Managed by Brian Epstein, produced by George Martin, and a cohort of Lennon and McCartney. The post The underrated artist Steve Van Zandt said was “right there with the rest of them” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

"It's just very beautiful." The post Lucy Dacus reveals a selection of her favourite songs: “It’s just very beautiful” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Readers have been pestering me for months as to who is going to win the election. You will remember that in 2016 I made a fool of myself when I cast my vote early for Donald Trump, the greenhorn Republican, who had never run for anything before. The day after the election, it turned out that the entire media had been wrong. Donald won. I had been right. I was of course ignored by everyone save the noble Ben Smith of BuzzFeed. Then in 2020 I upset the placid waters of the bovine media by saying Donald would win again. He lost, but not by much. And the election was controversial. In fact, it was the most controversial race of my lifetime. I held my tongue, and now the 2024 race is heading toward the finish line. Who will win? Who is the editor-in-chief pulling for? Will it be the newborn McDonald’s hamburger flipper, in his spotlessly clean McDonald’s apron, or will it be the of-a-sudden advocate for fracking, for cracking down on illegal border crossers, or some other prattle about sex changes, all subsidized by the United States Treasury? And forget not when Vice President Harris backed bugging out of Afghanistan and leaving brave American soldiers bleeding on the tarmac! I think the winner will be the candidate who picked the McDonald’s hamburger emporium as his symbol for serving the people. Donald Trump looked at a Quarter Pounder of beef and saw it as a ticket to political history. Others only saw a meal. Donald Trump will win in 2024, and he deserves to win. What is more, his appearance at McDonald’s was as brilliant as Calvin Coolidge’s appearance in the 1920s wearing an Indian headdress. In 2013, when I met Donald for the first time, I concluded that he could be a successful politician. More than that, I concluded that if he ran for president, he would win. He was not like any politician I have ever known (including five presidents). He was smart, aggressive, and he knew enough about the issues to get by. That is true of a lot of pols, but there was something more to Donald. He was a showman and a strategist. I have now, after 11 years of watching him, concluded he has still more gifts. He has the energy of a great athlete and a voice that can only be for a politician a gift from God. Donald, in 2024, you are going to win again. The post The Brilliant McDonald Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

My new book on Pornhub’s reckoning, Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking, teaches that to stop online sex trafficking, we must eliminate profitability. Sex trafficking, to put it simply, is the commercialization of sexual abuse. It is rape for profit. So how do we stop it? We eliminate profitability. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine, which includes this article and others like it.   In Takedown, I uncover the complicity of Pornhub’s owners and executives in the global distribution and monetization of rape and sex trafficking. Pornhub’s pursuit of profit through these means shatters countless victims’ lives, including those of children. The story begins in the early hours before dawn on February 1, 2020, as I was rocking my crying baby. I was thinking about the haunting story of a 15-year-old girl from Broward County, Florida, who had been missing for a year before being found after a Pornhub user told her mother that he had recognized her daughter on the site. In fact, fifty-eight online videos showed the girl being raped for profit. One question was unrelenting: How had these filmed sex crimes ended up on Pornhub, the world’s largest and most popular porn site, with 47 billion visits per year? This article is taken from The American Spectator’s fall 2024 print magazine. Subscribe to receive the entire magazine. After my baby went back to sleep, I pulled out my computer to test what it took to upload a video to Pornhub. I discovered that it only took an email address to post a video in minutes — anonymously. At that time, the site had over fifty million videos and images, all of which had been uploaded without verifying the age or consent of those in the content. That alarming moment was the catalyst for what became the #Traffickinghub movement, which aims to shut down Pornhub and hold its executives accountable. The virality of the movement was stunning. As the petition I started to shut down Pornhub gained millions of signatures, numerous victims of Pornhub began to reach out to me to tell their stories. Many of them also wanted to pursue justice in court. At the same time, company insiders and whistleblowers contacted me to expose Pornhub. I learned how massive amounts of illegal content were being uploaded to the site, as well as why. Here is what one seasoned company insider told me: The headlines you are sharing and the campaign you started, it struck a chord in my conscience. I don’t think there is malicious intent on the lower levels of the company, but at the executive level they are clearly complicit and it’s for the sake of revenue. It’s just money. One hundred percent. Management just sees numbers — let’s be honest. It’s like any other company but they are trading with people’s lives…. Were we planning any efforts to stop the illegal content? Absolutely not. Because of views. Every time you put an extra layer of control on what goes up, you lose content. And content is more web pages, and more web pages are more Google search results and more Google results are more paid views. Pornhub owners and executives purposefully designed the site to be unchecked — thereby enabling abuse — because they know that their financial success depends on having millions of searchable images and videos that can drive billions of visits to the site. The majority of Pornhub’s profit derives from selling 4.6 billion advertising impressions to advertisers daily.  It quickly became evident that to confront and disrupt this system, we had to attack the very means through which Pornhub’s content was being monetized. With the assistance of many people and organizations, we urged the major credit card companies to cut ties with the site. After almost three years of battling, Visa, Mastercard, and Discover finally cut off transactions on Pornhub.  We’ve also helped survivors hit Pornhub where it hurts — its bank account. Today, nearly three hundred victims are suing Pornhub and its parent company in twenty-five lawsuits across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. This includes multiple class-action lawsuits on behalf of tens of thousands of child victims. The potential damages total in the billions. Since this battle to shut down Pornhub began, the company has been forced to take down 91 percent of its content due to the site being infested with unverified content and sexual crime. Pornhub has lost all its major advertisers, and both its CEO and COO have resigned. The company was sold in 2023 to a hastily concocted private equity firm called Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), which is now attempting to salvage the brand and whitewash its toxic reputation as a peddler of crime. Legitimate user-generated websites invest heavily in technology, employees, and partnerships to address and prevent illegal content. Pornhub, on the other hand, has barely started to make changes after years of being globally exposed, sued, and losing its ability to process credit card payments. It is only just now, as of September 2024, beginning to verify the age and consent of the individuals in new videos and images uploaded to the site. However, to this day, the previously uploaded unverified content remains online. Any legitimate company would delete one hundred percent of unverified content from its website immediately. The fight is not over yet, but we are closer than ever to seeing justice served. Only by ending impunity can we ensure that victims find closure and future abusers are deterred from following in Pornhub’s footsteps.  When it comes to corporate trafficking, the story of Pornhub’s reckoning teaches us that eliminating profitability is the path to justice and change. Laila Mickelwait is the co-founder and CEO of the Justice Defense Fund, the Founder of the Traffickinghub movement supported by millions around the world, and the national bestselling author of Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine. The post The Battle Tactic That Will Shut Down Pornhub appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Wall Street and corporate lawyers — “The Rich” — are a built-in capitalist Republican constituency. Right? A century earlier, William Jennings Bryan, in his famous “Cross of Gold” speech, stirred his Democrat base of farmers and others on the economy’s lower rungs, declaring that his “Free Silver” Democrats were at war with the gold-standard capitalists of Wall Street and their corporate lawyers. Yet, as the decades have unfolded, Wall Street and the highest-priced legal community paradoxically have moved — almost lock, stock, and barrel —to the left. Meanwhile, farmers and union workers stopped voting left by the time the condescending Obamas and Hillarys mocked them as “deplorables” who “cling to their guns and religion.” Meanwhile, Trump, a child of New York’s outer boroughs, spoke their language and shared their working-class values despite privileges he inherited. Big business always voted GOP. Weren’t their Wall Street financiers and corporate law attorneys supposed to vote Republican, too? How explain why Wall Street investors and big-firm corporate and other lawyers lean so sharply Democrat? After all, these are the demographic who dream, breathe, and live for money, only for money. Progressives they? Their firms promote their “humanitarian concerns,” donating to public service law groups that provide free legal aid for the needy. They preach and virtue-signal about helping the poor and indigent, changing the world, fighting climate change, promoting diversity — the whole agenda — and of course donating Democrat. It seems so strange. In my 10 years of big-firm corporate litigating, I got to know dozens personally behind closed doors, and all they cared about was making more money. An extra-woke San Francisco–based firm assigned me to defend their most precious of clients, a cigarette maker being sued for lying to the public about the deadly nicotine that their cancer-causing products fed to the gullible and unwise alike. Another firm had me on a team defending a leading national energy company fighting off the distraught widows of their dead coal miners who had died prematurely from pneumoconiosis (black lung disease). I asked a senior attorney at the firm how he reconciled being a liberal Democrat donor, a progressive always talking about caring for the forgotten and the “little guy,” with his leading a legal team to crush and destroy those widows, already mired in poverty and now without breadwinners. He responded: “F**k ’em.” Certainly, everyone is entitled to the best defense, and it’s perfectly fine, I guess, to live primarily for more and more money until one dies. I myself am quite avid an advocate of capitalist principles, but I come from a different culture, belief, and worldview. I am more obsessed with doing good than in doing well. As long as other people keep their hands off me and leave me alone, I am fine with people pursuing their lawful passions. Still, I remained confounded that people so obsessed with endless money-making at the expense of the “little guy” could pontificate on the Democrat side of the aisle. In time, I discerned why such hardline money-worshippers affiliate with a political party that pledges to extricate and spread their wealth, a party whose DEI agenda would keep their own kids out of top colleges and jobs. Both Wall Street and Law share a unique common denominator: their fields are overregulated and forever subject to more regulation. The Democrats overregulate. By contrast, true conservatives speak of cutting regulations. For attorneys and the financial sector, government regulation is their bread and butter — just as long as it is not directed at them. Therefore, by donating heavily to Democrats, their quid pro quo is that, if Democrats get elected, new regulations indeed will be enacted to “force” The Rich to pay “their fair share” to “help the poor and the little guy.” However, in exchange for that monetary support, those regulations will mostly bypass the financial firms and the lawyers themselves because they have donated generously. Sometimes, to fool the general public — never a difficult challenge — new regulations will seem to be aimed at Wall Street and Big Law, too — but they will include carefully masked loopholes, negotiated with Wall Street and Law Firm lobbyists, that make those new rules meaningless. (It is like the way Biden and Harris allow 11 million illegals into the country and then propose border legislation three months before the election.) Each time new Democrats come to power, there are massive new regulations. But, for the most part, they carefully sidestep regulating the actual practice of law or finance. For show and headlines, they pass an act — but carefully include the widest loopholes. Instead, their reams of new regulations ream everyone else: primarily big business, the middle class, and small businesses. In turn, those complex and extraordinary regulations drive both big business and small businesses to race to law firms and Wall Street financial firms to help them bypass the new laws. That’s where the real money is: “After hundreds of (billable) legal/financial research hours, we believe we have found a way around the new regulation.” Or: “We have a worldwide presence with offices in Moscow, Beijing, London, Paris, even Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. We can help move your capital and factories out of America and can help you with hiring a new local workforce in the new country. We proudly offer an entire portfolio to bypass the new regulations and taxes.” In other words, the regulations that Democrats newly impose — as long as they do not directly regulate the financial and legal sectors — bring enormous amounts of business, billions of dollars, to the two fields of endeavor whose entire raison d’etre is to help people get around new regulations. Consider: When Democrats get elected, they raise taxes and ban items (e.g., gas stoves, gasoline-powered cars, plastic straws). The brutalized business sector thereupon needs lawyers and investment experts for advisory services to generate creative legal schemes to bypass the disruption. Maybe move manufacturing to China, Vietnam, Mexico, or Thailand. Maybe a loophole in the law’s drafting allows a waiver, exemption, or bypass. What if the gas stove includes an electric plug, like a hybrid car? (Dang. I should have patented that. And that is why patent lawyers like Democrats, too. ) Or consider Hollywood. Read the screen credits carefully at the end of the movie or TV show. Although the 20 Americans who still watch the Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys get lectured that it is their duty to embrace higher taxes to assure equal outcomes for everyone, to pay “their fair share,” note carefully that “Hollywood” assiduously crafts schemes to avoid their own paying the new taxes they advocate for everyone else. Proof? Does “Hollywood” produce all their films and shows in Hollywood? Soaring tax increases — promoted by celebrities — are oppressive in Southern California. Therefore, productions move across the border to Canada. Iowa has offered “Hollywood” tax incentives to film there. Many celebrities in Malibu and Beverly Hills have tax-haven homes in Arizona or Nevada. After preaching tax hikes to be imposed on all others, they run away from The (Hollywood) Hills. Signaling virtue, they give millions at Malibu and Beverly Hills soirees to elect Democrats in Montana, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. And then they are off to Romania to film. Chicago was made in Toronto. Hairspray, set in Baltimore — made in Canada. Capote, set in Kansas — made in Canada. Rambo: First Blood — made in Canada. Tax dodge? Mission Accomplished, Sir! They preach taxes for others, saying, “I am ready to pay my fair extra share. So you should, too. We all should pay more to help The Forgotten.” So why do they not volunteer to pay more? Is it illegal for people bedecked in the most glittering jewelry, and wearing special designer dresses that cost more than cars, to write a supplemental check to Uncle Sam? But they do not. Moreover, they can afford any cost of food, gasoline, or mortgage rate their Democrat and progressive policies foist upon others. Their homes are not near concentrations of illegal immigrants or inner-city no-cash-bail violent criminals. They demand mandatory gun buybacks and defunding the police while they hire private armed security and erect huge walls to keep the “riff-raff” away from their homes. Their policies supporting teaching transgender and sex-change ideology, woke math and woke history, to little children in our public schools do not impact them because those who have children send them to inaccessible private schools. Their children bypass college admissions DEI because they donate the required graft or fraudulently conspire to get them on rowing teams. They never are adversely affected themselves by the policies they espouse. The same with Silicon Valley. Cozy up to Democrats, give them billions, and they will not unduly regulate you. They will not touch your precious Section 230 that gives you almost blanket immunity to promote and disseminate to millions of unsophisticated “followers” of ignorant “influencers” vile defamation of Republicans you oppose. They will look aside as you publish Fake News for Democrats’ needs while banning actual news that Democrats decide the public must not see. News of the Hunter laptop could be banned by social media, and even one of two major-party presidential candidates could be banned, on the eve of a national election. It is a corruption. Give the Democrats billions, and they will enact the carve-outs for you. This is why certain among “The Rich” who madly pursue every penny they can obtain — as is their right — falsely signal “virtue” by promoting the anti-capitalists who will gravely damage everyone else but will give them a pass. 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. 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 are up: (i) “There is No Palesine” (here) and (ii) “Jewish Campus Students Need to Stop Whining” (here) READ MORE: Montana: Help Save Americans by Ousting Tester Who Is Kamala Harris? Democrats Have Abandoned Black Men, Hispanics, Asians, Farmers, and Union Workers The post Why So Many of ‘The Rich’ (Corporate Lawyers, Wall Street, Hollywood, Etc.) Support Democrats appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

With the election fast approaching, I know you were all looking forward to this test, which will ensure that you will vote wrong, very wrong, or terribly wrong. Or even all three at the same time.  Instructions: Add 5 points for each choice “A,” 10 points for each choice “B,” 15 points for each choice “C,” and subtract 50 points for each choice “D.” What is your opinion on a new tax for the wealthiest? Good, screw them. Good, let them share with the poor. Good, I like AOC’s “Tax the rich” costume. Whisky and Coke. Do you consider inflation to have been a problem during Biden’s term? What inflation? What is inflation? Who is Biden? No. Would you like to promote free abortion throughout the country? Could it be applied to certain politicians retroactively?  Hesitating between voting for Kamala Harris or Herod. Of course, we need more old people, more cats, and fewer children. Whisky and Coke. Should we have more diversity education in the classroom? Three hours a day at least. Classrooms are a fascist invention. And education should be free until at least the age of 60. If this helps to reduce time for mathematics, go ahead. Should the United States naturalize illegal immigrants? Of course, there are no illegal human beings (except for the IRS). Of course! Even the ones who committed murder. We should faithfully copy Ursula von der Leyen and Angela Merckel’s European model. Whisky and Coke. Is man’s impact on climate change myth or reality? Denialist! You denialist b*****d! Cancel the pollster! To the gallows with the author of this test! What is your opinion of the Chinese communist regime? Respect! You don’t say “communists,” you say “people who identify with a political tendency different from Western stereotypes of democracy.” I wouldn’t piss off the Chinese. Would that there were a democracy like China in these fascist United States! That Xi Jinping doesn’t like the sun much. Should children be guaranteed the right to have their sexual organs amputated at any age? Of course, it’s not something new: my father already threatened me with that every time I failed more than two subjects. Sexual organs do not exist, they are social constructs. Age does not exist; it is a social construct. Children do not exist, they are a social construct. What is your opinion on the current gun control policy? Terrible, offenders without unemployment benefits do not have sufficient access to them. Bad, we Democrats need more armed and irritated people at Trump rallies. Horrible. I am in favor of peace. And marijuana.  What did you say about marijuana? How would you rate the foreign policy of the Biden–Harris era? Biden’s was a disaster. Harris’ was wonderful. Long Live Free Palestine! We should be strengthening ties with Bolivarian liberators such as Nicolás Maduro. Maduro? Will there be Venezuelan rum at the summit? Are you for or in favor of woke policies? In favor. In favor. In favor. Postpone for five minutes. What is your opinion of the electric car? Very good. We shouldn’t make cars, but if we have no choice, at least make them electric. I love them because they don’t make noise, so you can sneakily run over fascists. If Elon Musk makes it, very bad. If it is promoted by George Soros, very good. Does it have back seats, a cigarette lighter, and a hole to hold a bottle? What should U.S. policy toward Israel look like?  The United States should recognize Hamas as a pacifist organization. Jews should be expelled. Israelis should let themselves be killed by their Islamist brothers. Have you seen how many hot chicks there are in the Israeli army? Are you in favor of defunding the police? Of course. Public spending has to be cut somewhere. Yes, and in return build saunas to reeducate prisoners. Most of them only kill because they are stressed. They are the last fascist stronghold in the country. Whisky and Coke. Could you answer YES to the question of whether Kamala Harris worked at McDonalds? Yes. Yes. Yes. The bathroom? Kamala Harris worked at McDonalds? Yes, once. Yes, she served me a delicious vegan and diverse pronoun burger. Yes, every time a McDonald’s goes dark, I hear her hysterical laughter. Yes, but I was served by the blonde at the next register over. Finally, tell us which party you will vote for, and why you have chosen the Democratic Party. Yes. I will vote for the Harris–Swift tandem. The one with the girl at McDonalds. Whisky and Coke. CONCLUSIONS: Between 0 and 100 points: Vote Democrat and urgently sign up for Alcoholics Anonymous. Between 100 and 200 points: Vote Democrat, then bust a couple of storefronts to celebrate. Between 200 and 255 points: You’re already going to vote Democrat, Kamala.  Over 255: go back to school and learn to add (but vote Democrat!) The post The Ultimate Test to Decide Whether to Vote Wrong, Very Wrong, or Terribly Wrong appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

They got to Jerry Seinfeld. He received enough blowback from the Left that he caved. He no longer blames humorless left-wing pundits and activists for the war on comedy. Indeed, he now says he “regrets” claiming that comedy on television has basically disappeared, “[T]he result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people.”  Will Chris Rock and Jennifer Aniston be next? Rock complained in 2019 that he is now stifled, saying, “If it was five years ago, I could say something offensive and funny right now.” Last year, Aniston claimed, “[I]t’s a little tricky because you have to be very careful, which makes it really hard for comedians.” The humorless ones, who are heavily concentrated in education, nonprofit advocacy groups, and the media, have certainly had an effect. In 2008, comedy as a share of the U.S. box office was 21 percent. Now it is in the single digits.  Seinfeld got it right the first time.  Political correctness, or woke politics, is a form of mind control. What animates the Left is power, and nothing is more important than getting inside the heads of the masses. Once the people surrender their conscience, they can be mobilized to do whatever the ruling class wants.  Make no mistake, controlling what we are allowed to laugh at is part and parcel of their agenda. The two most protected demographics in the nation are LGBTQ+ and Black people. But there is a big difference between the two. Black people are much less incensed about jokes that come at their expense than are gays and transgender persons. The latter, represented most conspicuously by GLAAD, are the biggest promoters of censorship in the nation. And, they are very good about punishing the “offenders,” squeezing apologies from them. Tracy Morgan has apologized to the gay and lesbian community for a joke he told in 2011. Eddie Murphy, in 2019, apologized to the same people for a joke he told in 1996. Kevin Hart apologized in 2019 for a joke that he said, “[H]urt members of the LGBTQ community.” Will Ferrell, in September this year, said he regretted dressing as a woman some years earlier while telling a joke. “That’s something I wouldn’t choose to do now,” he explained.  Harper Steele, a comedy writer known for Saturday Night Live, said he regrets penning a drag queen joke that he wrote years ago. He now says, “It’s absolutely not funny.” Amy Schumer apologized in 2015 for making a joke about Hispanics, saying, “I hope I haven’t hurt anyone.” Jay Leno often made fun of Asians, but now he says he regrets it.  Trevor Noah had lots of fun at the expense of Indians and Pakistanis, but now he is apologizing for the “hurt” he caused. Jimmy Fallon has apologized for wearing blackface in a 2000 Saturday Night Live skit. Jimmy Kimmel apologized in 2020 for wearing blackface in the 1990s. Tina Fey has apologized for wearing blackface in her sitcom 30 Rock.  Sarah Silverman now says she is “horrified” about wearing blackface in one of her 2007 episodes of The Sarah Silverman Show. Nikki Glaser has apologized for making fun of “skinny” women. Alfred “Weird Al” Yankovic, in 2018, apologized for featuring the word  “midget” in one of his songs from the 1980s. Patton Oswalt now regrets joking about “retards.” No one ever apologizes for telling patently obscene jokes about Jesus, Our Blessed Mother, nuns, priests, or the sacraments. This includes many of those who are now apologizing profusely about insulting others. Sarah Silverman and Trevor Noah, for instance, are two of the biggest anti-Catholic comedians in the nation, but they will never apologize for slandering priests.  If proof is needed to show how political all of this is, consider that Dave Chappelle — who won’t apologize for LGBTQ+ jokes — apologized in 2016 for simply saying, “I’m wishing Donald Trump luck.” Similarly, John Mulaney now says he “deserved backlash” for joking about Trump and Biden without making it clear that he very much favored Biden. Best of all is Stephen Colbert. In 2017, he made an obscene joke that offended Trump supporters and gays at the same time. He only apologized to gays. Jay Leno called me years ago after I blasted him for telling anti-Catholic jokes. He said he tells 11,000 jokes a year and wanted my advice on what kind of jokes about Catholics are okay and which ones are not — reporters and television talk-show hosts have asked me the same thing. I told him that jokes about Catholic school kids are fine. “Sister Act” type fare is also okay. But when you get to the heart of our religion — as Gretchen Whitmer did by mocking the Eucharist — that crosses the line.  The comedians of an earlier era — Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Rodney Dangerfield, Dean Martin, Don Rickles — made their audiences laugh without getting vulgar. Mel Brooks managed to lampoon everyone without getting nasty. So it can be done. All it takes is creativity, prudence, and a sense of decency. When that happens, there is no need to protect or demonize anyone.  William “Bill” Donohue is the president and CEO of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization and the publisher of Catalyst. He has authored several books on civil liberties, social issues, and Catholicism. RELATED: A July 4th Remembrance: When Comedy Was Funny Jay Leno: Mix Politics With Comedy, and You Get Politics I Miss Comedy in America. Just Look at Saturday Night Live. The post The Politics of Comedy appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Today’s thinking is that American democracy is deeply polarized — so sharply divided into two groups, Red and Blue, that it cannot govern itself. People now rank polarization as one of the top three problems facing the country, behind only inflation and gun control. And this perceived polarization is making Americans lose trust in one another.  But research and facts on the ground suggest something different. In fact, the country’s political system is remarkably responsive. Over the last several decades, partisanship has gone down and bipartisanship is up. Political participation has risen. Political parties have adapted to demographic shifts and candidates have altered their long-standing views. And yes, the U.S. government still continues to function properly. Let’s look at the research first. Since “polarization” took center stage as a major issue over a decade ago, many studies have shown that it’s greatly exaggerated. In 2014, professors David Brady and Hahrie Han found that, if one counted the “overlapping” congressmen of conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans, “what becomes evident is that the present period of polarization is akin to the polarization we had for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.”  In 2019, Yale University researcher Daniel Yudkin’s study showed that the country was divided into seven “tribes” — progressive activists, passive liberals, politically disengaged, moderates, traditional liberals, traditional conservatives and conservative activists. He found that it was the behavior of the wing groups, the activists, “that is largely responsible for the perception that American politics is hopelessly polarized.” That same year, surveys by the New York Times confirmed that polarization was “overstated” and that “only 15 to 20 percent of Americans were truly polarized.” This past July, a Time magazine article, “The Growing Evidence That Americans Are Less Divided Than You May Think,” concluded that “American politics has grown more divided — but largely among people who live and breathe politics.” It referenced many studies, including one that showed people grossly overestimate — by 78 percent — the size of the most polarized group within each party. They also underestimate — by 77 percent — the number of moderates in the other party. Another study, the American Aspirations Index by former Harvard University Professor Todd Rose, “found ‘stunning agreement’ on national goals across every segment of the U.S. population.” Rose said it was a “shared illusion” that people are hopelessly divided. Many facts on the ground confirm that Americans are not nearly as polarized as the media doomsayers love to argue.  Take a look at the number of registered Independents. They now constitute the largest political bloc at 43 percent. Those who identify as Democrat or Republican are at record lows — 27 percent each. Granted, the majority of Independents lean toward one party or another, but there are still nearly 7 percent who show no partisan bent, according to Pew. These “true” Independents avoid politics, don’t speak up publicly, and are therefore barely noticed. They move in and out of Independent status depending on the election or issue.  Independent voters have helped fine-tune American democracy. Every election since 2004, except in 2012, has seen the president, Senate, or House of Representatives switch between parties. No wonder a full one-third of Independent voters believe that their vote does make a difference. The number of Independents is likely to rise since 52 percent of Millennials and Gen-Zers now identify as Independent. The polarization doomsayers miss another interesting statistic; political participation is way up. There is nothing hopeless about American democracy when 66 percent of its eligible voting population does vote in a presidential election. The 2020 Trump–Biden election saw a 7 percent increase in voter turnout over the 2016 election. America’s voter turnout has risen in every presidential election since 2000, with the exception of 2012. Another sign of a responsive system is that the two big political parties are both engaged in an intense battle to bring more people under their umbrella. The Democratic Party is winning elections because it adjusted to the country’s changing demographics more rapidly than the Republicans. In 2000, Al Gore lost to George W. Bush when the white voter bloc constituted 81 percent of the total. By 2020, the white voter bloc had dropped to 67 percent and a Democrat won the White House. Biden secured 87 percent of the Black vote, 65 percent of the Hispanic vote, and 61 percent of the Asian vote. Political parties are also quick to respond to people’s changing views. Consider the platform changes in the current presidential campaign. Trump has changed his stance on many issues, including abortion, gun control, vaccines, and criminal justice. Kamala Harris has changed her position on fracking, immigration, healthcare, policing, and guns.  There is also no sign of polarization affecting America’s governance. The country’s legislative activity continues, as it has for decades. Since World War II, Congress has typically enacted 4–6 million words of new law in each Congress. And, bills passed with bipartisan support is at a 20-year high. In 2022, Vox reported, “bipartisanship winds up being more common than people think it is — even when one party holds full control of Congress.” This year nearly two-thirds of all bills were passed with bipartisan support. Sure, there are still legislative issues that America hasn’t resolved. But that doesn’t mean that polarization has paralyzed the country. Keep the faith, America. Our democracy may be slow and loud, but it still works.  Bhanu Dhamija is the author of Why India Needs the Presidential System. READ MORE: To Be or Not to Be America — After Election Day Anne Applebaum’s Comparison of Trump to Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini Is a Sign of Political Desperation on the Left Kamala Harris Is Melting The post American Democracy Isn’t Hopelessly Polarized — It’s Finely Tuned appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

California political figures should not be permitted to impose their regulatory preferences on American consumers. Consumers who should have the freedom and latitude to select the cars that best suit their particular needs. At least that is what free-market activists argue in an amicus brief that could quickly find an audience before the U.S. Supreme Court. House members provided further weight to the brief this past September when they passed a resolution under the Congressional Review Act that would overturn Vice President Kamala Harris, standing in for President Biden, and the EPA administrators’ “de facto electric vehicle mandate.”  Tom Pyle, a founding member of the Save Our Cars Coalition, which includes 31 national and state-based free-market organizations, trade associations, and consumer protection groups, sees an opportunity for Harris to demonstrate that she has had an epiphany that would help explain why she now sees fit to reverse her prior support of anti-consumer regulations. As Pyle explained in an interview: Since becoming her party’s nominee, Vice President Harris has tried to walk back her long-standing support of EV mandates and other anti-energy and anti-consumer policies. If she wants to show the American people that she has changed her tune, and suddenly cares about consumer choice, now is the time for her to call on her former colleagues in the Senate to vote in favor of this resolution. Harris could also lean on President Biden to sign the CRA if it makes it to his desk. Otherwise, there’s no reason to take her policy reversal seriously. The congressional resolution would strike down the EPA’s new tailpipe emissions rule that reinstates a waiver the Obama administration granted to California under the Clean Air Act. The waiver enabled California’s regulators to set standards for automobile emissions that are even more rigid and burdensome than federal standards.  The Supreme Court Challenge Litigants representing 23 states, alongside industry groups and trade associations, are making the case that the EPA overstepped its authority in granting the waiver and that the EPA’s decision violates a constitutional requirement that the federal government provide the states with equal treatment. The three lead states in the case — Ohio, Indiana, and Virginia — achieved a critical victory this past June when the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked the EPA rule in response to their petition asking for a stay in the new rule’s implementation. Writing for the majority in the court’s 5-4 ruling, Justice Neil Gorsuch determined the state plaintiffs, and their allies in business and industry, would likely prevail on the merits of the case that the EPA overstepped its authority in how it applied the ‘good neighbor’ rule. The rule is a provision of the Clean Air Act, which requires “upwind” states to reduce emissions that affect the air quality in “downwind states.”  In granting the stay, Gorsuch also observed that if the court allowed the EPA rule to remain in effect while the case gestated at the federal appeals court level it would cost litigants “hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.” Additional History and Sound Science  California’s power grab is based on the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards established and enforced through the Department of Transportation. The EPA comes into play by calculating the average fuel economy levels and setting greenhouse gas emissions standards that operate in tandem with the CAFE standards. The CAFE standards were initially enacted in response to the 1973 oil embargo in an effort to curtail U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil. But with the U.S. now positioned to be the top oil and gas producer in the world, the Harris–Biden administration notwithstanding, the original rationale for CAFE is anachronistic at best. That’s why the EPA regulations have been folded into the Harris administration’s “whole-of-government approach” to climate change with tailpipe Co2 emissions targeted for reduction. It’s worth noting that the repurposing of CAFE standards into a weapon to combat what Team Harris calls the “climate crisis” is not rooted in climatological observations. It is instead based on general circulation models purporting to project what temperatures might be in a few decades in response to Co2 levels. To call the projections specious would be generous.  What’s most relevant to consumers are the CAFE emission targets for “light-duty vehicles” since they include passenger cars and light trucks. As Pyle notes, the Harris–Biden administration is targeting traditional vehicles in favor of electric vehicles: What we are really talking about is a de facto electric vehicle mandate on the part of Harris, and other centralized planners, with California leading the charge. The goal is for the EPA tailpipe rule to set emissions requirements so high to the point where auto companies will be compelled to manufacture electric vehicles to meet these targets. The Harris regime is bent on destroying consumer choice as it prioritizes politics over personal freedoms. During the last administration, President Trump established a new rule, known as Safe Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE 1) standards, to roll back the Obama administration’s CAFE standards. SAFE 1 still raised fuel economy standards, but did so at a slower rate than what Obama had proposed. Trump’s goal was to relieve the auto industry of costly mandates set in motion under President Obama that effectively priced millions of U.S. households out of the market for newer, safer, more fuel-efficient vehicles. The efforts made under Harris to repeal Trump’s SAFE 1 rule and restore the Obama-era directives are ripe for review before the Supreme Court. Federalism and California’s Overreach Pyle, who is also president of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a free-market advocacy group that joined the amicus brief, sees “legalized grift” and the oversized influence of California at work where the tailpipe regulations are concerned. The favoritism California is receiving from the federal government cuts to the heart of what IER, and others, are arguing in court. He points out that Harris, a former U.S. senator and attorney general for California, is on the same team as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and long-time climate activist, in advocating for overregulation: They are helping each other out to the cost and detriment of everyone else. Not only does California have the largest congressional delegation in the country, but the state also has friends in high places in the form of Harris. The CAFE rule is all about power and money and self-dealing between the Harris–Biden EPA and Newsom’s California. They are operating in cahoots to make sure consumers have no say. IER, and its coalition partners, argue in their brief that the federal government must treat all states equally under the U.S. Constitution — an argument in line with the principles of federalism and a long history of jurisprudence: The agency, autonomy, dignity, authority, statutes, and of course sovereignty of California’s sister states — the very nature of being a state – seriously are undermined by the federal government’s unjustified bias in California’s favor. This EPA waiver irreparably has undermined ‘the federal sovereign’ constitutional duty to ‘govern impartially.’ Nor has the EPA advanced even a plausible justification for that special treatment. But it’s not just the legal questions that gum up the works as Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, explains:  Complementing the compelling constitutional arguments against EPA’s de facto EV mandates are the clearly stated choices of the American driving public. According to auto industry tracker Edmunds, EVs accounted for 6.8 percent of all new car sales in the last quarter. That means that just over 93% of buyers chose a gasoline-powered vehicle. These people shunned federal EV tax credit of up to $7,500 to buy a car that suited their needs. The nation is woefully unprepared for the government-driven transition to EVs, having neither electricity nor the recharging infrastructure to accommodate the millions of EVs elites in California and Washington, D.C. are force-feeding the rest of the country. In putting up a united front against California’s special waiver status, Pyle and crew astutely seize on the high court’s recent ruling overturning the Chevron deference, which had enabled federal agencies to usurp the judiciary’s Article III powers. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the justices ruled that the Constitution’s structural principles call for an independent judiciary free from executive influence. Loper effectively puts the kibosh on the ability of unelected bureaucrats to coercively inflict their policy preferences on to the public without congressional approval by way of vague statutes. The arguments that have been put into circulation by state and industry petitioners have the potential to bring the full force of the court’s reasoning in Loper to effect in California where Newsom and company seek to operate as a regulatory island. And, in Washington D.C., where Harris is leveraging the EPA to impose California rules on the rest of the country.  What next? Pyle anticipates that sometime in October the U.S. Supreme Court will “almost certainly grant the petition and hear the case … the legal questions are too big to ignore.” There is a scenario where the case could become moot — if Trump is elected and moves to reverse the CAFE rules. But that’s a big “if” heading into the next court term. As Pyle reminds us: Remember, the American people never voted on the new CAFE standards. This was done through unelected government agencies. California’s one-size fits all approach robs people outside of the state, and even inside the state, of having their say so. Ultimately, this is all about the restoration of self-government. Kevin Mooney is an investigative researcher with Restoration News. 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by James S. Spiegel, All News Pipeline: There has been a lot of analysis and commentary about last month’s presidential debate, regarding everything from the ABC moderators’ selective fact-checking to Harris’s statement that she is a gun owner to Trump’s reference to reports that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating dogs and cats. Also […]