CHICAGO —  Thousands of activists are expected to converge on Chicago this week for the Democratic National Convention, hoping to call attention to abortion rights, economic injustice and the war…

Kamala Harris finally answered a question from the media today and it went exactly as we thought it would:?Kamala finally took questions from the press.It went exactly as you would expect.It’s easy…

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At some point during the past two weeks, the Harris presidential campaign finally realized that the Vice President would be forced to address the most important issue of the election. Consequently, they cobbled together a speech and shoved Harris in front of the cameras last Friday so the voters could watch her read what her teleprompter plans to do about the economy and inflation. The final brick in the wall is a proposal for a $40 billion “innovation fund” to motivate cities to build more housing. And Harris said what it told her to say: “I will work to pass the first ever federal ban on price gauging on food.” Nor did she correct herself. She simply followed the teleprompter’s instructions to pause while her audience clapped like trained seals, then continued reading her lines. If this point seems frivolous, consider what it confirms about Harris’ grasp of the issues and her command of standard English. She has uttered so much gibberish since 2020 that it is quite plausible that she read a typo on the teleprompter without realizing that “gauging” and “gouging” have different definitions. This, in turn, suggests that she has no idea that a ban on price gouging enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is simply the latest iteration of the government price controls that have failed every time they have been used to control inflation. Kevin Hassett, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Trump administration, explains the economics and origin of this plan on Fox News: When the government starts setting food prices, that’s when countries start having famines because the people who produce food can’t afford to do so … The fact is that Harris’ proposal is modeled after a proposal by Elizabeth Warren that is so open-ended that the government could set the price for everything. And so if you think that this is just something that’s going take the far left people and make sure that they’re ready to vote for her. No. This is a serious proposal. In fact, while she’s out there talking about this price-gouging she’s also bragging about the price-setting that the government has already done in the prescription drug space. This is a reference to price controls imposed on pharmaceutical companies by the “Inflation Reduction Act” that has already created shortages for medications needed by seniors who suffer from diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, and atrial fibrillation. This ill-conceived policy has also caused premiums to increase for Medicare Part-D patients. This is hardly something to brag about, but neither Kamala Harris nor her teleprompter understand that price controls always cause shortages — every time they are imposed. Not some of the time. Not most of the time. Every time. They also cause hoarding (better stock up on toilet paper again). Worst of all, price controls always distort supply and demand creating higher inflation. The other proposals we heard on Friday would cause similar economic disruptions and make life more difficult for middle class Americans. The Harris teleprompter also proposed down-payment assistance for all first-time homebuyers up to $25,000. Any sane homeowner interested in selling will add $25,000 to his asking price. Moreover, the increased demand that will inevitably accompany this program will exacerbate the current shortage of homes available for sale. Meanwhile, it will increase the federal budget debt by a minimum of $100 million. This brings us to the teleprompter’s child tax credit proposal (CTC). According to data compiled by the nonprofit Tax Foundation, this is a very pricey proposal: Harris would restore the CTC expansion under the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which increased the credit from $2,000 under current law to $3,000 for older children and $3,600 for younger children for 2021 only. The ARPA expansion also removed work and income requirements to claim the credit, providing credit to qualifying individuals regardless of whether they had earned income … Tax Foundation estimates Harris’ CTC expansion would cost about $1.6 trillion over 10 years on a conventional basis. The expansion would shrink long-run economic output by about 0.1 percent by removing the credit’s phase-in. The final brick in the wall is a proposal for a $40 billion “innovation fund” to motivate cities to build more housing. This, like every other feature of the teleprompter’s “opportunity economy,” is thin on details. Yet it is clear that the machine doesn’t trust a housing market in which demand for homes stimulates more construction. Instead, the impetus for “innovation” must come from the primordial swamp from which all good things emanate. It doesn’t really matter if it actually produces affordable housing. The only thing that matters is how many Electoral College votes are certified on Jan. 6, 2025 and who moves into the White House two weeks later. The rest is just sound and fury from an idiot reading the teleprompter. READ MORE from David Catron: Harris Can Avoid Reporters But Not Economics For Kamala Harris ‘Weird’ Is the New ‘Deplorable’ The post The Harris Teleprompter Is Economically Illiterate appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

It’s too late to save Hollywood. The men who built it and guided cinema through the entire twentieth century foolishly gave the reigns to a spoiled, weak, ideologically brainwashed generation in the twenty-first. Which became easy prey for the coven of feminist witches that despoiled the motion picture art. The whole industry is committed to going down with the Message — that anything men can do, women can do better. Like everything they touch and could never create, these misandrous hags left the screen trade an ugly, shrieking, haunted house. But to ensure victory, they had to corrupt the first name in traditionalist family fare, Walt Disney, into a perverse grotesquery, devoid of all beauty, innocence, and child appeal. (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: The Sun Sets on Britain) Last year, I was one of many conservative journalists who mocked the woke live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves then in production. Walt Disney’s risky first feature film — an animated tour de force — made his little studio the top player in wholesome entertainment. The classic film enchanted little girls for almost 90 years by beautifully capturing their desire for companionable fantasy — talking animal friends; beauty — “the fairest of them all”; premarital romance — Prince Charming; and maternal responsibility — the seven dwarves. The remake, Snow White, dispensed with all these eternal virtues, initially including the other titular characters. Intimidated by little person actor Peter Dinklage — who benefitted careerwise from his diminutive height (Game of Thrones, Avengers: Infinity War) before disparaging midget casting post him — Snow White producers disemployed seven dwarf actors to favor a ridiculous septet of mostly minority normal-size performers. Photos of the group of “magical beings” cavorting through the English countryside provoked international derision, including mine. Then came the infamous interview with obnoxiously smug starlet Rachel Zegler trashing the original film and the inspirational fairy tale for their non-woke dynamic. “She’s not going to be saved by the Prince,” Zegler insisted. “And she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be.” These remarks and dumber ones by Zegler offended generations of young girls, their mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers who loved the movie and dreamt about true love, and that one day their Prince would come, and for many of them, he did or will. Fearing financial disaster and, worse, audience ridicule, panicked Disney operatives pulled the picture from its 2024 slot and went back to the production board for a 2025 release. For one year, nary a peep came out of Zegler other than humble high praise for the original movie. “It’s like a monumental moment in film history,” she gushed. “It was like the first feature-length cartoon movie, to the point that it won an honorary Oscar and all these amazing things that happened for that film.” Unfortunately for all concerned, a trailer showing the readjustments on Snow White temporarily escaped the Mouse House. The good news is that there are once again dwarves. The bad news is that they’re horrible CGI figures, ominous looking and moving. But the worst news is that Zegler’s Snow White is every bit the insufferable boss girl she warned, er, bragged about in the first interview. In both the 1937 film and the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Snow White shows her gratitude to the dwarves for their hospitality and protection by cooking and cleaning their home. This reasonable arrangement clearly stuck in the craw of Greta Gerwig (Barbie) and the other feminist writers. Their Snow White don’t need no protection from no patriarchal little men. So, in a total bastardization — or rather bitch-idization — of the lovely Frank Churchill-Larry Morey song for the original movie, Whistle While You Work, Snow puts her already hardworking hosts to do the housecleaning as well. “Now you wash the dishes, and you tidy up the room,” she commands them. “You clean those cobwebs, and you use the broom.” But she rewards them by singing the famous tune with a modern slavedriver variation. Whistle while you work … And cheerfully together we can tidy up the place. So hype a merry tune. It won’t take long if there’s a song to help you set the pace. Now you sweep the floor … Of course, in Greta World, the dwarves accept their new subservience and mistress like any heterosexual white man remaining at Disney. In the real Grimm world, they’d be kicking Snow White out under the Huntsman’s axe. And Prince Charming would just ride by rather than rescue such an ungrateful male-bashing brat. He’ll find a new Princess Charming who appreciates a dashing rich hero. (READ MORE: The Star Trek Election III: Men vs. Women) But it won’t be in any Hollywoke movie. The whole industry is committed to going down with the Message — that anything men can do, women can do better. Last weekend, the $115-million sci-fi action flick Borderlands stunk up theaters grossing less than $14 million in two weeks. The movie stars the inescapable Cate Blanchett, now 55 years old, embarrassing herself firing two guns like Snake Plissken at bad CGI targets. Any civilian would have known that no man or woman on planet Earth wanted to see that piece of feminist crap. Yet Lionsgate signed over the ridiculous check for it, and doubtless the sequel that will never get made. Real men could save Hollywood from the witches destroying it. But why should they bother. They can just build a new one with good traditional stories about manly heroes and feminine women. And they’ll live happily ever after. Aethon Books, LLC/The American Spectator Where have all the cool men, hot women, and non-woke storytelling gone? My timely new political thriller novel, The Washington Trail, about two DC private eyes, a femme-fatale, and a plot to end America in a volatile election year. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever exciting mysteries are sold. The post Snow White and the Witches of Hollywoke appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Like the lamest of lame ducks, President Biden is still quacking about the unlikely cease-fire he’s been trying to engineer in the Hamas-Israel war in the Gaza Strip. In his latest warning, Biden said that “no-one in the region should take actions to undermine this process.” But no one — not Hamas, not Israel or Hamas’s sponsor, Iran — is listening to Biden. If Iran again launches great numbers of missiles and drones … Israel may well target the ayatollahs themselves. Biden sent Secretary of State Tony Blinken to the Middle East again to try for the long-delayed cease fire. No one is going to listen to Blinken either. Neither side — Israel on one hand and Iran and Hamas on the other — is interested in a cease fire at this point. The August 7 anointment of Yayah Sinwar as the sole leader of Hamas meant that Iranian control of Hamas will be complete as long as Sinwar is alive. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Harris and Walz Are the Radicals) Which may not be much longer. Almost daily, since the Israelis managed to kill both Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas and Fuad Shakur, one of the leaders of Hizballah, the Israelis have managed to kill another top terrorist. On Saturday, the Israelis did away with Hussein Kassab, another top Hizballah commander. Israel said it was the 412th such killing of an Hizballah operative since the Hamas attack on Israel of October 7. According to my friends at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), on August 12 Hizballah Executive Council Deputy Chairman Sheikh Ali Damoush gave a speech at a memorial to dead Hizballah fighters. In it, he said, “By simply threatening to respond, Hizballah has put the Zionists in a state of exhaustion, paralysis, fear, panic and terror, and everyone is now living on their nerves inside the entity, and some of them are living on tranquilizers.” He said it was “’A serious psychological blow to Israel,’ in the words of some Israeli politicians.” This is what psychiatrists call “projection.” In rough terms it means accusing the other side of what you’re doing yourself. On July 20, Israeli air forces struck the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, essentially leaving the port facilities burning. It will take about a year to rebuild them. Israel struck back after a Yemeni drone killed one Israeli in Tel Aviv. The Hodeidah strike proved that Israeli air forces have the capability to strike at long distances, equal to the distance from their bases in Israel to Tehran. Add that to the fact that Russia is delivering highly advanced S-400 anti-aircraft/anti-missile systems to Iran. And, as a MEMRI source told me, Israel is penetrating Syrian air defenses — which have the same systems — regularly, presumably with stealthy American-built F-35s. Israel can, as it proved by the assassination of Haniyeh, operate successfully in Tehran. The fact that Israeli air forces can reach Tehran and operate successfully against targets at that range, means that the ayatollahs are themselves in danger. (Israeli air forces can probably also reach Qom, the other city in Iran in which the ayatollahs sometimes reside.) Iran’s April strike against Israel failed when almost all of its three hundred drones and missiles were shot down by Israeli, US, Jordanian, and UK forces. If Iran again launches great numbers of missiles and drones — in addition to those launched by Hizballah in a coordinated strike — Israel may well target the ayatollahs themselves and others in the Iranian leadership. The ayatollahs are quite brave in risking others’ lives. For themselves, not so much. The fact that Iran hasn’t yet struck directly with its own weapons or those of its northern proxy, Hizballah, means that Iran is not ready for a total war with Israel. That fact proves that Israel is deterring Iran for the moment, not permanently. Iran and Nuclear Weapons Iran is on the precipice of developing nuclear weapons. A July report by the Director of National Intelligence said that Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.” That report didn’t include its standard language that, Iran “isn’t currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.” In truth, no one really knows how close Iran is to developing and deploying nuclear weapons. It may already have them, either developed at home or purchased from North Korea. Some reports say that Iran may announce its first deployable nuclear weapons this fall. Biden said, along with previous U.S. presidents, that Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons but he has done precisely nothing to ensure that they cannot. Iran is much more respectful of Israeli Prime Mister Netanyahu than it is of Biden. The ayatollahs know that Netanyahu will strike first against any nuclear weapons capability that it could announce. If Iran struck Israel with any nuclear weapon it would trigger an all-out war that neither the ayatollahs’ regime nor, perhaps, the Netanyahu government or Israel itself would survive. (READ MORE: Iran’s Khamenei Threatens Israel … and the West) Russia is the only power that has urged Iran to restrain itself in attacking Israel after the assassination of Haniyeh. Former Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu — still a Putin confidante even after his demotion — delivered that message on August 5. The fact that Biden hasn’t urged restraint is irrelevant to how the war between Iran and Israel is conducted. The quietude of the Iran-Israel war is no source of comfort. Iran or Hizballah or both will strike Israel again when they believe the time is ripe. How large the resulting war will be is entirely up to Iran. The post Is Israel Deterring Iran? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The Democratic National Convention kicks off Aug. 19, 2024, in Chicago. Here is the party’s platform. Democratic National Convention Land Acknowledgement We acknowledge we operate on stolen land originally belonging to Native Americans. We therefore thank the Chicago Blackhawks for the use of the United Center. Preamble The United States of America is an idea — a terrible one that needs rethinking to ensure freedom. The Democrat Party’s 2024 theme of “Freedom (within reason)” seeks to limit our fellow Americans’ thoughts and actions to those meeting our approval. Only then can we be free. Fracking The Democrat Party supports fracking during even-numbered years, and 2024 is no exception. Even though we expect our candidates to promote its national ban and the criminal prosecutions of its practitioners during odd years, we must stand behind this abominable industry leading up to a presidential election to convince gullible voters we have their best interests in mind. Private Health Insurance See “Fracking” and substitute “Private Health Insurance” for “Fracking.” Education Every kindergartner must begin his/her/their public education by going to the school library and checking out any book depicting sadomasochistic bondage. Gender studies should overtake unnecessary subjects like English, mathematics, science, and history (unless the United States is depicted as an evil colonialist patriarchy). Tim Walz will spearhead a nationwide initiative to install tampon dispensers in every public school’s boy’s bathroom. Your impressionable and confused children are our children, and our teachers have every right to keep them from you if you don’t affirm whatever it is they believe they are on a given day. Firearms Gun violence is destroying America’s youth. Poke your head outside of the United Center toward the South Side and you’ll hear nonstop gunfire because of Republicans. Therefore, we must ban assault weapons even though nobody in our party can define what they are — only that they’re scary-looking, and that Walz carried one when he single-handedly captured Saddam Hussein in Iraq. And when this ban fails, and somebody commits mass murder with a handgun, we will ban them, too. We Democrats refuse to have the blood of innocent children on our hands. Abortion We support abortion for any reason whatsoever before and after birth. If the umbilical cord is attached, that baby is fair game for Planned Parenthood, whose business model took a pummeling in 2022, and they’ve got to make up for lost income. Not only will we reverse the incoherent, untethered-to-the-Constitution Dobbs decision, but we will also work with our friends in China to explore a forced abortion policy. You never know when it might come in handy. Immigration A secure national border ensures a safe, effective, and cohesive society. That’s why we’re leaving the southern border wide open. We don’t care who crosses. ISIS? Human traffickers? Young men of military age from the Middle East and China? Come on in! The more the merrier. And, yes, some Americans will be killed by illegal border crossers — the people who our party cares about most. Just ask Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. But we can minimize these deaths by boiling them down to statistics and moving on to the next news cycle with the help of our friends in the media. After all, we care. Democrats and Israel (The following statement will be delivered during the convention by the widow of recently assassinated Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh.) We support Palestine’s right to defend itself against Israel’s constant overreactions to Hamas massacres of innocent Jews, while also stating without Kamala Harris cackling that we believe Israel is one of our most trusted allies. A two-state solution between Israel and an entity that seeks to obliterate it is the only path to peace. This is seriously what we Democrats believe. Only we ask young, keffiyeh-wearing Democrats not to make their beliefs known on college campuses before November 5 because it makes it look like we’re supported by lunatics. Elections To ensure free and fair elections, we cannot ask citizens to prove they are eligible to vote by displaying any form of identification. This would disproportionally impact people of color, and we Democrats view them as helpless children who are incapable of procuring the necessary documentation for anything. The last thing our voters need is to be treated like dignified, functional adults. They are victims and rightfully so. It’s not difficult to obtain a state-issued identification card, but our platform mandates we equate it to finding an original draft of the Bill of Rights. Truth and the Democrat Party Democrats never lie. Not over Joe Biden’s infirmity, which wasn’t on display during the entirety of his presidency. Not over border crossings, the video footage of which you should ignore. Not over grocery prices, which George Clooney can afford. Not over justice, which is dispensed impartially despite one’s political affiliation. (Ignore Kamala’s cackling please.) We affirm Harris and Walz will be the most truthful administration in history — so long as no questions are asked. So far, so good. READ MORE from Matt Manochio: Don’t Mock the Los Angeles Times’ Loss It’s Good That Some Truth Is Suppressed   The post A Draft of the Democrat Party Platform appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age By Frank H. McCourt, Jr. & Michael J. Casey (Crown, 224 pages, $18) For many Americans, it is almost impossible to imagine a world without the internet. It’s even harder to grasp the notion that the digital world we inherited is dangerous, yet changeable. Currently, the five largest internet companies have a market valuation larger than the GDP of any country except the U.S. and China. The digital barons of Big Tech have more information and control over our lives than any other group ever has before in human history. The question is no longer whether we can reclaim our digital sovereignty, but whether we have the courage to demand it. In their groundbreaking book, Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age, Frank H. McCourt, Jr., and Michael J. Casey present their bold plan to recreate the internet so it reflects and upholds America’s most sacred values: dignity, property, privacy, free speech, and self-governance. McCourt is a billionaire businessman and philanthropist who founded and contributed more than $500 million to the Project Liberty Institute, the organization seeking to implement the plan outlined in the book. His co-author, Casey, is currently a chief content officer at CoinDesk and brings 18 years of experience in journalism at Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal. The authors are inspired by historic calls to action such as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Readers will find that Project Liberty presents a bold and ambitious set of ideas to fundamentally reimagine our lives in the digital age. In short, Casey and McCourt aim to overhaul the internet in order to offer an alternative rooted in the principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. (READ MORE from Colin Agostisi: Biden Proposes Reforms to Overhaul the Supreme Court) Our personal data has become Big Tech’s most valuable asset. The authors believe Big Tech uses its monopoly over this data to dominate the market and force other businesses to fall in line, making the internet anti-competitive and ultimately anti-capitalist. In this era of “digital feudalism,” Big Tech is violating our privacy, unjustly stealing our personal data, and selling it to the highest bidder. When exposing the injustice of the current internet, the authors articulate a compelling moral and legal argument: digital data is an extension of our personhood. They explain how the “transformative new technology has given rise to a new class of rights” that are “hidden in plain sight,” yet violated by Big Tech. Our Digital World and DSNP At the beginning of Project Liberty, McCourt assembled a group of software engineers, asking them to rebuild the internet from scratch to protect our digital rights. They responded by creating the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP) in July 2021. DSNP is an alternative form of internet that establishes a new set of rules for how social networks can work. Drawing a parallel to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which gave users ownership of their phone numbers, the authors explain that DSNP would similarly grant users exclusive ownership of their personal data. Just as we can take our phone number with us when switching between different phone companies, DSNP would allow our data to be compatible and portable across all platforms and apps that operate on this new internet. Private companies will govern their platforms, but users get to choose which data, if any, they share with any company on this new internet. As a result, individuals or groups of users could leverage their data as a commodity, receiving compensation from organizations for its use. The authors believe DSNP will incentivize universally beneficial policies by ensuring companies who mismanage their platforms risk losing access to our data, their most valuable commodity. The DSNP will bring us into “a new era of self-governance for a human-centric internet,” they assert. DSNP is already in use for certain apps and websites, but it is still in early stages of development. There are ongoing efforts to refine the technology and prepare it for mainstream use. The authors express deep skepticism about the government’s ability to dismantle Big Tech, citing corruption, division, and intellectual shortcomings. They therefore believe that private innovation will be the best avenue for transforming the internet. McCourt and Casey maintain that government involvement will also be necessary, such as for offering a legal enforcement mechanism to protect our digital property. Reimagining Our Digital World This book dares to radically reimagine the digital world, but its practicality and the shrinking window for change are major concerns. The last chapter underscores the urgency of Project Liberty, warning that the development of generative AI could strengthen Big Tech’s grip on big data, making it near impossible to transition to another model of the internet. The authors also admit “the value of any social network comes from the size of its user base,” yet they gloss over the challenge of convincing billions to switch to a new platform. (READ MORE: Flirting With a Foreigner) Despite its potential shortcomings, this book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of our digital society. If Project Liberty can prepare DSNP for widespread use and convince companies and users to embrace this new internet, it will permanently reshape our world for the better. The question is no longer whether we can reclaim our digital sovereignty, but whether we have the courage to demand it. Project Liberty is not merely a plan; it is a manifesto for a digital revolution — one that challenges us to reconsider what the internet can and should be. Are we ready to seize it? The post Rescue Us From Our Digital Overlords appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

This is what Israel does to JOURNALISTS who are trying to report the truth about the bombing of civilian residential buildings. Shot in the back by a sniper. https://t.co/ridflTh5P4 — HealthRanger (@HealthRanger) August 19, 2024