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.

WASHINGTON — It’s been a little over a week since the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget sent a letter to Kamala Harris and Donald Trump suggesting they get serious about “skyrocketing” national debt, which now exceeds $35 trillion. Washington is spending $1.8 trillion more than it collects annually. “Our publicly held debt will soon surpass the entire size of the U.S. economy, and debt is projected to exceed its previous record, 106 percent of GDP, in 2027,” the letter warned. “At a projected cost of $892 billion this year, our nation already spends more on interest on the debt than we do on both national defense and all federal spending on children.” “The costs and promises just keep coming,” CRFB head Maya MacGuineas observed as we chatted over the phone Friday. As November nears, the candidates are dangling “expensive targeted breaks for groups of voters” with a “silly cynical patchwork of fiscal giveaways.” CRFB crunched the numbers from the Harris and Trump campaign troves and reported that Harris scored better than Trump. The fiscal watchdog group factored three outcomes — low impact, high impact, and in between — of each candidate’s proposals and figured the impact on the national debt for Plan Kamala could be as low as zero or as high as $8.1 trillion over 10 years starting in 2026. For Trump, the range could be as low as $1.45 trillion or as high as $15.15 trillion over the same period. That would be on top of the $1.8 trillion or so in debt that we already accumulate each year. Since the letter went out, MacGuineas noted, there has been another natural disaster, Hurricane Milton, and Harris promised to have Medicare fund at-home, long-term care and Trump promised a new tax break on car-loan interest. So those estimates can only grow. MacGuineas knows that the longer Washington puts off addressing America’s over-indebtedness, the more painful the remedy will be. Because really, the only way to eliminate the money gap and put federal spending on a sustainable path would be to address entitlement spending. But you don’t hear either candidate talking about fixing Social Security or Medicare. Instead, you hear about how they want to give away more money they don’t have. Part of the problem is there is no crisis, just more red ink every year; our finances resemble the frog in the pot on top of a fire. But it’s also true that with no crisis, this would be a perfect time to course-correct. The economy is strong enough to absorb the cost of what needs to be done. Shortly after MacGuineas and I spoke, the Wall Street Journal reported that JPMorgan Chase Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum said on a conference call that after a recent interest rate cut, the U.S. economy is in a “kind of Goldilocks” situation. Inflation is at 2.44 percent right now. But when interest rates climb, the cost of paying off the mountains of U.S. debt will climb as well. So this would be a great time to right the ship, except that it’s an election year, and neither party wants to talk about paying the piper. Republicans aren’t talking about cutting government to right the ship, MacGuineas noted, and Democrats aren’t pushing for the broad tax hikes necessary to pay for their programs. I asked MacGuineas: What should voters be pushing for? A pledge from candidates, MacGuineas responded, and it’s simple: “No new borrowing until they fix this situation, barring emergencies.” That makes so much sense, you know it won’t happen. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Who Wants to Increase the National Debt? Both Trump and Harris appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from NEM721:  TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

by Eric Zuesse, The Duran: The neoconservative dream, ever since neoconservatism started on 25 July 1945, has been for the U.S. Government to take over the entire world, but this 79-year-old dream for them (nightmare for everyone else) has now practically ended, because after having played nuclear chicken against Russia ever since that date, the U.S. […]

Deep Purple's albums ranked, from patchy Purple to purple patches, from iconic albums to the one Ritchie Blackmore dubbed "cattle grazing" to the one with the new chap

Are the cures for the Harris slide far worse than the malady itself? The post The Scent of a Harris Panic in the Air appeared first on Frontpage Mag.