'Petty and fickle'

'Putting In The Work': Republicans View JD Vance As Invaluable Asset As Campaign Enters Home Stretch

'As president, I will not ban fracking'

Bella's husband is allegedly the one that dialed 911

'Never been overly involved in political campaigns'

The star said he could see his skin peeling off his arm

One of our favorite pop culture icons of the '80s is Mr. T.  The man has done a lot in his life, and we celebrate that by bringing you 12 things you may not know about him.  CONTINUE READING... The post 12 Things You May Not Know About Mr. T appeared first on The Retro Network.

Taxpayer-subsidized National Public Radio shouldn’t be a starting place for aggressively biased coverage against either Democrats or Republicans. But you can ask Clarence Thomas how the machine works. On Aug. 27, NPR veterans affairs reporter Quil Lawrence lit into former President Donald Trump for bringing cameras to a section of Arlington National Cemetery with some families of soldiers killed during President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. The entire manufactured controversy is perverse. It’s obvious NPR is exploiting the cemetery for a political goal, and it then spread to the rest of the national media. Trump is showing support for grieving Gold Star families, while Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris would not appear. They were MIA. But Trump was singled out as the one with grotesque political optics, not the no-shows whose negligence cost American lives. They weren’t seriously considering the Biden-Harris disaster on “All Things Considered.” They could call it “All Democrats Defended.” Conservatives quickly found snapshots from private photographers of Biden in the same sacred section of the Arlington cemetery. That thing cannot be “considered.” In a different segment of this evening newscast, Lawrence and NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman reviewed the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing, which led to the death of 13 American service personnel. The segment was headlined: “The chaotic U.S. exit from Afghanistan in 2021 had stems from four administrations.” NPR felt compelled to spread the blame around on everyone. Bowman spun furiously: “It’s important to note that it was the Trump administration that signed this peace deal that was basically a quick exit plan.” Lawrence added, “There is a lot of failure to go around to the four presidents over the 20 years of war.” Lawrence was back the next morning to add another layer of reheated Democrat spin to the mix: “You know, Trump has a controversial history with comments about disabled veterans, though, and about fallen soldiers. Some of his former staff have said Trump called fallen World War II troops losers and suckers for fighting and dying when they had no personal gain at stake. Trump denies these comments, but even this year, he mocked the late John McCain for not being able to raise his arms fully.” One of the most annoying problems with this story is using anonymous cemetery officials to attack Trump’s optics. This leads the public to assume only Trump is being political, that it’s impossible that the people seeking to block Trump and the Gold Star families are partisan Democrats doing damage control. Democratic journalists should be accused of hiding Democratic activism with an undeserved veil of anonymity. Why grant anonymity here? They’re supposedly nonpartisan public officials. Lawrence said they stopped talking: “They’ve told NPR and other media outlets that they’re no longer going to answer any questions about this because they want to protect the identity of the official who confronted the Trump campaign.” Then Lawrence closed with one last insult: “But our source told me that they have never seen this level of disrespectful behavior at Arlington, ever.” This sounds vaguely reminiscent of the anonymous “nonpartisans” at the National Archives that hated Trump so much it eventually led to an armed raid on Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago over some presidential papers. Trump is always the loutish supervillain, and the people heaping negative press on him are painted as patriotic anonymous bureaucrats. This is the corrupt nature of public broadcasting, loaded almost entirely with partisan Democrats, subsidized by Democratic politicians to provide mudslinging campaign ads disguised as “journalism.” It’s not “public” radio. It’s for the socialist half of the public. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post NPR Exploits Arlington Cemetery for Politics appeared first on The Daily Signal.

How do accomplished radicals elect a mediocre far-left presidential candidate? The task might at first seem impossible. Kamala Harris is currently a radical incumbent vice president. For more than three years, she was second in command to an unprecedentedly unliked Democrat president, his failed policies, and his unpopular record. Harris herself had compiled a hard-left trail over her own entire career while loudly boasting indiscreetly to leftist audiences of being proudly “woke” and “radical.” Most challenging for a Harris candidacy makeover was the long, entrenched Democratic Party’s reluctance to remove a debilitated President Joe Biden from the Democratic ticket. Why? Because Harris was deemed such a liability that she had become a Spiro Agnew-like insurance policy for a failing Biden. Until just recently, Democrats had considered an unpopular and enfeebled Biden nonetheless far preferable to an incoherent, lightweight, and widely ridiculed potential replacement Vice President Harris. After all, she had never before entered a presidential primary. She never won a single delegate by voting. She failed miserably as a candidate in 2020. And she co-owns the unpopular record of an even more unpopular president. The complete Harris makeover requires 15 radical rules followed to the letter: 1. Remake Harris as an entirely fresh happy face. She’s about joy and vibe—which trumps position papers and policy statements. Banish all thoughts that she is an incumbent vice president and co-owns the last four years of the Biden administration. 2. Ignore/deny that Harris as vice president could have long ago enacted her new makeover proposal—or could do so right now in the remaining five months of her administration’s tenure. She was the last person out of the room when Biden made those awful decisions. 3. For the next 70 days, reinvent Harris as a moderate. Xerox much of Donald Trump’s current more popular agenda. Have Harris claim it as her own. Reboot her as a border hawk, a China hawk, a defense hawk, a budget hawk, and a law-and-order hawk. 4. The word-salad Harris must not do a single unscripted media interview, live town hall, extemporaneous chat, ambush hot mic, or lecture without a teleprompter. 5. Harris must not offer any policy proposals such as her harebrained price controls that deviate from her 70-day new centrist image and teleprompted scripts. 6. Do not mention Biden at all. Harris is not to be seen with him in photos or at events. Create a vaguely joyful but completely imaginary, “Harris record.” Separate it from the miserable Biden-Harris administration. Leak that she was unhappy with Biden. 7. Call Trump a mobster, criminal, insurrectionist, and dictator nonstop. Never provide any evidence to support such charges. When challenged, double down and let loose with worse invective. 8. Talk about abortion nonstop. But never dare mention the word. Relabel abortion “reproductive rights.” Falsely reinvent Trump as a radical anti-abortionist who wants a federal ban. 9. Follow the 2020 successful Biden “basement” strategy: keep out of the public eye, silent on the issues, reliant on 70 percent of the ballots not being cast on Election Day, and outsourcing the campaign to the fusion media and billionaire class. 10. Harangue about race and gender nonstop. Define the election as a stark binary between a “young” oppressed but dynamic black woman and an old oppressor racist white guy. 11. Reinvent the “journey” and life “story” of Harris—the child of two PhDs—into a hardscrabble, lifelong struggle against poverty, systemic racism, and greedy “billionaires” like Trump. She is always to be from Oakland—never Berkeley. 12. Talk about transparency nonstop. Feign a willingness to have three or four debates. But agree to hold only one—and only on a left-wing network. Promise interviews and town halls endlessly. Enter into discussions about them. But always delay, stonewall, and evade for the next 10 weeks. 13. Meet privately and endlessly with the megarich donor class that helped to remove Biden. Assure Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley grandees that banter about wealth taxes, taxes on unearned income, and higher corporate taxes are mere campaign posturing. Then outraise Trump again 3-1. 14. Privately assure leftist activists and Democrat politicos that any backslidings from supporting lifelong left-wing advocacies are temporary and necessary 70-day pretexts. Instead look at what Harris actually does after Nov. 5, not anything she must say before then. 15. Control and modulate the street. Anti-Trump protests are a legitimate “movement” that are “not going to let up. And they should not.” Any violent anti-Trump demonstrator should be bailed out immediately. All anti-Democrat, anti-Harris demonstrations should be deterred. A large police presence must be proactive with as many arrests as possible, with barriers, and plenty of backup. Protest leaders should be given private concessions and incentives to tone down their people. Copyright by Tribune Content Agency We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post New Rules for Radicals—How to Reinvent Kamala Harris appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Former President Donald Trump announced Thursday a new plan to make IVF widely available and subsidized by the federal government. “Under the Trump administration, your government will pay for, or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment,” Trump said at a Michigan campaign event, referring to the fertility treatment that involves creating an embryo in a lab setting and then implanting it under medically controlled conditions.  “Because we want more babies, to put it very nicely. … But the IVF treatments are expensive. It’s very hard for many people to do it and to get it, but I’ve been in favor of IVF, right from the beginning,” the former president added.  I have never been more proud of a policy! #IVF pic.twitter.com/YfBWfbLK2T— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) August 30, 2024 On its face, this is an appealing idea. Who wouldn’t want to help couples struggling with infertility? And Trump is right: We do need more babies in this era of declining birth rates.   But IVF comes with both moral and practical challenges.   First, IVF does not guarantee a child. Women who are 35 and under have a 51% chance of having a successful single child pregnancy from IVF using their own eggs, according to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology.  For women who are 38 to 40, that chance drops to 25%. For women 41-42, the odds are even lower: There’s only a 12% chance they will have a child.   Furthermore, don’t think IVF is easy for women, who must undergo a grueling treatment of hormones to allow for egg retrieval and then optimal implantation of the fertilized egg or embryo. As the data shows, many women will face that extremely difficult medical treatment—and have no happy ending.  Just take the case of Kaitlyn Abdou.  “Three years, five egg retrievals, 10 embryo transfers, 19 embryos, $165,000 and over 80 pounds of weight gained—and I have nothing to show for it,” Abdou wrote for NBC News’ “Today” in April.  “[A]s I look back on who I used to be three years ago, the confident, happy, hopeful young woman who dreamed of raising a family of her own, I can’t help but think that despite its magnificence, IVF ruined my life,” Abdou added.   “I am a broken shell of the person I used to be. I have nightmares; I have inescapable bouts of depression. I can’t look at an ultrasound image without choking back tears.”  That’s not the story we like to hear about IVF—but it is an experience that many women sadly face. Some evidence also suggests that women who conceive by IVF may have more health pregnancy challenges than women who conceive naturally. For instance, women who conceived via IVF had a higher likelihood of developing gestational diabetes, according to a 2023 study from Finnish researchers. A 2019 study found that women using assisted reproductive technology to conceive had a higher chance of developing preeclampsia. Furthermore, IVF is extraordinarily expensive. “[C]osts for a single cycle of IVF have recently been estimated to range from $15,000 to $20,000 and can exceed $30,000,” stated a March fact sheet from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  “Given the average number of cycles that are needed to become pregnant from IVF is 2.5, this means that the average cost of IVF to conceive successfully can easily exceed $40,000.”  If insurance companies are mandated to cover IVF, those costs will be passed along to their customers via higher premiums. If the government starts subsidizing IVF, taxpayers would foot the bill. In light of the recent statements on abortion and IVF coming out of both presidential campaigns, I want to reiterate that I'm a lifelong pro-lifer, the institutions I lead are pro-life, tens of millions of Americans are pro-life, and that we aren't going anywhere. @Heritage and…— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) August 30, 2024 There are also the moral challenges. While a May Gallup poll found that 82% of Americans think IVF is morally acceptable, 43% of Americans say it’s morally wrong to destroy the extra embryos created during IVF.  The typical IVF treatment involves producing a lot of extra embryos. Emma Waters, a senior research associate at The Heritage Foundation, estimated in a March report that on average, IVF involves the creation of 10 embryos.   “[T]his means that the 413,776 rounds of IVF reported in 2021 resulted in the creation of approximately 4.1 million embryos,” Waters wrote. “When dividing the total number of live-born infants by 4.1 million, this would mean that only 2.3 percent of all embryos created in the United States result in the live birth of a baby.”  The United States doesn’t have to allow such high numbers of embryos to be created. For instance, Germany allows the creation of only three embryos per cycle.   For those who believe that life begins at conception, these unused frozen embryos pose quite the conundrum. If we are opposed to ending the life of an unborn child in the womb, how can we be OK with ending these children’s lives?  Some have advocated donating the embryos to other couples. In 2022, twins created in 1992 and frozen for decades were born. But this solution poses its own moral quandaries. On a practical level, there are also concerns: Do enough people exist who want a child and are OK with embryo adoption to carry these millions of discarded embryos to term?   Nor are these the only moral issues present in IVF. Right now, three quarters of fertility clinics allow testing of embryos for genetic issues, and nearly as many allow let parents test for sex, hair, eye, and even skin color. Do we really want parents discarding embryos with Down Syndrome or other so-called “undesirable” conditions? Do we want parents rejecting boys in favor of girls? Do we want to encourage racist preferences through skin color selection?   Yes, more babies would be wonderful. As a 36-year-old woman who hopes to have children myself, I completely sympathize with couples who are facing infertility and want to try everything they can to have children, particularly in this era where adoption can be so difficult.  But we cannot be blind to the downsides of IVF, nor can we ignore the defenseless embryonic children who never consented to be frozen for decades or discarded, their lives prematurely ended.  Right now, the focus should be on addressing the moral challenges around IVF, not increasing the number of IVF treatments. If policymakers want to increase the number of babies and help couples facing infertility, there are other options. One such solution would be funding medical research on infertility and eliminating regulatory barriers affecting this area. The onerous burdens of student loans, high housing costs, and everyday expenses like gas and groceries make life unaffordable for many young Americans. Those fortunate enough to meet their spouse at a young age too often delay having children right away because of economic factors. Lawmakers could implement family-friendly policies, including a child support tax credit.  Such a debate would be welcome among our leading presidential candidates, putting the focus of this election on children and families. But when we advocate for more babies, let’s make sure we’re advocating for all babies, including the millions of embryos created in the course of IVF treatments. The post The Downsides of IVF appeared first on The Daily Signal.