Dating has certainly evolved over the years—we’ve gone from courtship being purely a financial arrangement (not that this trend has ever truly died) to knights jousting for a lady’s favor, to casual hookups, to now, when romance is primarily found through an app more than anything else.Technology used for meeting that special someone has become so advanced that you can base your search entirely upon specific interests. Like, oddly specific interests. Think a fellow cat person would be the purrfect match? There’s an app for that. Wish to “love long and prosper” with a fellow Trekkie? There’s an app for that too.No matter the changes, one thing remains the same—dating is awkward. It’s got all the unspoken formalities of a job interview, disguised as innocent fun. The balance between playing it too cool and too eager is hard to find even for the smoothest among us, and usually results in total embarrassment. Even if we aren’t the ones committing those embarrassing acts ourselves, we are often the reluctant witness to them.Terrible dates might not always be fun in the moment, but they can be just as important as the good ones. They can teach us a lot about ourselves and what qualities we want in a partner. And at the very least, they can teach us to embrace social clumsiness with a sense of humor.Jimmy Fallon recently asked his Tonight Show audience on X (formerly Twitter) to share a “funny or embarrassing first date story” for his ever popular #Hashtags segment. The best part—some of these awful first dates ended in marriage. There’s hope for us all.Below, find 15 stories that are truly the best of the worst. How do some of your first dates compare?1. "After a nice dinner, she invited me to her house. On the way up, inside the elevator, I decided to push the button to stop between floors and give her a kiss... She had a phobia of closed spaces and she smacked my face as a reflex, two punches after we were kissing and laughing.” – @PanqueAlgarvio2. “His jeans were so tight he couldn’t sit down. Stood at a bar stool the whole time.” – @onlyintheozarks3. “Waiting 4 my date when an older couple asked me for a ride. my date came up and said sure! We drove them home & they asked us to come in. Date said “sure”. I pulled him back & asked why he wanted to hang w/strangers. He said ‘sh@t! YOU DON'T KNOW THEM!?’ We bolted!” – @natashaham754. “Before the date, we had been chatting about books we liked and I talked about a great book I just read. We went on the date. I loaned her the book. She ghosted me.” – @thenextbarstool5. “The worst first date I ever had was when my date locked his keys in the car and I had a curfew so he had to break his car window out to get me home on time. Didn’t think I’d ever see him again but we wound up married.” – @csleblan6. “First date movie ‘Basic Instinct’ not realizing how suggestive it was. We just thought it was a mystery thriller! We left the movie discussing how each character could have actually murdered someone. We're married now.” – @Southrnbell_Amy7. “First date with my ex husband was a double date with his parents. The preview for ‘Speed Racer’ came on, and she leaned over me to say to her son, ‘You know what your dad's nickname in the bedroom is?’" – @theostoria8. “A friend asked me on a double date as a blind date with his date's friend. I went to the bathroom and came back just in time to hear my date say to her friend, ‘why do I get the ugly one?’ I said good night to all three and headed home, leaving her w/the bill.” – @StevenTrustum9. “He loved cheese. I was subjected to a 2 hour conversation/lecture about cheese, and why cottage cheese is not cheese!” – @Optimist_Eeyore10. “He took me to an Asian fish market. We walked around looking at live & dead fish for a while. I don’t like seeing dead animals & I don’t eat seafood. Then we sat on a curb & he pulled out a ziplock bag of pineapple for us to share. I don’t like pineapple.” – @markayhali11. “My cousin set up a first date for me with a family friend. During a break from dinner, Mr. Man follows me into the ladies’ room, comes up close and says in a low voice, ‘I shave my butt.’ Can’t remember what I said in response but the evening ended abruptly.” – @carli_zarzana12. “I once took out my high school crush to a sports bar and ordered the spiciest wings there in an attempt to impress her. Not only was she not impressed. The next morning I woke up with heartburn.” –@Dmonster3813. “My date showed up with his bestie and girlfriend, and they talked through dinner about people I don’t know. Walking to the car, he gave me a wedgie because he thought he hadn’t been paying enough attention to me.” – @surrealDazey 14. “I was taking my date home and was pulled over by the police for speeding. When the cop came to my car, she jumped out and told him she had to get home. She walked home and I never heard from her again. I'm not sure who's #WorstFirstDate it was mine or hers!” – @eastriverbear 15. “After an evening of dancing with a first date, leaving the dance hall, I had to take a quick pee break. Rushing out to the parking lot, I see a lady, I grab her and swoop her around, and plant a big wet kiss on the lips. She was another guy's wife. Oops!” – @seadogskamore This article originally appeared three years ago.

Have you ever come across something online that instantly made you smile? That’s what happens when people see Locklan Samples pop up on their Instagram feed. The cute dimple-faced toddler has a rare condition known as Uncombable Hair Syndrome, which results in locks that stick straight up no matter how you try to manipulate them. It also causes the hair to be extremely fragile, so frequent combing can cause it to break off. The syndrome is so rare that Locklan is just one out of 100 people known to have it.Locklan’s parents spoke with People Magazine about how they discovered he was living with this ultra rare condition. Katelyn Samples, Locklan’s mom, explained that when he was born he had a head full of jet black hair, but eventually it fell out and was replaced with peach fuzz. A newborn baby’s hair is often completely different than the hair they end up with by the time they’re toddlers. It’s not uncommon for their hair to fall out in one spot or another, but it’s also not unheard of for their whole head to end up bald while their second sprigs of hair grow in.Hair can grow back coarser, curlier or a completely different color. In Locklan’s case, his hair went from being jet black to platinum blonde peach fuzz, which eventually grew into hair that stood on end. Locklan’s parents said the color of his hair matched his brother’s hair, so it wasn’t a surprise, but the texture threw them for a loop.When Katelyn posted pictures of Locklan on Instagram, a stranger messaged her asking if he had “uncombable hair syndrome.” This started Katelyn on a journey to find answers to what was going on with her infant’s hair, and if the condition was something she needed to be concerned about health-wise. Katelyn told People, it sent her into a “tailspin on Google.” Eventually, after climbing out of the Google rabbit hole, Katelyn called her son’s pediatrician to get answers. This turned out to be the first step toward an accurate diagnosis. See on Instagram See on Instagram Locklan’s pediatrician had not heard of the condition and referred them to Atlanta's Emory Hospital to see a specialist. It was there they got the diagnosis. Katelyn explained to People, “We went to see her and she said she’d only seen this once in 19 years.” The doctor “didn’t think it was uncombable hair syndrome because of how rare it is, but they took samples and a pathologist looked at it under a special microscope,” and confirmed the diagnosis, she said.He joins the very small club of people with the syndrome. Thankfully, this condition only affects the toddler’s hair and he is developing normally in all other aspects of his childhood. Katelyn revealed she hardly ever has to wash his hair unless it gets visibly dirty as it doesn’t collect oils at the scalp. Everywhere they go people are fascinated by Lock’s locks and ask to touch his soft tresses. See on Instagram The family documents their journey on their Instagram account, and have found a support group via Facebook, where Katelyn says “it’s cool to see how other kids' hair has changed over the years—for some people it does not go away, and for others it becomes a little more manageable.” For now, Locklan enjoys the attention he gets from strangers, and he continues to bring a smile to people’s faces wherever he goes.This story originally appeared three years ago.

Anyone who's had a baby knows how the sound of crying can feel like torture. Literally.If you're lucky, you get a baby who rarely cries, but some babies spend weeks or months being screechy, colicky little fussbuckets whose unbearable cuteness is the only thing that keeps you from throwing them out the window. (If you haven't had one of those babies, that may sound horrifying, but if you know, you know.) Sometimes babies cry because they're hungry, which is a problem easily fixed. Sometimes babies cry because their diaper is soiled—also an easy fix. Sometimes babies cry because they are clearly overtired—easy to fix on paper, but not always so simple in practice. Still, you at least know what's bugging them. But sometimes babies cry and you can't figure out why. It might be gas, but they can't say, "My tummy hurts." Maybe they want to be held or cuddled, but not like that. Nope, not like that. Not like that, either. Perhaps they see all these big humans doing things they can't do and they're just mad about being a helpless baby. Who knows? With fussy babies, the traditional "feed them, change them, rock them" advice often doesn't make a dent. The crying can make you feel like you're losing your mind, so if someone figures out a trick to get them to stop—even for a while—it feels like a godsend.That's one reason this video of a dad demonstrating how he gets his baby to stop crying in 18 seconds flat has gone viral. In a TikTok video, Jonathan, aka "Tuque Daddy," shows how he holds his 2-month-old son with one hand and wraps his little arms across his body in a "self hug" with the other. Then he holds one hand over the baby's arms and torso and the other cradling him under the diaper. A little gentle bobbing in this position and voila! Baby stops crying in 18 seconds. Watch the magic happen (and just ignore the rogue "8" that gets stuck on the screen): @tuquedaddy Reply to @king.marcellius I wanna see people try!! Duet this and try if you can!! I wanna see y’all super heroes ??? #tuquedaddy #fypシ #parenting See how even just a few seconds of that crying sends an electric jolt down your spine? It was enough for some commenters to say "Maybe I need to rethink wanting a baby." (My 13-year-old son came into the room while I was watching the video and said, "That's so annoying. How did you have babies?" Yep, that was you, dude. You're welcome. After the second viewing, he actually said, "Wow. Sorry.")But then the unbearable cuteness comes in, doesn't it? Gracious, that little one's face at the end. It's amazing how quickly babies can take us from "Arrrrgh" to "Awwww." And this daddy's gentle patience and reassurance is a beautiful cherry on top. "You alright, my boy?" So dang sweet. Speaking of sweetness (and unbearable cuteness), check out Tuque Daddy's convo with his boy in another video: @tuquedaddy Paid actor ? #tuquedaddy #fypシ #daddio #funny #baby #boy #dadsoftiktok @housecoatmommy And as for the way he calmed the baby down? That's a legitimate technique that a "magician pediatrician" in Santa Monica, California shows the parents of his patients. Dr. Robert Hamilton has been treating babies and kids for more than three decades. His video describing "the hold" has been viewed more than 53 million times on YouTube and he has been featured in videos all around the world for his ability to almost instantly calm babies down. If you have a baby in your life, give "the hold" a try the next time they're crying and see if the magic happens for you. This article originally appeared three years ago.

Jimmy Carter’s funeral was Thursday, so you’d figure that might be one of the items in this week’s 5QT. It isn’t. Melissa summed up those proceedings exceedingly well, and I don’t have much of anything to add. Besides, I was informed via e-mail that my take on Carter’s death was “rude,” a characterization with which I wholeheartedly and unapologetically agree, and so I’m happy not to beat that dead horse — or the shameful treatment of the president-to-be at that ceremony — any further. (READ MORE: The Uniparty v. Trump at Jimmy Carter’s Funeral) What I will say is that Carter’s funeral had to show off the worst collection of living current and ex-presidents ever assembled in American history. Trump is the only one of the five you can say didn’t directly contribute to American decline, and I don’t know when that could ever be said of five current or former presidents still living and present in one place at any point since our founding. Wow. Anyway, on with the show… 1. Those Fires in Los Angeles Feel Like They’re California’s Katrina You’ll forgive me if my frame of reference is a little local for the taste of much of our readership, but ever since the images started coming out of those fires spreading all over Southern California and piling up the billions of dollars in lost homes and businesses, I haven’t been able to shake the comparisons to what happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans some 20 years ago. You’ve got to admit the analogy is substantial. In New Orleans, the infrastructure failure was poorly made and shoddily maintained levees, while in California it’s the intentional neglect of the reservoirs and water capture infrastructure in an area that is constantly water starved and prone to wildfires in the first place. Then you have an out-to-lunch governor. Louisiana had Kathleen Blanco, who was instantly overwhelmed by the organizational challenge of a hurricane response. California’s Gavin Newsom is certainly that, but he’s also badly out of touch and has no understanding of the dynamics of an emergency situation, either. There’s the analogy of the mayor. Karen Bass was in Ghana when the fires first broke out, and when she returned, it was clear Los Angeles’s emergency management wouldn’t really profit from her presence. That isn’t so different from the performance of New Orleans’s Ray Nagin, who camped out in a suite at the Hyatt Regency Hotel next door to the Superdome and ran up a massive food and drink tab while doing rambling interviews with CNN as his constituents turned into a mishmash of refugees and looters. George W. Bush was castigated as an out-of-touch president as the levees broke after Katrina, and perhaps that was true. Bush probably deserved the media opprobrium he got for staring out the window of Air Force One as it flew over the Katrina floodwaters in New Orleans, but that shouldn’t have been half as destructive a set of optics as Joe Biden interrupting a briefing on the Los Angeles fires to announce that he’s now a great grandfather. But mostly, the reminiscence for me is the collapse of the frauds. In Katrina, those floodwaters exposed just how poorly run a city and a state it was inundating, and how utterly wasted the billions of dollars of local, state, and federal funds were in producing a sustainable and safe city. Mother Nature passed judgment on progressive policy in New Orleans that late-August day when the levees broke, and the test failed. I would venture to say those fires have exposed Los Angeles as even worse than New Orleans after Katrina. You surely know about Bass having cut the fire department’s budget by $17 million last year. You know about the donations of firefighting equipment to Ukraine for some reason. You know they’ve refused for YEARS to clear away underbrush and tree-trash in the woods near populated areas and thus left those areas wide open to destruction from turbocharged wildfires. You know about the DEI idiocy and vaccine fascism that has gutted the various fire departments in Southern California. And you know about the intentional failure to maintain a bankable water supply, so that when it became time to fight those fires the hydrants went empty almost immediately and the only source of water to save those houses were swimming pools the firefighters could pump out. Breitbart’s Joel Pollak was putting out fires near his house with buckets of runoff from fire trucks. That didn’t last long. Louisiana changed for the better after Katrina, at least for a time. People recognized the cost of incompetence and idiocy among their political leaders and, at least for a time, voted better. If there’s a silver lining amid the massive property loss in Southern California — how many of those people who’ve been burned out of their homes and businesses will simply take their insurance or disaster relief payoffs and recognize that windfall as a ticket out of California? — it’s that the folks there will now have an object lesson in the damage progressivism does when real life intrudes. Of course, there’s one major difference. Namely, liars like Bernie Sanders are now running around with political gas cans claiming “climate change” as the cause of those fires, and decrying the lack of rain in Southern California — when the fall and early winter saw more rain there than usual; it was the failure to capture that rainwater, in order to save some species of baitfish or other, which left those fire hydrants dry. There was some climate alarmism strewn about after Katrina, but it largely died away when it became obvious that the levee failure was the problem in New Orleans more than the wind and the rain. And there is this: Spike Lee used to go around claiming Bush blew up those levees when Katrina hit, and that was idiotic. Not idiotic is the contention by a growing number of people that those fires in Los Angeles were deliberately set for very nefarious purposes, whether political or “environmental.” We’ll see about that. 2. May You Get Carpal Tunnel, Mr. President How many times will Donald Trump have to sign his name on Jan. 20? It sounds like it’ll be at least a hundred… President-elect Donald Trump met with the Senate GOP on Wednesday night and during that meeting that he and top advisers reviewed plans for 100 executive orders to be signed after Trump takes office on January 20. Senators who were in the meeting spoke to Axios and revealed that among those orders were plans for immigration and border security. Trump has promised that on Day 1 he would address the border debacle left behind by President Joe Biden and his “border czar” Kamala Harris, who Trump bested in the recent presidential contest. Top adviser Stephen Miller was reportedly in that meeting with Republican senators and spoke to those present about their plans, which include reinstating Title 42, the public health law that allows for the mass refusal of illegal immigrants over concerns about the spread of disease. It was widely used during the COVID pandemic. Additionally, Miller said that the administration would make aggressive use of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which permits state and local law enforcement officers to aid Immigration and Customs Enforcement in carrying out deportations and other activities that have been strictly the purview of ICE. Trump has also been considering reimplementing the “remain in Mexico” policy, where those who come to the border to seek asylum must wait in Mexico or a third country, and not the U.S., while they await their hearing. Biden’s policy was to allow illegal border crossers to apply for asylum and then be released into the United States. The Trump administration will also get back to building the border wall, which was abandoned by the Biden administration. The building of a wall between Mexico and the U.S. was a key campaign promise of Trump’s first run for president in 2016 and propelled him into the White House. That wall was a point of contention with the Biden administration as many Democrats said it was inhumane. On Biden’s first days in office, he essentially flung the border wide open for illegal immigrants of all nations. He extended temporary protected status for those in the U.S. from dangerous nations, reversed Trump-era policies to keep Americans safe, and ushered in the largest wave of illegal immigration the U.S. has ever seen. His secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, even told immigrants “we’re not saying don’t come, we’re saying don’t come now,” as caravans of people lined up at the border to gain entry. Good. There’s so much work to do right now it’s mind-blowing. Other than someone like Harry Truman, who took office in the middle of a war, Trump is inheriting a bigger mess as president than anyone in American history. The border is a crucial piece of the problem, but it’s so much bigger than that. It sounds unsympathetic to wish him carpal tunnel from signing all those executive orders, but that’s probably what it’ll take to set this place straight. 3. Our Relations With Mexico Are Not Going To Be Very Good For Some Time, and They Shouldn’t Be This is not cool. Mexican President Sheinbaum warns citizens about the dangers of fentanyl by showcasing footage of the streets of the United States pic.twitter.com/bptzpkCPAV — COMBATE | (@upholdreality) January 9, 2025 The argument against designating the Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations is that to do so, and then commence military operations against those cartels, would destabilize the Mexican government. But it’s getting hard to deny the cartels actually are the Mexican government, or that it’s a distinctly hostile entity that probably ought to be destabilized. Mexico increasingly shows that it’s unwilling to do what’s necessary and proper to keep good relations with the United States. If our relations deteriorate and if Trump decides that airstrikes or special-ops raids to decapitate the cartels are in our national security interests, that’s on Commie Claudia Sheinbaum’s head, not Trump’s. She may not have created these circumstances but she seems to be reveling in them, and there are consequences. 4. “One Big, Beautiful Bill” Newt Gingrich has a piece out talking about the likelihood that Congress is going to pass a reconciliation package that knocks out a massive amount of Trump’s legislative agenda — border/immigration policy, making the Trump tax cuts permanent, and other things. It’s worth a read. Here’s a taste (I’m giving you the link to the RVIVR article rather than the one at RealClear Politics because the image at the top is just plain better)… The No. 1 goal for the Trump administration and congressional Republicans must be to pass what I would call the Tax Cuts, Jobs, and Affordability Act. President Donald J. Trump has described it as “one big, beautiful bill.” A powerful economic bill must be the Republicans’ top priority, because it is key to the 2026 election. We know the economy, inflation, and affordability are by far the American people’s biggest concerns. The southern border and illegal immigration are also important — and additional border security measures should be included in the bill. But they are still second to the economy. Furthermore, the President can get a fair amount done on illegal immigration and the border without an act of Congress (for instance, enforcing laws the Biden administration is currently ignoring). Quick timing is vital. It takes time for new laws to impact the everyday lives of people. Republicans should have learned this lesson twice: First with President Ronald Reagan in 1981, and then with President Trump in 2017. When President Reagan got his three-year tax cuts through the Congress in the summer of 1981, he allowed it to be written so the tax cuts would only kick in in 1983. The economic result was no real stimulus in 1982. The political result was the House Republicans lost 26 seats in the 1982 off-year election. Similarly, in 2017, the congressional leaders convinced newly-elected President Trump that they could not get to the tax cuts until they abolished Obamacare. They spent months focusing on Obamacare — and failed to repeal it. The lost months meant that the Trump tax cuts only passed in December 2017. The result was little economic impact in 2018. House Republicans lost 40 seats that year. Speaker Nancy Pelosi then unleashed Hell on the Trump administration. Tearing up his State of the Union speech and impeaching him twice were mere opening volleys. The ensuing investigations, harassment, and blocked actions made the last two years of the first Trump presidency incredibly difficult. Gingrich notes that getting a booming economy going by the summer of 2026 is crucial because that’s how you can stave off the dreaded midterm electoral slump a president’s party usually suffers from — and any slumping at all will lose the House, and any real opportunity for legislative headway in the second half of Trump’s term. He’s right about that. What I’d say, though, is that the one big, beautiful bill should contain a nice chunk of election reform action in it. For example, get rid of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which essentially mandates affirmative action for black Democrat politicians by mandating a certain amount of majority-minority congressional and legislative (and other) districts. This is obsolete and unnecessary. When Byron Donalds, Burgess Owens, John James, Tim Scott, Winsome Sears, Mark Robinson, Daniel Cameron, and lots of other black Republicans can win in majority-white districts or in statewide elections and nobody even bats an eye anymore, there is no longer an evidentiary basis for requiring x-amount of districts that black Democrats whose electoral appeal is based almost solely on radical progressivism and racial hatred are guaranteed to win. Plus we need a federal voter ID requirement. We need a ban on noncitizens voting in any elections, not just federal. We need to ban the Census from counting noncitizens for the purposes of apportionment. And we need a federal requirement of regular cleanups to the voter rolls in every state. A while back, Melissa and I had Cleta Mitchell on as a guest and she noted that every time Democrats fall into a governing majority with control of both the legislative and executive branches, whether in D.C. or a state, they immediately go to work bringing legislation to rig the electoral process in their favor. This ought to be done by the GOP, right now. If you really want that big, beautiful bill to be drop-dead gorgeous, put this stuff in there. (LISTEN FOR MORE: The Spectacle Ep. 159: Cracking the Case of Stolen Elections) 5. Amy Barrett Stinks. John Roberts, I can understand, as I’m used to his cowardly rulings. But Barrett has to rank as one of the biggest disappointments in recent Supreme Court history. How could this possibly have happened? President-elect Donald Trump can be sentenced Friday in his New York hush money case, the Supreme Court said in a 5-4 ruling. The high court on Thursday rejected Trump’s emergency request to delay the proceeding, setting the stage for him to be sentenced just days before he is inaugurated on January 20 for a second term. Four conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — said they would have granted Trump’s request. Judge Juan Merchan, the New York judge who oversaw Trump’s trial, had ordered sentencing in the case for Friday morning but has signaled that Trump will face neither penalties nor prison time. In a brief, one-paragraph statement, the court said that some of Trump’s concerns could be handled “in the ordinary course on appeal.” The court also reasoned that the burden sentencing would impose on Trump’s responsibilities is “relatively insubstantial” in light of the trial court’s stated intent to impose no penalty. There is so much manifest, publicly visible, reversible error in that stupid case, so much obvious conflict of interest with Merchan and his daughter who raised millions of dollars for Democrat politicians off that trial, that the idea of allowing a sentence to potentially interfere with Trump’s inauguration is absurd. (READ MORE: Judge Merchan: Dismiss Trump’s Case or Recuse Thyself!) And yet we have it, thanks to Roberts and Barrett siding with the leftists on that Court. Here’s hoping that when Pam Bondi gets confirmed as attorney general, she appoints a special prosecutor to investigate Merchan and his daughter for RICO and Conspiracy Against Rights, and that effort has the same effect on them that federal prosecutions had on, say, Mike Flynn or Rudy Giuliani, who were rendered paupers thanks to the Democrats’ lawfare schemes. And if Merchan does anything to interfere with Trump’s inauguration, maybe it isn’t RICO. Maybe it’s treason. The public has had enough of these shenanigans. Either they end, or it’ll be time for some very unpleasant escalation. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Hasta la Vista, Fidelito! You Get (and Deserve) What You Tolerate. That Isn’t Good News for the UK. An Outrage, and Then a Tragedy, in New Orleans The post Five Quick Things: The Sum of All Frauds in Los Angeles appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The shocking murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson a few weeks ago by what appears to be the son of an affluent family and a product of elite educational institutions, Luigi Mangione, manifests deep festering problems for the children of elites. There is no simple way to describe what is going on because it is multi-faceted. Ironically, children from the most “privileged” backgrounds tend to have a high rate of psychological pathologies due to: over-active parenting; high stress, performance-oriented educational structures; woke teachers, professors, and administrators; and insulated sheltered social circles. The children of elites face extreme and increasing pressure to perform. Amy Chua’s famous Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother documents, and lauds, this hyper-focus on performance. Or consider the recent debate about immigration policy, where Musk and Ramaswamy suggest that lack of desire or ability to work 60+ hour weeks represents a deep flaw in many Americans. Increasing emphasis on where children go to grade school, kindergarten, and even preschool reveals just how deep this performance anxiety extends. I often heard stories from my students who nannied in New York City about how much parents worried about getting their 3- or 4-year-old into the right preschool. And it never lets up. Even after being admitted to a prestigious college or university, students continue to feel immense anxiety and pressure to perform — which simply continues into their choice of career. William Deresiewicz documents this phenomenon among students at Princeton in his book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of American Elite. Even worse, though, is how the bureaucrats and educators at elite academic institutions (from higher education down to grade school) prey upon the insecurities and anxieties of the children of elites. Children at these institutions are taught that they should feel immense guilt in addition to their anxiety. There are racial dimensions (white guilt), environmental dimensions (climate guilt), and class warfare dimensions (wealth guilt). The prominence of woke ideology around race and gender, epitomized in intersectionality, builds and reinforces complex forms of guilt, prejudice, and anger. At root, the woke ideas promoted in most elite universities and colleges create deep self-loathing — which tends to manifest in criticism of capitalism, of American heritage, and of Western civilization more broadly. It can also be seen in sympathy with violence for the “right” causes. Dividing the world into oppressor and oppressed skews kids’ moral judgments as they are taught that the oppressed can do no wrong while oppressors deserve whatever bad thing happens to them — even being shot in the back. Alongside this immense pressure to perform is the trend of helicopter parenting where parents intervene whenever their child faces obstacles or potential failure. This can be seen in how often parents call schools or colleges on behalf of their children or insist on attending student-oriented activities with their children. Parents hovering in the background reduces children’s resilience and initiative. It also fosters an unhealthy sense of a safety net and entitlement. Nothing can get too out of hand because mom or dad are always there to fix things. Increasingly, wealthy elites live in narrow enclaves of their peers. This creates a “sheltered” experience for their children who grow up without interaction with or empathy for people from humbler socio-economic circumstances. This manifests in how elites are increasingly “out of touch” with ordinary Americans. Charles Murray’s excellent book, Coming Apart, explains this phenomenon in great detail. Growing up in enclaves of the wealthy, educated, and high-performing skews the priorities of children of the elite away from most Americans. To reiterate, the children of the elites are in trouble.  From before they can read into adulthood, they face exorbitant pressure to perform, even while mom or dad hovers in the background to “fix” all of their problems. Even as they are pushed to achieve, they are also taught how privileged and undeserving they and their families are if they do not fit narrow categories of “oppressed” people or groups. (RELATED: Luigi Mangione’s Cognitive Dissonance) Add into this mix deep insularity and coddling, and the result is unhappy activists who are deeply anxious yet feel entitled to their status while simultaneously feeling guilty about it. Virtue-signaling serves as a form of penance or atonement to assuage this guilt without requiring real sacrifice. At the same time, many of these kids are implicitly taught that their parents can and will shield them from the more severe consequences of their choices. (RELATED: Weimar America: The Threat Is on the Left) I don’t think Sam Bankman-Fried seriously thought he would face jail time for his fraud at FTX, let alone 25 years. This may seem ironic given that both his parents are lawyers at Stanford — but it makes a lot of sense if you think about the kind of environment he and his peers grew up in. Although Mangione’s story involves complicating factors of pain and perhaps a touch of mental illness, he too is a product of this elite upbringing and the severe twisting of moral and social sensibilities it entails. There is no silver bullet for what ails the children of elites today. Moving towards “free-range parenting” rather than helicopter parenting may help. Reducing access to, and use of, social media and smartphones — or screen time in general — certainly won’t hurt. But at the end of the day, elites need to decide what their priorities for their children really are and act accordingly. Perhaps that means downplaying the academic and career success playbook they have for their children. Perhaps it means living outside of elite enclaves and finding ways for their kids to rub shoulders with more “ordinary” kids. There is a kind of spiritual bankruptcy at work that elites must come to grips with. Declines in religious belief and religious communities have created a vacuum that people try to fill with elite sports, high-powered careers, academic prowess, and other activities. Yet these substitutes don’t seem to have the same staying power as organic religious communities. And they tend to have all the side effects discussed above. The children of elites are in trouble, and no government policy or program can fix their problems. Ultimately, elites themselves must decide to change their priorities and parenting practices if they really want to change the environment their kids grow up in. And if you think it’s a matter of putting them in a “better” school, you’ve missed the point. READ MORE from Paul Mueller: The Real Climate Change Disaster Import Germany’s Cars, Not Its Policies The post The Children of Elites Are in Trouble appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

My readers of these past eight years know I do not write gleefully over the dead. We all eventually die, whether righteous or evil, having served G-d the Creator and contributed to our society or having wasted our one glorious opportunity in this world to do either or both. Lincoln died. Moses died. Those now living will die until Messianic times. So there is something uneasy about crowing over the dead. Our time will come, too. Therefore, I am not really going to go after the dead here. Rather, I will leave Joe Biden alone. Let’s be clear: the same fake media now canonizing Saint Jimmy has lied to us for at least half a century — and really quite more. They not only have lost their way but more importantly have lost their sway. Not enough, but much. That — perhaps more than any other takeaway from the recent presidential election — is the glaring revelation we have witnessed. Despite all the media lies and the piling on, their result: pfft! The Lies Trump colluded with Putin. The Hunter laptop was a Russian deception. Nick, the kid in Covington, Ky., was an anti-Black and anti-Indian Catholic racist. Trump has dementia and insiders agree the 25th Amendment must be invoked. Biden is sharp as a steak knife and at the top of his game. Trump (though actually describing how an economic development could lead to a financial bloodbath) supposedly asserted instead that, if he lost the election, there would be an insurrectional bloodbath. While actually saying that neocon Liz Cheney should back up her warmongering by going to fight in Iraq and experience first-hand what our brave soldiers do — having a rifle pointed at their faces — Trump supposedly was saying that Liz Cheney, because of her oppositional political views, should have a gun pointed at her face in America (and presumably be shot). Done? Nope. Just starting. The “very fine people” at Charlottesville. COVID Chinese lab leak theory. Jussie Smollett. (Remember Kamala Harris’s tweet?) Border patrol officers on horses whipped illegal aliens like Confederacy slaves. The travel ban against people from discrete anti-American dictatorships, both Muslim and non-Muslim — but not from a great many other Muslim countries — was a “Muslim Travel Ban.” Black Lives Matter is a normative civil rights group. The assassinated ISIS cutthroat Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was a contemplative intellectual theological scholar and holy man. Trump was disgracing deceased veterans by intruding himself into Arlington National Cemetery without being invited by Gold Star families. The “cages” where the children of illegal aliens were being held at the border were built by Trump. (Obama built and implemented them). Illegals were being forced to drink water from toilets. Trump is an antisemite. Trump is a fascist who will overturn the Constitution. The Steele Dossier. Thus the lies — and so many more. Piling On Every presidential debate was marked by profoundly imbalanced questioning and one-sided dubious “fact-checking.” Remember Candace Crowley and Mitt Romney — and so many before and since. Kamala Harris’s softball interviews by shills, supporters, and Democrat hacks in the media. Endless media shenanigans to promote her, from Al Sharpton, and his $500,000 payoff, to Oprah, and the million dollar transfer, to NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” sneaking Harris into their weekly episode three days before the election. The entire orbit — planet — of mainstream TV Late Night “Comedy”: Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Myers, Jimmy Fallon. All the larger networks except Fox News. Any gambler would have thought that the one-way monopolistic media brainwashing would have put Biden–Harris over the top by a landslide. However, Trump’s overwhelming “Swing State” sweep, augmented by his popular vote win, evidenced that, yes, the media has sway with some, but a small majority of voters finally, after a half-century and more, have internalized tuning them out. We who never missed a Johnny Carson episode or those of his immediate successors — Jay Leno, David Letterman, and the many pretenders — have not watched Colbert, Kimmel, Fallon, and Myers for so long that we barely know they exist, much less what they say. Same with “Saturday Night Live.” The moment that the New York Times and Washington Post started publishing summaries of “Saturday Night Live” sketches in their Monday news sections, we knew that the apolitical days of Roseanne Roseannadanna and Samurai Deli were over. We moved. It is against this background — critical context — that one must understand the media’s present weeklong hagiography of Saint James Earl Carter. I am an Orthodox rabbi, so I beg my Catholic readers’ indulgence. But my understanding is that a saint must have performed at least confirmed miracles in his or her life. I witnessed Saint Jimmy’s miracles: After 120 years, briefly predating the Civil War and extending through 1976, America’s Deep South was impenetrably and unalterably Democrat — “Dixiecrats.” A state-wide Republican could not get elected dog catcher from Georgia to Alabama, from Louisiana to Mississippi, from Arkansas to Tennessee, and so forth. All southern U.S. senators and governors, like Saint Jimmy, were Democrats. Remember how Texas went for Lyndon Johnson and Lloyd Bentsen? Arkansas for Clinton and Tennessee for Al Gore and his dad? George Wallace. Lester Maddox. Saint Jimmy single-handedly, in his 1980 race against Ronald Reagan, turned the 125-year Dixiecrat Deep South from Democrat to Republican forevermore. I dare not compare it to turning water to wine (John 2:1-11) — absolutely not — but for a man who lived in our American midst, that was a miracle. Saint Jimmy brought us an almost 19 percent mortgage rate. By the time he left office in January 1981, he had left Ronald Reagan with an inflation rate so uncontrollable that it hit 18.45 percent until Reaganomics tamed the spiral. This was a supernatural wonder. We witnessed it. It happened. Some might call it thaumaturgy. But, no, it was a miracle. Presaging the Obama and Biden failures, Carter miraculously had his CIA pay $4 million to the Shiite Islamic Mullah crazies of Iran while the pro-American Shah was in power. (That would be $22 million today.) It is hard to analyze or even recount that on a plane comparable to Obama and Biden transferring billions to Iran because they merely were Saint Jimmy’s apostles. But the notion of buying off the Islamist crazies was otherworldly. It required a strong personal awareness of Saint Jimmy’s halcyon status to bring Iran to the change it has enjoyed these past 50 years. On his watch, he miraculously managed to leave Americans hostage in Iran for 444 days. This was a miracle. Yes, skeptics will suggest political explanations to deny the saint’s miracle. But all religions have their scoffers, deniers, and atheists. Yet, for the believing, the truth of the miracle is so clear and happened before our very eyes. The miracle of leaving Iran in control of Americans for 444 days ended the moment that Saint Jimmy departed his pulpit, taking his aura with him. Suddenly, the world reverted to natural events, and the hostages were released just as Reagan was being sworn in as the 40th president. Accordingly, it is challenging to accuse the media of outright fakery and falsehood for devoting the past week to canonizing Saint Jimmy. He was a saint, and that is hard for me to acknowledge because he was such a vicious, contemptible antisemite. He taught terrible things about Jews in his Sunday School classes. He overtly befriended Yasser Arafat and advocated for Arafat and Hamas while regularly deprecating Israel in racist and antisemitic terms that compelled almost every public Jewish personality — even established liberal Democrats — to declare him an antisemite. He raised money for Arafat’s P.L.O. He even coached Arafat on how to be more presentable in the West and even wrote a speech for Arafat to deliver. In 2015, he generated an uproar when supporting Hamas. Fourteen leading members of his own “Carter Center” resigned over his antisemitism. He blew them off: “They all happen to be Jewish Americans.” New York Times columnist William Safire put it plainly in December 1978: “Carter Blames the Jews.” It is fitting that the dishonest mainstream media, built on a culture of lying and false “fact-checking,” now would seek to distort history by grasping at shreds in the aftermath of their shattering collapse in the face of the Trump triumph over their combined efforts. Many people still trust those fading media, but a majority of Americans no longer do. In their effort to rewrite Carter’s “legacy” of failure and antisemitism, the media rely on the public to have forgotten or never even to have known about him. Indeed, those aged 52 and under never knowingly experienced him. They never saw him mess up America’s energy supply so badly that, as president, he went on national television wearing a sweater urging us all to wear sweaters and to “make sacrifices” because “the energy shortage is permanent.” So many did not know his years nor experience the damage he did. That is the best way that university professors and media brainwash the public: by drawing from topics that others do not know, falsifying history as alternate facts, and then brainwashing. But many of us indeed witnessed Saint Jimmy and his certifiable miracles with our own eyes and lives. We remember. The Olympians who devoted four, eight, or twelve years of their lives training to compete in the 1980 games but were barred by Carter in a meaningless gesture against Moscow that did not parallel in any manner, shape, or form the moral challenge posed by Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Olympics. He destroyed their lives. Auguring the contemporary Biden Crime Family, Carter’s brother used his access to the president to lobby politically for Libyan Madman Muammar Ghaddafi — for which he was paid at least $219,000 (a $220,000 loan for which he repaid one dollar) and, according to many, $2 million. That is $11 million in today’s numbers. ($220,000 in today’s numbers is $1,215,000.) And, yes, Saint Jimmy portrayed himself as a “man of the people” by publicly carrying his own luggage. However, those close to him later revealed that, when the media cameras were not rolling, he always had the Secret Service carry his luggage. A small quibble? Well, how about this: When carrying a smaller piece of luggage demonstrably over his shoulder for the cameras to capture, the luggage was empty. Biden is approaching sainthood next, very soon. His Easter rabbit is ready for the canonization. READ MORE from Dov Fischer: The Brilliance of Trump’s New Campaign Suing Fake News If Only We Had More Daniel Pennys! In Praise of G-d and of His Agent for Change — Kamala Harris Subscribe to Rav Fischer’s YouTube channel here at bit.ly/3REFTbk and follow him on X (Twitter) at @DovFischerRabbi to find his latest classes, interviews, speeches, and observations. To be invited to attend any of his three weekly Zoom classes — Sundays on the past week’s events impacting Jews and Israel, and Tuesdays and Thursdays on the Bible and Jewish law — send a request to rabbi@yioc.org Rav Fischer’s latest 10-minute messages are up: (i) “There is No Palestine” (here); and (ii) 6 Divine Miracles by Which Trump Defeated Harris (here) The post Presidents Jimmy and Joe: Goodbye and Good Riddance appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Why not the best? That question is not a mere rhetorical question. In fact, in the fall of 1975, this was the title, Why Not the Best?, of a bestselling book by a new figure on the national stage: former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter. The question had first been posed directly to the young Ensign and then Navy Lt. Carter by his strict and legendary commanding officer, Admiral Hyman Rickover. Rickover, Carter would write, “He asked me and every other young naval officer in the atomic submarine program.” It was a question Carter never forgot. For those not around in the day, Carter’s rise was an improbable story in the day. America was just emerging from a seriously divisive period. First came the Vietnam War. The war was so divisive in the 1960s and early 1970s that it had cost the once overwhelmingly popular Democrat President Lyndon Johnson — elected in a massive landslide over the GOP’s Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964 — his renomination. Under attack in 1968 from anti-war Democrat Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota and New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (father of today’s RFK Jr.), LBJ was forced to withdraw from what all assumed was his certain re-election bid. The Democrats then turned not to McCarthy or Kennedy — the latter assassinated the night he won the California Democratic primary — but to LBJ’s Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey, seen as LBJ’s heir, was so divisive the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago was the cause of massive Chicago riots, all televised in vivid detail. In the wake of that, the GOP nominated its losing 1960 standard bearer, former Vice President Richard Nixon. Nixon won and was re-elected in a landslide in 1972. The war extended beyond Nixon’s time in office, ending in disaster in 1975 as the South Vietnam capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Communists, the remaining Americans in the U.S. Embassy were captured on video dramatically being rescued off the Embassy roof by American helicopters. And then. And then what became known as the “Watergate scandal” erupted, a political drama revolving around a break-in by Nixon campaign staffers to the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office/apartment complex in Washington. For the next two years, the scandal unwound in a myriad of congressional committee investigations and prosecutions by so-called “Special Prosecutors.” After much slam and bang, the scandal ended abruptly in August 1974 when Nixon, about to be impeached, resigned, making Vice President Gerald Ford the new president. By 1976 Ford himself was under challenge for re-nomination by former California Governor Ronald Reagan. That race was close, literally ending in a tense showdown at the Republican National Convention when a handful of delegates switched their allegiance from Reagan to Ford, putting Ford over the top. As all of these multiple dramas unfolded, seemingly out of nowhere this smiling, soft-spoken former Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter appeared. He was so totally removed from the Vietnam and Nixon controversies that he had an instant appeal. A Georgia peanut farmer, Naval Academy graduate, submarine officer, state senator, and one-term governor, suddenly Carter was a political version of the Beatles. It was learned he had left the Navy and a promising career to return home at his father’s passing to save the family’s peanut farm. He did. Americans were suddenly crazy for Jimmy Carter. He was an Outsider, a political rock star. And, on January 20, 1977, having defeated the incumbent President Ford, he was being sworn in as president. And then. And then “Mr. Jimmy” (as he was called in his small hometown of Plains, Georgia) was doing battle with the Washington Swamp creatures. And as time unfolded, it eventually didn’t go well. Carter’s young Georgia staffers, symbolized by so-called “good ole boy” Hamilton Jordan as chief of staff and Jody Powell as White House press secretary, had as much contempt for Washington insiders as those insiders were growing to have for Carter and themselves. The contempt of insider Democrats manifested itself in a 1980 renomination battle with Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, that Carter, after a pitched battle, managed to win. In November of 1979, as the Kennedy challenge was getting underway, Iranian student radicals raided the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking the American embassy staffers hostage and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Reagan was running again, and this time captured the 1980 GOP nomination, setting himself up as a serious threat to the politically wounded Carter — with Reagan eventually winning in a landslide. Said Carter later to Jordan: “1980 was pure hell — the Kennedy challenge, Afghanistan, having to put the SALT Treaty on the shelf, the recession, Ronald Reagan, and the hostages … always the hostages! It was one crisis after another.” One crisis after another indeed. Carter left office viewed as one of the worst American presidents ever. Earning for himself the kind of reputation Republican President Herbert Hoover had earned from his presidency when the 1929 Great Depression hit the nation. What to do? A serious Christian — he was famous for teaching Sunday school at his Plains Baptist Church even while president — Carter set about using his presidential influence to help solve various international disputes. While he pursued the typical post-presidential task of setting up his presidential library, he went on to do something else entirely. That would be the establishment of what is known as “The Carter Center,” an organization devoted to Carter’s “lifelong mission to improve life for the world’s poorest people by championing freedom and improving health,” as the Center describes itself. And in that self-created role, Carter was a stunning success. Years later the Washington Post would write of Carter’s post-presidential years after he won the Nobel Peace Prize that “the prize recognized the singular achievements of a one-term president who had turned his post-White House career into a self-built monument to world peace and human dignity.” Indeed. As Jimmy Carter now passes on, he leaves a reputation for what future presidents can achieve whenever it is that they leave office. With future presidents asking of themselves, “Why Not the Best.’ An excellent question — and one for all Americans to ask of themselves as well. RIP Mr. President. And thanks for your service. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: No, Joe, It Ain’t So Biden Rewards Liz Cheney for Betraying the Constitution If Not Speaker Johnson — Who? The post Jimmy Carter RIP appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Three Days Grace have scored their 18th #1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart with “Mayday” (dated 1/11). It’s the band’s first single since the return of original frontman Adam Gontier – sharing lead vocals with Matt Walst. Of Three Days Grace’s 18 Mainstream Rock Airplay #1s, 11 have been with Gontier, beginning with “Just Like You” in 2004. Following his departure in ’13, Walst stepped in and racked up six #1s as the band’s sole vocalist, starting in ’14 with “Painkiller.” Three Days Grace’s 18 #1s on the Mainstream Rock chart is just one behind Shinedown. ### The post Three Days Grace’s “Mayday” Tops Mainstream Rock appeared first on RockinTown.

by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog: The “hurricane of fire” that is ripping across Los Angeles County is already being called one of the worst natural disasters in the entire history of the state of California.  There are actually several different fires that have erupted, and extremely high winds are spreading them very rapidly. The Palisades […]