The clouds of war that have cast dark shadows over Europe and the Middle East are now extending to the Korean Peninsula. In recent days North Korea threatened to go to war with South Korea after remnants of a supposedly South Korean drone was found in North Korean territory. Photos of the drone were released by North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), which officials said they retrieved on October 13. North Korean military and state security agencies claim that the design of the drone is the same as the drones that were recently shown during a parade in South Korea. This comes after North Korea publicly accused South Korea earlier this month of flying drones over the capital city of Pyongyang. The North Koreans maintain that the drones were seeking to distribute anti-North Korean propaganda. North Korean officials insist that the alleged drone incident represents a grave threat. A statement released by KCNA asserted: “If a violation of the DPRK’s territorial ground, air, and waters by ROK’s military is discovered and confirmed again, it will be regarded as a grave military provocation against the sovereignty of the DPRK and a declaration of war and an immediate retaliatory attack will be launched.” North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un reinforced this threat during a speech last Friday: “As we have already declared, if our offensive forces are used in the precondition of ‘if,’ it constitutes legitimate retaliatory action against the hostile country, not the fellow countrymen.”  Despite the rhetoric of “retaliation,” Kim and his lackeys have long displayed aggressiveness against South Korea. Last Tuesday, they destroyed northern sections of unused road and rail routes that once linked North Korea to South Korea. The routes have not been used for over a half century, but nonetheless, their destruction was seen as a symbolic act of North Korea’s anger.  These threats are nothing new to South Korea. Despite no confirmation of responsibility from South Korean officials over the drone, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff responded to North Korea’s threat by vowing, “If the safety of our citizens is threatened in any way, our military will respond with stern and thorough retaliation.” The timing of this escalation is especially troubling. It comes just as news reports have surfaced about the discovery of North Korean forces assisting Russia in its war on Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that close to 10,000 North Korean troops have arrived in Russia, according to recent intelligence he had received from his government.  Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have questioned the validity of these reports. However, there does seem to be mounting evidence of North Korean forces in Russia, signaling a major point of escalation for the war in Ukraine. Last Friday, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) released a report stating that 1,500 North Korean special forces were sent to Russia’s far east for training and acclimatizing. The NIS report revealed, “four landing ships and three escort ships belonging to the Russian Pacific Fleet completed the first transport of approximately 1,500 North Korean special forces from the areas near Chongjin, Hamhung, and Musudan (Attachment 1) to Vladivostok, Russia … and a second transport operation is scheduled to take place soon.”  Additionally, the NIS report stated that North Korean officers were visiting frontline areas in Ukraine to assist Russian forces with North Korean-made KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles. The report states that “the Ukrainian government announced that the KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles that North Korea provided to Russia were used in attacks on major cities, including the Ukrainian capital Kiev, resulting in a significant number of civilian casualties.” In response to North Korea’s growing involvement in Ukraine, South Korea officials spoke with the Russian ambassador to South Korea, Georgy Zinoviev, demanding a complete withdrawal of all North Korean forces from Russia. While American policy makers have expressed concern over North Korea’s behavior on the Korean peninsula, the real danger is the prospects of a larger global conflict. Between North Korea’s growing cooperation and defense pacts with China and Russia, as well as America’s mutual defense treaty with South Korea, the prospect of a wider conflict has begun to inch closer to becoming a frightening reality. Should Kim Jong-Un keep true to his word and order any military action against South Korea, he would be responsible for pushing the world towards cataclysm.  The post Kim Jong-Un Pushes South Korea, and the World, to the Brink of War appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The Washington Trail: A Slade and Cork Mystery Written by Lou Aguilar (Aethon Books, 304 pages, $21.99) Regular readers of Lou Aguilar’s weekly column for The American Spectator are familiar with the author’s signature passions. Above all, he is a patriot who supports Judeo-Christian values and eschews anything that even hints at woke-ism. For Aguilar, DC’s football team will always be the Washington Redskins not the Washington Commanders because he knows that Native Americans never took umbrage at the team’s original name but they were very offended by the left’s attempts to erase any linkage between the football team and the Indian warrior culture. Aguilar, a screenplay writer, also waxes eloquently about Hollywood, especially the Hollywood of days gone by before the progressive left spray painted it with political correctness transforming the once glamorous industry into what he has labeled Hollywoke.The author also uses his column to lament the disappearance of traditionally beautiful  and intelligent women from the big and the small screen in favor of unattractive and at times mean spirited she-devils. In Aguilar’s world, the ideal woman is endowed with the intellectual acumen of an astrophysicist and the physical assets of Raquel Welch circa One Million Years B.C. (1966).  Such is the essence of Lou Aguilar. He is unabashedly blunt and politically incorrect. Yet behind his seemingly cynical veneer beats the heart of an optimist who embraces the transformative power of the chance encounter. He believes that the world is inhabited by contemporary incarnations of Fitzgerald’s Daisy Buchanan offering  “a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.” It is this embrace of serendipity coupled with film noir type intrigue that populates the pages of Aguilar’s latest novel, The Washington Trail: A Slade and Cork Mystery Thriller. Set in present day Washington, DC a few months in advance of the 2024 presidential election, The Washington Trail is peppered with indirect references to former U.S. president and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump and current U.S. president Joe Biden. The novel was clearly written before Biden exited the race and Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party’s  presidential candidate.  The story opens with a beautiful woman named Amy contacting private investigators Mark Slade and Neil Cork to investigate why her boyfriend Greg, an aide to a conservative senator, abruptly ended their relationship. Although Slade and Cork think the case is nothing more than a romantic ghosting, they agree to take it on anyway. Slade, an Afghanistan veteran, and Cork, a former FBI analyst, are quickly thrown into a situation involving multiple murders, government corruption, a plot to subvert the election process, and a search for a mysterious expensive painting. While the book is a work of fiction, Aguilar’s distinctive voice and antiprogressive posture are ever present.  The Washington Trail  is very fast paced, the archetypical potboiler. The novel also satirizes contemporary progressive ideology, especially radical environmentalism. Aguilar writes like a cinematographer with such a level of visual detail that one imagines he storyboarded the novel while composing it. He also has an ear for memorable dialogue. If I were to offer any criticism, it is that the characters themselves are not particularly well developed. I found myself having difficulty differentiating between Slade and Cork. That being said, the story was incredibly engrossing. I happen to be a voracious reader and I finished the 300 page book in about three days, which is faster than usual for me. I also believe that The Washington Trail has the potential to become a film or limited series. And while Aguilar has stated that he would love to have his novel adapted for film, he has concerns about casting. The two protagonists are in their thirties and the author worries that it would be difficult to find actors of that age range who would be willing to appear in an inherently conservative production.  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. The post Follow <i>The Washington Trail</i>: New Cloak and Dagger Mystery Lampoons DC Corruption appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Recent polling shows Americans’ mistrust of establishment media at an all-time high. The only surprise is that it isn’t higher. America’s establishment media bias is so consistent that they clearly no longer just cover the news from one side, but for one side. Gallup recently released a poll (10/14) showing that “trust in the fourth estate — the mass media — is at a new low.” Less than one-third of Americans (31%) expressed “‘a great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of confidence in the media to report the news ‘fully, accurately and fairly.’” In contrast, almost seven in ten Americans have “no trust at all in the media” (36%) or “not very much” confidence (33%) in the media. Gallup’s question was not a new one. Back in the 1970s, America’s confidence in the media was 68%-72%.  Even in the late 1990s and early 2000s, trust ranged between 51-55%. Today, Gallup finds “the news media is the least trusted group among 10 U.S. civic political institutions.” Far from being merely a perception problem, the establishment media’s faults run far deeper. The Media Research Center has long cited numerous polls finding “journalists are much more liberal than rest of America” and that this liberal advantage is growing. These journalists report the way they lean with “most of the journalistic elite offering reflexively liberal answers to practically every question a pollster can imagine.” A 2022 Syracuse University survey showed that only 3.4 percent of American journalists say they are Republicans. And this summer, the Media Research Center found media coverage of Kamala Harris had been 84 percent positive, while Trump’s had been 89 percent negative. Certainly, Americans don’t need polls to tell them about establishment media bias; case after case exists.  There was the Russian dossier that was breathlessly reported on and used for extensive investigations by Congress. It turned out the FBI should never have undertaken a Trump-Russia probe.  Then there was case of Hunter Biden’s laptop that was treated as a hoax; only to turn out to be true and a key piece of evidence in his trial — in which he was convicted on all three charges. There was the ignoring of the border crisis. It stopped only when the illegal immigrant crisis came to the blue cities from which the establishment media reported.  Even now, the establishment media refuse to acknowledge any connection between illegal immigrants and the crimes they commit — despite data showing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who have committed crimes being released into the U.S. The establishment media also ignore crime in general, insisting crime in America has gone down. Then the FBI released updated crime statistics running counter to what the establishment media want the facts to be — and despite Trump being fact-checked during his debate with Harris. Then there are recent cases where the establishment media has taken an active role in shaping the “news” it covers. 60 Minutes’ recent editing to toss out yet another Harris word salad is an example. On a whole other scale is the establishment media’s complicity in concealing Biden’s decline for three and a half years: this despite receiving preferential access to this administration throughout the period. Only once the June debate made concealment no longer possible did the media come forward. Then, led by the New York Times, it did so in conjunction with the Democrat elite to force Biden from the ticket. Ever since, it has been no less active in inflating the image of Kamala Harris as the Democrats’ unelected nominee. Look no further than the hagiographic Time front cover picture of Harris. For evidence how effective and relentless the establishment media has been in promoting Harris’ candidacy, simply compare her high “unfavorables” as vice president to their rebound in just a few months’ time: According to Real Clear Politics’ national average, on July 20 (the day before Biden withdrew), Harris was -16.8 percentage points; on October 19, she was -0.3 percentage points. And all this has occurred as Harris has utterly avoided serious interaction with the press — something it entirely ignores. The list of establishment media bias is endless and grows daily. To understand its depth, simply ask when the tide has run the other way. Earlier this year, NPR senior editor Uri Berliner created a sensation when he wrote: “It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed… In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.” Berliner’s only error was not making a blanket confession for the entire establishment media. With the vanity of Narcissus, America’s establishment media has become mesmerized with itself, believing its viewpoint is the only one worthy to be seen. The media class reports solely for itself and to itself.  If you doubt, look back to Gallup’s poll which found that 54 percent of Democrats had confidence in the establishment media, while only 27 percent of Independents and 12 percent of Republicans did. America’s establishment media loves to hide behind the First Amendment. However, there can be no freedom of the press if there is no freedom in the press.  No greater blow is being struck for such a freedom than Americans’ tuning out of the establishment media. J.T. Young is the author of the new 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 Americans’ Justified Media Mistrust appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I am fond of recalling this anecdote from the life of Horatio Storer, a man who would graduate from Harvard and become the father of American gynecology and one of the most influential doctors in the nation. His family lived in the Boston area, but they sent him to a school for boys, run by Quakers, on the shores of Cape Cod. We have his letters back to his parents at home — they are a small treasure of Americana, and they bear witness to what boys once did, if given liberty and encouragement for their natural boldness and ingenuity. They also bear witness to much that is out of order in America now. It was July 4, 1840. Storer was ten years old. Because it was a holiday, all the boys expected a grand time, but when morning broke it was raining hard, so they trooped on down to the schoolroom for their lessons.  Then the rain stopped and the day was bright and clear, so the schoolmaster told them that since they hadn’t prepared any lessons that day, they might go enjoy themselves. And that they did. “Who’s for building a log cabin?” suggested one of the boys, and they all thought it was a grand idea, so they asked the schoolmaster if they could, and he gave them permission.  That meant chopping the wood and hewing the logs to fit; it meant that they needed a plan, a vision of the finished cabin, and that they knew how to use the tools, such as axes, adzes, and saws. When Horatio wrote home on July 16, he said, with a boy’s matter-of-factness, “It is now about done. The top is clapboarded over. It has 2 United States flags with a portrait of General Harrison and a picture of his log cabin on them.” That would be W. H. Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe, who in a few months would be elected President of the United States. That Monday, the boys had another free day, which they spent by trooping on over to Barnstable, several miles off.  Here is Horatio’s description: “At the village several accidents happened a boy broke his leg but I believe there was none beside that of a very serious nature.  On Monday we dressed in our best and got into 2 stages and a carry all to go on our intended visit to Barnstable. We stopped at Eldridge’s hotel and then went to the bowling alley and staid some time. A good many of the boys then went about some one way and some another. I spent 3 quarters of a dollar while there. At noon we were called together to partake of a din[n]er. There were 2 large flags which the man said were hoisted to give notice of our presence. A few days ago I saw a paper containing an account of us while there. I went all over the court house then I went up to the cupola where I had a fine view of all around me.” They returned home at 6 PM, the boy says, cheering. The sheer neighborliness is astonishing. So is the liberty that accompanies it. A group of happy and noisy lads comes to your village all of a sudden, and you raise the flag to greet them. They are welcome at the hotel. They go to the bowling green. No adult is there to oversee what they do. They spend some money, which is fine for the villagers, and it appears that Horatio gets to tour the county courthouse and even to walk up to the cupola to look at the view from up there. No one appears to have been worried that he would pitch himself from it to his death. There is, I think, a common bond between the boys who built their log cabin and the craftsmen who built the courthouse and its cupola. Obviously, the boys knew how to do things, and certainly they were not all of them ten years old. Some were younger, some were older. Knowledge passed along from man to boy, and from the boys to each other, naturally as it were, without special training, though you might get that special training by apprenticeship, if you chose. The building Horatio toured still stands, a handsome structure in the American neoclassical or “federal” style. It is a rather gloomy thing to turn from that courthouse to those that have been built in Barnstable since. The old courthouse is built mostly of granite, with both dressed and undressed blocks, and fluted columns; the plasterwork and the woodwork in the interior are exceptional, yet tastefully austere, as are the vaulted hallways. Then you look at the modern district courthouse and the probate courthouse, the former a squat and flat building of brick and cement, the latter a tall and hulking building of brick and glass unrelieved by a single hint of whimsy or a single gesture toward any meaning beyond its dreary function, and you wonder how a whole nation could seem to have lost the delight in craftsmanship altogether. But we can, I believe, go farther. It is not only difficult, now, to find anybody who can fashion plaster moldings in the old styles, with the knowledge in his hands. It is difficult to find workers to build up the brick eyesores. Why is it so? The foundation is missing. The log cabin, if you will, is that foundation.  If I may use the specific to stand for the general case, there are no boys building log cabins. Why not? We can point to several apparently unrelated causes that unite in their stifling and smothering effects. The boys are not outdoors (no one is outdoors). They are not working with their hands. Safety smothers: they are not allowed the liberty of using axes, adzes, saws, and all other tools, whether or not they are powered by electricity or gasoline. They are not in one another’s company to experience that synergy that is at the heart of all crazy male enterprises. They often do not have fathers.  They usually do not have older brothers or older male cousins nearby. Perhaps they have no such at all. Their schools are like black mold, spreading everywhere, taking up more and more hours of the day with less and less to show for it in learning and accomplishment, and shortening that last blessed outpost of liberty, the summer, by parceling out vacation time by little and little through the rest of the year.  And then there are the screens: and make no doubt about it, dear readers. Those screens are like the walls of prison cells that shut your child away from reality and life. Imagination is built up from encounters with real things, with grass, briars, trees, sand, washed-up sharks on the beach, stone, iron, wood, tools, other people with their own eyes and their minds, their voices and their hands.  Then it is built up into great towers of thought and feeling by encounters with the thoughts and feelings and the artistic mastery of other people far and near in place and time, through the most sophisticated software ever invented, and perhaps that can ever be invented: the book. What if we took a small portion of welfare payments with their perverse disincentive against marriage, and diverted it to schools for boys who might grow up to build things again, the “log cabins” of our time?  I am not here speaking about the education of girls, or of boys and girls together, which seem to me to be somewhat separate issues. Certainly no one can defend our current miserable record in raising boys and channeling their natural energies.  Anything at all would be better than what we have now.  For many boys, doing nothing would be better: they would at least have their young lives handed back to them. In any case, what has been done can be done again, with vision and will. So then, “Who’s for building a log cabin?” This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The post Welfare? How About a Log Cabin? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from “Coffee and a Mike” Show: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

by Cristina Laila, The Gateway Pundit: A new photo of Joe Biden’s improperly store Vice Presidential records was obtained by America First Legal. There are boxes upon boxes of records improperly stored yet Joe Biden was never charged by Special Counsel Robert Hur. TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/ ?BREAKING — NEW IMAGE OF BIDEN’S IMPROPERLY REMOVED […]

Iran faces a moment of historic weakness following Israel’s airstrikes on military facilities throughout the Islamic country on Saturday morning. As the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism considers whether it will respond to the strikes, a new report suggests that the country’s leader has become gravely ill. Buried in a report from The New York Times on Saturday was the revelation that intelligence officials believe that 85-year-old Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is “seriously ill.” The report noted that Khamenei’s health was a factor the regime was having to contend with as it weighs the risks of responding to a vastly superior Israeli military. The country’s economy continues to struggle and a war with Israel would likely result in its oil infrastructure being wiped out, which would crash its economy again. Israel has also decimated Iran’s top two terrorist proxy groups — Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza — that it has propped up to attack the Jewish State. MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ COMING TO DAILYWIRE+ OCT. 28 The Israel Air Force (IAF) destroyed key air defense systems in Syria, Iraq, and Iran early on Saturday morning as part of its strike on Iran so that it could operate with impunity over Iranian airspace. Knowing that it cannot defend itself against a technologically superior foe, Iran “is also dealing with serious domestic dissent over rising prices and its harsh rule, which play into any calculation for retaliation,” the report said. The report said that it’s because the regime is losing popularity among its citizens that Khamenei “allowed the election of a more moderate president, Masoud Pezeshkian, after the harder-line Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash.” “Complicating matters, a quiet battle has emerged over succession,” the report later added as it highlighted the reports of Khamenei’s illness. “With Mr. Raisi gone, there is internal disquiet over the possibility that Ayatollah Khamenei’s second son, Mojtaba, 55, might succeed him,” the report said. “The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps will have an important say and is considered more willing to confront Israel.”

Major Blue City Mayor Undermines Harris's 'Fascist' Accusation Against Trump, Makes Call To 'Dial Down The Temperature'