Did Kamala Harris’s husband pay his nanny to raise his children but give up one of her own? The evidence presented through various stories on his affair with his children’s teacher who moonlighted as their caregiver certainly raises this possibility. Though with confidentiality agreements and privacy concerns, we may never know exactly what happened other than the almost cliched truth of a middle-aged man cheating on his wife with the nanny. This should at least make Democrats reconsider whether “the war on women” amounts to a neatly partisan conflict. The affair definitely cost the other woman her nannying gig and allegedly cost her the teaching position at the Willows, a posh elementary school in Culver City, California, that the Emhoff children, then 15 and 10, attended. Doug Emhoff, for his part, lost his marriage over the fling. He reportedly lost a chunk of money in a financial settlement with his affair partner, too. Despite her working as a teacher’s assistant when she first encountered the Emhoffs, she now lives on a waterfront home in the Hamptons. “During my first marriage,” Doug Emhoff admitted, “Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions.” It sounds as though his employee went through some tough times as well. She lost her teaching gig and paid position with the family, despite tackling duties that went beyond any listed in the job description. She allegedly gave up her own child. And now, all these years later, a woman living a private life has been conscripted into becoming a public figure based on her worst moments and choices. As she told The Daily Mail, “I’m kind of freaked out now.” The temptation to dismiss the 15-year-old damage to numerous lives as old news fades when one recalls (how can one forget?) the incessant and at times picayune way that Democrats have amplified Donald Trump’s treatment, real and imagined, of the fairer sex. This includes hot-mic recordings of his claims of how women can behave toward celebrities and how celebrities can behave toward them, a “sexual assault” allegation in which the victim cannot remember the year in which it occurred, a string of alleged affairs in which paramours pried a great deal of money from the billionaire in exchange for silence, and unkind descriptives used toward Rosie O’Donnell. If all that is fair game, then certainly Kamala Harris’s husband abusing his power over a female employee in this dehumanizing, life-altering way is, too. Indeed, so debased has politics become that Emhoff’s former wife recently tweeted of J.D. Vance’s marriage, “Usha’s going to be in the ex-wives club in 2025. Mark my words.” The unseemly preoccupation with the private lives of not just politicians but their spouses, though predating Donald Trump, went into overdrive the moment he rode down the golden escalator. The media’s fixation, like so many of their fixations, finds boundaries only within their ideological boundaries. Outside of them, a New York Times reporter may act as though employed by The National Enquirer. Tellingly, just as in the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky saga, a figure outside of the mainstream media broke the story — and noted that the mainstream media had it first. Laura Loomer, not exactly anyone’s idea of Bob Woodward, tweeted the story first, claiming five sources, last week before The Daily Mail, The New York Post, and other outlets followed suit. Loomer, to her credit, omitted the nanny’s name in that initial tweet. The story now runs in some of the widest circulation newspapers around the world (and runs below the fold or not at all in other ones). The involvement of so fringe a figure in rooting out an embarrassing truth for Democrats reveals the degree to which journalists now act as active participants in elections rather than chroniclers and observers of them. This should at least make Democrats reconsider whether “the war on women” amounts to a neatly partisan conflict or wins volunteers of all parties. READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn:  Kamala’s Pee-wee Herman Strategy Biden Puts Supreme Court on Ballots as His Name Comes Off Them Anthony Fauci, Bureaucrat   The post The Second (Rate?) Gentleman appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The new anti-Semitism — let’s call it Jew hate, since that is what it is, not a study of ethnography — realizes that Hitler really ruined it for Jew haters big time. If he only had been allied with America and Churchill, maybe it would be a political sacrament. But instead he was a true war criminal, a criminal against all humanity, a Satan whose sole existence on earth led to 40-50 million deaths. His entire raison d’etre — reason for being — was to destroy Jews, to implement anti-Semitism. Along the way, he destroyed millions of American lives and millions of all others. So, no matter how much someone hates Jews, he simply cannot say in America “I happen to hate Jews because, well, I just hate all Jews. I am and anti-Semite. Y’know, like Hitler. I don’t just hate Bernie Sanders and George Soros. I also hate Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin and Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand and Albert Einstein and the whole bunch of them.” You can’t say that after Hitler. Hitler ruined a good thing for people who found Jew-hatred a nice way to make a pretty penny: Father Charles Coughlin of the Dearborn area, Gerald L.K. Smith, William Dudley Pelley, Fritz Kuhn, Robert Edward Edmondson, the whole priesthood of those warlocks. And when you question whether Dr. Mengele really was a Bad Guy and say that it … was America who perpetrated genocide against Germans during WWII, well — case closed. If prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, then Jew hatred is its oldest hobby and sport. There’s a Jew out there for everyone to hate. Bigoted landlords can rant about their Jewish tenants who ask for heat in the winter, and bigoted tenants who are eight months behind on the rent can rant about their Jewish landlord. Jew-hating capitalists point to Trotsky and Bernie Sanders and even fabricate that non-Jewish communists like Lavrentiy Beria were Jewish. (He was born and raised Orthodox — Russian Christian Orthodox.) Jew-hating socialists blame Milton Friedman or even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for capitalism. Anti-Semities would not hire Jews into America’s elite banking system as late as the 1960s; yet jealous and ignorant common people, even former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. George Brown, accused Jews of owning the banks. When one-third of Christendom died during the mid-14th Century from Bubonic Plague — the Black Death — Jews throughout Europe were accused of poisoning all wells in the continent to kill them, even though Jews were dying in similar numbers, though a bit less because of religious rituals that require Jews, as a matter of Judaic law, to wash their hands before eating bread, before dipping foods, and after exiting the lavatory. It is what it is. Because Hitler has made it uncool to say out loud “I hate all F – – – ing Jews,” and since such haters still linger among us, they have had to find new ways to identify themselves. The Language of the Anti-Semite After trial and error, with the benefit of hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into American higher educational institutions and Middle Eastern Studies departments, a new term that was barely used in the 1950’s entered our lexicon with all the frequency of other new terms like LOL, ROTFL, FOMO, ICYMI, microaggression, meme, AI, virtue signaling, safe space, mojo, deplatform, deep state, inclusive, and pickleball. That term? “I am not anti-Semitic. I have nothing against Jews. My husband is a Jew. I have Jewish friends. I was just at a rally for Bernie Sanders with Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m just anti-Zionist.” Anti-Zionist. Get it? Got it? Good. The reality is that Zionism is part and parcel of the definition of Judaism. It is like saying “I am not against Jews. I am only against people who circumcise their sons (Gen. 17:10-14; Lev. 12:3), eat kosher meat (Lev. 11:1-31;  Deut. 14:1-21), and celebrate their Sabbath from eighteen minutes before sunset on Fridays until nightfall on Saturdays (Gen. 2:1-3). But I’m not anti-Semitic. I don’t have a single anti-Semitic bone in my body.” It really is a thing. Hitler forced these poor Jew haters to find a new term for their anti-Semitism. Then they find their assemblage of useful idiots to parrot the term. “I’m not anti-Semitic. I’m just anti-Zionist.” The less sophisticated often let the cat out of the bag a bit by erroneously letting slip, “I’m not anti-Semitic. I’m just anti-Israel.” Ooops. And the more sophisticated, realizing by now that “Anti-Zionism” and “Anti-Semitism” are identical, are test-running a new one: “I’m not anti-Semitic. I’m not even anti-Zionist. I’m just anti-Netanyahu.”  Oh, that clears it up. The thing is, Netanyahu has been elected repeatedly by the Israeli public to be their Prime Minister. As in any true democracy, he has occasionally lost, too. In the most recent polling, a plurality of those polled said they still prefer Netanyahu for Prime Minister if elections are held now. (The strong majority also endorse continuing the Gaza struggle until Hamas surrenders and returns the hostages, and oppose an Arab country being formed west of the Jordan River. In other words, no “Two State Solution.” From the River to the Sea, only one country.) Identifying the Anti-Semite Even so, how are the uninitiated to tell for sure when a self-described “anti-Zionist” really is a Hitler-quality Jew hater? OK. Here goes: the Dov Fischer Guide for Ferreting out a Jew Hater Who Says He Is Only an Anti-Zionist: When you tear up your college campus for two months protesting Israel but don’t care about Xi’s China, Maduro’s Venezuela, Putin’s Russia, or Kim Jong Un’s North Korea you’re probably an anti-Semite. When you boycott hummus made by a company based in Astoria, Queens and Virginia because it has a Hebrew name but don’t boycott Apple or Nike products made in China, you’re probably an anti-Semite. When you force Jews at your campus to detour the main campus but don’t do that to anyone else, you’re probably an anti-Semite. When you attack a synagogue’s front doors, you’re probably an anti-Semite. When you paint or spray “Palestine” graffiti on a bagels-and-lox store, you’re probably an anti-Semite. When you paint or spray “Hamas” graffiti on a monument to Anne Frank, you’re probably an anti-Semite. When you disrupt a comedy gig starring Jerry Seinfeld in Australia, you’re probably an anti-Semite. When you tear a mezuzah off a dorm room doorpost, you’re probably an anti-Semite. When you throw pennies at a Jew, as if to say Jews are cheap and are obsessed with saving money, you’re probably an anti-Semite. When you or Yo Momma wake up at 3:00 a.m. on Black Friday to save $10 on Christmas presents … where does that leave you? When you or Yo Momma delay purchases for weeks until the Labor Day sale, Columbus Day sale, after-Christmas sale, Presidents’ Day sale, Easter sale, and Memorial Day sale … When you throw a brick through a kosher deli, you’re probably an anti-Semite. When you see and read the pictures, stories, and Youtube videos of the millions dying of actual starvation right now in Darfur, Sudan and react by setting up a Hate Israel encampment, you’re probably an anti-Semite. Have I left out any? And when you question whether Dr. Mengele really was a Bad Guy and say that it wasn’t the Nazis who perpetrated genocide but it was America who perpetrated genocide against Germans during WWII, well — case closed. Subscribe to Rav Fischer’s YouTube channel here at bit.ly/3REFTbk  and follow him on X (Twitter) at @DovFischerRabbi to find his latest informative and inspiring classes, interviews, speeches, and observations. READ MORE from Dov Fischer: Candace, We Hardly Knew Ye … and Ye Of Kamala’s Coconuts, Venn Diagrams, and Yellow School Buses Millions of Jews Agree With Trump’s Criticisms of the ‘Crappy’ Ones The post An ‘Anti-Zionist’ Is Probably an Anti-Semite if … appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady By Heath Hardage Lee (St. Martin’s Press/416 pages/$32) Patricia Ryan Nixon was, as far as I have ever been able to tell, pretty much flawless. She was born into extremely modest circumstances in the small town of Ely, Nevada on what was once called “the loneliest highway in America …” in 1916. Her parents had very little money. Early deaths, bitter economic conditions, and chronic illnesses were her portion as a young woman. She worked hard helping her family on their farm and in their extremely modest businesses. She lived to show devotion to the people of the nation, as well as to the people of the world. She was known by all who knew her as an uncomplaining, cheerful, hard working girl and young woman in a country and in a state where hard work and lack of complaint were not unusual. She was also movie-star beautiful, when that meant something. She had ambitions in the general realms where females were expected to have ambitions in those days: teaching, health care, retail sales, and the theater. She was known for her beauty and her eloquence from an early age. Her family moved to a much bigger — but still small — town when she was still young. It was there, in Whittier, a mostly Quaker Community, that she met a hard-working, also uncomplaining young lawyer named Richard Milhous Nixon, scion of what passed in those days as a well-to-do family. He was also hard working, uncomplaining, and in love with the theater — and with Patricia Ryan. Both of them were gifted in reading lines and were unpretentious and honest — which also meant something in those days. It’s hard to believe, but the young attorney Dick Nixon was so in love with her that if he asked her out on a date and if she were already booked, he would volunteer to take the other couple to the movies in nearby Los Angeles or wherever they were planning to go. Not everyone had a car, but Dick Nixon did. It was a different, far more chaste world then. What’s also a bit hard to believe is that everything I just wrote about the book I am herewith reviewing, The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon, was in a book about the Nixons that was in our Parkside elementary school library in Silver Spring, Maryland. I read it, as I recall, in about the fall of 1952 when I was seven years old. I’m not sure exactly what conclusion to draw from this, but it’s not a great sign about our educational system then and now. Richard Nixon pursued Patricia Ryan politely but incessantly. At first, according to the author of this biography, a famed biographer named Heath Hardage Lee, she politely but firmly turned him down when he sought her hand in marriage. He was smart and well read, but apparently not as exciting as she wanted her husband to be. However, she soon fell in love with him. He was rapidly rising in the world of law in Whittier. He was a fabulously articulate conversationalist, and “everyone” said he was a comer and would make a big name for himself and his family. During their courtship, Pat Ryan told a friend that “of course” Dick would be President. All of that came true. RN also made a name for himself in the Navy during World War II. And he and Pat produced two spectacularly beautiful and smart daughters. One of them, Julie, is probably my wife’s and my favorite woman on earth. Richard Nixon took to politics like a duck to water. Pat Ryan Nixon did not take immediately to political campaigning. She did it, though, because she believed, as wives did in those days, that she should help her husband get where he wanted to be. She realized almost immediately how difficult political life could be when Dick ran for the House of Representatives immediately after World War II. The Democrats in Nixon’s area, in and around Whittier, drummed up one calumny after another to sabotage Nixon’s rise. Mr. Nixon was riding the anti-Communist waves of the postwar days. In Mr. Nixon’s first campaign, in 1946, he took after assorted Reds and Pinks, especially Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. The nature of Nixon’s campaign, bare knuckle and face to face, earned him the undying hatred of “the ultra-left” in the Democrat party. When, in 1950, he took on a Hollywood favorite, Helen Gahagan Douglas, with a long record of pro-left, pro-Russian dealing, for the U.S. Senate from Sunny Cal, the leftists in Hollywood, were after him like flies on fly paper. They ginned up all kinds of fake stories about Nixon’s alleged crookedness. The worst was an allegation that Mr. Nixon, in contravention to law, took meaningful sums from wealthy Republicans not for his campaign but for his home redecoration and Pat’s clothing. The allegations were, of course, false. Nixon took them on, point by point, in his famous “Checkers” TV speech. There, he detailed every cent that the family had, where it came from, and ended by saying that he would happily give every dime back. The only item he would not ever give back was a Cocker Spaniel puppy given by friends in California. “The girls love him,” Mr. Nixon said, and no matter what anyone said, “we’ll never give him back.” The dog’s name was Checkers. From then on, Mr. Nixon and Mrs. Nixon suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in politics. From what Ms. Lee says, the worst of them in terms of personal pain came from Ike himself. Mrs. Nixon was dismayed that Ike even for a moment doubted the Nixon family’s honesty. She forgave, says Ms. Lee. But she never forgot. Time passed. The 1960 Presidential election against John F. Kennedy was clearly stolen by the mighty war chest of Hitler fan and multi-millionaire ex-bootlegger, Joe Kennedy. But Nixon did not sue. He did not scream. He just went off to a well-paid law practice in New York City. Pat Nixon well knew the Kennedy theft. But she also knew with Dick out of politics, she could spend more time with Julie and Tricia, and could buy herself the elegant clothes she had always wanted. She had a model-thin figure and had at one time been a model for Bullock’s-Wilshire, an elegant department store. Time kept on passing. RN kept campaigning for a comeback (brilliantly described by Pat Buchanan in his book, The Greatest Comeback). And by 1968, RN was the GOP candidate for POTUS. As Pat Buchanan perfectly detailed, Nixon ran a letter excellent campaign in ’68. He won against an authentically great liberal Democrat from Minnesota, Hubert Horatio Humphrey. If there has ever been a better exemplar of what American politics as it is and as it should be than the 1968 campaign, I don’t know what it would be. If there were ever a finer Democrat political figure than Hubert Humphrey, I don’t know who it would be. These were the years when Mr. and Mrs. Nixon were the apogee of Mrs. Nixon’s life. But there were storm clouds gathering. A trivial break-in at the Watergate Office building HQ of the Democrat National Committee was amplified by the media and (now it appears) by their allies in the CIA into a national crisis. (It also now appears that even fifty years on, with hitherto secret FBI and congressional files made public, no one knows what on earth “Watergate” was about except a bunch of dopes close to Cuban émigrés and CIA morons muddling about in mud about a foot thick.) The political left kept attacking Mr. Nixon endlessly. Nixon was a gloriously successful President. He made racial integration even in the deep South a fact of life without bloodshed. He literally saved the life of the state of Israel by standing up to the Russians even when they threatened nuclear war on Israel in the Yom Kippur War. He tamed the wildness in the streets over the Vietnam War even as he ended that war. He inherited a nation in chaos and turned it into a productive machine for human happiness, except for the flaming hot anger over a complete phony scandal, what came to be known as “Watergate.” The attacks against the Nixon family took on an unprecedented viciousness. Mrs. Nixon was called “Plastic Pat,” a phrase that was supposed to mean she had no real feelings about what was going on around her. She was also depicted on a popular TV comedy show called “Saturday Night Live” as an out of control drunk. Seeing Pat Nixon Of course, Mrs. Nixon felt keenly everything that happened to her and to her family. Unlike the vipers of the media who mocked Pat Nixon without knowing her, I did know her. Not as well as I know her perfect daughter, Julie. But I knew her to be alive, witty, in no sense at all an alcoholic. (By the way, I would love to write a book about the powers in the anti-Nixon media — what their drug and alcohol habits were, how well they treated their families, and how trustworthy I would consider their personal constitutions as well as their devotion to our magnificent Constitution.) But Pat Nixon did not live her life for tabloid consumption, print or televised. She lived to show devotion to the people of the nation, as well as to the people of the world. She traveled the world and the nation, even to the most hostile regions of the world and the nation to show them the loving beneficent America in which she grew up. She was not afraid of the media, even though they upset her — as was their goal. Even as the media snakes were circling her husband and his team, she worked with him to bring the Vietnam War to a close — and then to open the White House to the returning POWs in a historic gala as his endurance was running low. After Mr. Nixon left office, she was still hounded by the media’s well-paid assassins of character. Did their wildly untrue lies about Mr. and Mrs. Nixon shorten her life? I am not a physician studying such things. But I would certainly say they did. I’ve been in the media’s crosshairs before. It hurts keenly. She had seen it and felt it incomparably more than I did. But however she saw it and felt it, it could not have been good for a woman whose life was devoted to her family, and she saw the nation as a whole as her family, to be hacked at in the jungle of D.C. day in and day out — and for absolutely nothing. She was not “plastic Pat.” She was not within a billion miles of being an alcoholic. She was not a dictator of the East Wing. She was a loving, loyal, beautiful woman of great intelligence. Ms. Lee makes all of this chicanery and dishonesty clear. The book is well worth reading just for that. If you could have seen Mr. Nixon sobbing at her funeral, if you could have felt her good humor (as I did) when I met her and her husband and Julie and David for dinner shortly after Mr. Nixon’s resignation, and Mrs. Nixon said, “Julie’s been talking about you so much, it makes me want to throw up,” and she delivered the line with so much love that even now I feel tears about it, you would have no doubt. Mrs. Nixon was a saintly woman in very difficult times. My wife is flawless number one in the universe. Mrs. Nixon was a close second. For that, she had to be crucified. This is a book worth reading. The post The Mrs. Nixon I Have Always Loved appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Sebastian Korda won the Washington Open on Sunday, the first American man to do so since Andy Roddick in 2007.  Great USA players of yore, Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, Andre Agassi among others, brought fame to themselves and to this venue located in bucolic Rock Creek Park in uptown Washington, D.C., as have such contemporary international stars as Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev, Gael Monfils, and Nick Kyrgios. Redemption indeed, Paula Badosa following a year of anguish with a back injury, Sebastian Korda with the trophy his father Petr won thirty-two years ago. Way to go. But this has been a good American year, with wins in both men’s (Jackson Withrow and Nathaniel Lammone) and women’s (Taylor Townsend and Asia Muhammad) doubles along with Korda’s triumph. The men’s final was a fine match for most of two sets, Flavio Cobolli almost flawless in the first with graceful baseline power and unerring placement to the lines up against a Sebastian Korda at the top his own game, which is a mix of baseline pace and well placed shots to either wing and a net game that is deployed with surgical timing to put points away with volleys. It was like a choreographed duet designed to points going as long as the script demanded, until Cobolli made the break at four-all and then served out the set. The women’s final was no less thrilling. Former no. 2 Paula Badosa, whom you would call the Barcelona Bomber were she not such a lovely and elegant young lady, pounding a very pretty child of Prague — the Prague Prodigy? — Marie Bouzkova, who at times looked like she could scarcely do more than push one of Miss Badosa’s big shots back into the net but began to find her footing and with it her aim, which kept finding the very edge of the lines. She came back in the second set, as Korda would do later, with improved consistency and resilience against Miss B.’s pace and power. Thus matches went to third sets and there was some fear there would be another storm and a long rain delay — several sessions during the week went past midnight — but apart from a forty minute alert in the ladies’ match, the schedule this time was extended mainly by the players’ tenacity. The big tennis news last week was Novak Djokovic’s Olympic gold medal in men’s singles, and well it should have been. The all-time leader in majors (twenty-four) outplayed Carlos Alcaraz, who had beaten him without conceding a set at Wimbledon less than a month ago. It was an excruciatingly close match both of whose sets required overtime (tie-breakers) as neither man was able to break the other’s service.  Djokovic out-shot Alcaraz, who at 21 is 16 years his junior and is considered the successor of his great compatriot Rafael Nadal, at crucial moments in the tiebreaks, both times with powerful cross court forehands to the alley that were too much for even the swift footed Carlito. Two points made the difference and won the gold, proof (if it were needed) of Djokovic’s ability, for over two decades, to “fill the unforgiving minute,” as Kipling taught past generations of English schoolboys, “with sixty seconds worth of distance run … “; well, he sure deserved it and we can thank the Olympics for providing the inspiration such a feat brings. Especially over and against all the rot that has penetrated the movement launched by a Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, in the 1890s to promote sportsmanship and virtue and international brotherhood. Actually, the athletes always save the Games that the national sports establishments and their political allies tend to sully.  In the sixty seconds worth of distance run department, you could not do better than the fastest man on Earth, Noah Lyles, first American gold medalist in the 100-meter sprint in two decades; or Simone Biles and her fantastic team-mates in the American women’s gymnastics; or the phenomenal French swimmer Leon Marchand (and his American coach Bob Bowman). The young champions make you dream — perchance try harder in whatever you are doing. As the Games were always meant to do.  You can corrupt them all you want as the Nazis sought to do at Berlin in 1936, and a Jesse Owens will show them up. The modest tennis tournament in Rock Creek Park originated as a fundraiser for a fine Washington organization, the Washington Tennis Foundation, that had been launched somewhat informally by public-spirited Washingtonians to give dead-end, what we now call at-risk or underserved, kids a chance to stay out of court by spending their free time on the courts. When tennis went Open in 1968, Donald Dell and Arthur Ashe, close friends and former leaders of the American Davis Cup team, agreed to help out and, with a renamed Washington Tennis and Education Foundation (not just stay out of court but get tutoring and tennis instruction), brought the amateur tournament into the men’s tour. The Washington Open Arrives As tennis went increasingly big time — even before Djokovic and his contemporaries, tennis champions like John McEnroe and Pete Sampras and Chris Evert and Steffi Graff were as popular, if their names were not quite as well known, as Roger Federer and Serena and Venus Williams — the Washington Open’s quaint modesty, its neighborhood block party atmosphere, was refreshing. Variously branded Washington Star Invitational, Legg-Mason, Citi, and now Mubadala Citi Open, the competition was reminiscent of a time when you took hot muggy weather in stride and men wore straw fedoras and seer sucker suits and women dressed in cotton or linen dresses and carried parasols and fans. As it happens, the fans and the hats, or some knock off idea of a hat, are distributed on the grounds and you see people in the bleachers fanning themselves in unison, which, it occurred to me during the Badosa-Boukovia match, was what you see in a bullring; bullfighting, however, has been banned in Barcelona. There are seventy-five hundred seats in the bleachers, which is small by contemporary stadium standards, and the outside courts are always packed.  You could argue that the tournament has been a victim of its own success.  The stadium, built thanks to the generosity of William H. G. Fitzpatrick in the heyday of the Dell-Ashe partnership, is in need of renovation and repair, the grounds need expansion and, “fan experience” oblige, improvement.  Fortunately there are legions of immigrants (as well as natives) in Washington and its wealthy suburbs constantly at work in the construction trades. Meanwhile, by all evidence players and fans enjoy Washington’s summertime diversion from its usual business.  And why should they not?  Even the rain, so typical of this time of year in the city on (or in) the swamp, is welcome.  I ran out in the patch of woodland still standing between the courts and the street, 16th Street, that leads straight to the Capitol, and let it soak, childish summer fun. Downtown they ought maybe to listen to James McMurtry’s Childish Things, but this assumes the pols and their grifting hangers-on are not way, way beyond redemption.  Better worry, though, because after the flood, the fire.  Hank Williams has that one down in a well known gospel. But I digress. To my own surprise, so well had he been playing, young Flavio faltered in the third set, as Sebastian bageled him with a graceful exactness that kept improving.  This contrasted with the young ladies, both showing signs of weariness but holding on till the end.  Redemption indeed, Paula Badosa following a year of anguish with a back injury, Sebastian Korda with the trophy his father Petr won thirty-two years ago. Way to go. And back to work. READ MORE from Roger Kaplan: Serve and Volley in the Park Tennis Spectacle at Rock Creek Park French Tennis Follies The post Hot Wet Washington Open appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

WASHINGTON — National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan fought to hold back tears Thursday as he talked about watching President Joe Biden on the phone informing the families of American hostages held in Russia that their loved ones would be free after a prisoner swap. It was a joyous occasion, topped only by the return of the hostages. Trump hit back Friday when he told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo the exchange was “a win for Putin.” It was, Sullivan offered, “a feat of diplomacy that honestly could only be achieved by a leader like Joe Biden.” Forgive Sullivan for injecting campaign politics into the moment. He was heralding a deal that freed 16 political prisoners from seven countries in exchange for the release of eight Russians who had been detained in the United States, Germany, Norway, Poland and Slovenia. Sullivan wasn’t the only person who was joyous. Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed especially pleased to welcome home assassin Vadim Krasikov, who was serving time in Germany for the 2019 Berlin killing of a former Chechen fighter. Krasikov’s release was a painful concession that Biden nonetheless made because Putin had made it clear there would be no deal with Russia without the hit man’s release. Among the 16 released hostages were American journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, green-card holder and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza, and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan. “All four have been imprisoned unjustly in Russia,” Biden announced. “Russian authorities arrested them, convicted them in show trials, and sentenced them to long prison terms with absolutely no legitimate reason whatsoever,” he added. When a reporter asked Biden about former President Donald Trump’s claim that he could have negotiated a prisoner swap that produced better terms, Biden countered, “Why didn’t he do it when he was president?” The answer, of course, is that Russia did not detain Kara-Murza until 2022 or Gershkovich and Kurmasheva until 2023. Only Whelan, who was arrested in 2018, was behind Russian bars when Biden took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2021. Team Biden wants you to believe that Biden was able to cut this deal because, unlike Trump, the president enjoys warm, personal relationships with other world leaders. Or, as Biden put it, “All politics is personal.” Biden, we know, had to press a reluctant Germany to release assassin Krasikov. According to news reports, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Biden in February, “For you, I will do this.” The president’s remark about politics being personal was a not subtle dig at Trump’s history of elbowing allies and needling fellow NATO leaders when a little glad-handing might deliver more good will. Diplomacy for Hostages? Trump hit back Friday when he told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo the exchange was “a win for Putin,” but he wouldn’t challenge the decision because of the result. On Truth Social, Trump argued that Biden set a “bad precedent for the future” that could encourage more hostage taking. I share Trump’s concern about the bad precedent every hostage deal presents, as I did when Trump negotiated similar swaps to free American hostages in 2019 and 2020. In a podcast recorded before the release of Whelan, Gershkovich, Kurmasheva and Kara-Murza, the Foundation for Defense of Democracy President Clifford May warned against what is known as “hostage diplomacy.” “It seems to me we’re normalizing and legitimizing hostage taking,” May observed. The title of the podcast: “Putin’s pawns.” Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM READ MORE from Debra J. Saunders: What Is Harris’s Pre-2024 Border History? Netanyahu Speaks to Congress of Israel’s War on Barbarism Bad Election Rules and Stupid Media Tricks The post Biden’s Awfully Bittersweet Deal For Hostages appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Angel Studios has released another heartfelt movie trying to steal America’s hearts this summer. Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot is an insightful glimpse into the lives of Reverend R.C. Martin, and his wife, Donna, of Possum Trot, Texas, who inspired families in their rural church to adopt 77 children out of foster care. Just as the movie says, “there shouldn’t be a child without a home. We can turn this whole thing around.” DailyWire+ partnered with Angel Studios to bring the film to theaters around America. After the Sound of Freedom called America to fight back against human trafficking last summer, this must-watch movie does a wonderful job of shining a light on a little-known crisis happening across the country in the lives of thousands of children. As the movie says, “the state ain’t no family.” Yet, unfortunately, for the nearly 109,000 children waiting to be adopted out of foster care, the state has become their families. According to data from the federal Office of the Administration for Children and Families, in the 2022 fiscal year 570,00 children passed through the foster care system across the country. At the end of the year, nearly 400,000 children still remained in the system. While for the last five years the number of children in foster care has been trending down, there is still a critical need in many communities for families to step up and provide either temporary shelter or adopt the most vulnerable.  Sound of Hope called on families, but especially churches and other religious organizations, to step up to help fill this need.  Children in Need of Family Throughout America, there are nearly 350,000 Christian congregations, and millions of worshippers every Sunday. That means that if just one family for every three churches stepped up to adopt a child, there would be no children left waiting for a family. This is how the story of Reverend R.C. Martin and the Possum Trot community should inspire everyone.  Not only did they adopt 77 children, they adopted every child available for adoption within one hundred miles of Possum Trot.  The movie showed the hardships that come with adopting out of foster care, but it also showed the beauty. It showed the importance of community as the Martin’s church built one that supported families as they all navigated through the foster care system together . . . as they served the children who needed help the most. Since the movie first came out, thousands have come together in theaters across the country, as it brought in nearly $12 million. With a 97 percent positive rating of Rotten Tomato, the audience seemed to approve of the movie too. Yet, while it is one thing to watch a movie, it is another to be motivated to action … and that is what the movie calls America to do. Just as Donna Martin encouraged her community to not just hear Christ’s words in the Gospel of St. Mark but to act upon them, so does their inspirational story call on all to act, either in the small ways or in the big. Just as the movie says, “there shouldn’t be a child without a home. We can turn this whole thing around.” So, if you watched the movie weeks ago and forgot about it, remember its true message. If you haven’t watched it yet, be sure to catch this story of a church family who came together to change the lives of dozens of children … and their whole community. READ MORE: Sound of Hope: Angel Studios’ Fight for Kids Continues The Star Trek Election III: Men vs. Women The post <i>Sound of Hope</i>: Step Up for Children appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from BANNED.VIDEO:  TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

by Rhonda Wilson, All News Pipeline: On Thursday, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (“CEPI”) and the World Health Organisation (“WHO”) called on researchers and governments to strengthen and accelerate global research to prepare for the next pandemic. They emphasised the importance of expanding research to encompass entire families of pathogens that can infect humans […]

from SGT Report: DemonRat Congress critter Jamie Raskin is a traitor who is now openly talking about sedition, the coming 14th amendment coup and the civil war the D’s plan to incite if Trump wins in November. Christopher James joins me to discuss the criminal corporate government tyranny and much more. Get your Life-saving Meds […]

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