When Antonio Rodiles was invited to last year’s July 4 party at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, he handed out leaflets listing names of more than 1,000 political prisoners incarcerated by the communist regime since antigovernment protests broke out in 2021. “We got to all the European ambassadors, the papal nuncio, everybody,” says the Cuban opposition leader. But when an embassy van took him back home, a government goon squad was waiting for him. “We are at the worst moment since the human rights movement started up in Cuba 30 years ago,” Rodiles told The American Spectator. “Whoever opens his mouth gets whacked.” The beating he received — which landed him in hospital with a broken face and forced him into exile together with thousands of Cuban dissidents increasingly joining the migrant tide moving across the Mexican border —might have been avoided if the U.S. provided free internet service with which regime opponents can communicate among themselves and expose their plight to the the outside world. (READ MORE from Martin Arostegui: The Venezuela Template Against Democracy) With their own internet connection, opposition activists could be warned about the movements of regime security teams and the spontaneous mass protests that began three years ago may have gathered enough strength and coordination by now to topple the family dynasty to which Raul Castro’s son and Fidel’s nephew Alejandro, is now heir apparent following the death of his brother. Even policemen were joining street protests before the regime cut internet services to the general population importing the tactics and monitoring technology used to repress protests in Iran, Russia and China. “You cannot win a battle if the enemy controls your communications,” says Rodiles, “the regime is weak, but it can’t fall on its own”. “Cuba’s internet services are firmly in the hands of the Chinese who support their total control by the government,” Dr. Evan Ellis, Latin America specialist at the U.S. Army War College, said. Chinese companies have built up Cuba’s telecommunications including an undersea cable connecting Cuba with Venezuela laid by Beijing-based ZTE to secure the low of data between China’s main Latin American allies. China has recently expanded its intelligence operations with the construction of an electronic espionage base in Lourdes just outside Havana that was formerly operated by Russia to spy on the U.S. Florida congresswoman Maria Elviria Salazar has proposed floating balloons at 50,000 ft. to beam signals that would open independent internet access for Cubans. The U.S. military has electronic warfare systems that could further boost the signals and jam regime communications. But instead of green lighting such ideas, the Biden administration is appeasing the Castro regime even while risking World War Three to fight its backers in distant battlefields. (READ MORE: To Hell With the Universities) Last week, the State Department removed Cuba from the list of countries that “don’t fully cooperate against terrorism” even as state terrorism continues thriving on the island and the regime actively supports Hamas, whose delegates met with the Cuban ambassador in Beirut soon after the Oct. 7 attacks that killed 1,200 Israelis. Rául Castro has held meetings with Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, who visited Havana. Biden’s State Dept. announced the removal of Cuba from list of countries that don’t fully cooperate against terrorism. This is an INSULT to everyone fighting for freedom in Cuba. Floridians deserve to know if Biden’s hand-picked senate candidate, @DebbieForFL, supports this… — Rick Scott (@ScottforFlorida) May 16, 2024 While the U.S. all but abandons Cuba’s anti-government protestors, organizations linked with the Cuban communist party are promoting violent anti-semitic protests on American campuses, according to a recent report in the New York Post. A New York based group called The People’s Forum, which led the occupation of Hamilton Hall in Columbia University last month, has received extensive political indoctrination and training in Cuba. The leader of the group, Manolo Dos Santos, previously involved in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, met personally with Cuban premiere Miguel Díaz-Canel in 2022 to arrange for hundreds of American leftist activists to go to Cuba in April and May 2023, as reported in the Cuban official government newspaper Granma, for “exchanges” with Cuban communist party “grass roots activists” — like those who beat up Rodiles. Cuba has historical ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which participated in the Oct. 7 attacks and whose representative office in Havana has been organizing pro-Palestinian rallies. At a recent event, attended by Díaz-Canel, “solidarity” videos were exchanged with American activists occupying NYU. Cuba’s intelligence services played key roles in forming a nexus between the PFLP, European and Latin American far left terrorist groups in the 1970s and 80s. The DGI also backed U.S. domestic terrorism by groups like the Weather Underground, the Puerto Rican FALN and the Black Liberation Army, whose fugitive leaders continue living in Havana. Cuba has been collaborating closely with Russia in what President Volodymyr Zelensky describes as a “terrorist” war on Ukraine. Hundreds of Cuban mercenaries are fighting on the front lines while high level Cuban defense and intelligence officials, including Raul Castro, have visited Moscow as well as Belorussia “to discuss in detail the current status of military cooperation and ways of developing it” according to an official communiqué released by the Byelorussian defense ministry last year. According to Ukrainian intelligence reports, Cuban special forces known as Avispas Negras (Black Wasps) have been undergoing language training in Byelorussia for possible infiltration missions into Ukraine and other east European countries. (READ MORE from Martin Arostegui: Russia Is Pounding Eastern Ukraine’s Industrial Heartland) In a twisted explanation for sliding Cuba off the terrorism list, the State Department said it was in keeping with a recent decision by Colombia to lift extradition requests for two members of the National Liberation Army who planted a truck bomb in the country’s police academy killing 20 cadets in 2019. In other words, there was no action or concession by Cuba for its delisting. It was a political decision by Colombia’s leftist president Gustavo Petro, himself a one time member of another Cuban backed guerrilla group (M19), to officially ignore Cuba’s non-compliance that opened the way for Biden to move his appeasement policy forward. “The administration is trying to accomodate left of center allies in the region,” says Dr. Ellis. But there may be other reasons involving the interests of important donors to Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign, such as the Hyatt hotel chain owners itching to sign deals with the Castros. They lobbied intensely for the normalization of relations with Cuba under President Barack Obama who appointed a Hyatt family member to a senior position in the commerce department. Cuba has been accused of election interference along with China, Russia, and Iran in a recently released U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment on foreign threats to U.S. elections: “We assess that Cuba attempted to undermine the electoral prospects of specific US congressional and gubernatorial politicians (in 2022). Havana probably intended these efforts to advance its foreign policy goals which include removing sanctions and its State Sponsor of Terrorism designation.” The 1.5-page assessment on Cuba’s election influence is heavily redacted with most lines blacked out, including a long paragraph that starts: “Havana sought to identify and establish relationships with members of the U.S. media.” The Biden administration’s whitewash of Cuba not only endangers dissidents on the island whose ranks are swelling due to growing scarcities in food and energy but America’s national security as well. Many members of the intelligence community were shocked when a court trying Cuban state department mole Manuel Rocha, failed to convict him for espionage in a verdict handed last month, even as the FBI produced recordings in which he confessed to spying willingly for the Castros throughout his diplomatic career. “An espionage conviction might have raised some embarrassing questions,” says Timothy Ashby, an ex-commerce official and onetime business partner of Rocha’s. Members of Congress are also calling for an investigation into the mysterious appearance of Cuban security officials at Miami airport last week to inspect airline screening facilities, just hours after being cleared on terrorism. The post Cuba Is Training Leftist American Anti-Semites. The Biden Administration Is Helping. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The story of World War II’s “Red Ball Express” serves as a reminder that winning wars means winning a battle of logistics. It also offers insight into how we should approach our assistance to Ukraine in the face of concerns about Ukrainian corruption, which is an issue raised repeatedly in the recent debates over the latest aid package and which is likely to be raised again and again as long as the war continues. One may not agree with those who’ve made Ukrainian corruption an issue, but it has loomed too large in recent months to simply be dismissed out of hand. The “Red Ball Express” was an emblematic American “can-do” solution to a problem that might well have defeated the armies of most other countries. After the “breakout” from Normandy at the end of July, 1944, after the crushing encirclement of the German armies at Falaise, the German defenses collapsed and the allied armies raced across France. Raced so fast that they exceeded even the wildest dreams of the D-Day invasion planners, so fast that the armies soon had outrun their base of supplies, hundreds of miles distant in back in Normandy. (READ MORE: Russia Is Pounding Eastern Ukraine’s Industrial Heartland) By Aug. 25, it had become clear that nothing short of desperate measures would enable the continued pursuit of the broken German forces. The French rail system and rolling stock had largely been destroyed by the allied air forces in the run up to D-Day, when the priority was denying supplies to the Germans manning the vaunted Atlantic Wall. If the necessary supplies were to reach the front line troops, truck convoys on a scale heretofore scarcely imagined, would have to do the job. The solution was the “Red Ball Express.” Combining virtually every available military trucking resource in France, mainly the famous “deuce and a half” trucks, it was a system designed to overcome the limitations of the French highway system, roads largely well-surfaced, but too narrow to sustain large volumes of two-way truck traffic. So instead MPs were deployed to create two one-way highways, the northern route carrying supplies forward, the southern bringing the trucks back to be loaded once again. And it worked. At its peak it delivered something like 12,000 tons of supplies per day to divisions along the entire Western Front. To be sure, it was a close run thing. For example, Patton’s famed 3rd Army, having charged over virtually the whole of France in little more than 30 days, literally ran out of gas just shy of the final great barrier to the German border, the Moselle river in the French province of Lorraine. At a critical moment, the pursuit ended, and, when it resumed a week later, the breathing space had enabled the Germans to put cobble together a new line of defenses along the river, presaging a bloody and brutal slugging match that would last deep into November. The “Red Ball Express” continued throughout these critical days, lasting until the opening of the port of Antwerp dramatically eased the allies’ supply situation. All along the front, in hard and bitter battles from the Hürtgen forest to the grand fortifications of Metz, tanks depended on thousands of gallons of gasoline, while bullets and shells were consumed in almost unimaginably vast numbers. Soldiers had to eat, and, as winter set in — what would be the most brutal winter in eastern France in decades — they also desperately needed winter clothing to replace the increasingly tattered lightweight garb. Saboteurs on Both Sides As I’ve listened to discussions about corruption in Ukraine and the misuse of the billions in assistance we’ve provided, I’ve found myself thinking of a family anecdote, and reflecting on the way in which it might point to a policy solution. In August, 1944, my uncle Tom’s regiment, the 29th Infantry, had just arrived in France from England, having spent much of the war up to that point providing security for bases in Iceland. Rather than being pushed forward to the front lines, the 29th was assigned the task of providing security for the “Red Ball Express.” Much of the territory through which the trucks passed day and night had only recently been liberated, and General Eisenhower feared that bypassed German units or Vichy French saboteurs might attempt to interrupt the flow of supplies. (READ MORE: The Strange Life and Ironic Death of Putin-Loving Russell ‘Texas’ Bentley) So while the MPs directed traffic and manned the many intersections along the way, the riflemen of the 29th patrolled the routes in vehicle mounted teams, ready to respond to any threats. One afternoon, my uncle, a very young second lieutenant, saw several “Red Ball” trucks pulled off the route onto a side street in a French village, where a crowd had gathered. He ordered his jeep driver to pull over, and he and a third soldier walked over to the back of the crowd, discovering that a couple of “Red Ball” drivers were conducting an auction, selling GI long johns, overcoats, and “ten-on-one” ration boxes off the back of their trucks. My uncle saw red. Unslinging his carbine, he led his soldiers through the crowd and levelled the weapon at the drivers. While his men dispersed the crowd, he ordered the drivers — at gunpoint — to reload their trucks and then followed them in his jeep to the next MP checkpoint, his gunner with a locked and loaded, pedestal-mounted .30 caliber machine gun trained on the truck ahead from the back of the jeep. As he told the story many years later, what infuriated him the most about the entire incident was knowing that, at that very moment, his older brother, my father, was freezing in the front lines outside Metz, waiting for the warm clothing that the drivers had been flogging to French civilians. Would he have shot the drivers, I asked. Only one, he replied, somebody was still needed to drive the trucks, and the trucks had to get through. But yes, as he put it: “Our mission was to stop saboteurs, and those drivers were saboteurs just as much as a bunch of Krauts.” So much has been made of World War II’s “greatest generation” that it’s easy to forget that not all of its members were all that great. In the wake of the advance across France in 1944, a massive black market arose, centered upon Paris, organized by AWOL soldiers and corrupt members of the services of supply. The temptations were huge. After years under German occupation, and faced with shortages of almost everything, the French were eager for clothing, foodstuffs, gasoline, and cigarettes, and huge profits accrued to the Americans who could supply this demand. TV’s Sgt. Bilko may have played this kind of thing for laughs, but there was nothing funny about the GI mafias that emerged in Paris (or, in fairness to the French, even more so in Naples). It’s no accident that the early history of the U.S. Army’s CID, it’s Criminal Investigation Division, is filled with tales of the battle against black marketeers in World War II, not just the occasional “Red Ball Express” driver, but much more the organized crime syndicates that arose in Paris and other French cities. GI criminality never actually threated the war effort, and most soldiers had little use for the criminals, but, as my uncle’s story makes clear, it had its effect. Many front line soldiers during December’s Battle of the Bulge lacked the winter gear a great nation should have provided, mainly due to the miscalculations of rear-area supply officers, but also because these items were hijacked along the way. Let’s Stop Sending Humanitarian Aid to Ukraine What, then, does the “Red Ball Express” have to do with supplying Ukraine’s war amidst allegations of Ukrainian corruption? The lesson should be obvious. No one was selling 105mm artillery shells off the back of ‘deuce and a half” trucks to French villagers, nor were tank transporters being hijacked so that French farmers could use Sherman tanks to plow their fields. Similarly, it’s doubtful that Ukrainian crooks want to put a HIMARS rocket system up for sale, or pallet loads of 155mm shells. When these things get to Ukraine, and in spite of the Biden administration’s ridiculous strictures on their use, they get used for the purpose of stopping Putin’s invasion and protecting the homes and families of ordinary Ukrainians. If there’s concern about the money spent buying weapons and ammunition, then critics should at least acknowledge that, overwhelmingly, this money is spent with American companies providing jobs for American workers here in the U.S. If the Ukrainians could make these weapons and systems in their own factories, no doubt they’d be doing just that. After all, having experienced the perpetually “hot and cold” manipulative nature of Biden’s approach to providing aid — and having witnessed in recent weeks his similar approach to Israel — who wouldn’t prefer to be self-reliant. (READ MORE: Ukraine’s Secret Hospital Train) One suspects that the concern about Ukrainian corruption and American military aid comes down less to a concern about corruption and more a desire to withdraw altogether from supporting Ukraine. And some undoubtedly, reflect a perfectly justified unhappiness with some of the suspected nefarious dealings between interests in Kyiv and the Biden family. All well and good. Therefore, with the lesson of my uncle’s experience of the “Red Ball Express” in mind, and with due deference to the famed satirist Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, here’s a suggestion: Stop sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine, in any form. Undoubtedly, there are Ukrainians who deserve such aid, and maybe our European allies can take up the slack it — the Europeans, after all, are probably better situated to provide such aid and to monitor its honest use. For our part, send nothing that can be flogged by crooks for profit: not food, not clothing, not shelter. Above all, ignore the common NGO request to “send money” so that we can buy the things that are needed, money is far too fungible, far too mobile. Instead, send only things that blow up and destroy things, that is tanks and guns and shells and missiles. It’s not quite the same as Swift’s famed suggestion that the Irish eat their babies to solve their nutrition and population problems, but it is a solution to the anxieties over Ukrainian corruption as it relates to military aid. I know that the very notion of suspending our humanitarian aid will be met with froth and vaporing from all the usual suspects. Weapons bad, food good, and all that. But it might just be a salutary lesson for the NGOs around the world who, in many instances, have grown fat with our propensity for feel good messaging. Watching the manipulative political stench that has arisen around humanitarian assistance to Gaza, one can only hold one’s nose in disgust. After all, the proper time for humanitarian assistance there has always been only after Hamas has been crushed. Similarly, right now we might best provide Ukraine right now with the weapons necessary to bring Putin to the negotiation table, along with ending the inane restrictions on their use. This is the best foundation for peace, and something that has eluded the Biden administration altogether. James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His 2022 novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region, and a forthcoming sequel carries the Reprisal team from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find it on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited. The post What the Red Ball Express Teaches Us About Ukraine appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump had a message for the Libertarian National Convention Saturday night: Vote for me or lose again. RELATED: Trump Extends a Hand to the Libertarians The confab appeared split between die-hard MAGA fans, who cheered on the former president, and hardcore Libertarians, who booed when Trump took the stage. The mix was perfect for a convention with the theme: “Become ungovernable.” While supporters and opponents shouted at each other, Trump himself appeared relaxed and game for the boisterous evening ahead. He began by noting it was a great honor to be the first president in U.S. history to address a Libertarian National Convention. Cheers and boos. (Did I mention there were a number of bars in the lobby and full plastic cups in the convention hall?) Trump started with the admission that some wondered why he came to speak at the convention for a rival third-party. The answer: With 91 felony charges aimed at him, he offered, “If I wasn’t a Libertarian before I sure as hell am a Libertarian now.” More cheers and boos. When anti-Trumpers heckled him, Trump coolly responded that Libertarians now had a choice: vote for him, or get used to “getting your 3 percent every four years.” And really, Trump’s math was generous. In 2016, the Libertarian ticket, headed by former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, attracted 3.3 percent of the popular vote. Most years from 1972 on, Libertarians claimed less than 1 percent of ballots. Be it noted, 1 percent to 3 percent in a swing state could be a game changer when the Electoral College vote is counted. Hence the anger that the Left has directed at independent candidate for president Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy spoke to the Libertarian convention at the Washington Hilton on Friday. So the Libertarian Party’s big-name speakers this year were the presumptive Republican nominee and a candidate who until recently was a Democrat. By showing up at the Libertarian confab, Trump showed a willingness to fight for the support of voters whom the political class often ignores. He calls them “the forgotten man.” With that, Trump’s top billing might hurt the Libertarian Party among members, but the move certainly didn’t hurt the Trump campaign. My guess is Trump left the event with more votes than he had before he began his 35-minute remarks. And President Joe Biden seemed to be the last thing on the minds of those in the room. Since 2015, Trump has been offering Republicans a choice: relevancy over purity. In speaking to Libertarians, Trump has expanded this choice to the country’s third largest political party. Trump wasn’t coy about what he was willing to do to woo the room. The 45th president baldly pledged to place a Libertarian in his Cabinet, as well as to other big-shot positions. “We’ll be watching and waiting to see if he follows through on his promises to put a Libertarian in his Cabinet,” Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle said of Trump in a statement. Do I think Trump will put a Libertarian in his Cabinet if he wins a second term? Yes, I do. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Libertarian Party Says, ‘Become Ungovernable.’ Trump Says OK. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Johnny Wactor, bartending in-between gigs in his high-prestige, low-pay work as an actor, died over the weekend in downtown Los Angeles when he interrupted the low-prestige work of catalytic-converter thieves laboring underneath his jacked-up vehicle. Joe Friday does not work the streets of Los Angeles anymore. George Gascón does. Therein lies a problem. READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn: Ladies and Democrats, the Bronx Is Turning “These criminals can’t keep being on the street,” Wactor’s former fiancée, Tessa Farrell, reacted, “and they can’t keep being sent back and have no repercussions for their actions.” We knew this before 3 a.m. Saturday. Yet, they keep being sent back and face no repercussions for their actions. Repercussions, here and there, come for prosecutors averse to prosecutions. In Portland, challenger Nathan Vasquez unseated District Attorney Mike Schmidt after Schmidt deprioritized pursuing non-violent criminals. The primary vote follows the recall of left-wing district attorney Chesa Boudin in San Francsico two years ago. (READ MORE: Even Portland Is Fed Up with Progressive Policies) If progressive prosecutors cannot make it in Portland and San Francisco, can they make it anywhere? In New York and Atlanta, local prosecutors devote resources to stomping out the crime of Republicanism through the expensive pursuit of Donald Trump and many of his associates. Elsewhere, Illinois eliminated cash bail, and Philadelphia barely pursues shoplifters, a group whose prosecutions there dropped to about one-sixth their 2012 levels. Progressive prosecutors fixate on the wrong things. By not inconveniencing the criminals, district attorneys inconvenience the rest of us. Their inaction forces action by storeowners. Safeway supermarkets in the Bay Area removed self-checkout kiosks, which ensures longer lines and higher prices for customers. “Operational changes have been made at select stores throughout the Bay Area given the increasing amount of theft,” read a statement released by Safeway. “Self-checkout kiosks have been removed at a few stores. Like other local businesses, we are working on ways to curtail escalating theft so we can ensure the well-being of our employees and foster a welcoming environment for our customers.” In Washington, D.C., the Giant supermarket chain imposed a ban on customers bringing large bags into the store due to “unprecedented levels of product theft.” A visit to the DSW in Millbury, Massachusetts, on Tuesday revealed sneaker boxes minus a shoe and containing a plastic anti-theft device on the one that remained. Target, Walgreens, and other large retailers routinely lock up detergent and other theft-magnets. Sephora now similarly keeps its perfume bottles from the public. Pricey products increasingly sit behind plexiglass or counters at CVS. None of this happened a quarter-century ago. Something changed. As evidenced by two of the 10 Commandments, stealing predates us by many centuries. The declining respect for the Decalogue suggests one possible reason for the rise in pilfering and the who-cares attitude toward theft from civic authorities in certain locales. “Shoplifting is a crime in name only, like how hopping a turnstile and jaywalking are crimes,” a Hofstra University freshman recently wrote in a column in the student newspaper. “They’re technically crimes, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from doing it…. The right and wrong of shoplifting doesn’t come from what you’re stealing or how much you’re stealing but who you’re stealing from.” A whole generation, like this youngster, encounters many teachers in their educational journey who impart that profits amount to the real theft, we should abolish private property, relativism rather than absolutes govern ethics, and shoplifting works as a kind of karmic-justice expropriation against large corporations. In short, we teach immorality as morality. Steal the iPhones or bicycles from the preachers of such doctrines to find out if they really believe what they say. In San Francisco and Portland where they threw out mush-head district attorneys, this acid test occurred not theoretically but actually. Nobody supports robbery when it happens to them. The post Why Your Catalytic Converter Went Missing and Tide Sits Behind Plexiglass appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The 2024 presidential battleground is growing and tilting decidedly toward former President Donald Trump. It is not just that the states that decided 2020’s outcome are increasingly leaning toward Trump — although they are. There are also strong indications that more states could play a potentially determinant role in 2024’s outcome and that these, too, are moving closer toward Trump. Five months out, President Joe Biden is playing defense on over 100 crucial electoral votes but has less than 20 that he could plausibly take from Trump. READ MORE from J.T. Young: Forget Cancel Culture. The Real Danger Is the Left’s Creation Culture. The 2020 presidential race was closer than most realize. While Biden won by 4.4 percent of the total popular vote, seven states were decided by less than 3 percent of their popular vote: Arizona (0.3 percent), Georgia (0.24 percent), Michigan (2.8 percent), Nevada (2.4 percent), North Carolina (1.3 percent), Pennsylvania (1.2 percent), and Wisconsin (0.63 percent). Biden won six of these (all but North Carolina) and that essentially provided his victory margin over Trump in the all-important electoral vote — four (Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin) by less than 77,000 votes and that without which he would have lost the presidency. In short, almost all the battleground states broke for Biden four years ago. But what a difference four years can make. According to the RealClearPolitics average of national polling, Biden’s national approval rating is just 40.3 percent, over 15 percentage points below January 2021 readings. In a two-way race, he polls at just 46.4 percent, and in a five-way race he polls at just 39.4 percent. However, the real story is told in those seven 2020 battleground states: According to RCP polling averages, Biden now trails in each and by 3 percentage points (44.6 percent to 47.7 percent) in all combined. In North Carolina, the only battleground state Trump won in 2020, Biden’s deficit has increased from 1.3 percent four years ago to 4.8 percent today. There are also strong indicators that five states not considered battleground states in 2020 could be today. Then, Biden won these by seemingly safe margins: Maine (9.1 percent), Minnesota (7.1 percent), New Hampshire (7.3 percent), New Mexico (10.8 percent), and Virginia (10.1 percent). However, recent polls show that Biden’s falling fortunes are having an impact here too. While these states are largely not routinely scrutinized like 2020’s seven battleground states are, back-to-back polls in Minnesota show Biden’s lead at just 2 percentage points — way below his 2020 7.1 percent margin. In New Hampshire, Biden’s lead is just 6 percentage points (and that is from a three-way poll that includes Kennedy but drops candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein — both of whom could be expected to subtract from Biden’s support). If similar attrition is taking place in the other three, 2024’s battleground could now be almost twice as large as 2020’s — 12 instead of seven. But didn’t Trump have second-tier battleground states too? Yes, he did. Trump won Florida by just 3.3 percentage points and Texas by 5.6 percentage points. However, the latest polls in these states show Trump with leads far above his 2020 vote margins: In Texas he leads by 8 percentage points, and in Florida he leads by 9 percentage points. Thus, while polling shows Biden’s margin has shrunk in these second-tier battleground states, it shows that Trump’s has grown — sizably. An unmistakable trend is occurring: The 2024 battleground looks to be potentially twice the size of 2020’s. And while 2020’s battleground broke decisively for Biden, with him winning six of its seven states, 2024’s is tilting decisively for Trump. The potential impact of this 2024 trend is equally clear. If Trump holds all the states that he won in 2020 — and where there is polling in these, he is leading comfortably — then he needs to flip just 35 electoral votes from Biden’s 2020 column to win. The six battleground states that Biden won in 2020 by less than 3 percent of the popular vote — and all of which he now trails — account for 77 electoral votes. Five second-tier battleground states of 2020 — which Biden won and, if Minnesota and New Hampshire are indicative, are now potentially in play this November — account for another 34 electoral votes. What this means is that Biden is defending potentially 111 electoral votes, from which Trump only needs to win 35. In contrast, Biden has only one state, North Carolina (and he is trailing in polls there by far larger margins than the one he lost by in 2020) with 16 electoral votes, with which to potentially compensate for any electoral votes that Trump flips from him. Yes, the election is still over five months away. Yes, Trump still faces numerous legal actions against him — and who knows how many more Democrats could pursue? So, things could get better for Biden between now and November. They could also get worse. But amid all this speculation, one thing is as clear as things could be now: 2024’s battleground is tilted decidedly against Biden, and its slant is steepening. J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023. The post The 2024 Battleground Grows and Tilts Toward Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The Left’s campaign against weddings is in full swing as just one part of its global campaign against happiness. The plan to dismantle our way of life was launched in 2021 by the World Economic Forum with its famous slogan: “In 2030, you will own nothing and be happy.” Now that we are entering the high season of weddings, the progressive press has ganged up to discredit weddings with crazy headlines alluding to their high price, their climate footprint, the stress suffered by the bride and groom with the preparations, or the unhealthiness of dancing until the wee hours of the morning. Not a word about the happiness of the moment, both for the couple and for family and friends. It seems to me that left-wing journalists are becoming more and more like the cynic described by H.L. Mencken: “A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.” READ MORE from Itxu Díaz: The Confused Generation Weddings have always been expensive and complex. They require effort: for the bride to have decided to bring a bear into her house; and for the groom, to give up hanging underwear from the lamps and setting fire to the carpet after a game of poker with his friends.  But let’s not forget that the initial idea, until not so long ago, was to get married only once and for all time. That is the reason why it was such a big event. Today many marriages last much less and no longer wait until death do them part, but still, at a wedding, one should not be considering sobriety in case it all ends up going wrong. The only raison d’être of the wedding is for it to be an extreme ceremony, from solemnity in the church to the major drunkenness on the dance floor. Anything else is like buying a new apartment that already has leaks. One of my greatest satisfactions as a Christian is to contemplate the wedding at Cana. The Virgin Mary herself called Jesus to tell him that the wine had run out in the middle of the wedding. At first, Jesus wanted to avoid doing anything out of prudence: “My time has not yet come.” But the beauty of the scene is that it reminds us that you never say no to a mother — well, that and it reminds us that drinking large quantities of wine is the right way to fulfill the Third Commandment. In Spain, as we love celebrations, instead of: “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy,” our third commandment translates into something more generic and fun, like: “Thou shall hallow the feasts.” Last week the New York Times devoted an article to trying to make weddings more boring and end sooner: “Forget Partying Till the Wee Hours. Newlyweds Want to End Early.” They’re obsessed with ending the joy! The wedding ceremony is long and tiresome for everyone. The only way to not give into melancholy and exhaustion at the end is for the bride and groom to offer a good restorative banquet and then provide plenty of drinks and hours of dancing, to celebrate the new marriage as God intended. In fact, my favorite moment of any wedding is when all the girls, who are always beautiful at these ceremonies, have had enough to drink for them to be unable to recall if they came to the wedding with a boyfriend. I usually take the opportunity to clear them of any doubts. And on occasion a grim groom has taken the opportunity to smash a bottle of whiskey over my head. Who cares? Let’s give the party a chance! Finally, the Guardian has also devoted several articles to discouraging people from getting married: because of the high cost, because of the stress generated for the guests (it even goes so far as to say that many weddings end the friendship between the bride and groom and the guests!), and even because of the damage done to the environment. I guess the millions of other parties going on around the world every day do not pollute, because only weddings do, and, probably, only Christian weddings. I suspected as much. This from Victoria Namkung in the Guardian: “Among food, travel, decor and single-use items, parties can create an enormous amount of waste — and weddings are among the most egregious offenders.” Anyway, I don’t want to make this a long personal argument, but if Victoria seriously believes that getting married wrecks the planet and makes the Amazon writhe in pain, perhaps she should visit my bachelor pad to learn first-hand what real radioactive pollution is.  Look, boy, girl: Get married, celebrate until dawn, and to hell with the killjoys. Translated by Joel Dalmau. Buy Itxu Díaz’s new book, I Will Not Eat Crickets: An Angry Satirist Declares War on the Globalist Elite, here today! The post Ignore the <i>New York Times</i> Killjoys. Enjoy Your Wedding. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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