The Trump-Harris debate — with 67 million viewers, the most watched in 16 years — was a 3-on-1 travesty. Megyn Kelly’s take (4:34) on the moderators shows extreme moderator anti-Republican bias, so ingrained that drastic measures must be taken. There are preliminary indications that Trump may have picked up undecided voter support, but even if so, reform is urgently needed. There are fixes at hand, but getting the Democrats to agree requires that Trump wins the election, as they benefit from today’s bias. Moderators as Neutral Time-Keepers (1) candidates and their campaign staffs prepare questions for the opposing candidate(s); (2) each side decides which topics to raise; (3) questions are limited to 30 seconds, to prevent candidates from making speeches disguised as questions; (4) candidates fact-check each other; (5) moderators are time-keepers only, cutting off mics when each time segment expires; (6) keep the new practice of no in-studio audiences. [T]he performance of the ABC moderators was the worst he’d seen in the 33 debates he’d run as CPD co-chair. My views come primarily from my years of watching debates — until after the first presidential debate in 2016, when I soured on watching live contests. At age 13, I watched the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates. One lesson learned was that appearances do matter: JFK was movie-star handsome, well-dressed — he was told that light blue shirt and makeup would work well with he black-and-white TVs of the time — and exuded charisma and charm.  Alas for Nixon, he was on the wrong side of all three; his post-shaving five-o’clock shadow showed up by lunchtime. Viewers gave JFK the edge, while radio listeners thought Nixon won. (READ MORE from John Wohlstetter: Will 2024 Bring Doom for the Filibuster and the Court?) There were no debates in 1964, 1968, and 1972. In 1968, a very close election, the outcome might have been different had the charismatic RFK, tragically assassinated and not saddled with Vietnam, been the Democratic candidate; RFK could well have swayed enough voters. Debates might have had to include George Wallace, whose 10 million voters delivered five states and 46 electoral votes in the still solidly Democratic South. Epic landslides made debates irrelevant in 1964 and 1972. Came 1976, and debates were revived. The GOP tickets introduced a new feature that factored in some debates: the catastrophic gaffe. In the vice-presidential debate, Senator Dole, a genuine war hero, crippled while trying to help a comrade, called the two world wars, plus the Korean and Vietnam conflicts “Democrat wars” (0:46) — adding that the total killed and wounded came to 1.6 million, equal to the population of Detroit. President Ford, in one of his debates with Jimmy Carter, said in response to stellar NY Times foreign correspondent Max Frankel, asking about Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe, that their populations did not see themselves dominated by the Soviets; given a change to retract, Ford repeated his view. He was belatedly vindicated on November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. In 1980 the race was roughly dead even going into the final week. President Carter and Reagan met alone that night (Independent John Anderson had participated in the first debate, a month earlier). Reagan closed by asking voters: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” He cited Carter’s stagflation economy, and serial retreat abroad, The race margin held through the workweek, but over Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, the numbers tipped decisively to Reagan, who won the election on the issues foremost in voters’ minds. In 1984, Reagan won in a monster landslide. His debate with Carter’s former vice president, Walter Mondale, decided little. Reagan had faded at the end of the first debate. This led a journalist to ask Reagan, who was to turn 73 shortly after Inauguration Day 1985, if his age should be an issue. Reagan answered (0:45), looking at Mondale, then 56, that he promised not to use his opponent’s “youth and inexperience” against him. The audience roared, and Mondale, always a good sport, laughed. In 1988, Bush handily defeated a weak Democrat, former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. The year’s noteworthy debate moment came when vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen, who had served in the Congress Senate with JFK, pounced (0:49) on Dan Quayle’s citing having had as much experience in Congress as did JFK when he ran for president. To which Bentsen delivered a zinger: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. And senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy!” The audience, packed with Democrats, erupted. In the next five quadrennial debates, only one produced a truly noteworthy moment. The 1992 debates produced no fireworks, and were a veritable three-ring circus. In 1996, 2004, and 2008, ditto. But 2000 produced one extraordinary episode, that may well have cost then-vice president Al Gore the White House, given the razor-thin final margin. (Officially, Bush 43 won Florida, and the Electoral College majority, by only 537 votes in a protracted recount.) In one of the debates, Gore wandered over to Bush, physically invading his personal space (0:17) on stage, a major breach of debate etiquette. In 2012 there was a new element introduced: moderator fact-checking. CNN moderator Candy Crowley fact-checked Mitt Romney on what Obama said about the murder by Arab terrorists of three special ops defenders guarding our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where then-U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stephens, also perished. Crowley’s fact-check was, alas, not fully factual. In the event, Obama was handily re-elected. In 2016, I watched the first debate only, and was disgusted as the moderator, NBC’s Lester Holt, interceded on Hillary’s behalf after her dismal showing in the first 30 minutes. That did it for me and suffering through debates, praying that my preferred candidate wouldn’t make a fatal gaffe. (READ MORE: 25th Amendment: Acting President Is Not President) In 2020, it is generally conceded that Trump’s constant interrupting of Joe Biden cost him the win. Lest Trump do better a second time, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) used Trump’s recent recovery from Covid as an excuse to deny him a second debate. As if the candidates could not have been in separate booths, socially distant. The GOP co-chair of the CPD called (4:01) the performance of the ABC moderators the worst he’d ever seen in the 33 debates he’d run as CPD co-chair, from 1988 through 2020. (In 2024, Biden rejected CPD debate sponsorship.) True, no amount of reform can nullify advantages of looks, charm, charisma. And sheer luck can play a role. But lots can — and should — be done to minimize bias and caprice. The voters — for whose benefit political debates are presumably aired — deserve maximum transparency. Bottom Line An earlier generation of moderators tried to be fair: Their biases — impossible for anyone to completely eliminate — never decided a debate. Today’s generation of pseudo-journalists that moderate political debates are overwhelmingly — about 90 percent — ardently pro-Democrat. Reforming debate rules would enable voters to better appraise candidates. John C. Wohlstetter is the author of Presidential Succession: Constitution, Congress and National Security (Gold Institute Press, 2024) The post Fixing Presidential Debates: Lose the Moderators appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

MAHA Pushback Now that RFK, Jr. has teamed up with Trump to make Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) the new, if slightly less significant national slogan, the left will try to undermine the one thing that seems to unite both sides of the aisle — health. This alliance is more of a threat to the Democratic ticket than either candidate was alone and as sure as the sun rises, the Democrat party and the media will do everything it can to discredit the Trump—Kennedy stance against chronic disease. But demonizing meat and animal products is not the answer. Take, for example, Time’s August 27 story with the headline, “What If Ultra-Processed Foods Aren’t as Bad as You Think?” The article goes through the same type of mental gyrations I wrote about in a previous piece, splitting hairs over the definition of processed food arguing, for example, that a gummy bear and a can of beans are technically both processed. So how could a consumer possibly discern which would be the more nutritious choice? The backlash on social media channels was so fierce that the title of the article was updated the next day to read “Why One Dietitian is Speaking Up for ‘Ultra-Processed’ Foods.” The processed food industry is comprised not only of products common sense tells us are not healthy, such as Doritos, sugary soft drinks, and Snickers bars, but also a slew of vegan products that are marketed as healthy, such as non-dairy alternatives to milk, cheese and yogurt, beefless burgers, and dairy free ice cream. Vegan food options are often filled with artificial ingredients and highly processed seed oils, things Kennedy and his allies, such as Dr. Casey Means, have marked as contributors to chronic disease. A strictly animal free diet also supports the lie that cow farts will destroy the planet, promoting a rationale for Democrats to further their Green New Deal initiatives. This includes increased regulation that makes survival for independent farmers, in particular, even more tenuous. MAHA Requires Meat Alternately, Kennedy’s vision of saving the environment and simultaneously cleaning up people’s palates involves renewing the soil, which, through regenerative agriculture, must involve cows. Farm waste is recycled into the land and carbon sequestered for soil health. Several studies find that with appropriate regenerative crop and grazing management, ruminants not only reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions but also facilitate the provision of essential ecosystem services, increase soil carbon sequestration, and reduce environmental damage. Still, the left will continue to insist that all virtuous, caring people must stop eating meat. Mainstream media will continue to prime the pump to thwart any food policies that prevent the Green New Deal from achieving its end goal — complete and total government control over the means of production, or as many like to call it, socialism. Beans, Beans Are Good For … Not Much An opinion essay in the New York Times last month entitled “How to Make a Nation of Meat Eaters Crave the Humble Bean” offers another example of the type of pushback we can expect against Kennedy and Trump’s efforts to stop yet another avenue of anti-democratic control. The essay’s author, Bee Wilson, doesn’t exactly offer a compelling case for beans nutritional superiority or its environmental benefits. She only says that beans, “along with peas, lentils, and other legumes, are everything meat is not in sustainability terms.” Never mind that many studies conclude that one of the best food categories to decrease incidents of malnutrition is animal-based products. Or that the protein from all beans and legumes are considered “incomplete proteins” because they lack one or more of the nine essential amino acids found in animal-based protein that can only be taken in through food. That’s not to say they are nutritionally useless. But without mixing beans or legumes with another grain that contains one of its missing amino acids, you’ll not get the full benefit of the building blocks of muscle, skin, organs, and other tissues. Furthermore, a 2016 study found that diets that focus on reducing carbon are often less healthy than their carbon emitting counterparts. The key to human and planetary health is improving the sustainability of food while ensuring adequate nutritional needs for all. Bottom line: beans do not cut it. Bean Eaters Are Not Born – They’re Created What’s more illuminating is Ms. Wilson’s progressive view of human nature. She states that “no one is born loving hot dogs or disliking broccoli and Brazil nuts; our food preferences are learned.” Tell that to a mother trying to feed broccoli to her two-year-old. Like most loyal lefties, Wilson’s hypothesis assumes that humans are only a byproduct of learned behavior. There is no nature, only nurture. Everything — including one’s gender — is determined through socialization. It reminds me of Simone de Beauvoir’s declaration: “one is not born a woman, but becomes one.” We learn arithmetic, but 2+2 still equals 4. Unless, I suppose, you ask a progressive. They might try to tell you it equals seven and even do a pretty good job of convincing you it’s true. Just like a person with XY chromosomes can be a woman. As someone who doesn’t eat that much red meat, but is far from a vegetarian or vegan, I enjoy bean dishes as much as the next tree hugging hippie. I’ll happily plow through some homemade hummus. There’s nothing quite like a side of sauteed spinach and white beans with loads of garlic and, as the author comments, “crispy sage.” But I refuse to equate, as the author does, mashed potatoes to this plate of gaseous turmoil. Plus, she invalidates her own argument by suggesting that beans should replace potatoes, a vegetable, and not a bloody, juicy honking piece of red meat. Vegetables, beans, and legumes can be a wonderful supplement to any health diet. But for most, they should not be the sole source of sustenance. Talk about carbon emissions. You’ll Eat The Food We Prefer! Ms. Wilson also states, “To start seeing beans as something to crave, you need to imagine them as desirable.” In other words, we will shame and guilt you into eating beans. Just like Covid vaccinations. She also claims that “once little-known foods, from pesto to tofu and gochujang, have been welcomed gratefully onto American tables in recent decades.” I would contest the fact that tofu has been “welcomed gratefully” onto American tables. Maybe in neighborhoods like Brooklyn and in select microcosms of states west of Nevada, but for the most part, people still equate eating tofu with ingesting cardboard. Progressives make for very poor historians. They conveniently ignore the lessons of Stalin, Hitler, and Zedong. Forced change — including Kamala’s federal ban on so-called “price gouging” on food — cause nothing but misery and suffering and is almost always based on false logic and a desire for power. Food and the environment can be used as a tools of control, something Trump and now Kennedy are trying to prevent. Could Americans do with less McDonald’s and more homemade meals around the family dinner table? Of course. But demonizing meat and animal products is not the answer. Educating people on proper nutrition and weaning them off of addictive carbohydrate heavy diets would go a long way in ensuring the health of both humans and the planet to achieve MAHA’s goals. You can’t do that without meat and the farmers who provide it. READ MORE from Jennifer Galardi: Can America Afford To Be Healthy Again? The Democrat Party is a Cult   The post Food Fight: Competing Visions for America’s Health appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Amjad Taha on “X” h/t Nita Who is Amjad Taha? British-Bahraini social media influencer Amjad Taha, a journalist and political commentator on Arab affairs, is known for promoting normalization between Arab countries and Israel.   

Amanpour & Co. covered Israel’s bravura anti-terrorist tactic of rerigging and then mass-detonating communication gear (pages and walkie-talkies) used by the Iran-based terrorist group Hezbollah, killing and maiming thousands of terrorists. Israel was acting in response to Hezbollah firing rockets from its base in Lebanon since Hamas carried out its invasion and civilian rape and massacre October 7. But Christiane Amanpour and her CNN reporter in the field petulantly framed the humiliating attack on Hezbollah’s operatives from the terrorist group’s perspective, with a particular focus on the Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s leader since 1992, Friday morning on PBS: Amanpour: And we begin in Lebanon, where the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, has condemned the back-to-back attacks targeting the group's pagers and walkie-talkie communication system. In a speech, he said that all the red lines had been crossed. And he called the explosions massacres. They killed dozens and injured thousands of people. He also warned Israel that Hezbollah's forces on the border won't stop until the war in Gaza ends…. Amanpour talked to CNN reporter Ben Wedeman in Beirut, who chided Israel’s tactics which so expertly targeted terrorists. Ben Wedeman, CNN Senior International Correspondent: They coincided with Nasrallah's speech. And, you know, first there was that flyover where I was live and heard a roar and saw these Israeli jets flying right overhead, dropping flares, heat-deflecting flares over the middle of Beirut. That's an obvious message, not a very subtle one. Sort of adding insult to injury after those two days of pager and walkie-talkie blasts. And then, just about 20 minutes after that, again, two Israeli planes flying over Beirut, twice breaking the sound barrier. It's not the first time that such events have coincided with Nasrallah's speech, but a very unsubtle message from the Israelis that this is what we can do. We can fly our warplanes right over where Hezbollah is headquartered in the southern suburbs of Beirut and not just drop flares, but drop much more. And it comes at a time, of course, of unprecedented tension. And I think over the last seven visits to Lebanon since this war began in Gaza, I think this is perhaps the most tense time of all. This is an escalation, the likes of which we haven't yet seen…. Wedeman seemed concerned that the light had gone out of Nasrallah’s eyes, that the man “famous for his sense of humor” (anti-Semitic jokes?) was now worried and tired. Wedeman: ….Hezbollah has always had a reputation as being a very tightly controlled organization, very disciplined, very able to sort of keep its secrets. And it prided itself that it has not been infiltrated, for instance, like Fatah, the Palestinian faction that operated in Gaza and is still in the West Bank. That there aren't a lot of traitors to Hezbollah among its ranks. Now, there are serious questions about how good they actually are at maintaining internal security. So, yes, Nasrallah was not his usual sort of, despite all events, somewhat jovial self. He's famous for his sense of humor. He often chuckles during his speech. This time he looked tired and he looked very concerned. Christiane. Amanpour is notoriously anti-Israel, and Wedeman also has a history of finding the sympathetic side of anti-Israeli terrorist groups in the region like Hamas and Hezbollah. Not even a week after the October 6 massacre of Israeli civilians, he lamented, “Israel's wrath is now unleashed upon Gaza…. In this cramped strip of land along the Mediterranean, 2 million Palestinians are now in the crosshairs of an enemy bent on revenge for Hamas' surprise attack...." (Amanpour & Co. airs on tax-funded PBS after first airing on CNN International.) A transcript is available, click “Expand.” Amanpour & Co. 9/20/24 1:32:20 a.m. (ET) AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. And we begin in Lebanon, where the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, has condemned the back-to-back attacks targeting the group's pagers and walkie- talkie communication system. In a speech, he said that all the red lines had been crossed. And he called the explosions massacres. They killed dozens and injured thousands of people. He also warned Israel that Hezbollah's forces on the border won't stop until the war in Gaza ends. At the same time, Israeli fighter jets screamed over the capital, Beirut, appearing to drop flares. And the IDF said it is striking targets in Lebanon. And all of this is raising concerns about an all-out war and raising those concerns to a new level, after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's warning yesterday that a new phase of this conflict is beginning. So, let's get the latest from Beirut now with Ben Wedeman. Ben, you've been, you know, covering this nonstop. What has been the highest point of tension today? What were those flights over Beirut, the capital, doing? BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, they coincided with Nasrallah's speech. And, you know, first there was that flyover where I was live and heard a roar and saw these Israeli jets flying right overhead, dropping flares, heat deflecting flares over the middle of Beirut. That's an obvious message, not a very subtle one. Sort of adding insult to injury after those two days of pager and walkie-talkie blasts. And then, just about 20 minutes after that, again, two Israeli planes flying over Beirut, twice breaking the sound barrier. It's not the first time that such events have coincided with Nasrallah's speech, but a very unsubtle message from the Israelis that this is what we can do. We can fly our warplanes right over where Hezbollah is headquartered in the southern suburbs of Beirut and not just drop flares, but drop much more. And it comes at a time, of course, of unprecedented tension. And I think over the last seven visits to Lebanon since this war began in Gaza, I think this is perhaps the most tense time of all. This is an escalation, the likes of which we haven't yet seen. Now, what was interesting in Nasrallah's speech, Christiane, is that he did concede that these pager and walkie-talkie blasts were an unprecedented major blow in terms of personnel as well as the Hezbollah's security, but he insisted that the group will continue to support Gaza in the form of firing upon targets within Israel. And he said the only way that they will stop, regardless of what Israel does, is when Israel stops its war in Gaza. Christiane. AMANPOUR: So, Ben, you know, you've described the speech and he obviously did what he was expecting to do and said there'll be retaliation. But you also said he looked a bit tired. And I wonder whether your sources are telling you what they think might happen next. WEDEMAN: No, we don't. And certainly, he was not very emphatic about Hezbollah's retaliation for this week's blast in Lebanon. Back in late July and early August, in the aftermath of the assassination of Fuad Shukr, that senior Hezbollah military commander, he was very emphatic that revenge is coming. There's no question about it. He put it in very definitive terms. This time he said there will be an accounting, but we will decide when and where that will happen. So, he looked tired. We know that Hezbollah has been rattled as a result of this week's events, that they are feeling perhaps more insecure and more vulnerable than they have in quite some time. You know, Hezbollah has always had a reputation as being a very tightly controlled organization, very disciplined, very able to sort of keep its secrets. And it prided itself that it has not been infiltrated, for instance, like Fatah, the Palestinian faction that operated in Gaza and is still in the West Bank. That there aren't a lot of traitors to Hezbollah among its ranks. Now, there are serious questions about how good they actually are at maintaining internal security. So, yes, Nasrallah was not his usual sort of, despite all events, somewhat jovial self. He's famous for his sense of humor. He often chuckles during his speech. This time he looked tired and he looked very concerned. Christiane. AMANPOUR: Well, it certainly is a really important time. Thank you. Thank you for being there and giving us that report.

Influencer Says Watching Tim Walz Pretend to Work on His Truck is Like Watching the Olympics