The widespread adoption of compact discs for PC games didn’t just make 3D practical, it also made it possible for games to include extended vocal tracks. Fans of arcane thirty-year-old technology will chuckle to themselves during anecdotes about how Day of the Tentacle had to be squeezed onto six floppy disks because that was as many floppy disks that could be used without being overly expensive. Then the German version was just barely big enough that it needed seven.   The story of Day of the Tentacle isn’t just offbeat and bizarre from the way it was produced, of course. The genuinely weird game made the most of its time travel mechanics, with three heroes in the past, present, and future of Maniac Mansion working together to prevent the titular tentacular antagonist from conquering the world. Equally as horrifying as the sci-fi future, however, is the American Revolution era past. In order to fiddle around with the timeline properly, the player must manipulate the often-buffoonish Founding Fathers into writing all sorts of goofy laws into the Constitution.   At times, classic PC adventure game logic was famous for its absurdity. But the designers of Day of the Tentacle insisted that they’d come a long way since the Sierra days and had developed a decent rhythm to keep players from getting stuck. In one story, they note how early builds of the game immediately gave the player control of characters in all three eras. This was a bad idea- with too much they could do, the player had no real idea what they should do. For the player who has yet to try Day of the Tentacle, the Boss Fight book also details the most arcane progression traps- a technical pratfall of switching one bed with another bed, and having to start a rainstorm by washing a carriage.   Neither of these sound all that bad, at least in the interview context, to the point I’m tempted to play Day of the Tentacle someday, maybe, despite my generally being terrible at those sorts of puzzles. In general, Day of the Tentacle is a remarkably effective advertisement. The remaster of the game, as is claimed by the book’s interviews, was actually a fairly in-depth effort made by fans of the game with its original files as carefully preserved by the Day of the Tentacle team way back in the nineties. In an absurdity completely on brand with everything else in or about the game, the remaster has actually sold more copies in the modern era than it ever did on floppies, for which there were no doubt many illegal copies.   The post A review of Day of the Tentacle from Boss Fight Books appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.