"It doesn't change too much." The post The hit song Billy Joel expected to flop first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Most of the commentary on President Biden’s poor debate performance has focused on his chances for reelection. But that is only one side of a dangerous coin. The other side is explored by Naval War College professor James Holmes in a compelling article in The National Interest titled “Joe Biden and the Perception Paradox.” Holmes worries that China could “run wild in the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait, or other embattled zones.” “Perception,” Holmes writes, “is king in power politics.” The nations of the world that wish us well and ill undoubtedly watched the Biden-Trump debate or at least read the post-debate commentary about Biden’s awful performance — from both Republicans and Democrats. Holmes worries that the perception of America’s “capability, competence, and fortitude” was seriously damaged by Biden’s debate performance. “Aggressors will be emboldened” and “friends will blanch.” The mental ability and therefore the credibility of the American superpower’s leader has been called into question. Our friends and foes will act accordingly. Holmes does not write this as a Trump supporter. Trump is irrelevant to his concerns because Biden is the president and will be until at least January 20, 2025. There is a lot bad happening in the world — in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and most important, in the western Pacific. Plenty more bad things can happen in six months, as both our adversaries and allies perceive weakness from Washington. Holmes writes that “we’re in for a bumpy ride between now and January 20, 2025. If not longer.” (READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: Hong Kong Affords a Glimpse of the Future for Taiwan) Holmes reports that the alarm at Biden’s debate performance extended to Europe, where some observers called it “an unmitigated disaster.” Chinese commentators compared Biden to a “corpse.” The debate, Holmes writes, “implanted doubts about President Biden’s mental fitness among decisionmakers and average citizens at home and abroad.” And that affects three very important, though intangible, elements of a nation’s foreign policy that vary according to perception: deterrence, coercion, and reassurance. If our enemies perceive not only weakness but doubt the mental capacity of our nation’s top decisionmaker, deterrence is more likely to fail. Holmes references Henry Kissinger’s formula for deterrence, which is composed of capability, willpower, and belief. During the Cold War, for example, West Berlin, surrounded by Communist East Germany, survived repeated Soviet pressures because Soviet leaders believed that the United States and its allies had the capability and will to defend the city. The idea that the United States would sacrifice New York for West Berlin was based on the credibility of that threat — which means the credibility of the U.S. president to carry out the threat. When the Soviet Union achieved strategic parity with the United States in nuclear weaponry, the credibility of that deterrent weakened until President Reagan installed intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Central Europe. Our enemies and allies also need to believe that we have the capability and will to use coercion to advance and protect our interests. Again, Reagan was the great example when he armed the Contras in Nicaragua, which led to the removal of the Sandinista communist regime in free and fair elections, and invaded the small island of Grenada to overthrow a communist regime that was allied to Cuba and the Soviet Union. Reagan showed that he took the Monroe doctrine seriously — he backed up threats with decisive coercive action. It is our allies that most need to feel reassurance from America’s leader. Holmes defines reassurance as “convincing allies, partners, or friends you have the capability and the determination to keep your commitments to them.” Reagan showed despite opposition from many Democrats in Congress that he was willing to support our allies in El Salvador who were under attack from communists supported by Nicaragua and Cuba. It was Reagan’s reassurances and his actions that saved El Salvador from falling to the communists in the 1980s. Deterrence, coercion, and reassurance will fail if enemies and allies perceive that America’s president lacks the mental competence to understand what is at stake and to take decisive action to preserve and protect U.S. interests. As Holmes explains: An incompetent head of state might yield to unwise policy counsel, broadcasting threats or promises the nation cannot keep. Idle threats discredit future professions of purpose. Or he could fail to craft believable threats or promises when circumstances demand a strong stance. An inconstant leader might suffer bewilderment or despair in the midst of a crisis, or lash out with unforeseeable consequences…. Influential audiences could come to doubt American reliability in world affairs. Holmes worries that China could “run wild in the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait, or other embattled zones.” And our allies will also take note of the untrustworthiness of America’s leader. This is a recipe for an international catastrophe. (READ MORE: With Biden, the Lippmann Gap Returns) All of the talk about the domestic political fallout from the Trump-Biden debate misses the big picture. James Holmes is to be commended for having the courage to focus on the geopolitical fallout from that debate. We are indeed in for a bumpy ride during the next six months. The post Biden’s Incapacity Invites Danger Abroad appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

1958: July 4th Comes to Life The president of the United States — the 34th — is Dwight D. Eisenhower, the hero general from World War II. Rock and roll is still brand new, Elvis Presley the first rock star and going strong. The four British lads from Liverpool, aka The Beatles, were still in Liverpool. John F. Kennedy was merely one more ambitious Democrat Senator who thought he had a shot at becoming America’s first Catholic President two years down the road. And to realize that, in fact, we are the heirs of those Founders, and the future is now in our hands. In short, it was a good moment for Cornel Lengyel to step forward with a serious work of history. Wikipedia describes Lengyel today (he passed in 2003) as a “an American poet, historian, playwright and translator.” And on January 1, 1958, Lengyel released his latest: Four Days in July: The Story Behind the Declaration of Independence. Still available on Amazon, if barely, it’s a book my history-loving Mother bought back then to share with her then seven-year-old son. (!!) It’s a bit dog eared now, but I have it still, making it an annual July 4 tradition to read again. The book is a fascinating tour de force of just what transpired in Philadelphia for those amazing days that resulted in the Declaration of Independence. It takes the reader through the city’s “furnished rooms and boardinghouses” where “throughout the quiet country town they are rising, dressing, praying, drafting speeches or last-minute statements.” Lengyel goes on, setting the stage for what was to come from men with names like Thomas Jefferson, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, John Hancock, and more. Lengyel writes: Some of the men are charged with high expectations; others are doubtful, impatient, uneasy. They are getting ready to play their parts in the arena on Chestnut Street, in a white-paneled room which seats the forbidden first parliament of America. With troops of the enemy landing on their shores less than a hundred miles from Philadelphia the divided delegates know they can no longer postpone decision on the hard question before them. The hour is near when each of them must stand up and be counted. All of them surmise that the vote they cast this Monday morning, the first of July, will change their lives and fortunes. It will affect their reputations for the rest of their days. The choice they make can raise them high, high enough to satisfy the hangman. It can also change the course of events in the New World for generations to come. And change events for generations to come they most certainly did. All That Transpired To look back at the parade of events and personalities that followed those Four Days in July of 1776 — 248 years ago — is to be amazed, dare one say “agog,” at what was done then, and what has transpired since. A revolution that defeated the massive armies of Britain’s King George III. Another go-round with the persistent British in the War of 1812. An internal battle over abolishing slavery, which led to a decidedly bloody Civil War of 1861-1865. Then a reunited country, thrust into various wars through the decades of the remaining 19th and later 20th centuries with Spain, Germany, Germany again, and the colorless yet decidedly Red armies of Communism. And all the while, putting their ancestors’ hard-won freedoms to magnificent use, Americans rolled up their sleeves and invented the modern world of technology. From automobiles to telephones to railroads and airplanes, vast changes came forth, accompanied by vast fortunes and, for those who were not Astors or Rockefellers, a stunningly large middle class. The office that would be established in what would become the Constitution produced an unbroken chain of presidents from both newly developed political parties. Elections were held repeatedly on schedule, sending friends and neighbors to the United States Congress, state governorships and legislatures, and more. So as this latest Fourth of July recedes, with the 250th looming in 2026, it is perhaps a moment to stop and give a thanks to all those “Founding Fathers” who gathered in Philadelphia for those Four Days in July. And to realize that, in fact, we are the heirs of those Founders, and the future is now in our hands. With the responsibility to pass on to future generations the same freedoms that were handed to all of us in those Four Days in July. And oh yes. With a thank you to Cornel Lengyel for bringing American history to such vivid life in Four Days in July. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Biden Is Absolutely the New Thomas Eagleton Trump v. Big Government: The Department of Education Won’t Die Easy Trump vs. CNN and Biden The post Four Days in July appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

A few days ago, as I was talking to a close female friend, a thirty-year-old Filipina physicist at a prestige university in California, an idea came to me. “I feel so terrible about what’s happened in Israel,” she said to me. “The mass rapes. Burying Israeli women and girls alive, their throats slit, suffocating, while the terrorists stood over them laughing as they bragged about their murders to their parents on their cell phones. It’s unbelievable that this is happening. The Führer must be jumping for joy in hell.” “I have a thought for you,” I said to her. “I’ll buy you a gold Star of David at Tiffany. You can wear it as you are out and about in L.A. It shows that Israel still has some friends, even among Asians.” Tears came to my friend’s eyes. “I would love to wear that Star of David,” she said. Two days later she reported to me some bad news. “I have to tell you,” she said. “I’m a bit afraid to wear that necklace,” she said. “People are giving me dirty looks and saying scary things to me. This is happening in West L.A.” “I get it,” I said. “You don’t have to wear it one more day. Maybe just bring it to your home. Why risk your beautiful neck in front of these maniacs?” “I don’t want to insult you,” she said. “I know how much it meant to you.” “It means nothing to me compared with how much you mean to me.” “But to think this is happening in America,” she said. “I know. It’s flat out horrible. But you mean everything to me. They’re teasing about an Asian supporting Israel. The hell with them. They’re crazy people.” “Maybe I can start wearing it again when the war between Israel and Hamas is over,” she said. “It’s never going to be over.” And that’s where we left it, with her perfect shining brown eyes staring into mine. God help us. And now it’s still going on every hour of every day. God help us, again. God help us. READ MORE from Ben Stein: My Father’s Day Falls Every Day and Year Hello Doll! Old Age The post My True Story appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

At the Thursday night presidential debate, CNN’s Jake Tapper acquitted himself, if not more fairly than expected, at least more subtly. Although the question Tapper posed to former president Donald Trump on the subject of January 6 seemed straight up, he based it on the falsehoods birthed by the House January 6 committee and given air by special counsel Jack Smith. Smith discounts Trump’s sincere pleas for reasons trifling enough to alarm a Jesuit. “As President, you swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution,” asked Tapper. “What do you say to voters who believe that you violated that oath through your actions and inaction on January 6 and worry that you’ll do it again?” As implied in Tapper’s question, the “actions and inactions” of President Trump on January 6 have become part of DC lore. Trump danced around the issue. To deconstruct the charges against him would have taken much longer than the allotted two minutes, and he would have lost the audience in the details. Shifting the blame to Nancy Pelosi, as Trump did, was probably a surer strategy. (READ MORE from Jack Cashill: Who Had Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick ‘Murdered’?) True to form, the barely functional President Joe Biden mangled the “action” charges against Trump: “And they said they said — they said, no, no, this guy, this guy is responsible for doing what is being — was done.” He succeeded, however, in echoing the conventional wisdom on Trump’s inaction. “The fact is,” said Biden, “that there was no effort on his part to stop what was going on up on Capitol Hill.” Although widely believed, this assertion is demonstrably false. Equally false, and believed just as widely, are the charges about Trump’s “actions.” In his indictment of Trump, special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump both with doing too much and doing too little. This combination led to one count of “conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding” and a second count of “obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.” The Supreme Court ruling Friday in the case of Fischer v. United States will make it harder for Smith to pursue these obstruction charges against Trump, certainly along the lines he had hoped. Nonetheless, the Fischer ruling is no more likely to deter Smith in his pursuit than the wreck of the Pequod deterred Ahab in his. There are just so many great white whales. Much has been said about how federal prosecutors rewrote a law designed to prevent the shredding of documents to snare January 6 defendants and Trump along with them. Little has been said, however, about how Smith contorted the sequence of events on January 6 to make an obstruction charge against Trump seem even plausible. At the heart of his indictment is what Smith calls “the defendant’s exploitation of the violence and chaos at the Capitol.” According to Smith, the exploitation shifted into high gear at noon when Trump began his speech on the Ellipse. To make his case Smith ignores Trump’s specific appeal early in the speech, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Smith is in good company. The House January 6 committee also ignored this exculpatory remark as did almost all corporate media. In the indictment, Smith applies the terms “false” or “falsely” to Trump’s words no fewer than eighteen times. He works under the assumption that everything Trump said about the election was a lie if it varied from the official orthodoxy. That orthodoxy was at its most rigid in defining Mike Pence’s role as president of the Senate. “All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people,” Smith quotes Trump as saying. True, Trump made the recertification process seem much simpler than it ever could possibly be, but if he was deceiving anyone, he started by deceiving himself. Despite his concern about “significant allegations of voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law,” Pence announced via a tweet that he was going to count the votes as presented. He waited until about 12:55 to send this message. Trump finished his speech at 1:12 p.m. unaware of Pence’s intentions. Smith quotes Trump as saying, “We fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” and follows this immediately saying, “During and after the Defendant’s remarks, thousands of people marched toward the Capitol.” He neglects to say, however, that Trump made this remark at 1:10. At 12:53 the ubiquitous Ray Epps led the first wave of protestors through the lightly guarded perimeter on the Capitol’s west side, in Smith’s words, “by violently attacking law enforcement officers.” In reality, a policewoman fell down when protestors pushed over a bicycle rack, and a protestor promptly helped her back to her feet. Epps and crew did not attend Trump’s speech. Smith makes no mention of Epps. Smith argues that this mass of people “broke through barriers cordoning off the Capitol grounds and advanced on the building.” He makes the lawyerly case that these people did so “at the Defendant’s direction,” but he knows that Trump was still speaking at the Ellipse, a 45-minute walk from the Capitol, when this action took place. At 1:06, while Rep. Paul Gosar was challenging the certification of the Arizona vote in the House, Capitol Police deputy chief Eric Waldow made the inexplicable decision to launch a barrage of flash bangs, tear gas, and rubber bullets into the still peaceful crowd of protestors on the Capitol’s west side. The people that Trump allegedly incited with his “fight like hell” remark would not arrive at the Capitol for close to an hour. At 1:28, 56-year old father of five, Kevin Greeson, collapsed after a Capitol Police flash bang exploded in his face. He would soon die of cardiac arrest. At 1:32, a Capitol Police officer was recorded on his bodycam objecting to the launch of smoke grenades: “It’s just going to make it worse. Hey stop, hold.” Protestors were picking up grenades and hurling them back behind police lines. This borderline criminal barrage into the protestors’ midst turned a largely festive crowd angry. “At 2:13 p.m.,” writes Smith, “after more than an hour of steady, violent advancement, the crowd at the Capitol broke into the building.” Those who listened to Trump speak at the Ellipse were not involved in this “hour of steady, violent advancement.” The late Ashli Babbitt, for instance, the day’s most obvious fatality, stayed until the end of Trump’s speech and did not reach the Capitol until after 2 p.m. She entered the building at 2:23. Twenty minutes later a Capitol Police officer shot and killed this 14-year Air Force vet without warning, a tragedy explained in Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6. At 2:38 p.m., Trump tweeted, “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!” At 3:13 p.m., Trump tweeted, “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order — respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!” Smith discounts Trump’s sincere pleas for reasons trifling enough to alarm a Jesuit. One was that Trump “did not ask rioters to leave the Capitol” and the second was that he “falsely suggested that the crowd at the Capitol was being peaceful.” History will remember Smith as the prosecutor who quibbled his way to a constitutional crisis. At 4:17 p.m., Smith writes sarcastically, Trump “finally asked individuals to leave the Capitol, while telling them that they were ‘very special’ and that ‘we love you.’” Smith prefaced this comment with the remark, “Defendant repeated the knowingly false claim that “[w]e had an election that was stolen from us.” Smith does not include Trump’s actual remarks on this video message, “You have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt,” Nor does he mention that Twitter promptly applied a warning label, saying, “The claim of election fraud is disputed, and this tweet can’t be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of violence.” Facebook blocked the post as well. (READ MORE: First, They Came for the J6ers) It seems only fitting, I suppose, that Facebook and Twitter would have the last word. Had they not collaborated with the FBI in blocking the Hunter Biden laptop story, and had Biden’s 51 intel friends not filled the news void with their Russia lies, we would still remember January 6 as the Feast of the Epiphany and Joe Biden as just another “elderly man with a poor memory.” Jack Cashill’s new book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, is now available in all formats. The post Jack Smith and the Hijacking of January 6 appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Before Biden There Was FDR Joe Biden is not the first ailing American president to seek another term of office, despite being manifestly unfit for the job. But the last time it happened — with the re-election of Franklin Roosevelt for a fourth term — the result was disastrous for the cause of democracy and human rights in the world. The democratic revolutions of 1989 might have occurred much earlier had a stronger American leader been present at Yalta. Those in close contact with FDR during the 1944 presidential campaign knew that he was in a state of mental and physical decline. Senator Harry Truman, his newly picked running mate, was stunned by what he saw, “I had no idea he was in such a feeble condition,” he told an aide. On his way to the Yalta Conference in February 1945 — the crucial wartime meeting between Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin — Roosevelt was, in the words of one physician, “a very sick man.” (READ MORE: He’s No FDR) Throughout the conference, the president physically projected weakness and capitulation. The end result of his performance was the forcible absorption of central and eastern Europe into the Soviet Union. The conventional wisdom, touted for decades by Roosevelt’s sycophantic admirers, is that the Soviet army already occupied these European states by the time of the Yalta conference; there was nothing the president could do to alter Moscow’s intention to create “friendly states” along the border of the Soviet Union. “If he failed at Yalta, it wasn’t because of his physical or mental capacity,” insists author and New York Times editor Joseph Lelyveld. “Had he been at the peak of vigor, the results would have been much the same.” Yet the transcripts of the Yalta conference and the memoirs of key participants expose this narrative as fairy dust. In fact, Roosevelt’s mental decline accentuated his naïve, progressive instincts and played into the hands of Stalin, the ruthless realist hellbent on dominating Europe. It is true, of course, that the Red Army, in thwarting the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, occupied most of eastern Europe and was not about to leave. But the decisive issue at Yalta — the hinge upon which Soviet designs depended — was Poland. The American president possessed the power to intervene on behalf of its democratic future. Instead, FDR used Poland as a bargaining chip for his Wilsonian dream of a rejuvenated League of Nations. Churchill went to Yalta with a supreme objective: to preserve Poland’s political independence. It was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, in 1939, that ignited the Second World War and created an existential crisis for Great Britain. “Everyone here knows the result it was to us, unprepared as we were, and that it nearly cost us our life as a nation,” Churchill said. “Never could I be content with any solution that would not leave Poland as a free and independent state.” Unlike Churchill, FDR seemed indifferent to the fact that 150,000 Polish ex-patriates had fought with the Allied forces at Monte Cassino, at the Battle of Britain, and in other theaters against the Nazis. His interventions on behalf of Poland were sophomoric, vacuous, and ineffective. Against the calculating and duplicitous Stalin, he adopted a posture of perpetual retreat. The Polish democratic resistance, with its leadership in London, was dead set against the communist puppets installed in Warsaw during the fog of war. The American and British negotiating teams wanted the Soviets to agree to a new Provisional Government in Poland — reorganized “on a broader democratic basis” — to offset the Warsaw communists. After that, democratic elections would be held. But the Soviets balked, and Roosevelt backed down. “The United States will never lend its support in any way to any provisional government in Poland which would be inimical to your interests,” he assured Stalin. It was an absurd and astonishing thing to promise: The Soviet Union had made it clear that any democratic government on its border was “inimical” to its interests. Stalin confirmed this when, in September 1939, the Soviet army invaded Poland from the east as the Nazis invaded from the west. He confirmed it again when he proceeded to brutally dismember Polish society, ordering the deportation and execution of tens of thousands of ordinary citizens. If elections were to be held without a more broadly democratic government in place, Roosevelt and Churchill insisted upon the presence of election observers. Churchill took the lead: “The U. S., Britain, and Russia should be observers to see that they are carried out impartially. These are no idle requests.” Yet the prime minister lacked the one thing he desperately needed: the clear and unconditional support of the American president. It never arrived. FDR, convinced he needed a Polish settlement to secure domestic support for his dream of a United Nations, instructed his aides to delete the “offending” provision for election observers. Soviet membership in the United Nations, Roosevelt believed, would moderate Stalin’s illiberal instincts. (READ MORE: Donald Trump: The Conservative FDR) Hugh Lunghi, a translator and member of the British delegation at Yalta, was astonished by FDR’s naivete. “Those of us who worked and lived in Moscow knew that there was not a chance in hell that Stalin would allow free elections in those countries when he didn’t allow them in the Soviet Union.” In February 1945, the American president controlled the most powerful military in the world and was within months of possessing an atomic weapon. The United States boasted unrivaled industrial might and was the engine of the global economy. Yet with all of these resources in hand, Roosevelt would not even insist upon election observers in a European state that had been brutalized by both the Nazis and the Russians. Was the President’s Health Determinative? Did Roosevelt’s fragile condition contribute to his posture of appeasement? Of course it did. In Malta, on his way to Yalta, Churchill’s physician, Lord Moran, interacted with Roosevelt and recorded in his diary: “The president appears to be a very sick man. He has all the symptoms of hardening of the arteries of the brain, in an advanced stage … I give him only a few months to live” — (Roosevelt died two months later). When he arrived at Yalta, recalled Lunghi, “the President, waxen cheeked, looked ghastly.” His condition deteriorated throughout the conference. Those present believed Roosevelt probably heard only half of what was said during the meetings. In his memoirs of the Second World War, Churchill complained that Roosevelt took “a distant view” of the Polish question. “It seemed to me, throughout the sessions of that conference, that the President had a distant view on many other problems as well,” recalled A.H. Birse, Churchill’s chief interpreter at Yalta. His aides, Birse added, “appeared to be putting the words into his mouth for him to say.” Indeed, based on the notes of his physician, Howard Breunn, it seems likely that Roosevelt suffered a pulsus alternans (when every second heartbeat is weaker than the preceding one) during one of the debates over Poland. Thus, a frail American president embodied political impotence at a moment of geo-political crisis. By not demanding a free and fair democratic election in Poland, Roosevelt telegraphed a clear message to Stalin: The United States would not object if Poland’s sovereignty and independence were destroyed, nor that of Eastern Europe’s. The message was received in the Kremlin, loud and clear. Nevertheless, with a compliant press corps, Roosevelt later declared to Congress that the Yalta conference had been a smashing success, especially with regards to Poland. There were difficulties, he admitted, “but at the end, on every point, unanimous agreement was reached. And more important even than the agreement of words, I may say we achieved a unity of thought and a way of getting along together.” It was a deception based upon a delusion underwritten by political ambition and personal vanity. What difference might a democratic Poland have made, caught in the communist grip of the Soviet bloc? That question was answered in 1989, when the Polish democratic resistance movement, known as Solidarity, compelled the regime to allow free and fair elections. The downfall of communism in Poland led directly to the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The democratic revolutions of 1989 might have occurred much earlier had a stronger American leader been present at Yalta. Joseph Stalin displayed a ruthlessness, a disregard for moral norms, and a lust for domination that has few historical rivals. The sick and feeble Roosevelt was no match for “the man of steel.” If history is any guide, America’s enemies are taking stock of the fragile president who melted into incoherence during his first debate with Donald Trump — and they are praying that he wins in November. Joseph Loconte is a Presidential Scholar at New College of Florida and the C.S. Lewis Scholar for Public Life at Grove City College. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The War for Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933-1945. The post A Frail President in a Hostile World appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

One president incomprehensively spoke of “if we finally beat Medicare” and stared vacantly at his shoes on CNN. The other, roughly around the same age, discoursed on the solution to what ailed the flailing Soviet Union and why Saddam Hussein erred in invading Kuwait. As Reagan observed about journalists, “I’m afraid that sometimes they have goals of their own. They aren’t as responsible as they should be.” Strangely, some of the same journalists who slimed the latter as senile during his presidency cover up for the latter’s on-display dementia at last week’s debate as he seeks a second term in the White House. In January 1991, Ronald Reagan appeared live for an hour with a liberal interviewer on a hostile network (though the conversation, like so many of Larry King’s, came across as warm and not adversarial). Compare Reagan’s discussion with one CNN host (watch here) two years after his presidency ended with Joe Biden’s appearance before two friendly CNN hosts at what he imagines as the mid-point of his presidency. (READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn: The Worst Week in Memory for Democrats Who Can Remember) Reagan spoke not in phrases or sentences but in full paragraphs. He addressed Margaret Thatcher’s pending visit to the opening of his presidential library, his relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev, the B-2 bomber, and, in an insightful and honest answer, the frustrating effects age imposes on memory. After discussing the difficulty of attaching names to the 1,200 faces he encountered in the White House, the former president turned to his distant past in a field other than politics. “I have been surprised when I have looked at a movie that I made quite some time ago,” he told King. “What really surprises me is, yes, I remember that movie and the whole story and everything except there will come a scene on there in which I am involved and I find that I have no memory whatsoever of doing that particular scene. And it bothers me.” Rather nasty people pushed the idea, during and after his presidency, that Reagan suffered from some neurodegenerative disease while in the White House. Lesley Stahl, for instance, later claimed that, while serving as White House correspondent for CBS in 1986, she “had come that close to reporting that Reagan was senile.” She reflected that aides and family “covered up his condition.” The president’s namesake also pushed this idea in pushing a book. A study, pushed by The New York Times, of words used by the 40th president and his successor by Arizona State professors implied, but admitted it did not prove, possible onset of Alzheimer’s during Reagan’s presidency. Contrast that obsession over the cognitive abilities of a robust man who left the Oval Office at 77 — and received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis nearly six years later — with the see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-speak-no-evil mentality of an albeit shrinking number of Democrats and their press auxiliary with a weakened man who seeks to leave office more than four years from now at 86. A testy George Stephanopoulos (unsurprisingly chosen by Biden to interview him Friday) recoiled last summer when Nikki Haley suggested that Joe Biden’s decline made the prospect of him finishing a second term an impossibility. Rachel Maddow chalked up Biden’s freezes, catatonic stares, and “beat Medicare” non sequiturs to “the debating incumbent curse.” Just weeks ago Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes of The Wall Street Journal took friendly fire from other journalists for a report, derided by Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post as “shoddy” and a “faceplant,” that Biden showed signs of slipping. Reagan, long after journalists pushed the idea of dementia afflicting him, clearly understood the slanted approach of the news media. “There seemed to be a hostility,” he said in 1991 after Larry King suggested a warm relationship between the former president and the press. “I felt, and I think properly, that in every press conference there was an adversarial relationship.” But even within journalism, a profession in which Democrats outnumber Republicans by 10-to-1, limits to one-sided credulity exist. Editorials by The New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Boston Globe calling for Biden to withdraw, and the suddenly pointed questions at Karine Jean-Pierre’s press conferences this past week, indicate many no longer go along with the 81-going-on-18 charade. (READ MORE: The Most Disastrous Debate Performance in U.S. History) Still, denial persists. As Reagan observed about journalists, “I’m afraid that sometimes they have goals of their own. They aren’t as responsible as they should be.” The post Senility, the Press, and a Tale of Two Presidents appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Health Freedom Defense Fund and employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District sued LAUSD officials including Superintendent Alberto Carvalho in 2021 in a little-covered case about the district-imposed mandate requiring employees get COVID-19 injections. Plaintiffs and defendants batted the individual health freedom issue back and forth for the last three years. The pattern of behavior that LAUSD exhibited towards its employees and the courts throughout this time has led to a U.S. Appellate Court decision in the employees’ favor.  Americans in all occupations … have the right to make and voice their choices in matters of health, medications, and pharmaceuticals. By ruling to “vacate” and “remand,” a 3-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court on June 7 reversed a lower court’s dismissal of the case Health Freedom Def. Fund, Inc. v. Carvalho. Health Freedom Defense Fund was joined by California Educators for Medical Freedom and several school workers in the country’s second largest school system. The decision’s findings put Superintendent Carvalho and staff on notice against violating employees’ medical liberty. (READ MORE: The Most Influential Dissidents in Sports During the Biden Regime)  The court’s finding in the case means that even the State of California’s vision of schools as “one stop centers” for activism and socialized pharmaceutical utopia must not tread over the sovereign rights of the people who work at and attend schools. The majority of the panel’s judges recognized that Americans’ jobs and future professional prospects may have been unduly damaged by LAUSD’s medical mandate, and that the district may be tried for accountability.  In the decision, Judge Nelson and Judge Collins of the Ninth Circuit panel addressed both the legal procedures and the merits of the case: Litigants who have already demonstrated their willingness to tactically manipulate the federal courts in this way should not be given any benefit of the doubt. LAUSD’s about-face occurred only after vigorous questioning at argument in this court, which suggests that it was motivated, at least in part, by litigation tactics … Comments [of the chair of the School Board Dr. McKenna and additional Board Members] show that the Board was aware of, and responding to, the pending litigation. LAUSD therefore is no longer entitled to any presumption of regularity. Addressing the merits, the panel held that the district court misapplied the Supreme Court’s decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905)…. Taking plaintiffs’ allegations as true at this stage of litigation, plaintiffs plausibly alleged that the COVID-19 vaccine does not effectively “prevent the spread” of COVID-19. Thus, Jacobson does not apply…. Plaintiffs’ allegations here are sufficient to invoke that fundamental right [to refuse medical treatment]. Following the ruling, Leslie Manookian, the founder of Health Freedom Defense Fund, discussed the case on a podcast with pharmaceutical executive Sasha Latypova. Manookian said the decision appears to her and other lawyers observing the case to represent a “legal earthquake.” Because the Ninth Circuit Court has been “extensively involved in bodily autonomy cases throughout recent history pertaining to abortion,” Manookian pointed out that the court “cannot have it both ways.” Manookian further expounded on how multiple ongoing legal cases interrelate to one another in regard to the people’s Constitutional rights. She noted that the overthrowing of “Chevron deference” could enhance citizen protections in disputes with bureaucrats over medical mandates. With the ending of Chevron, courts should now uphold the centrality of the citizen’s right to self-rule, as the American founding has long prioritized.  These decisions, says the plaintiff, provide a season to celebrate individual citizens’ climb once again to the top rung of the law, above bureaucratic governments. The Health Freedom Defense Fund wrote, responding to the Carvalho decision: The Ninth Circuit ruling today demonstrates that the court saw through LAUSD’s monkey business, and in so doing, it made clear that Americans’ cherished rights to self determination, including the sacred right of bodily autonomy in matters of health, are not negotiable. This is a great triumph for the truth, decency, and what is right. The dissemination of bodily autonomy legal decisions to citizens and employees to whom it may be relevant, of course, relies on another fundamental American right, the freedom of speech and expression. The fate of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and an uncensored populace rides on several active cases. This week, the state of Missouri’s anti-censorship lawsuit against Biden officials was remanded to lower courts, while a suit by presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and one by social media competitor Brighteon continue to progress through the legal system. (READ MORE: What Is Fueling Public Schools’ Book-Weeding?) Americans in all occupations, from the educational environments where our children attend to the corporate world, have the right to make and voice their choices in matters of health, medications, and pharmaceuticals. Defenders of liberty in court are pillars for the free republic, stalwartly facing the gates of tyranny. The post Win in Court for Individual Medical Freedom appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In a recent interview, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum warned, “If we’re not leading in AI as a country, we will lose cold wars, we’ll lose hot wars. We’ll lose it all.” AI is being used extensively for everything from making memes to academic research, but it will change military operations forever. It’s incredibly powerful, but there’s a problem: AI uses a considerable amount of electricity. Whoever wins the race for AI will have a tremendous advantage on the battlefields of tomorrow, but they need the energy infrastructure to support it. To maintain our national security and technological edge, we must prioritize energy production. Though computers have always been energy-intensive, AI takes it to a whole new level. Where a typical search on Google uses about 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, a single request in ChatGPT uses ten times as much energy. Every aspect of AI, from training a new model to storing vast amounts of data, is very resource-intensive. (READ MORE from Philip Reichert: Our Intelligence Community Is Broken) AI demands substantial baseload electricity, a constant strain on the power grid. Our country does not have enough capacity to meet a tenfold increase in data center power demand. Our growing need for power is coming at a time when the Biden administration is taking dramatic steps to hobble our energy security: radical electric vehicle mandates, new restrictions on oil & gas development, and draining strategic oil reserves to roughly half what they were under President Trump. Rene Haas, CEO of the chip design company Arm, said that AI data centers could consume as much as a quarter of U.S. power requirements by the end of the decade. Despite this looming need — from just one critical industry — Biden continues to mismanage the American energy economy. It’s imperative that we power this transformation. AI is not just another technological advancement but a fundamental shift in every job, company, and industry. Most importantly, the national security implications for AI cannot be understated. Military Power The country that first masters AI will see it utilized in every facet of military operations. Enormous efficiency gains will be realized in everything from logistics to battlefield planning. These changes mean that the pace of warfare will increase dramatically. The military with the best AI capability will be able to operate with inhuman efficiency to overwhelm the less capable opponent. The race for military AI is critical due to its impact on the entire process of making war, from autonomous systems to decision-making. China views this race as a golden opportunity to overtake the U.S. in military capability and has heavily invested in its military AI programs. Worryingly, they might be succeeding. A recent report from data firm Giovani indicates that China is overtaking the U.S. in AI development. The U.S. military could be severely disadvantaged in any potential conflict if China is successful. As much as it sounds like science fiction, military AI has already been put to use by Israel in the battlefield. “The Gospel,” an AI tool developed by the IDF, assists in locating and identifying military targets in real-time. Though the international community has condemned the tool, it has enabled the IDF to conduct strikes at a breakneck pace. This is precisely the type of operational improvement that we could see in every area of military operations, serving as a warning of how China could use AI to close the military gap. However, all these advances hinge on that critical element: energy production. The future of AI, especially in military applications, demands a robust and reliable energy infrastructure. The Biden administration’s current energy policies prioritize climate alarmism over energy security and threaten our ability to meet the growing power demands of AI. It’s time for a shift in our energy strategy. One leader, Donald Trump, has come out in favor of expanding our baseload power capacity to ensure a stable and sufficient electricity supply. This involves not only innovating in nuclear energy and other newer tech but also reinvesting in our dominant oil and gas industry to ensure we have the necessary power without compromising the grid. (READ MORE: The Military’s F-35 Fiasco) The race for AI dominance is the key to winning future wars, and it is inseparable from the need for a secure energy infrastructure. To maintain our national security and technological edge, we must prioritize energy production and ensure that our policies support the growing demands of AI. Philip Reichert is a conservative writer, activist, and contributor for Young Voices. He is a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst, contractor for the U.S. Space Force, and producer at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter at @PhilipReichert. The post Powering AI: The Key to Our National Security appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.