Liz Gunn speaks with Jim Ferguson in the UK & Michael Gray Griffith of Cafe Locked Out in Australia all about ideas for invigorating the worldwide freedom movement as well as highlighting Jim's new platform 'Freedom Train International'. Follow Jim Ferguson: - X - https://x.com/JimFergusonUK - Freedom Train International - https://freedomtraininternational.org - Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@FreedomTrainInternational Follow Cafe Locked Out: - Rumble - https://rumble.com/c/Cafelockedout - X - https://x.com/cafelockedout - Substack - https://cafelockeddown.substack.com - Website - https://cafelockedout.com -------- FreeNZ Media is on: - Substack - www.freenz.substack.com - Donorbox - www.donorbox.org/support-freenz-media - Locals - www.freenz.locals.com

Civil unrest has been seen across cities in the UK after the fatal stabbing of 3 children.

A momentous musical memory. The post The Nirvana song that spoke to Rivers Cuomo and inspired Weezer: “I immediately started dancing” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

One of the worst political pratfalls by any recent presidential candidate was Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” speech in September of 2016. At the time, most Democrats and their legacy media partners openly agreed with her assessment of Donald Trump and his supporters. When the targets of that snide slander sent her back to Chappaqua, it dawned on some of these geniuses that insulting the customer is a losing strategy. Most failed to learn the lesson, however, including the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee for 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris has gleefully taken to calling her Republican opponents “weird.” Presumably it would be rude to point out that … the fingerprints of our Vice President are all over the Biden administration’s record of fiscal incontinence. One would think that Harris, whose bizarre word salads have made her something of a laughing stock, would avoid the term “weird.” Yet she uses it to describe Republicans at every opportunity. Predictably, as Dave Rubin documents, this puerile taunt has been parroted by a long list of Democrats and talking heads. And they don’t restrict the insults to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Democratic operative Max Burns writes in The Hill that Trump’s choice of Vance as his running mate reveals the following about his supporters: “It’s reminding millions of voters that the MAGA movement is a clown car packed with off-putting weirdos.” In 2020, this particular “clown car” contained about 74.3 million voters. This is why New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman describes this schoolyard name-calling as “the dumbest message Democrats could seize on right now.” These “weirdos” are the working-class voters who have endured the most pain from the economic policies of the Biden-Harris administration. They are the people struggling to pay for groceries, gasoline and rent. They are the young couples who can’t afford to buy a house because the median price of an existing home is at a record high and mortgage rates have skyrocketed. This is bad news for Harris and Democrats in general because they might decide who wins the upcoming election. As political scientist Ruy Teixeira writes at the Liberal Patriot: Here is a simple truth: how working-class (noncollege) voters move will likely determine the outcome of the 2024 election. They will be the overwhelming majority of eligible voters (around two-thirds) and, even allowing for turnout patterns, only slightly less dominant among actual voters (around three-fifths). Moreover, in all six key swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the working-class share of the electorate, both as eligible voters and as projected 2024 voters, will be higher than the national average. This clearly favors the GOP presidential ticket. According to exit polls conducted by Edison Research after the 2020 election, Trump won 67 percent of the white working class vote and 26 percent of the non-white working class vote. Considering that the top issues for these voters are inflation and immigration, on which they tend to trust Republicans more than Democrats, the Trump-Vance ticket is likely to receive an even larger share of the working class vote in 2024. Consequently, despite the polling bump Harris has received after Biden was forced out of the race, Democrat strategist David Axelrod warned against “irrational exuberance” during a CNN interview: “It’s absolutely Trump’s race to lose right now.” But Harris may not be able to rise above schoolyard taunts. On inflation, for example, an AP article reported that she has never discussed the topic in the speeches she has made since she was installed at the top of Democratic presidential ticket: “Not once in speeches in Wisconsin, Indiana, or Texas did she mention the word ‘inflation’.” Harris Wears Biden’s Failures It’s probable that she and her campaign staff will insist that she had no control over the policies that caused the problem. Yet she cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate that ultimately allowed the inflationary $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to reach Biden’s desk for signature. Indeed, according to the New York Times, she has cast more tie-breaking votes than any other VP: Vice President Kamala Harris broke the centuries-old record on Tuesday for the most tiebreaking votes cast by a vice president in the Senate, underscoring Democrats’ tenuous hold on the majority … The vice president serves as the president of the Senate, giving her the constitutional power to break ties in the 100-member body. Since 1789, 300 tiebreaking votes have been cast. Former Vice President Mike Pence provided 13 tiebreakers while in office, and President Biden cast none while serving as vice president. Presumably it would be rude to point out that this dubious accomplishment renders it all too obvious that the fingerprints of our Vice President are all over the Biden administration’s record of fiscal incontinence. It will also make it very difficult to claim that she wasn’t an active partner in the other failures that define the regime. This is particularly true where the border crisis is concerned, of course. Not that Harris and her friends in the Fourth Estate haven’t tried. Never mind that they themselves documented her high profile role. As AP reported at the time, “President Joe Biden has tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border.” Strange. It’s abundantly clear that these people truly believe they can convince the voters to ignore the evidence of their eyes by insulting them. It’s like being told by a used car salesman, “You’re a moron if you don’t buy this sweet ride.” Sometimes the voters can be fooled by this kind of strategy, but not by someone like Harris. She’s too … well … weird. READ MORE from David Catron: Will the Media Makeover of Harris Work? Can Manchin Be Trusted on Voter Integrity? Biden’s Dishonest Domestic Terrorism Claims The post For Kamala Harris ‘Weird’ Is the New ‘Deplorable’ appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

“Her life could’ve been as rich as any woman’s if only … If only …” Captain Kirk, Star Trek, “Turnabout Intruder” For half a century, smug liberals have derided the very last episode of Star Trek, “Turnabout Intruder,” shot after the original series had already been canceled. It concerns Captain James Kirk’s batty ex-girlfriend Janice Lester (Sandra Smith) obsessed with two goals — punishing her former lover and commanding the USS Enterprise. Because the 23rd Century Star Fleet will wisely prohibit women from captaining a military starship, Janice employs an alien force to switch bodies with Kirk and take control of the Enterprise. “Hollywood,” Walsh tweeted. “STOP encouraging young women to withstand even a single blow to the head from a male and then disable him with a karate chop. Naturally her brief tenure on the bridge is a total disaster, which provokes a mutiny by the sharp crew. This drives Janice even madder, resulting in her climactic attempt to murder Kirk, who’s trapped in her body. In the end, Kirk foils her plan and restores their correct bodies. Then the full extent of Janice’s feminist rage becomes evident in her face, voice, and demeanor. “I’ve lost to the Captain,” Janice cries. “I’ve lost to Jim Kirk!” She then attacks Kirk with a deadly hypo before he easily overpowers her. “I want you dead!” she shrieks. “I want you dead!” She finally breaks down in tears. “I’m never going to be the captain … Never a hero.” Whereupon Kirk utters his final line (until Star Trek: The Motion Picture ten years later, 1979). “I didn’t want to destroy her … Her life could’ve been as rich as any woman’s if only … If only …” Allow me to complete Kirk’s thought, which no longer seems dated to normal people. “If only she hadn’t been brainwashed by feminist garbage into hating men while striving to be like them … If only she’d realized the eternal value of femininity, wifehood, and motherhood.” Because the genius artists who created Star Trek (the original, not the countless ghastly woke sequels and spinoffs) understood humanity better than the sniggering academia-programmed leftwing brats who mock “Turnabout Intruder.” I often say, Star Trek was there first. And Janice Lester is here now, in essence, embodying all the bitter shrews in charge of the Democratic Party and consequently the country. These are the women the Republican nominee for Vice President once called “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.” Like the writers of “Turnabout Intruder,” despite similar progressive opprobrium, J.D. Vance was right. But it won’t take fifty years to prove it, or any time at all. Last month, Vance’s 2016 bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, once again topped Amazon’s Kindle bestseller list. While Ron Howard’s 2020 film adaptation (see my review here) skyrocketed on Netflix. This is the first presidential election year for a mushrooming conflict. No longer is it only liberal versus conservative, Left versus Right, and fantasy versus reality. It’s also men versus women — specifically, real men versus madwomen. As the whole world saw last Thursday at the Paris Olympics during the ridiculously brief women’s boxing match between an obvious man and a natural woman, the girls don’t stand a chance. And when they lose, they’ll apologize to their abuser like battered wives — as Italian boxer Angelina Carini did to the man who beat her, undermining brave women champions like Riley Gaines and J.K. Rowling. Feminist Women Wanted This Men didn’t want this fight. We were more than willing to go about our business, entertainment, and politics. But for a decade now, each has been culturally ripped away by feminist witches and their beta-male familiars. In private employment, government, and the military, unqualified women get precedence over meritorious men as a matter of policy. Look no further than forcefully resigned U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. Her incompetence not only nearly cost Donald Trump his life, but her top agenda was to induct more inept women like herself into the service. This would explain the diminutive, overweight, frustrated female agents trying to get Trump into the van right after the shooting. On screen and in print, male heroes completely vanished, along with their inspirational virtues of chivalry, panache, and appreciation for female beauty. To be replaced by laughably bad male imitators in once boy-friendly franchises like Star Wars, (see the universally mocked The Acolyte), comic-book movies, and action films. After watching Olympian Carini get her head pounded by a man, military historian Michael Walsh had some sound advice for Hollywoke. “Hollywood,” Walsh tweeted. “STOP encouraging young women to withstand even a single blow to the head from a male and then disable him with a karate chop. ATOMIC BLONDE was a cartoon fantasy that should never have been made.” Which brings us to the current presidential race. Nothing could be more illustrative of the new battle-of-the-sexes dynamic than the two opposing candidates. On the Democratic side, you have a cackling inarticulate female who slept her way into politics being hidden from the public while the leftist media remakes her into the new Rosa Parks. The Republican is a world-famous entrepreneur who reshaped the New York City skyline, was a successful President, shrugged off impeachment, cancellation, slander, and corrupt lawfare, and last month took a bullet to the head and raised his fist in defiance. “I’m never going to be the captain!” sobbed Janice Lester. And Kamala Harris will never be President. “If ever a city needed a couple of tough guys to bust some kneecaps, it’s Washington D.C. Go get ’em, Slade and Cork.” Andrew Klavan, author of the Cameron Winter mysteries, on my exciting new political detective thriller The Washington Trail, coming out next week. Preorder now available. READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: We’ll Never Have Paris The Impeccable Timing of a Political Thriller The Picture of Donald Trump The post The Star Trek Election III: Men vs. Women appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

On 31 July, Iran’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Khamenei, ordered an attack on Israel in response to the presumed Israeli assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the terrorist network Hamas. Hamas is, of course, a proxy force owned and operated by Iran. We should take a lesson from the Israelis. Any terrorists who kill or kidnap Americans must pay with their lives. Last Monday, Turkish President Recep Erdogan also threatened Israel. He threatened a Turkish invasion, saying Turkey “must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine … Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we might do similar to them.” Erdogan’s bluster can be ignored. Turkey, our least reliable NATO ally, has been turned by Erdogan into an Islamist state. His statement about Israel doing “ridiculous things to Palestine” is absurd. As most recently documented by Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula (USAF, Ret.) Israel is doing everything humanly possible to minimize civilian casualties in its Rafah operation. Erdogan’s Turkey should, as this column has repeated often, be thrown out of NATO because it no longer shares NATO’s democratic values and because it is too tied to Russia. Within the past month, Israeli agents and air strikes have killed three top terrorists: Mohammed Deif, a major Hamas commander, Fuad Shukr, a top-ranking Hizballah commander and Haniyeh. Shukr has been wanted by the U.S. since he took part in the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut which killed 241 Marines and other U.S. personnel. Why Shukr was still alive is a mystery. On being told of Haniyeh’s death, instead of congratulating the Israelis on the killings of Deif, Shukr, and Haniyeh, President Biden said Haniyeh’s death “doesn’t help” negotiations on a Gaza cease-fire in the war Hamas began on October 7th by massacring 1,200 Israelis, 32 Americans and taking about 240 hostages, including eight Americans. As I’ve written repeatedly, Biden is doing nothing to gain the U.S. hostages’ release. Five are believed to still be alive. Biden is so tied to his cease-fire proposals that he continually disregards the fact that Israel has agreed to their framework to get its — and our — hostages back. It is Hamas that blocks the cease-fire by refusing to release its hostages. Biden is, as usual, entirely wrong. It makes no difference to the cease-fire proposals that Haniyeh was killed. The next Hamas negotiator will be just as unreasonable and defiant unless and until Iran orders otherwise. Biden is doing one thing right. He has ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier battle group to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt group (which has been on station too long), as well as other ships capable of missile defense, to operate in the Gulf of Oman, which is the entry to the Persian Gulf, close to Iran. Defense Secretary Austin has also reportedly ordered the deployment of a fighter squadron to the area. Lessons from Iran’s April Attack on Israel Khameni’s threat raises the threats against Israel to yet another critical level. Iran tried to attack Israel directly on 13 April, launching about 300 missiles and drones, about 99 percent of which were shot down by the combined efforts of Israeli, American, UK and Jordanian forces. Hizballah has been raining missiles — most of which are shot down by Israeli defenses — on Israeli civilians since the Gaza war began. Airlines are cancelling flights to and from Israel, and our wonderful State Department has told Americans in Lebanon to get out by whatever means they can. No U.S. forces have, so far, been ordered to evacuate U.S. civilians from Lebanon. In any new attack, Hizballah — another Iranian proxy terror force — could launch tens of thousands of rockets and missiles against Israel. From even the April unsuccessful attack, the Iranians will have learned a few lessons. First is that any missile defenses can be oversaturated by incoming drones and missiles and thus overwhelmed. Even Israel’s “David’s Sling,” “Arrow,” and “Iron Dome” systems can be overwhelmed. Our carrier battle group operating in the Gulf of Oman, the entrance to the Persian Gulf that borders Iran, can help defend Israel — as can the Jordanian and UK forces — but the tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands — of Hizballah missiles could overwhelm those defenses if they are launched at one time or in rapid successive waves. The second lesson that Iran has learned from the unsuccessful April attack and the Haniyeh assassination is that no one is safe from Israeli vengeance, even in Tehran. After the 1972 massacre of eleven Israeli athletes by the Black September terrorist group, which also killed a German policeman, then-Israeli prime minister Golda Meir ordered the deaths of all the killers. Israeli intelligence agents hunted them down and killed them. It took about twelve years for that to be accomplished. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly ordered the planners and perpetrators of the October 7 attack to be killed just as the perpetrators of the 1972 Olympic massacre were hunted down and killed over more than a decade. The assassination of Haniyeh, Shukr’s death in Beirut and the air strike that killed Deif are part of Netanyahu’s plan. What is missing here are statements by Biden threatening the use of force against Iran. Biden is, again, siding with Iran, Turkey, and Hamas by not issuing scathing statements against them, warning of U.S. reprisals. Hizballah has been firing missiles at Israeli civilians since Hamas’s October 7 attack. It is only possible to deter Iran by military force. Israel responded to Iran’s 13 April attack six days later, striking — and probably destroying — a radar installation near Isfahan which is about 270 miles south of Tehran in western Iran. After that strike, Iran went quiet for a short while but it is now back with Khameni’s threats, which Israel and we must take seriously. Neither Biden nor Vice President Harris will. We should take a lesson from the Israelis. Any terrorists who kill or kidnap Americans must pay with their lives. READ MORE from Jed Babbin: What’s Next for Biden and Harris? Cheering Iran’s Bad Luck Democrats’ Big Lie on the Border Wall — But They’re Winning The post Iran’s Khamenei Threatens Israel … and the West appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Voters in at least seven states will decide ballot measures this year concerning ranked-choice voting. A handful of left-leaning, deep-pocketed donors are driving the push for this fundamental shift in elections. Yet despite a huge fundraising advantage, they seem to have given up trying to convince voters. Instead, the strategy is to distract them or — in Montana — to fool them. There can be no doubt about the purpose of these “election reform” measures. One must only follow the money. Perhaps it’s because RCV undermines the principle of “one person, one vote.” Depending on how voters fill out their ballots, they might be counted multiple times for different candidates, or they could be discarded altogether. The only sure winners are the dark-money groups that will gain even more power amidst voter frustration. Ranked-choice voting is a tedious process where voters rank candidates by preference. If no candidate wins outright, a series of elimination rounds “redistributes” votes until one candidate has a majority. If voters mark their ballot for just one candidate, and the candidate doesn’t make it to the final round, those voters’ ballots are tossed out, effectively disenfranchising them. RCV’s ability to upend would-be winners by trashing ballots is precisely why partisan elites have invested so much money in rewriting distant states’ election laws. In the 2022 Alaska special congressional election, Democratic candidate Mary Peltola got only 40 percent of first-place votes while 60 percent went to Republican candidates. After ballots were thrown out and votes redistributed, Peltola won with 51.5 percent of what was left. Alaska only has RCV because the same liberal donor cabal packaged it into a 2020 ballot measure that they claimed would rid the state of “dark money.” No, you can’t make this stuff up. A groundswell of buyers’ remorse has put RCV repeal on the ballot in Alaska this fall. The backers of ranked-choice voting are desperate to distract from the details of their plan. Their scheme makes voting harder, leads to longer lines and more spoiled ballots, and creates new challenges for election officials, who sometimes struggle to understand it themselves. In this fraught political moment, ranked-choice voting makes elections more complicated, less transparent, and harder to trust. RCV backers have figured out that voters don’t like what they’re selling. A leaked memo in Arizona shows RCV supporters trying to refocus on vague concepts like “fairness.” Another memo from a pro-RCV group demands that people stop identifying “ranked choice voting” by name. Yet the trick they’re trying to pull in Montana, using a pair of ballot measures that make no reference to RCV at all, is even more deceptive. Proposal to Change Montana Voting Proposal The first ballot measure would replace ordinary primary elections with one that automatically sends four candidates to the general election. All candidates, regardless of political party, would appear on one ballot. This “jungle primary” would let Democrats have a say in choosing the Republicans that appear on the general election ballot, and vice versa. Given Montana’s political landscape, this would often result in general elections with two Republicans and two Democrats, or else three Republicans and one Democrat. Assuming all four candidates are relatively popular, a candidate might win with a plurality of less than 30 percent of the vote. That’s where the second ballot measure comes in, to “fix” the problem created by the first. The second measure simply requires that winners be elected by majority, not just a plurality. But it doesn’t say how — it just requires the Montana State Legislature to make it so. This is the trap set by the RCV cabal. There are only two ways to comply if these measures pass: hold yet another election or use RCV. There can be no doubt about the purpose of these “election reform” measures. One must only follow the money. As of June, a left-wing group called Article IV poured in nearly $2.7 million in support of the Montana ballot measures. The group is closely tied to former Enron executive John Arnold, a major liberal donor and prolific funder of RCV initiatives throughout the United States. In 2022, for example, it contributed over $6.7 million to a failed attempt to get RCV on the Missouri ballot. The Sixteen Thirty Fund, managed by Washington, D.C.-based Arabella Advisors, recently contributed $100,000 toward the Montana ballot efforts. That group has accepted nearly $250 million in donations from a left-wing foreign billionaire and has spent $100 million to influence ballot issue campaigns in 25 states. In May, Ohio enacted a new law to ban foreign funding for ballot measures after Sixteen Thirty Fund hit the Buckeye State with over $14 million in foreign-tied cash. Now, this conduit for foreign influence is targeting Montana. Voters in Montana and across the nation cannot hope to match the money flowing in from out-of-state megadonors who are attempting to corrupt voting systems and manipulate their outcomes in favor of leftwing causes and candidates. Those who favor free and honest elections have a better weapon: The truth. Even those pushing ranked-choice voting seem to realize that if voters know the truth about what they are hawking, they don’t want it. Trent England and Jason Snead are co-chairs of the Stopped Ranked-Choice Voting Coalition. READ MORE: Early Voting in 2024 The Left’s Noncitizen Voting Gambit The post Ranked-Choice Voting by Subterfuge appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Access to cheap, reliable, safe energy is crucial to human well-being. Higher per capita energy consumption correlates tightly with human prosperity (see graph in this link and here). It is no exaggeration to say that we could not possibly be as wealthy as we are today — far wealthier than our great-grandparents — were it not for all the energy we have consumed. The multi-generational evolution of our sources of energy shows two clear trends. As developed economies progressed from wood to coal to oil to natural gas to nuclear, each step featured energy that was progressively more concentrated while also emitting less pollution. From Efficient Energy to Inefficient Energy The trend toward cleaner, more concentrated energy sources bumped into a countertrend five to seven decades ago. A strong anti-nuclear movement emerged. Environmentalists exploited Americans’ poor understanding of nuclear energy to turn public opinion against it. Consequently, government progressively impeded the adoption of this clean energy through ever-expanding federal regulations that artificially increased costs and delayed or halted the construction of nuclear power plants. In the 1990s, and especially after the turn of the century, the anti-nuclear movement morphed into a broader anti-energy movement, as I wrote in this space fifteen years ago. The green left worked to thwart the domestic production of fossil fuels. Some of them went from promoting natural gas as a welcome cleaner alternative to coal to vehemently opposing the cleaner fuel. A green leftist elite was able to exploit the unscientific climate change hysteria whipped up by a government-funded cabal of elitists to adopt a series that are some combination of sheer stupidity and sinister destructiveness. Their single worst policy happened in 2009 when Congress made the catastrophic policy error of classifying carbon dioxide as a pollutant. CO2, of course, is plant food; it is one of the necessary foundations of the human food chain. A pollutant? I recall in 1974 when American-made cars were legally required to have catalytic converters on their cars’ engines, the purpose of which, as scientists said at the time, was to convert poisonous carbon monoxide into harmless carbon dioxide. Since 2009, the green left has aggressively pursued their ultimate objective of imposing a top-down economic plan on the country — a misanthropic plan infused with green paganism that would keep the world’s poor countries poor — a plan whose follies and failures are now glaringly apparent for anyone with eyes to see. For almost four decades now, Uncle Sam has spent literally trillions of federal dollars subsidizing “renewable energy” (better labeled “intermittent energy”) — i.e., wind and solar — which are less concentrated, less reliable, and more expensive than fossil fuels and nuclear energy. The subsidies to wind and solar energy companies comprise one of the largest corporate welfare schemes in our country’s history. Its overall effect is to make us poorer by artificially boosting the price of energy. Ah, yes, our tax dollars at work. The leftist government-funded war against cheap, reliable energy is not only anti-economic, anti-capitalistic, and anti-prosperity, but fundamentally anti-human (hence the reference to paganism above). If the anti-human animus of our current energy policies fail to convince you that those policies are perverse, consider this: the supposedly “green” technologies of wind and solar energy are wreaking environmental havoc. Clearly, intermittent energy sources are not a viable answer to our society’s growing energy needs. Not only do solar panels and giant windmills require vast amounts of land (one study estimates land four times the size of South Dakota), but the massive amount of minerals that would have to be mined to continue expanding wind and solar are environmentally devastating. Equally problematic is the daunting task of figuring out how to dispose of all the waste generated by panels and windmills, virtually all of which have to be replaced every 20 or 30 years. Then there is the damage to countless ecosystems as solar panels and windmills kill vast numbers of birds, bats, and insects (as much as five percent of some insect species per year). If any fossil fuel company were killing one-tenth the wildlife that wind and solar are killing, the greens would be screaming to lock up their CEOs. Instead, in their pursuit of socialistic control over us, greens are too often willing to ignore the decimation of animal species wrought by “green energy.” And let us not overlook the dangers to human wellbeing posed by wind and solar, whether it be the depleting of aquifers, spikes in human suffering from “valley fever” and silicosis, or health hazards from increasing humans’ exposure to Bisphenol A which, according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, “is the most toxic substance we know.” There also are psychological effects. As reported in one medical journal, “People who live or work in close proximity to IWTs have experienced symptoms that include decreased quality of life, annoyance, stress, sleep disturbance, headache, anxiety, depression, and cognitive dysfunction.” Another study even linked wind turbines to significantly higher suicide rates. Reject Climate Alarmism For those Americans who believe that we have no choice but to turn to wind and solar or face a climate Armageddon, I offer here the sketchiest of thumbnail rebuttals to climate alarmism: Earth has gotten a degree or two warmer since the harsh Little Ice Age ended in the 1800s. Today’s warmer temperatures have made life safer for humans. Even today, after almost two centuries of warming, approximately twenty times as many humans die from cold than from heat. Today’s warmer temperatures (manifest most noticeably in milder nighttime and wintertime temperatures) have resulted in longer growing seasons that — combined with more carbon dioxide (i.e., plant food) in the atmosphere — have enhanced agricultural productivity to the point where our planet can produce enough food to sustain its eight billion people. Deaths from adverse weather events have plummeted rather than increased over the past century. And for those who may have been taught that carbon dioxide is the devil’s gas, consider this: Since the end of the Little Ice Age, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from ~290 parts per million to ~420 ppm (which is still at the low end of its long-term historical range). A major beneficial effect of this CO2 enrichment of our atmosphere is that it has caused a significant greening of our planet (see here, too) — a result you would think people calling themselves “greens” would applaud. If you still think wind and solar energy should be subsidized, consider this: As we head toward a future in which various technologies (e.g., AI, VR, cloud computing) will require ever-more electricity, it is becoming painfully clear that intermittent, less efficient, and more costly energy sources won’t meet our needs. Further, those inferior technologies are steering us toward potentially catastrophic failures of our electrical grid system due to the large fluctuations and consequent unreliability of electricity generated by wind and solar energy. Both the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) have issued blunt, dire warnings about this looming danger. A Free Energy Market The good news is that we have the capacity to expand our production of energy considerably and to reverse the deterioration in the security of our electric grid. We are the global energy superpower in terms of fossil fuels and have reserves more than sufficient to easily meet our needs. For reasons explained by advanced physics, additional CO2 in the atmosphere will have a negligible impact on warming, which should allay the concerns of those who believe that warming is bad, but it will cause further greening of planet Earth, so bring on those fossil fuels! We also have some nuclear options. The decades-old anti-nuke hysteria seems to have passed — finally! Nuclear power has long been shown to be safe and reliable. The French generate more than 70 percent of their electricity from nuclear power. They deposit their spent radioactive fuel rods in a vault under one of their cities. There are no compelling reasons to avoid this clean, prolific energy source. It is encouraging that, in June, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the ADVANCE Act. This legislation is designed to streamline the application process, reduce fees, and shorten approval times for the construction of nuclear energy generators. In short, ADVANCE does much to reverse the longstanding anti-nuke regulatory framework that has so tragically crippled nuclear power in our country. This is especially timely in light of the exciting possibilities currently being explored for small (maybe neighborhood size or even smaller) nuclear reactors in addition to larger units to power cities. We have arrived at a propitious time to reexamine our national energy policies. Clearly, intermittent energy sources are not a viable answer to our society’s growing energy needs. Neither is corn-based ethanol, a decades-old environmentally destructive boondoggle whereby the federal government subsidizes corn production on millions of acres of land that would otherwise be used for different agricultural products or simply serve as natural habitat. Government subsidies to wind, solar, and ethanol have been acting as a brake on economic growth while helping to balloon our soaring national debt. The first step in reforming energy policy should be to jettison all the wasteful, counterproductive subsidies to renewables. What energy sources should our electric utilities use? Frankly, I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. The only way to sort through the various options is to let markets work their magic. Free and open markets process far more economically valuable information than any genius individual or panel of experts possibly can. Personally, with all the positive benefits to human beings and our environment, I think we should continue to develop our domestic fossil fuels. I am equally open to the potential offered by nuclear. I am also willing to conder the possibility that there may be local areas where wind and solar make sense — as long as they can do so without government subsidies. In sum, then, a rational energy policy for the USA has three elements: 1.Adopt as law of the land that carbon dioxide is not to be classified as a pollutant. We need to embrace, not reject, fossil fuels. 2.Immediately terminate all energy subsidies and maintain a level playing field for competing fuel sources. 3. Let entrepreneurs and utilities produce fuels and electricity from whatever source they choose. Market forces will identify the most practical alternatives. Such a policy mix will solve our current energy challenges and boost prosperity for decades to come. READ MORE from Mark W. Hendrickson: Joe Biden and the Democratic Party Are Amoral Remembering James B. Edwards The post America Needs a Rational Energy Policy appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Roosevelt’s New Nationalism In the 1912 presidential election, Theodore Roosevelt championed the principles of “New Nationalism,” the title of his 1910 speech inspired by Herbert Croly’s The Promise of American Life. Roosevelt and Croly believed the federal government should intervene more strongly in the economy and ensure the public welfare, especially against concentrations of corporate power and political privilege. Conservatism is about a love of country, tradition, place, and posterity — born and unborn. Roosevelt and Croly were dedicated American nationalists, but they were also progressives, not conservatives. The Progressive Era of American history — in which Roosevelt and Croly were two prominent political figures — was characterized by the expansion of federal power, when the phrase “the United States are” was replaced by the more uniform “the United States is.” The New Nationalism sought to undermine local or regional power, including local legislatures, and redirect Americans’ loyalty to a central authority in Washington — not just the federal government, but specifically the executive branch. Roosevelt said in his famous speech: The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage. It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from over division of governmental powers … This New Nationalism regards the executive power as the steward of the public welfare. Over a century later, the heirs of American nationalism define themselves by the term “national conservatism,” proudly distinguishing themselves from the “market fundamentalism” of the Republican Party consensus during and after the Cold War. This movement unapologetically advocates industrial policy, protectionism and — like their progressive forerunners a hundred years ago — the use of federal power to advance their idea of the common good. National conservatives, from Tucker Carlson to Sen. Josh Hawley, venerate Theodore Roosevelt as a paragon of American masculinity, patriotism, and leadership — a bona fide conservative hero, notwithstanding his progressivism. National conservatism is a strange political development since nationalism and conservatism do not share a common tradition. Nationalism originated with the French Revolution and viewed the romantic mythos of “the people” as the source of legitimacy for the exercise of raw power in the modern nation state. As historian and former Librarian of Congress James Billington explained, “the [nationalist] drive for power appropriated the new idea of popular sovereignty and pushed into the background the earlier Enlightenment concern about constitutional forms and rational balance.” Ordered liberty and constitutional government — the pillars of Anglo-American conservatism — were wholly antithetical to the despotic nationalist regimes of the 20th century, in which the state became a surrogate god and vilified the Christian faith. Roger Scruton pointed out that nationalism “occupies the space vacated by religion” and strives for meaning, consolation, and redemption through the national idea. In a secularized and deracinated United States, nationalism is not a cure, but a symptom of a spiritual malady in the American soul. Nationalism Without Conservatism With Donald Trump and J.D. Vance on the 2024 GOP presidential ticket, national conservatism is now the dominant faction on the right and has won over a majority of the Republican electorate. Yet it would be more sensible to describe their movement as “national progressivism” — or simply “nationalism” — since they have abandoned a commitment to genuine conservative principles. The ostensible reason for the national conservative embrace of big-government politics was to advance a socially conservative agenda at the federal level after years of GOP failure to resist the left-wing onslaught against traditional American values. At last, the national conservatives are in the ascendancy, yet the Republican Party platform is now more liberal than the cigar-chomping Rockefeller Republicans could ever dream. In 2024, the GOP is pro-choice and only opposes “Late Term Abortion.” It regards the defeat of Roe v. Wade as the final victory in the abortion debate, not the actual end of abortion in the United States. It claims to value the “Sanctity of Marriage,” yet does not define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Resisting today’s “woke” leftism while accepting yesterday’s progressive liberalism — and repeating this process as the Overton window shifts — demonstrates that American conservatism is feeble and lacks a coherent, compelling and unified vision. Conservatism is about a love of country, tradition, place, and posterity — born and unborn. These are the means through which our identities are cultivated and may flourish, not chauvinistic exertions of federal power. As Edmund Burke wrote, “We begin our public affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen.” It is the sum of local, bottom-up attachments that comprise the national whole, but national conservatives are reversing this classical Tocquevillian distribution and adopting a top-down collectivist approach. Unfortunately, in the Republican Party of 2024, nationalism has trumped conservatism. Aidan Grogan is a doctoral student of history at Liberty University and the donor communications manager at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). Follow him on X @AidanGrogan. READ MORE:  The Ascendent National Conservatives Conservatism After Trump The post Nationalism Has Conquered Conservatism appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Prehistoric man started his development by learning to hunt. His next challenge was to try to get on an inflatable unicorn in the pool. Man’s repeated failure in the struggle with the unicorn changed human evolution and led to the birth of defensive limbs, particularly the hands, to try to avoid losing teeth against the edge of the pool. My Experience With Unicorns A journalist must be prepared for all dangers: Stepping into the mouth of a volcano, crossing a trench in war, chasing a snake, photographing a nuclear explosion, or asking Kamala Harris an uncomfortable question. Death is always close. I, without going any further, last year rode a unicorn in the pool. Thoughts of my family, my friends, the years I might have left to live ran through my mind. I thought about all of them and yet I did it because it was my obligation to experience it before sitting down to write these lines. (READ MORE from Itxu: The Adventures of Taking a Towel to the Beach) My unicorn is about two meters in diameter and one and a half meters high, and my pool is four meters wide with an edge designed by the Islamic State to gradually end freedom of the press. The first thing I have learned is that, in the water, you can’t get on anything higher than your knees. Secondly, that trying to do so and not ending up exposed is impossible, no matter what kind of swimsuit you wear, and no matter what you tie it with, including the aquatic suspenders. What I Have Learned Archimedes’ principle says that a body immersed in a fluid at rest receives an upward force from below equal to the weight of the volume of fluid it displaces. This is false. Archimedes never tried to ride a unicorn. First, there is no such thing as a fluid at rest, unless it solidifies — like cement — and then it ceases to be fluid. Secondly, the other body is missing in the beginning. We already know that the unicorn pushes upwards, precisely so that you cannot climb up onto it, but then there’s me, pushing downwards, even though I am not displacing any fluids, you shouldn’t do that in a pool. Thirdly, Archimedes never took into account the evil character of the floating unicorn, which is a beast that enjoys seeing you suffer, that takes advantage of the slightest draft to break away just when you are just about to jump, and that has been invented to test the patience of swimmers, which is its only true vocation. (READ MORE by Itxu: How to Apply Sunscreen: A Handbook) Size Matters There are several sizes of unicorns on the market. In my experience, if it is too big, you will not be able to get onto it without the help of a ladder (this practice is deadly 99 percent of the time), and if it is too small, by Archimedes’ principle, it will sink a little, and immediately, the displaced fluid will be you. Ideally, you should buy one that is big enough for it not to sink, and small enough so that you don’t bounce too much on it when you jump in and end up catapulted out of the pool. Human Nature Man, by which I now mean the male, has five primary urges: hunger, thirst, sex, sleep, and climbing on things. There is only one of them that can be performed in the pool without resulting in death, and now I know that it is not climbing on things. Risk of Explosion One of the most unknown aspects of unicorn climbing is that in the attempt, there is a fairly high risk of float explosion. If the thing is very small, you come away with only a scare and a scratch, but if the thing is big, again Archimedes, you can be displaced at the speed of light in a vacuum, which could cause you to fall into the afterlife, now Einstein, on a real unicorn. Unicorn Navigation If by divine intervention you manage to get on (I managed it on the 10th attempt; the cause of divine intervention being my friend’s words: “Can’t you do it?”), once you get on, the normal thing to do is to sunbathe. But often the pool is not private and you may have to try to change course so as not to kill someone who is swimming. It is almost impossible to pilot a unicorn, but what I have been able to discover is that if you spin your feet, underwater, at high speed, as if they were propellers, the unicorn will not move as you want it to, but it will laugh its head off. It has a very funny laugh. The Selfie As everyone knows, there is only one reason in the world why man has been trying, since time immemorial, to ascend a floating unicorn. And that reason is, of course, to take a selfie. Since it’s impossible to climb a unicorn without getting your phone soaked, it’s best to get someone else to take it for you. It’s almost impossible to get the perfect angle. In any case, tell your friend to make sure the photo is suitable for minors. I took one myself — with which I intended to illustrate this article — and I had to censor it. Getting Down If you think the hardest thing in the world is to get on a unicorn without killing yourself, try getting off. The only way to get off a unicorn is to jump into the water, but the thing traps you in such a way that it’s impossible to be rid of it. I’m going to give you some free advice if you’re a guy: you’d better sink it before you try to jump. I tried to jump with that huge head between my legs and now I don’t understand why they warn us about smoking causing impotence when the really dangerous thing in this area is getting off a unicorn. I haven’t felt so much pain since the last time I saw a Maduro press conference. (READ MORE: Maduro, Get Down From Your Tree and Scram) Selling It On eBay The unicorn is a typical purchase that is very entertaining for the duration of the challenge whilst still a novelty. By the third day, you’ll realize that the damn thing takes up too much space in the pool, that it’s uncomfortable to sunbathe on, and that the adventure of riding it usually lands you in the hospital for shock, suffocation, or drowning. Then you will want to get rid of it. Tell it to put on its best smile, wait for a nice day, and take the best picture you can of it in the calm pool water. Put it up for sale on eBay at half the original price. Believe it or not, millions of people dream every night of having one like this in their pool. If you want a faster sale, in the product description, add its story in first person: “Hi. My name is Bobby. I’m a floating unicorn. Fun, down to earth, a friend to my friends, and very cute. I turn your bathing experience into an unforgettable adventure. For children and adults. My bastard owner has threatened to puncture me and throw me away. I only have 40 hours left. I’m begging that you adopt me immediately to save my life. Sincerely, Bobby”. 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 How To Ride a Unicorn appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.