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45 w

“Dread ripples through me”: When John Densmore lashed out at Pete Townshend and Sting
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“Dread ripples through me”: When John Densmore lashed out at Pete Townshend and Sting

He didn't hesitate to criticise. The post “Dread ripples through me”: When John Densmore lashed out at Pete Townshend and Sting first appeared on Far Out Magazine.
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Tucker’s Interview With Elon Is Required Viewing for Everybody
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Tucker’s Interview With Elon Is Required Viewing for Everybody

There’s an ad circulating on the TV networks that you may have seen. It features a working-class union black guy who calls himself “Buddy,” and he says that he’s voting for Kamala Harris because Donald Trump wants to give tax breaks to billionaires and Buddy thinks that’s not cool. Somewhat conspicuously, when the ad starts in on how terrible it is for billionaires to get tax breaks, Team Kamala simply has to throw up a picture of Elon Musk in a tuxedo. Musk has now become the Left’s new Emmanuel Goldstein, the figure of the Two Minutes’ Hate that all of their votaries must condemn. And why? For the sin of having backed Trump. The dishonesty that underlies the ad isn’t hard to unpack, of course. Most of America’s billionaires are leftist ideologues, and for a number of reasons. First, the oldest and surest way to be a billionaire is to inherit a fortune of that size, and the descendants of the great 19th- and 20th-century captains of industry are quite plentiful. And what we know about the inheritors of great wealth is that their appreciation for the work that went into its creation is inversely proportional to their contribution to that process. It’s almost a cliche at this point that trust-fund babies are going to lean left. In fact, the capture of elite institutions by the Left, and particularly higher education institutions like those of the Ivy League, was done in no small part for this precise purpose. Indoctrinating the children of those Americans who created the immense fortunes that our rise to economic superpower status would inevitably produce into Marxist ideologues was the single greatest victory the Left has ever achieved. It’s allowed the Left to worm their way into positions of power and wealth that a sane nation would never knowingly choose to give them. Another reason most billionaires tend to be leftists is that the newer billionaires disproportionately come from the tech sector. There’s a difference between the “old” economy and the “new” economy. The “old” economy was and is based on the manufacture, sale, and delivery of tangible goods and services. Cars, for example, or bread. Or legal or medical services. In the old economy, it was and is fairly simple to describe how one might make a fortune. And in the old economy, an absolute understanding of, and guidance by, objective reality and natural law is a requirement. You must have knowledge of physics and geometry, for example, if you want to build a bridge that won’t fall down. The “new” economy is different. It isn’t based in objective reality so much as it’s based in creativity and ingenious ways to warp reality. The digital space is a wonderland in which efforts are made to alter the human condition beyond its nature, so Facebook, for example, is a place where deeply unhappy people post smiling, AI-filtered photos of themselves in order that others might believe untrue things about them. And algorithms shape what is seen on people’s news feeds not based on what’s true but based on what they click on and what might offer the largest dopamine rush. Facebook isn’t atypical of what Silicon Valley is doing. People who believe it’s right and proper to warp reality rather than respect and make use of it are predisposed to political leftism. That the culture of the tech sector and other “new” economy industries is hedonistic and irreligious, if not anti-religious, only contributes to this. Musk is an interesting figure because he has a foot in both camps. He’s undoubtedly a tech guy, as his fortune was made building PayPal, an online payment system that has facilitated a huge portion of the growth of the tech sector and the public’s willingness to transact business over the internet. But Musk’s contribution to tech was still rooted in the principles of the old economy. PayPal, despite some of the woke abuses of its current management, is nonetheless built around the same basic rules a bank would operate under. All Musk did was to apply those to an app that facilitated transactions across banks or other financial institutions, or even bypassed them, and created a public expectation of trust around those transactions. Then his next venture was Tesla, which appealed to a lot of “new” economy types but at the end of the day is very much an “old” economy venture. Yes, Teslas are electric cars (for now; one imagines he’s eventually going to move toward hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles or even back to the internal-combustion engine, assuming an eventual change in auto regulation), and yes, they’re built differently than traditional internal-combustion vehicles are, but auto manufacturing is nonetheless governed by the principles of “old” economics. Does the car look good? How does it perform on the road? Is it comfortable to operate? Does it last? And then, Musk’s next venture was SpaceX. As futuristic as the vision around SpaceX is, fundamentally it’s still an “old” economy venture. SpaceX builds and fires rockets to bring people and things to space. And its chief driver of operation is that it launches communications satellites — many thousands of them so far — to support the development of Starlink, Musk’s telecommunications venture that will provide internet connectivity at high speed and low cost to everyone on earth eventually (or, at least, everyone who subscribes). This is going to put traditional cable and satellite providers out of business before long, and it will make Musk far and away the richest man on earth if he isn’t already there. And of course there is X, which Musk didn’t found but has transformed into a social platform based on the idea of free speech and the pursuit of truth. In that respect, he’s bringing old-economy principles to one of the most new-economy entities there is. What characterizes his entrepreneurship is something much different than that of, for example, Mark Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin of Google. Musk generally doesn’t rush to buy out potential competitors who bring a better mousetrap. His is the better mousetrap. He makes sure of that before he enters a business space. Think about the last Google search you made, and whether it met your standard. If what you were searching for was information on a topic on which the accepted conventional wisdom doesn’t seem correct, the chances are that you gave up before you could find anything useful. An Elon Musk–driven search engine would never accept that level of performance. Musk seems perplexed by the fact that he’s seen as a radical, and that’s not a surprise. His ideas and values are not radical. You’d probably describe Musk as a garden-variety 1990s moderate liberal, but that has gone greatly out of style in American politics, and it no longer has a place in the Democrat Party. When Barack Obama came along, one of his most profound effects on our politics was that he forced the liberals to choose either hard leftism — the choice Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden and the rest of the Democrats’ current old-line power structure made in order to survive and succeed in Obama’s America — or irrelevance. There are no more Joe Liebermans as a result. Joe Manchin might be the last one. Musk is one of a not-small number of old liberals who have wised up and shed many of their illusions as a result. What’s so interesting about this new interview Tucker Carlson had with Musk is the entrepreneur’s thoughts on what that evolution has produced for him. He opens the interview joking casually about being prosecuted for any number of things in the event that Donald Trump, whom he’s enthusiastically and robustly backing, should lose the presidential election. Musk even quotes Lavrentiy Beria, the chief Soviet persecutor of dissidents and other undesirables under Joseph Stalin, as he famously said, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” You can’t really argue, after what Trump has been through at the hands of the Biden administration, that Musk is off-base in expressing such concerns. And to buttress his point, he notes that the Department of Justice has filed a very large lawsuit against SpaceX alleging that its hiring practices discriminate against “asylum-seekers.” There is another provision of law that makes it illegal for that company, engaged as it is in building rockets, the technology of which is quite similar to that of intercontinental ballistic missiles, to hire non-citizens. Musk finds this contradiction insane, and it is, but it’s also very logical using the mindset of the tyrant that he admits he struggles to understand. Namely, that having contradictory laws is a great and desirable thing because every aspect of human behavior is then illegal in some respect, and this gives wide discretion for someone like Merrick Garland to pick and choose which law to enforce. Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime. Or perhaps, depending on the man and his political favor or lack thereof, I will show no crime. As in, those sex pests and perverts of great means and influence who currently populate the flight logs to Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile island. Musk notes that many of them are sizable donors to and influencers for Kamala Harris, and there is a reason for that — they want to stave off the otherwise inevitable reckoning that their past deeds would entitle them to. He notes, prompted by a Carlson question, that Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn fame, who has been a deep-pocket Harris donor and before that attempted to engineer Nikki Haley’s anti-Trump insurgency in the GOP primaries, and before that bankrolled the ridiculous E. Jean Carroll fantasy sexual assault case against Trump, is quite nervous about this election and what a certain result could mean for him. It’s a fascinating interview, and that’s hardly surprising given that Musk is a fascinating individual. He’s a truth-seeker and a curious man who examines things deeply in order to understand what makes them tick, and because of that, he’s now very interested in the morals and values that underlie society and its component institutions. This goes about an hour and 48 minutes, and it is well worth your time. Elon Musk is all in. (0:00) Elon Musk Is All in on Donald Trump (6:35) Providing Starlink to Victims of Hurricane Helene (9:22) If Trump Loses, This Is the Last Election (21:49) The Epstein and Diddy Client List (33:38) Vaccines (35:49) The Movement to Decriminalize Crime… pic.twitter.com/jNqB1ThqQz — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 7, 2024 The post Tucker’s Interview With Elon Is Required Viewing for Everybody appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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45 w

The Republican Party Erred in Abandoning Its Pro-Life Platform
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The Republican Party Erred in Abandoning Its Pro-Life Platform

The Republican Party’s decision to abandon its foundational principle of valuing human life from conception to natural death marks a significant departure from its historical commitment to its founding principles and pro-life voters. This action was particularly shocking to those of us who were delegates at the July Platform Committee meeting in Milwaukee. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine, which includes this article and others like it. Contrary to some expectations, this departure from protecting the unborn and acknowledging our rights’ divine origin was not driven by grassroots Republican support. Instead, it was a top-down directive led by Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, chair of the Platform Committee. The process involved the intimidation of pro-life delegates and an unprecedented effort to block any debate or amendments to the platform. As a faith-driven voter, which pollster George Barna calls SAGE Cons (Spiritually Active, Governance Engaged Conservatives), I, along with others drawn to the GOP for its alignment with biblical truths, am now grappling with what this shift means for the future relationship between faith-driven voters and the Republican Party. This article is taken from The American Spectator’s fall 2024 print magazine. Subscribe to receive the entire magazine. The present political challenge of this post-Roe era is not lost on us. However, for those who have been involved in the movement for more than a decade, the significant challenges of the past are a reminder of the resilience required. Following the June 2022 Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, pro-life ballot initiatives have faced defeat in seven state referenda, including in surprising states like Kentucky and Ohio. Why, then, resist a new party platform that would, if implemented, seek pro-life protections only at the very end of pregnancy and in states where they can be adopted by majority vote? The best way forward for the Republican Party lies in its history. Traditionally, the GOP has stood for limited government, low taxes, the rule of law, and peace through strength. Yet, for many grassroots conservatives who helped the GOP become a majority party, it’s the commitment to civic virtue and moral principles — rooted in the party’s founding over a century and a half ago — that truly defines its legacy. The party was born with a society-shaking insistence on the universality of the Declaration of Independence, that all men “are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This was not a majority, much less a unanimous, view at the time of its adoption in the Republican platform of 1856. That platform did not unite the country; its ramifications — and the need for its continual restatement — reverberated throughout American politics for decades. It divided the nation, led to civil war, prompted three constitutional amendments, further split the states during Reconstruction, and fueled debates over legal segregation and anti-miscegenation laws for another century. Today’s intense contest over the right to life, fortunately, does not involve all of these dimensions. People like me, who are not political by nature, entered contemporary policy fights precisely because of issues like abortion. We believe that the only qualification for protection in our laws should be the fact of humanhood, not some external test of age, quality, or condition of dependency. This issue is unlike others — such as tax rates or the level of armaments — where compromises are readily struck, and participants move on. If states like New York, California, and Illinois deny all legal rights to a child in the womb up to birth and, yes, beyond, then we as a nation have denied that life is an inalienable right from our Creator. For decades, the GOP has aspired toward the universal recognition of this right. But now, under the pressure of a single election cycle that many of us believe it misreads, the GOP has set aside the clarity and specificity of a platform that stood on principle. The platform’s recognition of the right to life of the unborn and the duty of government not to perform, pay for, or promote abortion has been replaced by a call for limited action in some states but not others — the very position that Stephen Douglas and others espoused regarding slavery. Restoring that platform, as we will seek to do, may prove difficult, but not as difficult as it will be to restore trust. The effort will be aided by the extremity of the Democrats’ position, which refuses to acknowledge the right to life of a single unborn child anywhere in America or worldwide. They even welcomed the parking of an abortion van outside their convention — a curious celebration of American hope and opportunity! Art by Bill Wilson Restoration will also be aided by consensus within the party. The platform document in Milwaukee was obtained by a crackdown on dissenting advocates for life that was not in the spirit of the GOP. Polls continue to show that the party’s grassroots support protection for the right to life. Gallup polls indicate that about 64 percent of Republicans favor abortion being legal only under limited circumstances. Barred from introducing an alternative pro-life platform in Milwaukee, nearly two dozen delegates signed a minority report, which I believe time will show reflects the view of a majority of Republican voters. Ironically, fueled by the reality that abortion is necessarily a federal issue too, the nonsensical life plank of the current platform will be rejected. The federal government pays for nearly half of U.S. births through the Medicaid program, federal employment, and veterans’ and military health. It is the FDA that has greenlighted the mailing of abortion pills to minors and women without medical screening, now constituting more than 60 percent of the industry. While I cannot speak for every signer of the alternative platform, I can affirm that we will not flag nor fail in our unwavering commitment to defending the unborn and the core principles that drew us to the Republican Party. There are some values and principles that transcend short-term political calculations. We will continue to strive with long oars for the distant shore. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine. The post The Republican Party Erred in Abandoning Its Pro-Life Platform appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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45 w

Democrats Have Abandoned Black Men, Hispanics, Asians, Farmers, and Union Workers
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Democrats Have Abandoned Black Men, Hispanics, Asians, Farmers, and Union Workers

Over time, Donald Trump has moved the Republican Party from the upper crust of effete country-club exclusivism toward a more diverse and inclusive (!) blue-collar, working-class, salt-of-the-earth populism. Quite a shift away from the classical interests of the Bushes, James Bakers, Koch Brothers, George Wills, and the Bane Capitals of the Mitt Romneys. Concomitantly, farmers in Middle America have moved toward the GOP, as have union rank-and-file. Understand that politics is an almost-zero-sum game. For example, when a Democrat Party caters whole-hog to urban Black constituencies, then White rural voters realize they are abandoned, so move where they are appreciated. Put all your focus on New York and California, and you just may lose historic bonds in West Virginia, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Dixie. When almost every Democrat DEI appointment is a specific “Two-Fer”— both Black and female, to click off two critical virtue-signaling boxes — the DEI assembly line of Karine Jean-Pierre, Kamala Harris, Ketanji Jackson, Linda Greenfield — not to mention Claudine Gay — may solidify the Black woman vote. But how are Black men impacted — and, yes, they are figuring it out — when they begin to realize that Democrats’ talk of “equality” does not apply to them because they check off only one box — color but not gender? The Democrats’ approach is that Black men can have their very own place in the NFL and the NBA, and share some entertainment glamour with the women. But that’s it. Sure, dutiful honor is paid to men like Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, and Al Sharpton because they deliver patronage and votes. But it’s all smoke and mirrors. Black men have been destroyed by Democrat progressivism. Put yourself in their shoes: Really, do they see their interests reflected in “The Squad”? A close analysis of Democrats “caring for minorities” these past 60 years, since Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” reflects that Democrats have shunted aside the Black male in his family, in his household, as a father, as a son, as a breadwinner, as a person of social consequence or meaning. Bill Clinton offered Black young males “Midnight Basketball.” Remember? That’s the ticket? My boy at midnight, instead, was studying for the next day’s math or history exam — or both — with my encouragement (and gentle inducing). The Democrats’ “boys of entitlements” end up in prison because they are left without the paternal on-site parenting and role-modeling for success. The liberal government is more criminal than they. They need fathers at home for dinner, not basketball at midnight. The Democrats neutralized the fathers by social welfare programs that pay “entitlements” as long as household income is not “too high.” Therefore, husbands came to realize that working as truck drivers or check-out clerks at minimum wage brought in just enough salary to lose the household’s “entitlements.” Accordingly, there seemed “no point” in working to bring in household revenue that merely nullified the “entitlement” threshold. Voluntarily unemployed husbands and fathers became alienated and were thrashed with lost respect and shattered self-respect within the family unit, so often drifted off. Their sons consequently grew up without the role model of an on-site father, a man who wakes up each morning at 6 or 7, gets dressed properly for work, perhaps recites some prayers, grabs a quick breakfast and cup of coffee, kisses the kids and wife goodbye, and is gone the next 10 or so hours working to support everyone. He comes home beat, and the kids pick up that Dad is OK with his job but not exactly fulfilled; yet, Dad’s fulfillment is that, as a man, he supports his children and proudly lays the groundwork for them to exceed his own life achievements. And then he is up at 6 or 7 the next day, and back to work. It is as old as King David, after being told by the Prophet Nathan that it will not be David but his future son whom G-d has designated to build the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Apprised that the not-yet-born Solomon will exceed him in that regard, David does what a father — a man — does: he lays the groundwork for his son’s future success. He gathers all the supplies of gold, silver, brass, cedar wood, workers, and more that will be needed to erect that Beit HaMikdash, the House of G-d. His future son will need only to assemble the pieces (Divrei HaYomim Aleph / I Chronicles 22:14-17). Boys need that role-modeling because their turn on the generational line will be called 10–15 years later. Will they understand and be prepared to assume their place in society, or will they have been abandoned to drift aimlesly, too? Boys who are denied the on-site, two-parent family role model often end up drifting into instant gratification, not buckling down for college prep or vocational guidance and training but instead getting themselves caught up with the wrong crowd and soon added to the incarceration statistics. Not all juveniles stained for life with criminal records are innocent. And sociologists studying the root causes will not get them what they have lost. History and math exams are better than midnight basketball and handouts — er, “entitlements.” It’s all zero sum. By trying to buy off one demographic, the Democrats often ruin that entire group while also driving another body of people away. Politics is almost zero sum. If you curry too much with one demographic, you alienate another. An excessive one-way focus on advancing Black women sees Black men left behind. This is so obvious that the only reason no one says it out loud is that — well, society will shun those who say it. You just can’t say it. “Oh, Ketanji Jackson? What a great choice! The finest legal mind in America. The next Oliver Wendell Holmes.” “What, Karine Jean-Pierre? So perfect for the role. Puts Dana Perino, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Jen Psaki, Kayleigh McEnany, Jay Carney, and Ari Fleischer to shame.” “Kamala Harris? She is such manifest presidential material that she does not need to compete for primary votes. She is the primary. Why hold press conferences when her mind is on other things?” “Claudine Gay? Finally, someone leading Harvard worthy of the role.” Yet, in between the script forbidden to speak, Obama himself began to hint at the matter, the challenge of the absentee American Black father. Louis Farrakhan called for a “Million Man March.” Why specifically “M[e]n”? Because — well, why do you think? The Democrats have destroyed two generations of Black males … so far. (Take it from a Jew. The secret to our success is not innate “smarts.” Look at how unbelievably stupid half the Jewish voters are. (By the way, the liberal-conservative Jewish divide is closer to 50–50, not 75–25. Look at the actual voting results in Jewish districts this November. The “polls” of “Jews” are bogus. They do not know how to poll Jews because they rely on inaccurate self-definitions, use incredibly small samples, have never focused  on scientifically fine-tuning how to predict such a small demographic with accuracy, and such polls inevitably are conducted by left-wing unreliable interest groups like the “Jewish Democratic Council of America.” Waddya expect from them?) The secret to our success is simple: anti-Semitism! It is a gift — albeit really annoying like circumcision. Look at the voting forms and listen to the utility companies’ telephone language choices: a million languages, languages that no one speaks, but not Hebrew or Yiddish. No bilingual for us, so we had to learn English. They kept us out at Ellis Island unless we could prove we had a job or family covering our costs, so no “entitlements” — meaning we had to work. People wouldn’t employ us, so we had to create our own industries. Law firms would not hire us, so we had to start our own better law firms. We had no government safety net, so we became better acrobats and walked tightropes. (That is our secret — not “smarts” but, as we see with Israel, no choice. You can’t wait for America; you have to create your own Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow II. The Ivy Leagues kept out all Jewish students except the very smartest — so we all had to become the very smartest. But not everyone could get in, so a generation of hard-studying geniuses ended up in Brooklyn College, City College, and the rest of CUNY. As a result, instead of the City University making us great, we ended up making them great. Now that we have moved on, compare the CUNY of the 1950s to today’s embarrassment. That’s the secret. Not “entitlements.”) Politics is zero sum. In double-clicking DEI and “affirmative action” boxes for years, favoring Black women, the liberals and progressives have disdained and abandoned Black men. Also Latino and other Hispanic Americans of both genders. They all became afterthoughts. In the face of DEI, social justice, and equity — sounds nice, huh? — Asian Americans literally had to fight their way into the Supreme Court to get fair access to Harvard because great grades and academic achievement no longer were the ticket. In reality, all things being equal, these abandoned groups should have jumped over to the GOP years ago. Black men, Hispanic families, and Asians do not fit in the Democrats’ pockets or mold. There is only one way to make sense of what has kept them in political dissonance for so long until Trump arrived to beckon them into the GOP. Consider: If you were a Black man, or Hispanic or Asian of either gender, would Mitt Romney and Bane Capital be the lure to motivate you to change teams? Even so, the Democrats don’t want them anyway after the quadrennial election. It has taken Trump to say: “Well, come on over. What do you have to lose?” As Democats race to advocate for kids to get sex-change operations over parents’ objections, traditional blue-collar working families take their cue. All kinds: White and Hispanic working-class families, Black men, married women with children. As Democrats support eighth-month and ninth-month abortion, traditional Catholic ethnic voters get the memo, too. Even Hispanics. Again, politics is zero sum. When you pander to an untouched constituency (like illegal immigrants), another realizes it has been abandoned and disenfranchised (like the people into whose communities those illegals have been dumped). They are people with feelings, too; they don’t need sports agents to switch teams. When Kamala Harris panders to discrete interests by sending hundreds of millions of dollars for illegals to have housing and free Medicare, and by pumping the Gazan–Hamas economy and the Lebanese–Hezbollah economy with nearly $200 million more, North Carolina citizens, buried under the worst hurricane imaginable, grasp that they are “so yesterday,” not part of the progressives’ brave new world. By now, many historic loyalties have changed. Republicans are preferred by ethnic Catholic Midwestern Rust Belt union workers, and other abandoned constituencies: “fly-over” farm country, the deep South. Politics is almost zero sum. People who are abandoned as part of a progressive vote-getting strategy do not only cling to their guns and religion. Many also cling to their self-respect and their ballots. Subscribe to Rav Fischer’s YouTube channel here at bit.ly/3REFTbk  and follow him on X (Twitter) at @DovFischerRabbi to find his latest classes, interviews, speeches, and observations. Rav Fischer’s new season of classes begins after Sukkot. To be invited to attend any of his three weekly Zoom classes, send a request to rabbi@yioc.org Rav Fischer’s latest 10-minute messages: (i) “There is No Palestine” (here) and (ii) “Jewish Campus Students Need to Stop Whining” (here) The post Democrats Have Abandoned Black Men, Hispanics, Asians, Farmers, and Union Workers appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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Airbnb Is Good for Families — and the Free Market
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Airbnb Is Good for Families — and the Free Market

People think traveling for work is fun. You get to explore a new city, see all the exotic sites, and eat the best local cuisine. I mean, sure, it can be. But quite often, it’s the opposite. You’re working. Working stupid-long hours, and when you’re not working, you’re living in a one-room hotel and grabbing a burger from whatever fast-food spot is still open and gets you back to your bed the fastest. Sometimes for weeks. I spent five weeks in a suburb of south Atlanta recently and had the joy of regularly sampling the best Taco Bell had to offer all while working long hours and staying next to a wonderful and scenic paint factory. High-class living, let me tell you. But you know what makes it better? When my family can travel with me. And that’s what Airbnb does. Put simply, Airbnb is de facto pro-family, and opposition to Airbnb is opposition to the family. If we want to be pro-family, we must be pro-Airbnb. Let’s explain. Long-Term Travel Whether you’re project-based, working gigs, a digital nomad, or just the everyday millennial trying to scrape by, there are lots of jobs that either allow or require travel. In fact, Forbes estimates that, by 2025, 32.6 million Americans will work remotely and millions more will be required to travel at least part-time for work. I’ve enjoyed a career that has taken me on long stints to all three American coasts and four continents. I don’t just get to travel. I’m required to travel. The year I met my wife, we counted it all up, and I was on the road more days than I was home. It was fun. Kathryn came along often, and we had some incredible experiences. But now we have a family. And that family needs more than a hotel. Airbnbs allow for all the amenities of home, amenities that are closer to necessities when you start to have kids. I’ve been stuck in hotel rooms with my two kids. It’s fun the first night. It’s manageable the second night. By the third night, they are rabid, caged hyenas who have overdosed on espresso beans. And they have every right to be. Kids weren’t meant to be cooped up in a hotel. Imagine, if you will, kids living in a hotel for weeks — weeks — on end. Yes, it is as bad as it sounds. We did it with our oldest, Charlotte, but now that there are two, that’s just a recipe for insanity. Airbnb allows me and the millions of workers like me to bring our families along while traveling. Kids have their parents, parents have their kids, and for that innovation alone, society should be lining up and thanking Airbnb for making the world a better place. The digital nomad culture and jobs requiring travel are not going away. If anything, that sector is growing. Either we support this emerging culture being family-friendly, or we accept the noxious notion that family life just isn’t for certain jobs. Short-Term Stays and Vacations Of course, let’s not forget that the same benefits apply to short-term vacations as well. Maybe you’re on a tight budget and want to see all the sights, but can’t afford to eat out every night? Airbnb has a kitchen! Food allergies? Guess what?… Airbnb has a kitchen! The average hotel does not. Sure, there are some places where it is at least a venial sin not to sample the local cuisine. (New Orleans, I’m looking at you.) But no matter the number of Michelin stars, I guarantee you my toddler wants chicken nuggets. We can be at the Consulate in Atlanta (among Zagat’s “Top 10 Sexiest New Restaurants and Bars in Atlanta”) or Manhatta in New York City (Check out the view!), and my toddler is going to want chicken nuggets. You know a place that has chicken nuggets? The kitchen at my Airbnb. And this problem is going to get worse. Not just because my wife and I plan on having more kids, thus guaranteeing ourselves an avalanche of chicken nuggets. But because as kids get older, they want and need a certain amount of privacy and autonomy for their own development. As much as I love a good Hilton, they don’t guarantee my family both privacy and chicken nuggets. You know who does? Airbnb. We could go into the families that are permanently relocating and need time to look for their “forever home.” Or the military families who know they may only be somewhere for a few months of training. We could go into the trips that include grandparents, cousins, or any other permutation of the modern American family, but that’s just icing on the cake. Suffice it to say that when it comes to family travel, Airbnb is just more convenient. And for the long-term, it actually makes family travel possible. Yeah… So What? It’s bad enough that the NIMBY crowd ruined electricity (we should all be nuclear by now) and ruined flight (the Concord could get us there way faster), but now they have to make it that much harder for families to be together in the modern economy. And don’t think that’s not part of the plan. The same busybodies who want to ban Airbnb have been pretty public that children are the root of the world’s problems. For instance, Stephanie Feldstein, the “population and sustainability director” at the Center for Biological Diversity wrote in an op-ed for the Scientific American, “[With] slow decline and all that comes with it — we can ultimately scale back our pressure on the environment, adapt to climate change, and protect enough places for imperiled wildlife to find refuge and potentially recover.” She’s not the only one. There’s a cornucopia of literature advocating for population reduction to inhibit climate change, and a significant movement afoot that believes humanity is a plague upon the earth. They’re notorious buzzkills who suck the joy out of whatever room they’re in. And now they’re targeting our travel. The Slope Slips It’s not in the headlines anymore, but cities throughout America continue to debate bans or significant restrictions on short-term rentals. And we must fight back. Give an inch on this one, and I guarantee you the nanny state will take a mile. Airbnb is a property rights issue. It’s the owner’s house, dammit. Airbnb is fun. Even this Idaho Potato–themed space is more interesting than a Best Western. Airbnb is a chance for the American dream of a small business to thrive. It’s quite literally the hotel industry funding opposition to Airbnb. Just remember that, if you’re opposing Airbnb, you’re backing big business against the little guy. If society allows regulations on Airbnb, then it’s not just a slippery slope — it is also making the case that fundamental property rights don’t matter; that innovation and fun are dangerous; and that big business deserves to dominate industries. This is not a slippery slope. Rather, it is the words coming out of the opponents’ mouths. What is even worse is that the affordable housing arguments made by Airbnb’s opponents are completely false. When New York City banned short-term rentals, there was no measurable impact on housing prices. (See reports from Vital City, Harvard Business Review, PhocusWire, and even Vox.) Banning Airbnb didn’t make New York City more affordable, it just made it suck more to travel there with kids. If we allow the anti-science, anti-evidence opponents of short-term rentals to win, we give in to the idea that facts and results don’t matter, only intentions. That’s not how problems actually get solved. If this last section sounds like the rant of toddler, well … I’m currently under the influence of entirely too many chicken nuggets. But I’m thankful that my short-term rental has provided chicken nuggets to me and my demanding, food-allergy toddler who is now demanding a popsicle. Maybe there are advantages to the solitude of a hotel. The post Airbnb Is Good for Families — and the Free Market appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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Conservative Voices
Conservative Voices
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Iran and the ‘Obama Delusion’
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Iran and the ‘Obama Delusion’

In an article in Unherd, the strategic analyst Edward Luttwak calls on the Biden administration to “unleash Israel” by giving the Netanyahu government the green light to attack Iran’s nuclear installations and/or the Khark Island oil terminal. Luttwak, however, has little faith that Biden, or whoever is actually making decisions in this White House, will follow his advice because “those officials who run Biden’s foreign policy cling to their dream of reconciliation with Tehran, believing that all would now be well if only Trump had stuck by the nuclear agreement negotiated by Obama, their former boss.” Luttwak calls it “the persistence of the Obama delusion.”  It should be clear by now to anyone whose judgment is not clouded by Obama worship that Obama’s Middle East policy was an unvarnished failure. It began, you may recall, with the president’s apology to Iran for America’s role in the 1953 coup that overthrew the government of Mohammad Mossadegh and reinstalled the Shah in power, portraying a geopolitical achievement of the Eisenhower administration that every successor presidential administration appreciated until the Jimmy Carter debacle as an historic wrong. Obama pledged to the Mullahs that he was “prepared to move forward” in improving relations with Iran. In that same speech in Cairo, Egypt, Obama sought “a new beginning” with the entire Muslim world.  Next came Obama’s promotion of the so-called “Arab Spring,” acting under the naive “belief in the salvific power of global norms” to transform autocracies into democracies in the Middle East — a belief shared by his predecessor George W. Bush. In Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, the Obama policy miserably but predictably failed to advance democracy or, more importantly, American interests in the region. As James Jay Carafano wrote, Obama’s “experiment with normalizing Islamist extremists” failed everywhere it was tried. “Obama and his team,” wrote Stephen Walt, “mistakenly viewed the Arab Spring as a large-scale, grass-roots uprising clamoring for liberal democracy.” Obama’s policy, Jonathan Tobin reminded us, led “to more repression and the emergence of radical Islamist parties and terror groups” in all the targeted countries, except Tunisia.  Undaunted by those failures, Obama compounded them by negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran that did nothing more than, in Tobin’s words, “strengthen Tehran’s efforts to achieve regional hegemony.” The much-heralded deal not only did not halt Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, it also secretly gave Iran hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and tried to give Iran access to the U.S. financial system to convert nearly $6 billion in Iranian assets. Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies called the Iran nuclear deal “one of the worst unforced strategic errors in the history of U.S. foreign policy.”  In return for Obama’s policy of appeasing Iran, the Mullahs have provided the fiscal and military wherewithal (some from North Korea and China paid for no doubt with Obama’s cash gifts and the Obama–Biden lifting of sanctions) to their proxies in the region (Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other Islamist forces) who have used it to wage war against Israel and U.S. interests in the region. Iran’s proxies have killed and kidnapped Israelis and Americans. The Biden administration is staffed with Obama holdovers who, Luttwak writes, suffer from the same delusion about Iran that motivated Obama.  Israel is reportedly expanding its military incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah and has fired missiles at buildings in Damascus, Syria. Axios reports that the Biden administration has lost trust in Netanyahu’s government. Luttwak knows that the Netanyahu government in Israel will take whatever actions it deems necessary to ensure that Iran cannot inflict a nuclear Holocaust on Israel and its citizens, whatever the wishes of American officials. What he calls the “persistence of the Obama delusion” among Biden administration officials will likely mean that Israel will have to strike Iran’s nuclear weapons infrastructure — as it did in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. That may result in all-out war between Iran and Israel. Such are the wages of appeasement. READ MORE: The Demon of Unrest Is Marred by Comparison of Jan. 6 to Attack on Fort Sumter Is Netanyahu Facing Another Osirak Moment? A Conservative Realist Foreign Policy for the Twenty-First Century The post Iran and the ‘Obama Delusion’ appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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Intel Uncensored
Intel Uncensored
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NATO threatens North Korea
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NATO threatens North Korea

by Martin Armstrong, Armstrong Economics: North Korea has come out and denounced NATO’s condemnation of military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, warning that the entity could face “tragic consequences” if it continues to pursue an anti-North Korea stance. NATO had issued a statement condemning North Korea and Iran for “fueling” Russia’s war of aggression […]
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Intel Uncensored
Intel Uncensored
45 w

THIS IS HUGE NEWS!
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THIS IS HUGE NEWS!

THIS IS HUGE NEWS! Climate Engineering Researcher Dane Wigington says he spoke with members of Congress by phone after Hurricane Helene devastated their districts. He said they know something is not right with these storms. He told them how they are steering and… pic.twitter.com/A3k7d6e2o3 — Packingpatriot (@packingpatriot_) October 8, 2024
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Intel Uncensored
Intel Uncensored
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? BOMBSHELL: 60 Minutes Just Ended Kamala’s Campaign After Harris’s Hail Mary Interviews Backfire
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? BOMBSHELL: 60 Minutes Just Ended Kamala’s Campaign After Harris’s Hail Mary Interviews Backfire

? BOMBSHELL: 60 Minutes Just Ended Kamala's Campaign After Harris's Hail Mary Interviews Backfire pic.twitter.com/2GR5JqlSTg — Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) October 9, 2024
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Intel Uncensored
Intel Uncensored
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WEAPONIZED WEATHER – Hurricane Milton to devastate Florida weeks before Election Day
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WEAPONIZED WEATHER – Hurricane Milton to devastate Florida weeks before Election Day

WEAPONIZED WEATHER – Hurricane Milton to devastate Florida weeks before Election Day https://t.co/zAb3d8OKu9 — HealthRanger (@HealthRanger) October 8, 2024
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