There are 50 U.S. states, but voters from seven so-called battleground states are expected to determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. The Southwestern state of Arizona used to reliably…

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It’s understandable that fathers want to protect their daughters. But many parents today are calling out the age-old patriarchal approach of instilling fear and intimidation to do so. Even girl dads themselves. Recently, English Professor (and father of a teen girl) Neil Shyminsky, broke down exactly what is so problematic about this trope in a stitched TikTok. In the original clip, a father talks about meeting his 13-year-old daughter’s first boyfriend. “I knew this was coming, but I don’t know if I’m ready for it,” the dad says, adding that he did find the boy very respectful. Both of which Shyminsky could get behind…except maybe the “insistence” that the boy address him with his last name. But things really take a turn when the man says, “as a girl dad, it’s definitely hard knowing that the little baby you once held in your arms all of a sudden has got a boyfriend that’s starting to take your place.”“What now? I’m truly trying to figure out how he could ‘replace’ you…but all the answers I could come up with are deeply uncomfortable,” Shyminsky says. And we’ll just leave it at that. The dad goes onto share the “good news” that his daughter told him her boyfriend (i.e. a child) said he was “absolutely terrified” of him because of his physical build. And then the whole thing devolves into a weird message touting the importance of lifting weights, so that you won't need guns to intimidate young boys, and instead do it with hard-earned muscle. This is where Shyminsky drops a few truth bombs. @professorneil When they say ‘protect’, they mean ‘terrify’. #toxicmasculinity #masculinity #girldad #parenting ♬ original sound - Professor Neil “You want a 13-year-old to be terrified of you? ... He is 13. And so any adult man would probably seem huge,” he begins, adding that while he too is generally larger than the people around him, he prefers to measure success in terms of who feels safe in his presence, versus “how many small children I terrify.”Shyminsky goes on to say that while he wants the dating world to be as safe as possible for his daughter, prioritizing physical intimidation is the wrong way to accomplish that. For one thing, if this young boy only respects this man’s daughter out of fear of being hurt by her father, then he “is not anyone that we want getting anywhere near our daughters” in the first place, Shyminsky points out. And on that note, Shyminsky asks “If he’s supposed to respect and listen to you because your muscles are larger than his, how is your daughter supposed to treat him when his are in all likelihood larger than hers?”Said that bluntly, it’s easy to see how this strategy, however well intentioned, is a form of “toxic masculinity” that, as Shyminsky put it, causes suffering to those on “the wrong end” of it. Even those who are meant to be protected by it. Down in the comments, folks were entirely on board with Shyminsky’s hot take. ‘Fear is not respect,” one person wrote. Another quipped, “I feel like people get their parenting techniques from 90s sitcoms.”Parents want to protect their kids from all the many dangers of the world. But at the same time, it’s so important for kids to see firsthand how the important adults in their life lead with something other than fear, if we hope for them to do the same. This is a great example of how a mindset shift can help with that.Shyminsky actually has an entire TikTok treasure trove of videos dissecting our ever evolving views on manhood. Including a great one breaking down how masculinity as it "should be" has been in question since 400 BCE. @professorneil Men are never as masculine as they once were - and never have been #men #manhood #masculinity #toxicmasculinity #fragilemasculinity #greenscreenvideo #greenscreen ♬ original sound - Professor Neil Or this one delving into misandry vs misogyny: @professorneil #stitch with @jaystakes It’s not misandry, it’s misogyny #misogyny #misandry #sexism #feminism #feminismisforeveryone ♬ original sound - Professor Neil You can find these, and more, on his TikTok.

Cervical cancer is something that can go undetected if you're not in a position to get regular gynecological appointments. But with the new guidelines, allow for greater leeway between screenings for abnormal cervical cells. In America, the age to begin receiving pap smears, which is the test that can detect abnormal cells in the cervix, increased to age 21 and in the UK it's not given until 25.Though, this test can detect the cells much earlier and before symptoms start, the distance between testing has been increased to every 3-5 years instead of yearly. The decrease was backed by scientific evidence showing there wasn't an increase in detection of abnormal cells by doing the test more frequently. Ethan, a man who lost his sister in 2022 to cervical cancer partly blames the delay in testing with her untimely death.The grieving man took to TikTok to share a PSA on how important it is for women and people born with female anatomy to get their pap smears, sharing the cautionary tale of his deceased sister. "Have you got a vagina and don't want to die? Cause if that's the case please watch this video," Ethan starts out saying. "So I'm going to tell the story of how my sister passed away and the one thing that I want anyone to take away from her death and she would want anyone to take away from hear death is to look after your health." a woman sitting at a table with a model of a stomach Photo by Elen Sher on Unsplash He explains that in 2021 his sister started having a lot of large blood clots "the size of a size 10 foot" that she kept going back to the doctor for but was consistently dismissed. Ethan shares that his sister began going to the hospital weekly due to the amount of pain she was in and she continued to be dismissed for months before she was referred to the gynecologist. According to the woman's brother, the process to look to see what was going on was so painful that the gynecologist refused to continue with the appointment. "He said 'oh, I'm not doing this because you're in too much pain,' rather than actually investigating the reason why. Because she had a f***ing tumor inside her vagina that was the size of my fist. How the man missed that is beyond me. If he found that she'd probably f***ing still be alive cause she was neglected so bad throughout the whole route of this process." baby i'm sorry GIF by truTV’s I’m Sorry Giphy Ethan reveals that she started having symptoms in October of 2021 but it wasn't until February of 2022 that she was diagnosed after months of trying to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, the cancer had already spread to her lungs, liver and stomach and died at the age of 31, March 2022. "If you know something's wrong with you, only you know what's going on with your body so make sure you push harder. If you know that there's something wrong with you, you need to kick and scream and shout until you get what you f***ing want," he says as he shares what he hopes the main takeaway from his message will be. Happy New Year Feminist GIF by All Better Giphy "Cervical cancer is so common so make sure you get your smears done because if you don't get your smears done and you've got those cells...if you've got the beginning of those cells you can just get it burned away. My mom's had it done a thousand times. My auntie's had it done. But if you leave leave them then that can lay undetected in your body for years until it's too late. Cervical cancer is a massive problem."Ethan shares his frustration that the UK doesn't do pap smears until the age of 25 when it's the STI human papillomavirus (HPV) that causes many of the instances of cervical cancer. He's hoping that telling his sister's story will encourage people to not only get pap smears even if they have to pay for them out of pocket, but to advocate for themselves fiercely. @eefybeefy1 Replying to @Emma Parkinson the best ones always die first ❤️ #grief #fyp #foryou #cancer #storytime ♬ original sound - Ethan People in the comments are thankful he's speaking up while others are sharing their own stories of loss from delay in screenings along with not being believed. "my daughter died aged 23 from cervical cancer. basically the same story as yours. neglected for 2 year, then by the time they diagnosed her she had i month to live," one mom shares."My friend passed away age 30 of cervical cancer, they need to lower the age of smears" another grieving person writes."As a GP nurse conducting smears everyday I’m SO proud of you for advocating for women, and your sister like this! It’s not a scary process to do, it’s over and done with in less than a minute and I absolutely don’t care if your legs are hairy," a nurse chimes in."Sadly women are often not believed when it comes to their pain. Keep educating people Ethan, your sis would be so proud of you," someone else shares.Several women in the comments share that his video has caused them to schedule appointments for their pap smears after being overdue or afraid of going. So while his delivery may have included a few instances of adult language, his message seems to be heard clearly by those who are needing to hear it. Telling his sister's story may just save a few lives.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has become the Republican Party’s Glutton-For-Punishment-In-Chief, it seems. Last Sunday, Johnson appeared on ABC News’ This Week show, the one hosted by former Bill Clinton media fixer George Stephanopoulos, who has allegedly transmogrified himself into an objective messenger of truth. How well that went was that the “objective” George Stephanopoulos had the speaker of the House of the U.S. Congress on his show for nine minutes, and the two questions the ABC News propagandist had to offer were: Was it inappropriate, given demands to turn down the temperature in American politics following two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, for the former president’s son Eric to say, at the just-concluded return-trip rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, that Democrats were trying to kill his father (was Eric lying?); and Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election, which would make Trump a liar for having contested it, or was Johnson a kook and a liar along with Trump? It was the kind of “when did you stop beating your wife?” questioning that marks the interviewer as profoundly unserious and demonstrably lacking in good faith, and it didn’t go over so well with Johnson, who nevertheless managed to politely refuse to get sucked into Stephanopoulos’ stupid questions. At the time, I said Johnson could have been a little more rude. Certainly Stephanopoulos deserved that treatment for his obnoxious electioneering disguised as “objective” journalism. But the speaker was back on the Sunday circuit a week later, conversing this time with NBC News’ clownish Kristen Welker, and either Johnson listened to me or he’s just sick of stupid questions from highly paid dunces in the legacy corporate media, because nice-guy Mike managed to carry a bit sharper edge to him. And it worked out pretty well, because Johnson executed a decent pile-driver maneuver on Welker in response to questions even dumber than the ones Stephanopoulos vomited at him: Kristen Welker tried to humiliate Speaker Johnson and she ran into an absolute buzzsaw. All politics aside, it's glorious to see a smug journalist cut down to size like this pic.twitter.com/4eYG1rB5W0 — Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) October 14, 2024 So good for Johnson. Watching that, I figured it wasn’t Welker’s idea to drop that stinkbomb of a question about Trump’s medical records. Not that Welker, who is positively rotten at her job for different reasons than Stephanopoulos is awful at his, isn’t capable of coming up with stupid questions on her own. It’s just that these things are never the bright idea of the talking-head host, who doesn’t get a job like that because he or she knows anything but rather for other reasons. It’s somebody else who thinks those things up. And all it takes is a little patience, and soon it becomes obvious where something as moronic as trying to make a federal case out of Trump’s neglecting to divulge his cholesterol levels would come from. Where do you think it might have originated? Careful, you don’t want to get whiplash from your surprise when I show you: Donald Trump refuses to release his medical records, and he is unwilling to meet for a second debate. Why does his staff want him to hide away? Are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America? — Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 13, 2024 The amazing thing is Welker floats that air biscuit at Johnson, and he bats it away like a housefly, and in no time flat the clip is being shared all over social media as “Mike Johnson SCHOOLS Kristen Welker After Stupid Cholesterol Question,” and Sunday afternoon amid the laughing, Harris’ handlers decided to invest her in that controversy. The ratio Harris took after that tweet was legendary, and for the obvious reason that attacking Donald Trump for his age and health after nearly four years of lying to the American people that Joe Biden was fit to hold the job is outrageously rich. But everything about Harris and the $700 million-and-counting campaign attempting to drag her into the White House is outrageously rich at this point. Some idiot who’s responsible for the embarrassingly bad jokes Jimmy Kimmel tells on his failing late-night talk show put together an ad aimed at attempting to get men to vote for Kamala, and the ad was literally the best thing that has happened to Trump so far in this campaign. It’s so cringe, so unmitigatedly out of touch, and so utterly insulting to actual men that, as Andrew Klavan said, “This ad makes me wish I supported Kamala Harris, so I could see this ad and change my mind.” Lou Aguilar gave the ad a proper spanking in his American Spectator column Monday, so there’s no need to trouble ourselves further. But then there is the Tim Walz cavalcade of fiascos, from his demonstrable failure to load a shotgun on a press-avail pheasant hunt, to the unanswered questions about the many trips he’s taken to China not at his own expense over the years. Walz has gone from the supposed traditional male anchor of the ticket to an anchor around Harris’ neck as the lack of vetting around his selection of VP continues to haunt her. And then, of course, there’s Doug Emhoff. Monday being Columbus Day, this naturally resurfaced… Kamala Harris on Columbus Day: “European explorers ushered in a wave of devastation, violence, stealing land, and widespread disease” pic.twitter.com/3XijDf5Ldo — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 14, 2024 I had a friend tell me a couple of weeks ago that Kamala would cut her own electoral throat on Columbus Day by reprising that message. As of this writing, she hadn’t, but does it matter? That video tells you all you need to know about what she thinks of America, and specifically about those white men her handlers are trying to con into voting for her — at this point if you’re one of them and you’ll still vote for this woman, what’s toxic about your masculinity is your lack of it. It isn’t like she can walk that statement back. Everybody will know how insincere she is in doing so. Oh, by the way — white guys are the least of Kamala’s problems. Barack Obama, who’s ultimately responsible for all of this gargantuan cloud of civilizational failure that Harris is coming to personify, made a stink last week when he appeared before cameras whining that “the brothers” — meaning black men that he identifies with only as a matter of politically expedient identity — aren’t enthusiastically backing The Candidate Of Joy as they should, and implying it’s sexism. One respondent to that posted that “I have a father, I know who it is, and he ain’t you.” Which was well said, and quite true. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., is the father of no man, literally or figuratively, and his political children are becoming orphans in real time particularly as Harris’ flagging poll numbers begin delivering swing states into Trump’s camp and her staffers begin dishing dirt in preparation for a loss to Trump. And the Stephanopouloses and Welkers of the world, with their bad-faith questions and slavish devotion to Team Obama/Biden/Harris’ manufactured, curated narratives, might end up the most lasting victims of what’s coming if this current direction persists. READ MORE: Five Quick Things: This Is All the Left’s Fault, You Know Tucker’s Interview With Elon Is Required Viewing for Everybody Of Course Kamala Hates Men. It’s Understandable. The post And Now, the Cholesterol Race Begins appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Democrats’ display their elitism by using macroeconomic numbers to ignore America’s microeconomic concerns. By promoting the macro-economy, Democrats produced the numbers they now campaign on. However, their macro numbers have come with high inflation that has wreaked havoc on the micro-economies in which most Americans live. Democrats’ embrace of the macro economy is unmistakable.  Paul Krugman’s recent column (10/8) trumpeted that the “macro” numbers “vindicate Bidenomics.” During CBS’s Sunday (10/6) 60 Minutes interview, Kamala Harris immediately ducked into the macro economy when asked about inflation’s impact on Americans. When discussing the economy, Democrats only talk about the macro — GDP and unemployment. When pressed about her economic plans, Harris talks about proposals to pump more federal dollars into plumping up those macroeconomic numbers. There are real limits to the value of macro numbers. The GDP’s post-COVID rebound in the second half and 2020 and 2021 is a good example. Statistically it showed dramatic growth; in reality, it was a return to normal trajectory. Throughout the next three years, because GDP is merely the total value of all goods and services produced, massive federal spending — $7.7 trillion in deficits during FYs 2021-2024 — boosted that statistic. However, the biggest limit on Democrats’ macro numbers is that average Americans do not live in them. Instead, most Americans live in the microeconomic: their households, jobs, and workplaces. And they measure their microeconomic worlds at kitchen tables — not by macro statistics, but by a basic micro one: How much does my paycheck bring home? Into these microeconomic worlds has come Biden-Harris’s record inflation. This is the reason — to the consternation of Democrats staring fixedly at their macro numbers — Americans rate Biden so poorly on inflation in particular and on the economy in general.  Real Clear Politics’ averages of national polling show just 36.5% of Americans approve (62.3% disapproving) of Biden’s handling of inflation and just 39.8% approve (58.5% disapproving) of his handling of the economy. When confronted with their inflation’s effects, Democrats attempt to switch to the macro — as Harris did in her 10/6 CBS 60 Minutes interview. Or they pedantically pretend inflation is over because its rate of increase is finally slowing. What Democrats avoid talking about are their inflation’s impact on average Americans’ microeconomic worlds. Claiming the inflation rate is now the lowest in four years, ignores these have been their four years — during which inflation leapt, peaking at just over 9% (a four-decade high). Nor do Democrats say their macro inflation rate number is just a single frame in inflation’s movie. Inflation’s impact is cumulative, compounding everything that came before; that its current rate of increase is lower (though at 2.5 in August, still above the Federal Reserve’s desired 2% rate), does not erase the effects of Biden-Harris’ four-year inflation.  If it has been below freezing for four weeks and the temperature then rises five degrees one day, you do not call that summer and put on a bathing suit. The micro economies most Americans inhabit are hurting. They’ve been hurting over the last four years, and inflation’s compounding impact makes that hurt worst right now — even as Democrats gaze into their macro statistics to tell Americans that everything economic is great. The prices average Americans pay are high; 20% higher, and some much higher still, than they were four years ago. Their mortgage rates are high — a monthly mortgage on a median-priced home costs $1,250 more now than four years ago — because the Federal Reserve had to raise interest rates to fix the inflation that Biden-Harris’ high spending helped cause. Their savings are depleted because average Americans had to exhaust them to keep pace with Biden-Harris inflation. And their borrowing is high because having exhausted their savings, average Americans are now piling on debt to offset the impact of Biden-Harris’s inflation. Once upon a time, Democrats campaigned on America’s microeconomics. Biden still styles himself “Lunch Bucket Joe,” while Harris constantly speaks incessantly of growing up in a “middle-class household.” Yet now, they run from the micro and into the macro. Their only use for microeconomies’ inflation woes was as cover for their macroeconomic plans. Biden himself admitted it about their IRA bill: “The Inflation Reduction Act — I wish I hadn’t called it that, because it has less to do with reducing inflation than it does to do with dealing with providing for alternatives that generate economic growth.” Rather than combatting inflation, it added another $370 billion of the same elitist spending that helped cause the inflation it falsely claimed to cure. Democrats have enjoyed talking about America being two countries. Now, they have two economies too: the macro one of statistics and the micro one of average Americans. What has changed in both is Democrats’ blatant embrace of the elite. Nothing is more indicative of this than their embrace of the macroeconomy at the expense of average Americans’ micro economies. The post Democrats’ Economic Elitism appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, described in news reports as “a Japanese organization of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” The organization received the award for its “activism against nuclear weapons.” Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chairperson of the committee, explained the award by noting the current weakening of the “taboo” against the use of nuclear weapons. European Union President Ursula von der Leyen added that “the spectre of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still looms over humanity. This makes the advocacy of Nihon Hidankyo invaluable.” The selection of an anti-nuclear weapons organization for the Nobel Peace Prize is nothing more than symbolic, and this isn’t the first occasion where the Nobel Committee chose symbolism over substance. Back in 2009, the Nobel Committee awarded the peace prize to Barack Obama, who had been in office as president for less than a year, for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” The committee’s press release noted Obama’s “vision” for a more peaceful world and his ability to give the world’s people “hope.” Obama had at that time done nothing of substance to implement his “vision” and fulfill the “hope” he apparently created, other than embarking on an apology tour in the Middle East and other places where he expounded on America’s past sins. In reality, after the eight years of the Obama presidency, the Middle East was in chaos as terrorists and Islamists gained the upper hand in Libya, Yemen, Egypt, parts of Iraq, and Syria during the so-called “Arab Spring” and Iran’s geopolitical reach expanded in the region. Hardly the stuff of “peace,” but Obama’s criticism of the United States during his apology tour was reason enough to give him the “peace” prize. The Nobel Committee’s selection of an organization of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan is meant to highlight the evils committed by the United States. President Obama visited Hiroshima in 2016, and while he did not expressly apologize for the dropping of the atomic bombs, he did note the suffering that resulted from the “terrible force unleashed” by the United States. He did not say that the bombings were justified, nor that they saved many more lives than they took. The “spectre of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” doesn’t haunt the world. The dropping of those two atomic bombs ended a terrible war and saved both American and Japanese lives. During the Cold War, the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons protected half the continent of Europe from communist enslavement. Today, it protects parts of eastern and northern Europe from Russian aggression. That same nuclear stockpile protected the freedom of Japan and South Korea during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and today protects those countries from communist China and North Korea. But the committee doesn’t want to consider nuclear weapons in historical context. Nuclear weapons helped prevent the outbreak of a third global war, yet the committee would not dare to give the peace prize to, say, Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb — a weapon that helped keep the general peace during crises that absent the H-bomb would likely have resulted in much larger and destructive wars. Today, Israel’s survival depends on its unrivaled nuclear stockpile in the Middle East, which is why its leaders acted to prevent Iraq from obtaining a nuclear weapon in 1981 and Syria from obtaining one in 2007. And it is why Israel will never knowingly allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Instead of praising the people and organizations who provide for and support deterrence of war, the Nobel Committee gives awards to people and organizations who advocate for the end of nuclear deterrence. Perhaps if they looked back at pre-nuclear history they might appreciate the deterrent value of nuclear weapons. The Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century claimed between 3.2 million and 6.5 million lives. The First World War resulted in more than 18 million deaths. World War II caused between 35 million and 60 million deaths. There has been no global kinetic war since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear deterrence has thus far worked to avoid the kind of global war that in the past produced such enormous casualties. The nuclear genie cannot be put back in the bottle. Global wars are avoided by what Albert Wohlstetter called the “delicate balance of terror.” Too bad the Nobel Committee refuses to acknowledge this reality. The post The Nobel Committee’s Symbolism Over Substance appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.