The Teamster's endorsement could have had significant impact

Books Wind and Truth Wind and Truth Read-Along Discussion: Interludes 1 and 2 What did you think of these two nail-biting interludes, starring Kalak and Odium (Todium? Vargodium?) By Paige Vest, Lyndsey Luther, Drew McCaffrey | Published on September 16, 2024 Comment 25 Share New Share Happy Monday, Sanderfans and Cosmere Chickens! It’s time for another Wind and Truth read-along discussion. Chapters 12 and 13 wrapped up the events of Day One, and so we’re on to the Interludes before we dive into Day Two! Today we’ll be discussing Kalak and… dun-dun-dunnn… Odium. Note that this post will possibly contain full Cosmere spoilers, so beware if you aren’t caught up on all Cosmere content. And please remember, when posting or commenting about these preview chapters on social media, to follow your platform’s spoiler rules. Pattern says, “No spoilers!” Your comments here, however, don’t need to be spoiler-tagged, so feel free to comment as you will down below… Onward to our commentary! Paige’s Summary and Commentary There are no epigraphs on Interludes, of course, so let’s dive right in! Interlude 1 is from Kalak’s POV. As you’ll remember from chapter 7, he chose to stay at Lasting Integrity after Shallan and Adolin (astride Gallant!) left with the Windrunners. In this Interlude, Kalak goes to his quarters and locks himself in, thinking that, after all of his long years of life, he still doesn’t want to die. He wonders if he should have gone with the Radiants and then decides that he needs to hide somewhere other than Lasting Integrity because Thaidakar, “a Herald from another world,” could send someone else after him. He goes into his study to gather his things and… the drapes by the window grab him, tie him up, shove a gag in his mouth, and slam him against the wall. He wonders if this is some art of Stonewards but we know better, don’t we, Sanderfans? If you recall Kaladin’s visit to Zahel in chapter 15 of Rhythm of War, “The Light and the Music,” Zahel used Awakening to manipulate cloth when he was sparring with Kaladin. As we know, Zahel is Vasher from Warbreaker and can use Breath to Awaken objects. Whoever is in Kalak’s chambers obviously has the same ability. I imagine Drew will delve into this a bit more below, so let’s move on. Kalak thinks he recognizes the man sitting at his desk as one of Adolin’s soldiers, a foreigner with long mustaches and a floppy hat. Then he notices a dagger on the desk. A dagger with a gemstone. Kalak the Herald, king and warrior (once upon a time), whimpers. The man tells him not to worry about the dagger and opens a box, which reveals the seon that Shallan had been using, given to her by Mraize. The timid, frightened little creature that Shallan had freed. And she’s a bit different than what we saw before. She pops out of the box, bright and confident, telling Felt, the foreigner, how aggravating her experience has been. She didn’t care for Shallan, it would seem, and faked being a frightened, imprisoned “spren” once Shallan rebelled against Mraize. The seon, Ala, has already revealed Mishram’s location to Iyatil and Kelsier, and Kalak realizes that everything he had discussed in front of Shallan has been relayed to the Ghostbloods. He feels a fool for not realizing who the real spy was. Ala asks Felt if it’s time to use the dagger, but he says they’ll wait as he doesn’t trust the dagger. He notes that Iyatil gave it to him and that he doesn’t work for that “masked witch.” He says that “Lord Kelsier” told him to be careful, so they’ll just sit tight and wait for further instructions. Kalak, though now a prisoner with the threat of death or worse hanging over his head, is actually relieved that at least he didn’t have to make any more decisions. Poor old guy. In Interlude 2, we see Odium. ::foreboding music:: This interlude is titled “The Divided God” and, indeed, we see that Odium is of two minds as he holds the body of a dying child in a backwater called Tu Bayla. There is a famine and a war raging between the kingdoms of Jah Kaved and Aziri; in the chaos, the government has collapsed and warlords rule. Cultivation arrives, manifesting as a woman dressed in green and brown, and Odium begins to speak to her, stating that while there is so much to experience with vast power, there’s also so much suffering. He talks of the pain and misery he finds all around him: “Infinite capacity to see. Infinite capacity to feel. Infinite capacity for agony.” Odium (“That was not my name, he thought. I cannot lose myself in godhood”) is both “thinking” and “feeling” with the thinking side of him understanding that in the grand scheme of things, suffering is bound to happen and that the universe is complicated. The feeling side of him just wants to weep. And he feels rage. He is, after all, the god of passions. And we know that Taravangian also had a great capacity to feel, and holding the shard of Odium seems to have expanded that capacity. Odium and Cultivation talk about how much he essentially wants to make people do what he wants them to do. She stresses how important it is to leave them to make their own choices. She tells him he’s forbidden from taking direct action and he states that he could break the pact his predecessor made which would, of course, leave him open to attack. But Odium says he can basically force people to behave and Cultivation tells him that he knows he can’t do that. “What,” Cultivation said, “do we do instead?”“You want me to say,” he whispered, “that we create systems—teachings, incentives—that encourage the right decisions. That we prevent war by building up societies where people choose peace. We prevent greed by nurturing governments where the greedy are held accountable. We take time, and we steer, but we do not dominate.”“Yes.” Odium then gets angry. He blames his predecessor, Honor, and Cultivation for the state of the world, saying that they had eight thousand years to fix things. He says that he can do better. She tells him to calm the Everstorm and restore peace. He insists that wouldn’t fix it and that it wouldn’t be fixed until there was one god. Cultivation warns him from that path, saying it destroyed his predecessor. He states that he destroyed Rayse and tells her to leave him. Knowing that she’ll work against him, he tells himself that he is Taravangian and that he holds Odium… that he won’t let it rule. But then he goes on to think about his mission in Karbranth—only now, he’s determined to save them all. So, Sanderfans… What are your thoughts on these interludes? We know that Shallan is intending to hunt for Mishram, but now she’s going to be racing against Mraize and Iyatil to do so, since they know of her plan thanks to the seon spy. What will become of Kalak? Will Felt kill him, trap his soul, and let him fade into oblivion? How about Taravangian? Can he really hold the shard and not allow Odium to control him? Does anyone really think it’s possible to control Odium? I personally don’t—I think that Taravangian’s mind is already corrupted by Odium—but tell me what you think in the comments! Lyndsey’s Commentary: Characters and Relationships Interlude 1, Kalak: Appropriately enough, the herald in all four arches is Kalak (Kelek), patron of the Willshapers. His attributes are Resolute/Builder and his role is Maker. Seeing as how the interlude unfolds from his POV, I don’t think there’s much more analysis that needs to be done here. Interlude 2, Odium: Nalan (Nale), Herald of Justice, patron of Skybreakers is present in all four arches. His attributes are Just/Confident, and his role is Judge. I believe that Nalan appears here because Toadium is debating the prospect of “justice” on a grand scale, but that’s just my best guess. Kalak Eyes closed, he tried to remember the man he’d once been, the hero who had fought for thousands of years. His life seemed a blur, a wash of grey and brown, a fresh painting left out in the storm. It’s hard to form any sort of psychological analysis on a character who is, for all intents and purposes, immortal. How could we, as simple mortals, possibly understand the mindset of someone who has lived for thousands of years? Yet this is the thing that Sanderson (and many other authors before and most certainly after him) has attempted to portray. There’s something alluring about immortal characters. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that I’ve always wished to leave something behind me, to not simply disappear when I’m gone. And if there were an option for you, yourself, to continue on? Would you take it? This is prevalent in so many types of fiction, including but not limited to vampires (which I think is part of the reason that they’re so continually alluring). I have to admit that I was a HUGE fan of the Highlander TV show in my youth (yes, I know about the remake in the works and I have mixed feelings about it), so this is a subject that I may have done more thinking about than most. Who wants to live forever, indeed. The Heralds in Sanderson’s work deal with all the issues that we’d expect from characters who have outlived so many of their loved ones, and they’ve paid the price for their longevity. Most of them are barely hanging on to their sanity… if they are at all. And in this chapter, Kalak is confronted with the very real possibility of his existence ending. He clearly wants to continue living, and who can blame him for that? But Kelsier and his Ghostbloods have other plans for him, which I’m certain Drew will get into below. Taravangian/Odium (I also like to refer to him as Toadium) Quick note that this interlude takes place in Tu Bayla, which is here. That was not my name, he thought. I cannot lose myself in godhood…Odium wept for them, and—having formed a body from his infinite essence—held one little boy close. And: I can see to the ends of the cosmere. I can see the lives of people great and small. I had thought this wonderful, with so much to experience, but now I find only suffering. And: “I am the very substance of passion, and where a person suffers anywhere in this miserable galaxy, I feel it. That is the burden of this power.” Hoo boy. Lots to unpack here. Taravangian was always willing to do whatever it took to do what he saw as protecting his people, and now that definition of “his people” has broadened to the entirety of the Cosmere. I see some interesting parallels here between his ideas about creating harmony in the universe and Thanos in the MCU. They both have good intentions, theoretically: saving people and removing strife. However, their methods of achieving said intentions are problematic on so many levels. Can you save half the universe by killing the other half? Sure. Can you save a kingdom by hiring an assassin to eliminate other world leaders, thereby distracting them from your own country? Yup. Is it ethical to do either? Depends on your perspective, doesn’t it? It’s the classic trolley problem played out on a universal scale. (For those unfamiliar, see the wiki article here.) I’ve often said that I appreciate Taravangian as a villain because he exemplifies the “I don’t see myself as a villain” trope, and his ascension to godhood has heightened this. He now has access to near omnipresence and omnipotence (with some limitations), and seeing what he does with them is going to be fascinating. (And horrifying, I’m sure.) Are there any right answers to this dilemma? Well, he sure thinks he has one: By directly intervening on such a granular level, he risked creating a society where no one learned, and where society did not progress. By supernaturally forbidding warlords, he would also stifle scientists and artists. By removing the capacity for violence, he would also remove the capacity for mercy. And: “There is a spectrum of choice that can be allowed,” he said. “No society can persist with complete freedom, and growth can happen within limits. I can make it so that free will exists to an acceptable state, while also preventing famines.” Now HERE’s a really fascinating moral debate. Can limitations on freedom create a better society? Well, the existence of laws would certainly indicate that to be so. Society enforces limitations on freedom in all sorts of ways, thereby creating a more equitable and safe society for all. But Toadium appears to be planning to remove free choice entirely, by removing the very ability to even think of or do certain things. Is this crossing the line? Or is it an acceptable loss in order to remove the possibility of violence, bloodshed, and death? Does it lessen the impact of kindness, to remove the capacity for violence? Does that even matter when what’s at stake is human life? I leave it to you in the comments to debate. Because I honestly don’t have an answer. Drew’s Commentary: Invested Arts and Theories Our first set of interludes comes out of the gate hard with some eye-opening Cosmere and Investiture implications. Nearly straight away in the Kalak interlude, we get a potential bomb dropped on us: Without Ishar holding some of it back… it would have destroyed him long ago. Somehow (almost certainly through Ishar’s uniquely powerful command of Connection), it seems that Ishar is directly helping the other Heralds by shielding them from the insanity that plagues them all. This is a huge revelation, to be honest, as it not only has direct impact on the current conflict on Roshar, but also opens up potential utility for all long-lived people and Cognitive Shadows across the Cosmere. Vasher and Hoid are notably dealing with their long lives, and the crushing weight of memory, by storing memories in Breaths. That’s a fairly accessible source of Investiture, and less traumatic to acquire than some, but it’s still a limited resource. However Ishar is helping out the other Heralds, it might be something anyone with sufficient knowledge of Connection could do. It makes you wonder if, somewhere on Scadrial, a certain spiked survivor has been directing his minions to keep an eye on Ishar… “Well hello, Herald,” said a man sitting at Kalak’s desk. “If you don’t mind, I have a few questions.” Because he’s certainly having his agents keep an eye on Kalak! All this time, Felt has been a Ghostblood. It seems so obvious in hindsight (he is from Scadrial, after all) but this caught me off-guard. On top of his apparent loyalty to Kelsier—specifically to Kelsier, not to Iyatil or Mraize—Felt has a secret arsenal of Invested power. He may not be an Allomancer or Feruchemist, but he sure has a stash of Breaths and knows what he’s doing when it comes to Awakening. Immediately, the drapes from the window beside the door seized him, wrapping around him like two grasping hands, pulling him tight. They’d been cut into strange shapes. No wonder Felt was such an effective scout and soldier that Dalinar took him on important missions like the trip to the Valley. But that’s not all we get in these interludes, oh no. No no no. We get Odium. We get the Divided God. It has been a burning question in the Stormlight fandom since the day Rhythm of War came out: Does Taravangian’s boon/curse still hold? In my mind, this interlude shows that it does—to an extent. Ascension has clearly changed the game, but Taravangian is still wrestling with what’s essentially a split personality. He is challenged by the powerful emotions that allowed him Connection to the Shard of Odium in the first place, and the “capacity to save humankind” that gave him such tremendous powers of thought and intuition. He may be uniquely dangerous as a Vessel for Odium, but that doesn’t mean we have some Mega-Moriarty situation here; he isn’t a ruthless, coldhearted mastermind. However, that doesn’t make him less dangerous, but rather unstable. He may have difficulty managing his long-term plans, but this could make him more capable of short-term, catastrophic decision-making. And, hmm, would you call ten days “short term” for a Shard? I’ll leave you with this tidbit from Vargodium: “Because you killed your father, and now worry the same will happen to you.” What do we think? Is he talking about Adonalsium, or something more personal that he plucked from the depths of Cultivation’s presence in the Spiritual Realm? Fan Theories Lyn: Over on Reddit, there hasn’t been a ton of discussion on chapters 12 and 13. Not as much as in previous chapters, anyway—though I expect there will be a TON for this week’s chapter. I would like to point out this theory that caught my eye though, by TheBigFreeze8: There are a lot of parallels between Vin and the mist and Kaladin and the wind. Both have a unique connection to their chosen, uh, gas, to the extent where it even seems to respond physically to them in unique ways.If a shard can invest some of its power as mist, why couldn’t God themselves invest some of their power as wind? Reddit comment of the week for me goes to this one—I’m simply linking to it here because you all need to go over to see it for yourselves and upvote it. We’ll be keeping an eye on the comment sections of posts about this article on various social media platforms and may include some of your comments/speculation (with attribution) on future weeks’ articles! Keep the conversation going, and PLEASE remember to spoiler-tag your comments on social media to help preserve the surprise for those who choose to wait for the full release. See you next Monday with chapters 14 and 15! (Also, go and check out Lyn’s FB author page for a little special something that she’s going to be giving away this week…) The post <i>Wind and Truth</i> Read-Along Discussion: Interludes 1 and 2 appeared first on Reactor.

In the 2020 presidential election, the Left staunchly promoted voting by mail and scoffed at critics of the option. In 2024, however, Democrat and Republican election officials, as well as an inspector general, are raising concerns about whether the U.S. Postal Service is prepared for mail-in ballots.  Last week, election officials from both major parties expressed concern about mail-in ballots, the same week the National Letter Carriers Association—which represents 290,000 active and retired mail carriers—endorsed Vice Preident Kamala Harris for president. In July, the American Postal Workers Union, representing 200,000 Postal Service employees, endorsed Harris.  Earlier this year, the Postal Service Office of Inspector General expressed concern about the “risk of delays in the processing and delivery” of election-related mail as well as “operational changes that pose a risk of individual ballots not being counted.” However, U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy insists that he is “confident in our Election and Government Mail Services group, and in the robust plans we have in place.” During the pandemic election year of 2020, 43% of voters participated by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission—almost twice as many who voted by mail in each previous presidential election, 2012 and 2016, when about one-quarter sealed their ballots in envelopes.  Voting by mail isn’t likely to be as high for the Nov. 5 presidential election, said Ken Cuccinelli, national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative. But the volume of mailed ballots is expected to be substantially high, he said. Ballots that leave a voter’s state pose a significant problem for election mail, Cuccinelli said, adding that he doesn’t view the Postal Service as ready.  Delays are caused by changes in shipping, said Cuccinelli, former attorney general of Virginia and acting deputy secretary of homeland security during the Trump administration.  “For election mail, if you don’t have a postmark by Election Day, it won’t be counted in most states,” Cuccinelli told The Daily Signal. “A lot of people think that the day you put it in the mail is the day that it’s postmarked. That’s not true. Depending on where you live will determine where the mail is taken. It sometimes will leave the state and then return.” The Election Integrity Network, a coalition of state groups focused on clean elections, has a national working group that identified vulnerabilities after looking at the postal system, said Ned Jones, director of the Citizens Election Research Center at a think tank called the Virginia Institute for Public Policy.  Jones said continuing problems include poor tracking of ballots (also known as “chain of custody”), no “reconciliation” of ballots received by voters and ballots delivered to election offices; and ballots delivered to voters who no longer live at their registered address. Reforms of regional processing have caused “built-in delays” after the U.S. Postal Service launched its Delivering for America initiative in 2021. That 10-year plan, designed to make the USPS more efficient, includes processing more mail through large regional centers.  “Mail will leave the state and then comes back. There are so many problems with this system beyond what the inspector general reports said,” Jones told The Daily Signal. “There is a lack of security and no chain of custody. Undeliverable ballots go to addresses where the people no longer live.” During the 2020 presidential election, more than 1.1 million mailed ballots were “undeliverable,” according to a study by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election watchdog group. The inability of our federal government to adequately operate the postal service is another example of why I oppose mass mail ballot distribution and no excuse absentee ballots.https://t.co/sakc67R26q— Wes Allen Alabama Secretary of State (@alasecofstate) September 13, 2024 A total of 29 state and local elections officials last week signed a letter to DeJoy, the postmaster general, flagging their concerns about “processing facility operations, lost or delayed election mail, and front-line training deficiencies.” The lead signers of the letter were Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who is president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, and Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican who is president-elect of the association for the coming year.  NASS and the National Association of State Election Directors coordinated the letter to the postmaster general, which also notes “exceptionally long delivery times” for ballots mailed back to election offices. “In nearly every state, however, local election officials are receiving timely postmarked ballots well after Election Day and well outside the three to five business days USPS claims as the first class delivery standard,” the letter to DeJoy says. “For example, election officials in multiple states report receiving anywhere from dozens to hundreds of ballots 10 or more days after postmark.” The letter adds: “Election officials report mail sent to voters is being marked as undeliverable at higher than usual rates, even in cases where a voter is known not to have moved.” NASS- 9.11.24 NASS_NASED Letter to US Postmaster DeJoyDownload Despite such criticism, the Postal Service contends that in the 2020 election it delivered 99.89% of ballots from voters to election officials within seven days. In the 2022 midterm election it delivered 99.93% of ballots within seven days. DeJoy is scheduled to speak Thursday about election readiness in a briefing for the media and the public. The Postal Service referred The Daily Signal to a letter in which DeJoy responded to the two organizations.  DeJoy wrote that many of the issues they raised were addressed previously. The reforms should not affect election mail, he said.  “Let us reiterate, modernization and enhancement plans will not have an impact on election mail, and we have committed to limit network changes to avoid any unintended disruption in service for the upcoming election and peak season,” DeJoy wrote, adding later: “Furthermore, as demonstrated consistently in previous elections, election mail routinely outperforms our regular service performance due to our long-standing processes and procedures.” Although Democrats championed mail-in voting in 2020, they targeted DeJoy who became postmaster general that June in the final months of the Trump administration. He stayed in the job for the Biden-Harris administration.  The Postal Service said it is implementing “extraordinary measures” or expediting delivery for election mail two weeks in advance of Election Day. The election officials asked for a month, however.  DeJoy disagreed in his letter, saying that “we implement certain processes and procedures specific to election mail all year-round, including advancing election mail ahead of other mail-in processing.”  “We have determined that implementing extraordinary measures two weeks before the election provides ample time,” DeJoy wrote. “That said, we are, and will continue, to look for opportunities to further improve our processes and procedures and to enhance our election mail service performance.” DeJoy-9.13.24 – NASS-NASED Letter ResponseDownload Last month, the USPS Office of Inspector General released an audit finding that from December 2023 through April, the Postal Service processed election and political mail almost entirely on time.  “However, as a result of our observations and inquiries, we found that Postal Service personnel did not always comply with policy and procedures regarding all clear certifications, election and political mail logs, and audit checklists,” the audit says.   “In addition, we identified processes and policies that could pose a risk of delays in the processing and delivery of election and political mail,” it continues. “Further, we identified issues related to some Delivering for America operational changes that pose a risk of individual ballots not being counted.” The post The Left Lauded Voing by Mail in 2020, but Now It’s a Bipartisan Concern appeared first on The Daily Signal.

One of the great mysteries in most polling on abortion is the small percentage of those surveyed who are fully committed to either a pro-life or pro-choice position. One study of swing states across the country found that only 31%  of adult Americans said they put a stake in the ground on one viewpoint or another, with the balance being somewhere in the middle.   It doesn’t make sense not to have your mind made up on abortion—the life developing in the womb is either a human being deserving of protection or it’s not. But four decades in the branding business have taught me that the decisions people make are not always sensible. We who value life are losing at the ballot box because we presume what’s going on in the minds of abortion-vulnerable women is what matters, rather than what’s happening in their guts. That’s where the battle is raging. What appears to be driving a lot of women’s thinking is a feeling—a raw, primal, and often subconscious sense of unease, what novelist and pop culture commentator Kat Rosenfield describes as “a nightmarish state of perpetual physical vulnerability.” That’s why, when given a binary choice of outlawing abortion entirely or making it legal up to birth, even many who lean pro-life choose the latter. Though their position isn’t morally justifiable, it is understandable. Women are fearful for themselves, for their daughters, and for their granddaughters.  They’re anxious in ways they can articulate and in ways they can’t. They’re continually disturbed—not in an adrenaline-inducing state of conscious fright, but in a dull, unrelenting apprehension about what might happen: “I am against abortion, but what if it happens to me?” That may never have crossed the frontal lobe of many women, but it’s a question that can lurk in the back of their minds like other conflicting thoughts we all have as human beings. “I would never kill someone—unless my family was threatened. I would never steal a loaf of bread—unless my children were starving. I would never want my daughter to have an abortion—unless … ” This is the emotional context underlying any debate about abortion. Women believe they must protect themselves and those they love—from criminals, yes, but more commonly from men who’ve let them down. From deadbeats and slackers. From cowards. From men who would abandon them; not only those who have, but those who might. Even if it hasn’t happened to them personally, it’s enough that it could happen potentially. Consider a twisted yet compelling video in which a woman pens a letter to her deceased father. “If some psycho was dead set on having a baby with me,” she says, “he literally could. Dad, that scares me. It really scares me. What the hell is happening?” She goes on to say: “I know you understand. And I also know if you were here, you would [vote for Democrats] too. Because you’ve always done everything to protect me. And I have to protect myself.” ?NEW ELEVEN FILMS?MAGA Republicans want a national abortion ban. DEMOCRATS will always DEFEND a woman’s right to choose! ??PLEASE SHARE this emotional video:#DemocratsDefendWomen pic.twitter.com/A5wioMUB2s— Eleven Films (@ElevenFilms) March 6, 2024 How did we get here? It didn’t happen overnight. Over the past several decades, what it means to be a man has been under continual assault in America. Militant feminism increasingly has made masculinity a byword, resulting in two generations of men who have lost their way. That’s not to indict every man—far from it. But too many have relinquished their roles as providers and protectors, instead indulging their base desires, taking advantage of women’s so-called “sexual freedom,” or simply giving in to defeatism. Chivalry isn’t dead, but it has become little more than a curiosity. Because this is a widespread, hydra-headed sociocultural issue, it doesn’t avail itself of simple political solutions. But those who value a child’s life from conception must no longer assume the answer lies in merely sharpening arguments; there’s no debating with dread. We must recognize the current reality and begin to address the root issue: Men are the reason women are afraid. This is fertile ground on which the life-affirming may create resonant, emotional messaging every bit as compelling as the fearmongering at which the Left is so adept. And it can provide those who are running for office what, in recent cycles, they’ve desperately lacked: a way of going on offense. Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, candidates on the Right largely have been frozen on the abortion issue, unable to dodge it but afraid to take it on. Equivocation, however, doesn’t win votes (and more often loses them). Rather than soft-pedaling their views on the sanctity of life, conservative candidates should step into them on behalf of the mother as well as the child. There are a variety of ways of doing so. Candidates can rhetorically go after cowards who selfishly use and abuse women. They can advocate stronger laws to stop predators more effectively, from abusive husbands to sex traffickers to dangerous illegal aliens. They can work to increase the certainty and severity of penalties for sex offenders. They can vow to hold men financially accountable for their offspring from the moment of conception. And they can use the power of the bully pulpit to exhort deadbeat dads to embrace accountability, encourage basement boys to take responsibility, and take to task today’s so-called alpha males for their abdication of true manhood. It takes two to tango, as they say, and last I checked pregnancy was 100% man-caused. Allowing it to be framed as a women’s issue is just another symptom of the problem—men have gotten off too easy. Recognizing the predicament into which they’ve put women won’t, by itself, make women feel entirely safe. But it’s a starting point that likely would be welcomed by people from across the political spectrum. Perhaps it would encourage just enough of them no longer to feel they have to vote for a ghastly escape hatch. In a swing district, that could make all the difference. Times change, issues evolve, and political winds continually shift, but some things are immutable. The more men live up to their calling as men, the more women will embrace their instinct to nurture and protect those who can’t protect themselves. And the more children will be saved from the scourge of our time. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Abortion: How to Begin to Win appeared first on The Daily Signal.

By a miracle, really a series of miracles, former President Donald Trump has survived two assassination attempts in little more than two months.    The implications of Trump being murdered are almost too disturbing to contemplate. The fact that a man running for president continues to be targeted like this is certainly worth a “national conversation.” Yet, the media is treating the story of the second assassination attempt—already fading from the back pages of national newspapers days after it happened Sunday—as if it’s no big deal. When the media can be bothered to mention it at all, they switch to rabidly blaming the victim. In this case, the man they hate so much: Trump. What we should take away from the treatment of this story is more than just the obvious fact that the news media is biased, although that’s almost cartoonishly the case right now. It’s clear that the media thinks that another news cycle about a Trump assassination this close to the Nov. 5 election has to be downplayed. It’s double bad that the would-be assassin Sunday has a record of donating to Democrats and copied the Biden-Harris campaign message about Trump being a threat to “democracy.” The legacy media seem particularly agitated that Trump gets to adopt the “language of victimhood,” as one author put it in the Guardian, a London-based newspaper. That’s usually the Left’s favorite language. No fair! Trump in this case was the direct, twice-over victim. That makes no difference to a hostile media. The language of victimhood is all about power, not about actual victims. So how do they solve the Trump-as-victim conundrum? There is an old phrase in the media world for when you’re in an interview and don’t want to answer a specific question. It’s called a “block and bridge.” That’s what the media has done collectively with this story to make it go away. First, they’ve done their best to block discussion of the event entirely. The story often was missing on the front pages of newspapers across the country. That includes Florida Today, a subsidiary of USA Today, radio and TV talk-show host Chris Plante notes. Plante noted that the second Trump shooting story was on the last page of the B section of the Florida newspaper, even though the assassination attempt took place in West Palm Beach, Florida. USA Today, the national publication, also left the story off the front page in the next day’s paper. Well, OK, it was in a tiny insert in the corner. The real front-page news is a random fluff piece. For the 2nd time in 3 months, someone tried to murder a former POTUS, who is also the current GOP nominee for president. Here is USA Today’s cover the morning after the assassination attempt was thwarted: https://t.co/E7kUQHHYJz pic.twitter.com/pKzSPR9jPd— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) September 16, 2024 So, the bias is obvious. You already know how this would have been covered if it was Vice President Kamala Harris who nearly had been assassinated for a second time. It seems that right now corporate media outlets are cynically counting on Americans to be desensitized to assassination attempts on Trump. Yet the story lingers. And here’s where we get to the “bridge” part. USA Today, when it bothered to report on Sunday’s second assassination attempt at all, insinuated that it’s Trump’s fault that people are trying to kill him. Here is USA Today’s summary above its story about the FBI’s investigating the second assassination attempt on a former president: “The incident occurred on the same day Trump posted ‘I hate Taylor Swift’ on his Truth Social platform and his running mate said he had no regrets for propagating fake stories about Haitian migrants.” See, you shouldn’t have sympathy for Trump or his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. Those meanies really deserve what they get. Just imagine what a wonderful and peaceful world we would live in if only Trump and his supporters would just disappear. Here’s The Cincinnati Enquirer on the social media site X. Opinion: Opinion: There is no place in politics for violence. That said, the former president, Donald Trump, brings a lot of this stuff on himself. https://t.co/vq4J5VSKIe— Enquirer (@Enquirer) September 16, 2024 The Enquirer ended up changing the headline about Trump’s bringing violence on himself for not “meeting their editorial standards.” Of course, the Ohio newspaper left in a summary that Trump “brings the crazies out, and one of those crazies tried to shoot him.” A writer argued in The New Republic that Trump is simply being engulfed by the chaos he created. Deranged leftists keep trying to kill Republicans, and it’s apparently the Right’s fault. Trump is to blame for Trump derangement syndrome. Oh, and while the media has generated this narrative about Trump’s “rhetoric,” here’s the rhetoric we get from Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign opponent, Hillary Clinton. Clinton said in an MSNBC interview with host Rachel Maddow—aired just a day after the assassination attempt—that the media needs to be even more relentless in how it defines Trump as a “danger to our country and the world.” Hillary Clinton tonight on MSNBC:"The press needs to create a consistent narrative about how dangerous he is""He is a danger to our country & world" pic.twitter.com/7rBt7zcVGY— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 17, 2024 According to Clinton, the media have just been too fair and even-handed when dealing with Trump. Again, we are supposed to believe that bad things happen because opposition to the Left exists and hasn’t been shut down. The message from the Left and their media allies has been clear and growing. They think it’s fine to perpetually frame Trump as an existential threat to the country, Hitler 2.0. Instead of victim-blaming Trump, it’s time for much of America’s corporate media outlets to look in the mirror and consider that they, not Trump, have become a threat to democracy. They’re the ones who’ve sown chaos and kept the country in a state of hysterics. The post Media Victim-Blames Trump for Assassination Attempts. But They’re the Ones Sowing Chaos. appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Unlocking the Web’s Potential: 10 Must-Have Open Source Browser Extensions appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

City Council Approves Homeless Sweeps in...Berkeley?

During Tuesday’s interview with Kamala Harris at the National Association of Black Journalists, TheGrio White House correspondent Gerren Keith Gaynor lobbed the softest of softballs when he asked Harris what she made of the idea that “Republicans have at times weaponized you laughing in campaign ads.” Later, Gaynor would join MSNBC’s The ReidOut and admit he did it to boost the Harris campaign. Gaynor also asked, “Why is joy important to you to insert into this election, and what do you make of Republicans using that as a way to suggest you're not a series candidate?"     With that all as background, host Joy Reid inquired, “Gerren, why did you ask that question?” Gaynor responded that, “it was important for me to ask that question because one, I noticed in doing my research for this interview, the vice president had been using the joyful warrior term even years before she was vice president. She did an interview with Ellen DeGeneres and she described herself as a joyful warrior. And this is obviously a theme of the Harris-Walz campaign that I think is resonating with voters.” He also claimed to observe how, “on the Republican side, they have been using, Joy, her laughing, and using that as a tool to suggest that she's not a serious candidate, particularly as a black woman, and the implications that that might give to voters. It was important for me to lift that up. And who doesn't love joy, Joy?” That is what was important? Her “joy” and kooky accusations of racism? Gaynor’s ode to Harris’s joy represents a journalistic conflict of interests. If TheGrio doesn’t care, does the NABJ care that one of the people they chose as a moderator viewed the opportunity as a way to boost one campaign over another? Ultimately, Gaynor simply said the quiet part out loud because most reporters seem to think their job is to boost Harris. The NABJ’s vastly different treatment of Trump and Harris is just one example. Here is a transcript for the September 17 show: MSNBC The ReidOut 9/17/2024 7:26 PM ET JOY REID: Gerren, why did you ask that question? GERREN KEITH GAYNOR: You know, it was important for me to ask that question because one, I noticed in doing my research for this interview, the vice president had been using the joyful warrior term even years before she was vice president. She did an interview with Ellen DeGeneres and she described herself as a joyful warrior. And this is obviously a theme of the Harris-Walz campaign that I think is resonating with voters. But also, because I noticed on the Republican side, they have been using, Joy, her laughing and using that as a tool to suggest that she's not a serious candidate, particularly as a black woman, and the implications that that might give to voters. It was important for me to lift that up. And who doesn't love joy, Joy? REID: Exactly. Exactly, I totally agree. 

Podcast host Joe Rogan called out Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2019 proposal to regulate and oversee Big Tech companies.  During a Sept. 10 segment of the Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan warned that such proposals would restrict freedom of speech. “She was saying that she wants government oversight and regulation for social media. That's crazy!” Rogan exclaimed, responding to a 2019 clip of Harris. The clip Rogan referenced is from a 2019 CNN interview during Harris’s first unsuccessful run for the Democratic nomination, where she shared enthusiastically, “There has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power, they are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation. That has to stop.” FLASHBACK: Five Times Kamala Harris Pushed to Censor Donald Trump — And It Worked Reuters fact-checked the video on Sept. 10, claiming that Harris “did not say she wanted to shut down X in a 2019 interview.” Responding to this fact-check, Rogan argued, “There is no way to misconstrue that. Oversight and regulation for free speech is ridiculous.” He clarified further, “She is essentially saying, ‘Why should they have different rules for Facebook than they do for Twitter.’ Like, what rules? We don't have rules. We have First Amendment rights of free speech.”  Rogan warned the audience about Harris’s baffling proposal, “Whatever she was saying right there is not what you want to hear from somebody, you don't want to hear they're going to censor social media.”  Later in the podcast, Rogan called out the apparent hypocrisy of forcing Big Tech platforms to censor Americans, stating, “So what are you saying then? It’s okay If your side says things that aren't true and you can regulate in a way that’s not based on fact or reality, but based on a result that you want to take place and that’s fine. So we don't have freedom of speech.” In the reference, Harris was asked about the discussion revolving around the removal of then-President Donald Trump from Twitter. She urged the government to police free speech, particularly on social media platforms. Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

A Virginia man has been indicted in the stabbing death of his wife and the fatal shooting of a man that occurred last year. The husband also was alleged to be involved in a love triangle with the couple's Brazilian au pair — who previously was charged with the murder of a male who was in the couple's home. Fairfax County Police Department Chief Kevin Davis and Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano announced the arrest and indictment of Brendan Banfield in connection with the 2023 double murder that occurred in Reston — which is roughly 20 miles west of Washington, D.C. Investigators believe the husband and nanny were lovers involved in a 'sexual relationship' and devised a sordid scheme to take out the wife. Banfield, of Reston, was charged with four counts of aggravated murder and use of a firearm in commission of a felony. Banfield was being held at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center on no bond.Davis said at a Monday press conference, “I stood in the middle of a cul-de-sac street in Fairfax County and described the deaths of two persons inside of a residential home. Now, 570 days later, we know the deaths of Joseph Ryan and Christine Banfield were both, in fact, murders.”Davis added, “This much is clear, we have evidence to now allege that Christine Banfield’s life was unlawfully taken, and Joseph Ryan’s life was unlawfully taken.” Police who responded to the Banfield home on Feb. 24, 2023, described an "appalling scene." Brendan Banfield and the family's au pair – 23-year-old Juliana Peres Magalhaes — made the 911 call, police said. Officers found Christine Banfield, 37, in an upstairs bedroom suffering from stab wounds to the upper body. They also discovered Joseph Ryan, 39, dead from gunshot wounds to the upper body.Banfield's wife was rushed to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead.Police said two firearms and a knife were recovered from the home.Magalhaes reportedly told investigators that she and Brendan Banfield had walked in on Ryan stabbing a naked Christine Banfield with a knife. The au pair said Brendan shot at the “intruder.” Investigators believe that the husband and nanny were lovers involved in a “sexual relationship” and devised a sordid scheme to take out the wife. The husband and the live-in au pair are accused of shooting Ryan, who had been "summoned to the couple’s million-dollar Herndon home through a sexual fetish online site," the New York Post reported.Prosecutors said Ryan was lured to the Banfield home by a profile on FetLife — which described itself as the "world's largest and most popular social network for the BDSM community, kink community, and fetish community."According to the Washington Post, Ryan went to the home for a planned rendezvous with a woman identified in a dating app as “Annastasia9.” The outlet noted that there is no evidence to suggest that Christine created the profile or knew about it. Authorities have not revealed who created the profile. Davis stated, "We know Brendan Banfield and Juliana Magalhaes, the family au pair, were involved in a romantic relationship at the time of the murders."Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Kelsey Gill has said that Magalhaes and Brendan began a romantic affair “several months” before the murders, based on photos of them that investigators found on the nanny’s cellphone. Magalhaes and Banfield went to a shooting range weeks before the murders, prosecutors said. Banfield bought a Glock from the range on Jan. 28, 2023, according to WTOP.Brendan and Magalhaes reportedly continued their relationship following the deaths of Ryan and Banfield's wife. Magalhaes was arrested in October 2023 for Ryan's murder.At the time of her arrest, the au pair allegedly had moved into the main bedroom of the Banfield home. Authorities said there was a framed picture of her and Brendan Banfield set on the nightstand, and her clothes were hung in the closet Christine Banfield once used.Magalhaes was charged with second-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. She was being detained at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center on no bond.“Early last year, a double murder devastated two families and shocked our entire community,” Commonwealth Attorney Descano declared during a press conference. “I will ensure that my office puts forward the strongest case possible at trial, and that we continue to seek justice for the victims and their families.”The Banfields have a 4-year-old daughter. Brendan Banfield is expected to be arraigned later this week.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!