Water laps against the side of the boat, nudging it gently back and forth. I look down at my 6-year-old son cradled in my arms. A beach towel stretches across his tiny frame, dwarfed by the life jacket clipped around him. Every so often, he lifts his head and flashes a gap-toothed smile, before sinking himself further into my body. I press in closer and feel like I must hold this moment in time—this moment when his body fits inside my entire arm, when he’d rather nestle close than play in the water. Time is fleeting, or so I’ve heard from the woman at the checkout line. I can’t remember which store or which woman because there’ve been too many to count. The adage suffocates the air we all breathe. College students hear the call not to waste their youth; the newly married couple is told, “These are some of your best years”; even the empty nesters feel the pull not to waste their newfound freedom. We grieve these words because they’re true. Kids do grow up fast. Our situations change. The child, spouse, parent, sister, or friend we have today will be different tomorrow. He or she will be one day older, one day stronger, or even worse—one day weaker. Each turn of the sun pushes us out of a past we can never reclaim. No wonder we grip tight to these moments as if their passing marks a thousand deaths. In response, the concept of mindfulness has exploded in our vernacular over the past 20 years. An article in the Guardian reported that “the meditation app market was worth $97.6m in 2021 and is projected to expand to $307.1m by 2030.” These apps, along with podcasts, TED Talks, and Instagram influencers, consistently preach to us to savor the moment and live in the present. But is that message consistent with Scripture? Savor and Remember Of course, these appeals hold good reminders. We should train ourselves to put down our phones and push aside our to-do lists to direct our attention to the people around us. Distractions continually crowd our days and pull our focus from what truly matters. Yet amid these good reminders, we’re burdened with guilt. While we clamor to enjoy moments with our children, spouses, or friends, we wonder if we’ve done enough. How can we measure whether we’ve savored enough? So we bend ourselves backward trying to create ideal moments. We labor toward the perfect birthday party, vacation, or family night. Our moments together become opportunities to analyze how grateful, present, and happy we really are. If the joy of today is all we have to savor, then every evening will feel like the death of all we can’t reclaim. Memories will become the tombstones of all we let slip through our hands. Yet we weren’t made to live with this kind of fear. The noble call to “savor the moment” stands incomplete. God doesn’t call us only to live in the moment. Instead, he invites us to savor the memories of our past right along with our present. Throughout the Scriptures, God continually beckons his people to repeatedly recall the past. The Israelite feasts, the sacraments, and dozens of verses call God’s people to pull the memories of the past into their current lives (e.g., Deut. 4:9; 6:9; 7:18; 8:11; 1 Cor. 11:24). God invites us to savor the memories of our past right along with our present. Parents cradled their children close and told them the stories of Yahweh to ignite in them a new resolve to follow him. A baptism at church revives the memory of our own conversion and establishes our faith as we think of how far the Lord has carried us since that day. Another drink of the cup with the body of Christ springs memories of every time we’ve come desperate for our Savior’s grace, growing our trust deeper. Church fathers like Augustine and Aquinas understood they couldn’t live only in the moment. They consistently chose to carry the past along with them, memorizing dozens of Bible books and tomes of writing. As Mary Carruthers explains, their impetus for keeping these treasures in their memory wasn’t to entomb the past but to give it “life together in a place common to both in memory.” Space and Time If God routinely uses the past in the lives of his children, then we need not despair over the loss of every passing moment. The Lord will allow them to live on—in our memory. Their presence waits in our minds until our brains activate them with a mere sound, smell, taste, or touch. They come flooding back with the scent of your grandmother’s favorite pie or the ’90s pop song on the radio. Hundreds more live on in the pages of scrapbooks on our shelves or exist in strings of 0s and 1s on the hard drives of our phones, waiting to be experienced again. I scroll through those grids of pictures on my computer as images of my children throughout the years fly by me. I see my then 1-year-old son walking for the first time and grin once more with pride. I see his bent legs and his shaky totter, and I feel the burn of the smile in my cheeks. In his kindness, God allows us to relive the same feelings of pride and joy even as we recollect. We understand the negative aspect of this reality as it manifests in trauma, yet the positive often gets pushed to the wayside. In our race against time, we forget recollection isn’t merely a prompt for guilt but a continuation of real joy that revisits us with each memory. God doesn’t only give us the enjoyment of our memories; through the passage of time, he allows us to derive new meaning and deeper joy. Augustine believed that “cogitation makes us expand, expansion stretches us out, and stretching makes us roomier.” This kind of careful thought won’t be accomplished in a mere moment; it requires space and time. We can see this reality echoed through the pages of Scripture. The joy of Mary, Jesus’s mother, only grew as the passage of days allowed her the opportunity to treasure and ponder all she experienced (Luke 2:19). The apostles couldn’t fully glory in their present ministry with Jesus until God allowed their growth and understanding to provide even more joy in their memories of his work (18:34). The Lord slowly develops our joy in the same way throughout our lives. Those times our daughter giggled with her little brother as a toddler affect us more when we see they’ve become the forebearers of the precious friendship we watch flourish years later. The memory of an afternoon spent fishing with a grandfather means much more when it’s coupled with the hundred more days of care and love that followed. We can’t see this fully in the moment. These gifts are only found in the remembering. Marilynne Robinson’s character John Ames in Gilead believed as much. Facing his impending death, he writes to his son about a special memory: “It was an experience I might have missed. Now I only fear I will not have time enough to fully enjoy the thought of it.” What if making the most of a moment can only be done once it’s gone? Perhaps those newborn giggles, the late-night laughing with a friend, or the evening spent in the arms of a spouse requires time to be fully enjoyed. The fullness of our joy needs time to linger and marinate with each passing day until we’ve squeezed out every last drop. Moments and Memories This fuller picture of memory allows us to cast off the guilt that presses in. We don’t have to scramble for picture-perfect moments or overanalyze how we spend each second. We can simply enjoy each day we’re given while remembering God will continue to bless us with its joy long after it’s gone. Our days fade like grass, yet God has enabled beauty and goodness to travel with us far beyond these fleeting moments. What if making the most of a moment can only be done once it’s gone? Maybe the older woman in the grocery store knows how precious this season is precisely because she’s had 10,000 more days to fully enjoy its memory. Like seeds dropped to the earth, our passing moments offer chances for new life to emerge through memory. With each recollection, the shoots stretch out a little farther, as the Lord sweetens the fruit one day at a time. My fingers grip tight around my son as the waves rock us on the glistening water. My mind and body exhale with the exhaustion of a 35-year-old mom of three. He arches his head and plants another small kiss against my cheek. Joy and grief wash over my body. In a few months, his adult front teeth will steal the childish grin from his face. Someday soon, those tiny shoulders that nestle in my arms will grow broader than my own. The days of snuggles and kisses will be exchanged with a host of activities and interests that push him toward his full life that lies ahead. Yet I won’t lose this moment. I’ll relive it when I return home and pack up the life jackets and smell the lake’s scent. Next month, I’ll smile again and remember the feel of his embrace as I scroll through our trip photos on my phone. Perhaps many years from now, when it’s my son’s turn to drive his parents in the boat, I’ll rock against the waves and relive it once more in the light of every sweet moment we’ve experienced since. Yes, our moments will fade, but this is only the beginning of God’s gift.

In Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot called poetry “a raid on the inarticulate.” I’ve always liked the phrase. It implies the chaotic mess of life in a postlapsarian world is mimicked in language’s fragmentary nature. It also implies poets can do something about it, diving into the deep as they find treasure and nourishment. Having found them, they can offer them for our benefit. There’s something clandestine about the whole operation—a raid—reminiscent of the Promethean theft of fire. If Eliot is right, and if the metaphor holds, we have a record of the greatest of such attempts in Charles Taylor’s new book Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment. What gold has surfaced? What nourishment is on offer? And how do we reconcile any of this with the God who is himself the Word, the logic, the order underlying everything? Taylor phrases it like this: “Romantic art as a response to the loss of cosmic order begets the aspiration to reconnect” (89). People feel a loss of connection in many dimensions: between one another, between themselves and nature, between themselves and the past. They feel, at least some of them, that poetry is a vehicle for mending that disconnect. Taylor’s animating question in this new volume is how this reconnection happens. Why does reading another human’s artful language momentarily alleviate the dislocation from reality many modern people feel? Experience Poetry Taylor diagnoses the modern condition: “We need a relation to the word, the universe, to things, forests, fields, mountains, seas, analogous to that we have to human beings we love and works of art; where we feel ourselves addressed, and called upon to answer” (130). Oh, how we experience this dislocation. Prone to wander, Lord I feel it! We’re relational by design and cry out like the very stones when estranged from our natures. His answer is that the experience of poetry—not simply to read it but “to let oneself be carried by it”—is to “experience a strong sense of connection” and that to feel the connection “is to strengthen it, to enter into it more fully” (18). Taylor briefly references music and painting but argues across 600 pages for poetry’s ability to engender such connections. Perhaps poetry creates a sense of connection because it asks so much of us. We aren’t passive receptors of poetry. We don’t watch it. Poetry doesn’t happen to us. Rather, readers enter into communion with another mind and colabor to produce whatever meaning it can carry. That gives us both the dignity of work—sweat of our brow, fruit of our labor—and the sense of being addressed, of being trusted, that Taylor describes. Poetry’s Power We don’t watch it. Poetry doesn’t happen to us. Rather, readers enter into communion with another mind and colabor to produce whatever meaning it can carry. In Taylor’s schema, the way this connection is forged changes from poet to poet. For some poets, the connectedness of all things means poetry reveals a verifiable reality inherent in the universe. Readers of A Secular Age will recognize this as a transition beyond “the immanent frame,” though he doesn’t use that language here. As 19th-century poet Percy Shelley described it, “Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, / Stains the white radiance of Eternity.” That is, eternity is white radiance, but we, creatures bounded (for the moment) in time, perceive it as fragmentary and distorted. Or as Paul wrote, “Now we see through a glass, darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12, KJV). For later poets, however, the task isn’t to reveal cosmic truth but to produce an effect. Taylor writes, In the era where the traditional cosmic orders reigned unchallenged, the important intellectual achievement consisted in our grasping a vision of hierarchical order, which in turn inspired us to embrace certain ultimate values; but, in the Romantic period, the important goal was to gain a sense of connection which was life-enhancing . . . a connection which was “resonant.” (129) Along the way, Taylor puts to bed some misconceptions about poetry. For instance, he claims that “Romanticism was not the source of the dissociation of the three transcendentals” that many take it to have been. We cannot lay the loss of the true, good, and beautiful at the feet of the Romantics. For those tempted to diminish poetry’s power with accusations of navel-gazing, Taylor insists “giving vent to one’s personality is emphatically not the goal” (504). And he admonishes those who simply throw up their hands, saying they’re just not into poetry: “Not responding [to poetry] in this way is missing something important in the range of potentialities for a full life” (54). Taste. See. Discerning the Audience The book demonstrates awe-inspiring range and a fundamental belief in the power of art. Most philosophers are quick to pull everything down to first principles, to get at the “it” at the center of whatever question they’ve posed. For the most part, Taylor does this as well. Like some incarnate large-language model, he categorizes huge swaths of verse across centuries and languages to ask who dares to fly. Yet he never seems to doubt that people are capable of flight on the wings of poetry. Cosmic Connections demonstrates a fundamental belief in the power of art and awe-inspiring range. Cosmic Connections is a broad-ranging, occasionally startling, and often moving book, yet it’s hard to know the target audience. It’s full of one-name references to thinkers with whom readers are presumably meant to be familiar. “So Proust,” is an entire sentence, referencing the French novelist’s enormous output and influence. Perhaps then it’s meant for literary specialists and other ubercultured sorts? But the readings of Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats, and even Hopkins in the book examine only the most well-known poems such as one would find in a freshman literature anthology. Most are familiar, well-trodden paths for anyone in academia. So maybe it isn’t a book for scholars. Taylor seems to be after the sort of readers who (1) believe in poetry’s power, (2) are familiar enough with intellectual history to be on a first-name or even nickname basis with its trends (e.g., “Jena,” the name of a German town, carries huge significance for a small number of people trained in theories of the symbolic), and (3) read fluently in three or four languages (all poetic and philosophical quotations are rendered in the original languages first, rather than placed in footnotes) but (4) are unaware of the secondary literature on the major British Romantics (so, not professors or scholars). That’s a small area of the Venn diagram. Many threads and themes are picked up and unceremoniously dropped. Many outlines are furnished but not followed. For instance, the introduction promises to discuss British Romanticism, but fully half the book is dedicated to French surrealists and German philosophers. It then covers moderns like Eliot, Miłosz, and Rilke, with only a scant handful of pages on Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth, the major British Romantics. What the book lacks in literary analysis, it makes up for in novel descriptions of the real. Fans of Taylor’s previous books will be on solid, familiar footing with observations such as this: “We normally live in a mental/emotional frame which is narrowly centered on us . . . but we can occasionally reach/leap beyond this, and live, really live, in a much bigger space; that is, feel this as our primary locus” (185). That’s not only profoundly true but beautifully argued, lovingly rendered, and as such—as much of this adventurous new tome does—it aspires to the condition of poetry. This may not be Taylor’s best book, but if only for its capacious range, it’s one worth appreciating.

Unity matters. Christ prayed his church would be marked by it. Yet disunity among Christians abounds, and it’s not always civil in tone. With the Bible’s clear admonitions about foolish controversies and quarreling, how can we know when a fight is worth having? Jen Wilkin offers a framework for diagnosing how to pick your battles and how to conduct yourself when a battle is worth the fight.

Time to make sure I'm stocked up on popcorn

Archaeologists excavating the ancient site of Chan Chan near Trujillo in northern Peru have discovered burials of wealthy members of Chimu society. The disarticulated remains of 11 individuals were found buried with fine ornaments — necklaces, earrings, bracelets — indicating they were members of the ruling class of the city. The burials are about 800 years old. The remains were found in an excavation of the Utzh An (the Great Chimu palace) complex. The goal of the excavation was to research and conserve the palace’s eastern perimeter walls, shedding new light on Chimu construction techniques, architecture and materials. Investigations carried out between 2017 and 2022 already uncovered a 19 wooden sculptures on the north wall and a mass grave containing the remains of 25 people. The director of the project for the Restoration of the perimeter walls of the Utzh An walled complex, Sinthya Cueva, explained that the remains are linked to 3 pairs of ear ornaments and 2 necklaces of beads (chaquiras) and Spondylus shells that would belong to individuals of a high administrative rank from the period. The archaeologist pointed out that the area was not prepared to be a cemetery, but there is a possibility that once the site was abandoned it was used for that purpose, although everything will be determined at the end of the investigations and analysis that will be carried out together with the team in the office. Chan Chan was the capital of the Chimu empire (Chimor), a pre-Inca society that occupied the northern coastal area of Peru between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes from the mid-9th century until they were conquered by the Inca in 1470. Chan Chan was a large urban center built of mud brick that was one of the largest adobe cities in the world in and the largest city in pre-Columbian South America with a population of 40,000-60,000.

A new device may someday soon allow astronauts to drink purified water made from their filtered pee during spacewalks.

It's not one you might expect.

It has been two weeks since palpably senile President Joe Biden delivered the single worst performance ever given in a presidential debate, and the fallout continues to tear the Democratic Party asunder. For two weeks, most of the left-wing corporate media, joined by a small but growing number of elected Democratic officials, have desperately been trying to convince Uncle Joe and Jill “Lady Macbeth” Biden to stand down. They have done so to no avail. Although some senior Democrats such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have wobbled, and a number of party backbenchers have publicly called for Biden to bow out of the race, most of the Democratic Party establishment remains behind their octogenarian presumptive nominee. Perhaps that is why Biden himself, in a Monday letter to Capitol Hill Democrats, forcefully declared his intention to stay in. With each new headline about the dam breaking, including Hollywood star George Clooney’s blistering New York Times op-ed this week calling for Biden to drop out, the president’s stubborn inner circle only further digs in its heels. As each additional day passes, it seems clearer that Biden will indeed be the Democrats’ standard-bearer this November. Democrats certainly cannot — and by all indications, affirmatively do not — feel confident or inspired by that seeming inevitability. On Tuesday, the highly regarded nonpartisan political handicapper Cook Political Report shifted six jurisdictions — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district — in a Republican direction (the first three now “lean Republican,” and the latter three now only “lean Democrat”). Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin remain “toss up” territory for Cook, but Trump leads all three states in the polling averages. The Democratic panic has even reached bright-blue New York state, with Democratic Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine shockingly conceding that he “truly believe[s]” New York is now “a battleground state.” But Democrats truly have no better option. Cackler-in-chief Kamala Harris, the only even remotely plausible alternative due to her vice presidential perch, is about as politically popular as venereal disease. And given the massive logistical issues that even switching to her at this late stage would bring, in terms of both federal campaign finance law and state-level election law, why take the risk? Democrats need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. Because it is they themselves, their media enablers and their closest allies who are entirely to blame for their current predicament. Begin with the Democratic National Committee itself. The DNC easily could have recognized the exact same warning signs the rest of the country saw — namely, the president’s obvious physical and mental decline — and encouraged a competitive and robust presidential primary process. But the DNC did no such thing. On the contrary, the DNC highly discouraged — to the point of virtually freezing out — competing primary campaigns. U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) became the sole Democrat to mount a challenge — in which he laudably focused on Biden’s clear deterioration and unsuitability to serve an additional four years — and he received no backing whatsoever from the party, prominent Democratic officials, or major Democratic donors. The corporate media that serves as a modern-day Pravda for the Regime Party (Democrats) also bears a tremendous portion of the collective blame. For years, the press told us not to believe our lying eyes or our deceitful ears — the president is totally fine, and you are a MAGA Nazi kook if you believe otherwise! The media served as Biden’s Praetorian Guard, shielding their precious from prying scrutiny at all costs. They have completely reversed themselves since the presidential debate only out of a sense of desperation and because they now realize the jig is up. But don’t be fooled: These miscreants have no sense of shame, nor do they possess even the slightest morsel of self-awareness. Finally, Biden’s tight-knit inner circle — led above all by “Dr.” Jill Biden and former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain — deserves a tremendous amount of blame not merely for their party’s misfortune but for the current danger posed to the republic as a whole. Why exactly have these cynical monsters around Uncle Joe engaged in such a coverup of this astounding magnitude? What is it that they have sought to gain? The answer seems to be straightforward enough: power — pure, unadulterated power, which fallible human beings have coveted ever since they first instituted governments among their fellow men. The contemptible harridan “Dr.” Jill is perhaps singularly responsible. She clearly does not care for her party or for her country. But is she really not human enough to spare her husband this humiliation and indignity before the whole world? Democrats and their media boosters find themselves in a no-win situation. And the culprit is not the nefarious “orange man” or his “deplorable” minions but their very own hubris and myopia. To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Democrats Only Have Themselves to Blame for Their Joe Biden Mess appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I wrote yesterday about the potential for a palace coup dislodging Joe Biden from the presidency, and in that column I dismissed the likelihood that Kamala Harris would have either the brains or chutzpah to lead such an effort. Even though she’s the one with the golden opportunity to pull it off (or she would be, had she the chops). It’s going to have to be a coup, because it’s clear that Biden isn’t going to leave on his own. And the Democrats are at a point of crisis they haven’t seen in a generation. The media is turning on Biden, which is prompting the public to turn on the media — not because anybody thinks Biden is being treated unfairly; people tend not to like being lied to. And while most of the Democrats’ elected officials are sticking with him, with even a few of those beginning to lash out at the ones who’ve begun to break ranks, the roster of ranks-breakers is definitely growing. Which brings us to the most egregious chump in America today. 1. “Can’t I Count on You People, George?” There was a time, though it’s largely passed, when George Clooney could be counted on to make outstanding movies. His collaborations with the Coen Brothers gave us O Brother, Where Are Thou?; Intolerable Cruelty; and Hail, Caesar! (which is a quite underrated film that actually finds a way to make fun of the Frankfurt School, something quite uncommon in a Hollywood product), and the Ocean’s Eleven franchise reinvented the heist genre and made it fun again. Lately, though, Clooney is beginning to show that he’s lost a step. He seems like he’s more of a politician than an actor. And unlike somebody else who made that transition more successfully, Clooney is no Ronald Reagan. Three weeks ago, Clooney was one of the hosts for a $30 million star-studded Hollywood fundraiser that consisted of Jimmy Kimmel interviewing Joe Biden and Barack Obama on the stage and Obama, out of necessity, playing usher as Biden found himself confused and disoriented and needing assistance to get off it. When the entire country saw the footage of Obama having to assume the role of nursing-home orderly, Team Biden castigated social media and the conservative press for something called “cheap fakes,” swearing that what people could see with their own eyes was nothing at all like the reality, which was that Joe Biden is “sharp” and “on his game.” Where was George Clooney then? Certainly not outside of Biden’s camp. Oh, but this has changed, hasn’t it? Now, Clooney is writing op-eds saying that while he loves him some Joe Biden, it’s time to change horses. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he’s faced. But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate. Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign. The George Stephanopoulos interview only reinforced what we saw the week before. As Democrats, we collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president, who we respect, walk off Air Force One or walk back to a mic to answer an unscripted question. The rest of us can laugh at this, as it so obviously reveals that Obama is actively attempting to push Biden out and he’s using Clooney as a cat’s-paw to do so. But if you’re one of the suckers who ponied up thousands and thousands of dollars to attend Clooney’s fundraiser for Biden, which per Clooney’s current advocacy was money thrown out the window since it added to a war chest only Harris can fully access, wouldn’t you be angry to the point of violence over his about-face? Clooney is now telling you that he knowingly grifted you out of your hard-earned, or maybe hard-inherited, swag to benefit the presidential candidacy of a ham sandwich. And he furthermore says that inserting a new candidate who will then require an equal sum, or more, of your money to get in the game with Trump is eminently doable and no hill for a stepper. There’s a Ben Folds Five song that comes to mind. Perhaps you’ll also conjure it without needing to hit the link. All that notwithstanding, Clooney is shilling for Obama. And Obama is turning on Biden. And maybe we’ll finally get the civil war in that party they’ve (and we as a country have) needed for a long time. Trump posted this last night on Truth pic.twitter.com/EKSV0kQIjC — Amit Shah (Parody) (@Motabhai012) July 11, 2024 I personally can’t wait to see Biden publicly lashing out at the Obamas and leaking dirt on them. Whether anybody on his team has the sand or the savvy to go there is a good question; doing so ensures a loss in November, but the longer this debacle persists, the more obvious it becomes that November is a lost cause for Biden anyway. 2. Oh — and Can You Guys Have a Race War as Part of Your Intraparty Civil War, Too? Thanks! As part of the Biden takedown, this thing has gone viral… Joe Biden is a racist fool and no one can hide it anymore! pic.twitter.com/aGeCGXdYKz — Ada Lluch (@ada_lluch) July 6, 2024 You can file this one under “gaslighting” as well, you know. We don’t need to go through the litany of ridiculous statements coming out of Biden’s mouth, which, on the lips of a Republican politician, would have branded the man an incorrigible racist and bigot. But here’s a piece of video that says more than any of those lines about “putting y’all back in chains” or “if you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black,” or references to “Dunkin’ Donuts” and Indian immigrants or the rest. Maybe that poor girl waiting in that rope line for a greeting from the president, with his sign in her hands, will rethink her loyalties. Maybe lots of other black people will begin to notice thatthis is a pretty good metaphor for Democrat politics as a whole. Or maybe this is another example of the dam breaking and the gaslight finally being turned off. Of course Biden is a racist. He’s always been one. There’s a reason he palled around with Robert Byrd and James Eastland when he was a young senator. And there’s a reason he treated Clarence Thomas the way he did when Thomas had to come before Biden’s Judiciary Committee to get confirmed to the Supreme Court. He’s been a racist a lot longer than he’s been, as Dave Portnoy called him, a head of lettuce. And they’ve gaslit the public about that, too. 3. But Wait, Ummm … They Don’t Have Anybody Else You probably saw this on Thursday. Boy, has it made the rounds… You can discount these results to an extent, as there are other polls out there showing that a “generic” Democrat beats Donald Trump 53–47. Presumably with a large enough media blitz and enough money and legwork, somebody younger and less demented would run better than Biden would. But what that poll shows is there isn’t a “generic Democrat” out there. Their options outside of Biden and Harris are a collection of aging hacks who never had even the questionable chops Biden offers and a younger group of empty suits who, other than perhaps Josh Shapiro, have already marked themselves as clownish. COVID did not treat the Democrats’ Generation X politicians well. Biden’s camp is going to show these numbers around and make the real point that there isn’t a magic bullet out there, so shut up and get in line. That isn’t working on their donors, though. And the longer this goes, the more the specter of “Big Mike” looms: 4. How Disturbing Is This? We don’t have anywhere near enough space to give this the treatment it deserves, but I wanted to mention it this week before it gets too stale: Mother throws newborn daughter out of a window to her death because 'she thought a child would ruin her career as an executive at Porsche' https://t.co/uaQvY3Jcwm pic.twitter.com/8iiBBQ4Y1K — Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) July 5, 2024 When I saw this, it reminded me of two summers ago, right after the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs decision and there was a collective panic among the Left about the availability of abortions. And in one of the more horrific displays of societal dysfunction, there was a wave of announcements that Corporate America would set aside funds for their female employees to travel to have abortions if need be. Are we saying that Porsche’s corporate culture is so unfriendly to motherhood that this was a rational response? No, not quite. There isn’t enough evidence of that, yet. But is it fair to say that this cultural imperative that feminists have forced women to adhere to is making a lot of deeply miserable, mentally unstable women who are so divorced from themselves attempting to survive the rat race that tragedy looms in too many lives? That’s fair, isn’t it? Something like this would have been utterly shocking a generation ago. Now it’s almost a punchline to a joke. This needs an examination. We’re losing the ability to sustain ourselves as a society because our priorities as a culture are horribly wrong. And the victims, and victimizers, are everywhere. 5. The Critical Drinker Reviews Horizon, and… The title of this one says it all. “Very long.” I’m with the Drinker when he says he isn’t scared away by a film’s runtime, so a three-hour Kevin Costner Western epic wouldn’t scare me off. And to be honest, I’ll certainly watch Horizon … but I’m going to do it at home when it hits the streaming services. And for the reasons the Drinker notes, which I’ve seen mentioned multiple times. I like Costner, but I’m in the minority, apparently, because Dances With Wolves to me was boring, self-indulgent, and woke before its time. And what scared me about Horizon from the time I heard it was coming out was that this was going to be Dances With Wolves on steroids. I’m not sure, based on the Drinker’s review, that those fears are valid. I’m not sure they’re not, either. Costner is apparently sinking a large chunk of his fortune into making this a four-part epic. It seems like it might be a labor of unrequited love, though: box office receipts on the film haven’t been great. I wonder if this is at least partially due to Yellowstone fans turning up their noses at Horizon out of pique that Costner abandoned the series. I also wonder that if you’re making four three-hour movies, wouldn’t you be better off making a limited series with 12 one-hour episodes and getting Netflix or Max or Amazon Prime to carry it? There’s a lot about this that suggests Horizon is a bit of an anachronism; it’s attempting to fit itself into a hole in the market that doesn’t exist anymore. I think there’s still room for the Western genre. I think our culture needs Westerns to remain relevant. Westerns are actually necessary elements to keeping us the America the world needs us to be. But we need our Westerns to be digestible. I’m not sure Horizon is. But I’ll give it a shot. I’m not going to the theater to do that, but I’ll watch when it comes to my TV. The post Five Quick Things: George Clooney, Sad Clown appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s return to power in December 2023 was hailed by liberal onlookers as a step forward for the nation. After what New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg called an “eight-year slide toward authoritarianism” under the Law and Justice Party (PiS), Tusk’s more liberal Civic Platform (PO) promised to bring democracy to Poland. But the liberals — both in Poland and looking on from afar — aren’t actually concerned with democracy. Instead, they seek Polish politicians who will implement a progressive moral agenda in a nation that, following its liberation from the Soviet Union, was greatly shaped by the Catholic Church. The concern for democracy is superficial; what really matters is that Poland liberalizes its abortion laws and falls into lockstep with the rest of Europe on LGBTQ issues. (RELATED: Polish Prime Minister Pushes Unconstitutional Abortion Bill)  Now, seven months into Tusk’s term, steps have been taken to liberalize Poland’s abortion laws, and a draft act on civil unions has been introduced to parliament. The prime minister tweeted his support for both issues earlier this week:   We will vote for the decriminalization of abortion. We will vote for civil partnerships as a government project, although I have not managed to convince everyone. The discussion is over, it’s time for decisions. Under the proposed legislation, two unmarried adults could register for a civil union, regardless of gender. The civil union would provide the registered individuals with “the right to a joint surname, similar rights in tax offices to married couples, a right to obtain through partner’s medical information and visit the partner in the hospital, a right to succeed … and care of the partner’s children in case of death.” It’s not full gay marriage, but it’s not far off.  Though Polish LGBTQ activists are satisfied with the legislation’s introduction, they haven’t withheld their criticism. Maja Heban, an activist involved with pro-LGBTQ NGO Miłość Nie Wyklucza (“Love Does Not Exclude”), told the press that she was “disappointed that some ‘key issues are missing,’” such as broader adoption rights for gay couples.  Donald Tusk openly admits that he has not “manage[d] to convince everyone” of this next step for same-sex couples. Polish views on LGBTQ issues have become significantly more liberal in recent years, but only 36 percent of Poles supported the legalization of same-sex partnerships in 2021. In 2019 and 2015, support hovered at 30 percent and 26 percent, respectively.   But, at the end of the day, the decision to introduce civil unions isn’t actually up to the Polish people. The bill enjoys some support among more liberal members of the ruling coalition, but the EU Court for Human Rights is the driving force behind the legislation — not elected members of parliament or the Polish citizens they represent.  As of now, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, and Slovakia are the only EU countries that do not allow same-sex couples to register their partnership. In December, the EU Court for Human Rights ruled that Poland’s refusal to permit civil unions constituted a human rights abuse and violated the European Convention of Human Rights. “It is the state’s duty to institutionalize same-sex unions” under the human rights convention, Polish Ombudsman Marcin Wiącek told the press.  The new legislation has been drafted pursuant to that ruling, as the bill’s text clearly states: “The aim of the project is to introduce the institution of a registered partnership into the Polish legal system and thus implement the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of 12 December 2023.”  The bill’s path to passage could be difficult, as Tusk’s governing coalition is not unified on the issue. The coalition currently has 247 members of parliament, out of 460 in the Sejm, Poland’s lower parliamentary house. Given their narrow majority, the bill’s passage depends on near-unanimous support from Tusk’s political allies.  If parliament does pass the bill, it will be taken up by President Andrzej Duda, who would likely veto the bill. Duda, a conservative, expressed that he would “need to see the law in detail” before vetoing, passing, or referring the bill for constitutional assessment. But the president’s position was staked out clearly earlier this year when his chief of staff stated that “the president does not support civil partnerships.”   President Duda might be able to halt the legislation for now, but his term in office ends next year, at which point Tusk’s Civic Platform party could gain control of the presidency. As Polish voters consider the future of their nation, they will need to grapple with the new ideological superpower that shapes Polish political life. The EU Court of Human Rights is a kinder master than the Soviet Union, to be sure, but it too seeks to undermine Poland’s self-government and impose moral liberalism while disparaging its opponents as threats to democracy. Mary Frances Myler is a contributing editor at The American Spectator. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.  READ MORE by Mary Frances Myler:  Six States Put Abortion on the Ballot, With More to Follow Pornhub Blocks Access in Five States with New Age-Verification Laws More Catholics Believe in the Eucharist than Previously Thought The post Poland Caves to Foreign Pressure, Introduces Bill to Allow Same-Sex Unions  appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.