Politics Huzzah for Transparency! Buying votes isn’t new—nor is it the worst thing in the world. (Photo by Popow/ullstein bild via Getty Images) A report from Forbes that “at least 100 billionaires” were supporting either the former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris points once again to the unseemly involvement of rich Americans in their own country’s elections.  So much earnest handwringing over this news can be expected in coming weeks that La Roche-Posay hand cream sales will go through the roof and send stock in L’Oreal, which owns La Roche-Posay, soaring. Even the factories producing O’Keefe’s Working Hands (this for the manliest among us) are said to be doubling production.  It is only the billionaires backing Trump, of course, that worry the somber guardians of “our democracy.” Those backing Harris—and Forbes says there were far more Harris supporters among the billionaires than Trumpers—are a-okay.  Leaving that aside, the undue influence of “fat cats”—a term dating at least to 1928—has been a subject of much discussion for most of our history, especially among those who see it as their mission to reform this messy system. If they cannot locate a golden age in which elections were conducted with less meddling by the malefactors of great wealth, they can at least look toward a better day.  It will of course take some doing to get there. Rich people have had the audacity to involve themselves in our elections since the beginning of our republic—I mean, our democracy—and show few signs of doing otherwise. Even George Washington, who could not tell a lie, spent his money to advance himself in politics.  Almost all his successors have used their resources (and those of their sponsors) to fund their campaigns; those in recent years who didn’t start out rich when they entered politics ended up among the one percent, and that includes those who fancy themselves among the reformers and whom we continue to regard as such.  This might mean that those of us who do not possess the wealth of, say, Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, or Bad Bunny, and the options that go with it, will need to think differently about money in politics. This will require uprooting a lot of deep-rooted prejudices and breaking bad habits. Reforming the system won’t be easy, considering how people with deep pockets have always influenced our elections and how accustomed we have become to this distressing reality.  Back in Washington’s day, there was no Federal Election Commission, no PACs, and no dark money. There was no dark money because no one felt the need to hide what they were doing. Candidates routinely bought votes, and no one thought a thing about it. Hooray for transparency! Huzzah, huzzah! They also had more fun doing it. In 1758, when Washington sought a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses—his first political office—he bought 160 gallons of liquor for fewer than 400 voters and “unnumbered hangers-on,” according to Douglas Southall Freeman, one of Washington’s most distinguished biographers. Charles Sydnor in Political Practices in Washington’s Virginia calculated this to amount to “more than a quart and a half” of hooch per voter.  “An itemized list of the refreshments,” Sydnor figured, “included 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and two gallons of cider royal.” (And this was just for the day that freeholders showed up to cast their ballots.)  Those who think they want a more transparent system should study the way things were done back then. In those days, voters would have to stand on a platform in front of the candidates and announce, for all to hear, who got their vote.  Supporters of transparency might favor this practice, although with more than 160 Americans casting their ballots in 2024, this could be time-consuming. And, after a while, monotonous. Democracy, as mentioned, is messy. People lie, cheat, steal, and commit bribery to achieve their tawdry ends. That’s why I’m so leery of transparency. Some of us don’t want to know how awful it is. The only thing worse than seeing it for what it is, in our considered opinion, would be trying to fix it.   The post Huzzah for Transparency! appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs American Outreach to Middle Eastern Despots Is Shortsighted The U.S. stands to gain little from showering love on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf tyrannies. President Joe Biden is an increasingly decrepit lame duck. A Washington fixture for more than 50 years, he is lost in time, believing that the U.S. is still the unipower and essential nation, enabling him to “run” the world. Those days, to the extent that they ever existed, are long past. Biden has spent most of his term sacrificing the interests of Americans to benefit foreign governments. Particularly bad is the administration’s bizarre offer of a security guarantee to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s few absolute monarchies, headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. That would mean turning the U.S. military into a modern janissary corps, with American personnel acting as royal bodyguards. Apparently cooked up by the National Security Council staffer Brett McGurk, acting as Riyadh’s man in Washington, the plan continues to be pressed by Biden, contradicting the latter’s many embarrassing paeans to democracy. Few Washington policy proposals are so loathsome and irrational. It is tempting to write the idea off as a product of Biden’s advancing dementia. Other administration officials lack that excuse, however. For instance, Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed, “It would really change the prospects of the entire region far into the future.” Nevertheless, the so-called Abraham Accords are not peace treaties despite their strangely idyllic reputation, since none of the nations involved have been at war with Israel. Rather, the U.S. is paying Sunni Arab regimes to establish diplomatic relations with Jerusalem.  The earlier agreements were bad for America. Bribes should not be necessary if a de facto alliance against Iran is in the interests of Arab countries and Israel. However, the former governments, despite long having back-channel relations with Israel, played the U.S. In exchange for recognition of Jerusalem, Washington expanded arms sales to the United Arab Emirates and recognized Morocco’s illegal conquest of Western Sahara.  Biden would provide the Kingdom with a security guarantee backed by U.S. troops, along with a sweetheart nuclear energy deal. Americans would protect MbS, as the killer prince is known, while he imprisons and murders, and sometimes dismembers, his domestic critics, and attempts to coerce his neighbors. According to Washington’s magical thinking, heavenly peace would then take hold. Iran would surrender, allowing Riyadh to dominate the region. The Palestinians would yield, docilely acting as cheap labor for their Israeli overlords. After the lion and lamb laid down together, the U.S. military would be able to withdraw from the Mideast. Everyone would live happily ever after, especially the Saudi and Israeli lobbies in Washington.  In fact, paying off MbS and his wastrel royal elite would be bad policy in almost every way. There is no need to pay Riyadh to improve relations with Jerusalem. The Saudis and Israelis have had unofficial ties for decades. They have good reason to cooperate on intelligence and security issues. If full diplomatic relations benefit both governments, they should act on their own, without any additional inducements from the U.S. Their official relationship matters little to Washington, which already offers both countries excessive attention and support.  Turning the U.S. military into a royal bodyguard would subordinate American to Saudi interests. The KSA has always put itself first. Riyadh’s lackadaisical attitude toward terrorism contributed to al-Qaeda’s rise. Only the group’s self-destructive decision to target the royals in 2003 led to more serious Saudi intelligence cooperation with the US. In any case, Washington has no need to defend the Kingdom. Nor does the KSA require American protection. Washington has armed the royal family—some $100 billion worth of foreign military sales are currently in process—to enable it to defend itself. If the regime doesn’t believe its people would shoot in the right direction, it could liberalize the Kingdom’s authoritarian political system. Notably, the majority of Americans oppose tasking the U.S. military with the royal family’s defense. Offering Saudi Arabia an unconditional security guarantee would reward past irresponsibility and encourage future recklessness. MbS has been as great a threat to regional stability and security as the Iranian clerics, having launched a brutal aggressive war against Yemen, isolated (and planned to invade) Qatar, kidnapped the Lebanese prime minister, intervened militarily to support Bahrain’s dictatorial Sunni monarchy, and underwritten jihadist insurgents regionally. Protecting Riyadh from the consequences of its behavior would encourage even worse in the future. A security guarantee would further enmesh Washington in multiple violent Mideast confrontations and conflicts. Rather than enable Washington to reduce its role in the region, “the pact’s main achievement will be to further entangle the United States in a region that successive U.S. presidents have tried to pivot away from,” write Frederick Wehrey and Jennifer Kavanagh, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Defense Priorities, respectively. Confident in military immunity courtesy the U.S., Riyadh could become more aggressive against its neighbors. At the same time, the KSA would likely demand ever more evidence of Washington’s commitment. A ballooning American troop presence could spur terrorism. U.S. forces on holy Islamic soil triggered the 1995 bombing of the Khobar Towers compound and animated Osama bin Laden’s attacks elsewhere.  Promising to defend the Kingdom would discourage its pursuit of a diplomatic solution with Iran. Last year Tehran and Riyadh, with a push from Iraq and China, among others, resurrected relations and lowered tensions. Although the peace is uneasy, it appears to be real. The Saudi ambassador to Great Britain, Prince Khalid bin Bandar Al Saud, recently observed, “We have had our differences with Iran. But I think we are pretty aligned at the moment to deescalate this situation.” The two governments reportedly are even planning joint naval maneuvers. The KSA’s shift to diplomacy reflected the Trump administration’s refusal to retaliate against Tehran for the attack on Saudi oil facilities five years ago. A new defense commitment, especially if backed by the presence of U.S. combat troops, would tempt MbS to reverse course.  Increasing the military threat against Iran posed by both an Israel-Saudi axis and U.S. security guarantee, and providing the Saudis with nuclear power without tight safeguards, would spur regional proliferation. Tehran could not help but see a formal U.S.-KSA alliance as a threat, another reason to develop nuclear weapons. The Kingdom might seek to become at least a latent nuclear power. Other Middle Eastern states, such as Egypt and Turkey, could in turn consider joining the nuclear club. America’s international witness would suffer. The Kingdom is a human rights bottom-feeder, ranked behind Iran, Russia, and China by Freedom House. So bad is the KSA’s reputation that earlier this month the royal regime was rejected by the United Nations General Assembly for membership on the Human Rights Council, beaten by the Marshall Islands. Riyadh does not moderate its brutality even when America is concerned. The regime murdered and dismembered the journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi, luring him to its Istanbul consulate and turning it into an abattoir. Dual citizens living in America have returned to the Kingdom, only to be arrested and sentenced to years, sometimes decades, in prison for tweets critical of the regime. U.S. presidents kowtowing to the Saudi royals long have put American human rights hypocrisy on global display. Offering a formal security guarantee until now available only to nominal democracies would further ravage Uncle Sam’s reputation. The Palestinian people would be even more vulnerable, with less pressure on Israel to respect their lives and dignity. So far the so-called Abraham Accords have enabled the Gulf kingdoms to evade their professed commitment to press for a homeland for the Palestinian people. That, in turn, has eased pressure on Jerusalem to seek a sustainable political solution. So long as the Israeli government believes that it can treat Palestinians like helots in ancient Sparta, they will suffer. Optimists imagine prying Netanyahu away from his violent allies to form a more moderate coalition, but his continued tenure, not Riyadh’s recognition, remains the central issue in Israeli politics, and he has long emphasized his opposition to a Palestinian state. Many Israelis evidently desire Saudi recognition, which would offer a boost to Netanyahu and his extremist government.  Turning American military personnel into royal bodyguards would not exclude China from the Middle East. The PRC has shown no interest in entangling itself militarily in the region’s endless and fruitless conflicts. Beijing is making steady economic inroads in the region, but these would be unaffected by America making the Mideast safe for absolute monarchy. A more prosperous PRC will inevitably play a larger commercial role in the Mideast. Even if turning the U.S. armed services into MbS’s bodyguard improbably curbed the Kingdom’s appetite for Chinese investment, the price for America would be too high. Ironically, wasting even more U.S. resources on defense subsidies for dubious allies would further weaken America economically, inadvertently aiding Chinese efforts.  The Biden administration will soon come to an ignominious close. Among its failures worth applauding is not adding Saudi Arabia to the list of participants in the Abraham Accords. Observed Sarah Leah Whitson of Democracy for the Arab World Now, what such an agreement would “actually secure is strengthening—with an unprecedented U.S. security guarantee—an axis of dictatorships who will ally with Israel’s apartheid government and stay mum about the Palestinians.” Neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel constitutes a vital interest worth the shedding of Americans’ blood. A defense guarantee would be a bad deal for everyone involved, especially those expected to give their lives to protect the corrupt, brutal, and licentious Saudi princes. Let Middle Eastern countries make their own deals without sending the bill to Washington. The post American Outreach to Middle Eastern Despots Is Shortsighted appeared first on The American Conservative.

Another young healthy doctor with many names just died suddenly. Someone who worked with him reported that he did indeed get the shot. I didn't need to know that though. It's best to assume it unless proven otherwise. I'm sure they'll claim his LDL was too high or low, or he had an unknown heart defect. Yes that's it. UTL COMMENT:- Sorry for him and his family.......he clearly fell for the lies and deceipt from his funders - Bigpharma.... How come some of them are 'in the club' and knew not to get the toxic shots and others still did? With thanks to THE KURGAN REPORT Sources https://www.lewisfuneralhomemoorestown.com/m/obituaries/George-Mark-Iv/Memories https://m.facebook.com/hearthousenj/ Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr3o2n4YO7s Music: Summer Wine - Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood

When Chris Palermo's 7-year-old daughter, Ella, said she wanted to show him something, he was expecting another painting, or a piece of writing, or something that she had built. He never expected a lengthy – and thorough — To-Do list!However, a To-Do list is exactly what he got. Ella had created a detailed table in the Notes app to keep track of all the things she hoped to accomplish. Chris posted a photo of the list to Reddit, where it was an instant hit, brightening the days of thousands and thousands of users.Most of us keep a To-Do list of some kind, or a running list of chores and tasks we need to accomplish.I have one of my own just like Ella's, sitting in my Notes app right now. For the record, Ella's is way better.I've got lists of bills to pay and administrative phone calls to make, things to fix around the house, and upcoming appointments to keep.Ella's got dancing and blowing bubbles. NuevoJerz/RedditBut it's not all fun and games for this 7-year-old: The list also includes chores like cleaning up, eating dinner (always important), and reminders to 'learn something.'However, the list is mostly fun and games.And that's exactly the way it should be.It's important to Ella that she never forget to:SingDancePlay with dollsDance againTake a video of herself dancingTake a video of herself dancing again!And do some writingNow if she could only get around to painting that darn cupcake!(How relatable is it that even Ella struggles to check off everything on her list? She even included 'Check Box' as the first item to give herself a little momentum to get through all her tasks!)Chris never expected the list to go viral. He just hopes people can learn something from it.Being an adult can be mind-numbingly boring.Our routines get stagnant, and our lists of responsibilities and Have-To-Dos get longer and longer every year. It's easy to forget to make time for things that have no productive value, things that we only do because we enjoy them.And not just big things like planning your next vacation or meeting up with friends — although those are great, too."I hope [the list] gives us adults a pause and makes us think about our own to-do lists and responsibilities and the importance of having those joy-filled activities in there, too," Chris told Newsweek.Ella's incredible list reminds us that we should be seeking out moments of joy every single day. Whether it's watching the clouds roll by, dancing in the kitchen, or learning something new just for fun.And despite what you've been told, you're never too old to blow bubbles.

A moment of reflection. The post “It gets me every time”: the Pearl Jam song that makes Mike McCready emotional first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

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