I don’t pretend to be an expert on the history of the so-called negotiations between Israel and the Arabs who call themselves, and are known by the Western elites, as “Palestinians.” Which isn’t to say I’m without perspective on a process which is considered, by those Westerners who engage in it, as “complicated.” The Israelis are an outpost of Western civilization and the Palestinians are antagonistic to it. It doesn’t actually seem complicated at all. It seems quite simple. And to those who would impose the old Dunning-Kruger analysis on such an opinion, let me cut through the bovine scatology and offer a straightforward and obvious truth, which is this: the people in charge of the Palestinian Arabs, who at this point are not Arabs at all, have no discernible desire for peace with Israel. On the contrary, they’re quite open in their desire to kill every last Jew in the Holy Land, or at least subjugate them and force them to pay the jizya (infidel tax) and live as second-class citizens the way other non-Muslims must in lands governed by sharia law. (READ MORE from Scott McKay: This Is No Longer The Presidential Race You Think It Is) That isn’t a very peaceful position, you know. Hamas is in charge of Gaza, or at least the parts of Gaza remaining which haven’t been cleaned out by the IDF in the months following the massacres of October 7 of last year. Hamas is also in charge of a number of hostages taken during those massacres, some of whom are American citizens. There was a time when our government would move heaven and earth to free our people taken by hostile regimes, and a president whose tenure was not dissimilar to that of the current one essentially saw his administration crushed by an inability to free hostages taken at our embassy in Tehran by the jihadist revolutionaries who took over that government. Those jihadist revolutionaries still run Iran, by the way, and they’re a cancer on the Near East in the same way that the communist revolutionaries in Cuba are a cancer on Latin America. The failure to adequately deal with such people has consequences. In Israel’s case those consequences are existential. Because Iran controls Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi partisans in Yemen, and all three proxies are tasked with destruction of the common welfare — of Israel, of the “civilized” Arab world, and, in the Houthis’ case, of global commerce in the Red Sea. None of this is complicated. It’s very simple. Israel faces an intractable enemy which refuses any lasting peace agreements. A Hamas or Hezbollah will agree to the occasional armistice when they’ve been bloodied badly enough that recuperation is needed. That doctrine dates all the way back to the Quran; it’s how Allah commands them to operate in war. It seems like the Israelis know this. Bibi Netanyahu refers to it often. But it doesn’t seem like our diplomats know it, or that they accept it as truth. Which leads to what just happened… Negotiations in Cairo to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and a hostage deal are still pressing ahead, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said, adding that the discussions will continue on the working-group level for the next few days to iron out specific issues. Speaking to reporters in a virtual briefing, Kirby pushed back on suggestions that the talks have broken down, and said, on the contrary, that they were “constructive.” “The talks actually progressed to a point where they felt like the next logical step was to have working groups at lower levels to sit down to hammer out these finer details,” Kirby said. Brett McGurk, U.S. President Joe Biden’s top Middle East aide at the White House who has been participating in the talks, will soon leave Cairo after staying an extra day to start the working-group talks, Kirby said. One of the issues to be tackled by the working groups will be the exchange of hostages Hamas is holding and Palestinian prisoners that Israel is holding, Kirby said. He said the details to be settled included how many hostages may be exchanged, their identities, and the pace of their potential release. Months of on-off talks have failed to produce an agreement to end Israel’s military campaign in Gaza or free the remaining hostages seized by Hamas in the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war. That followed what was essentially a walkout by Hamas from the talks in Cairo on Sunday. Israel has been systematically cleaning Hamas out of Gaza, at the cost of an inflated, but still significant, death toll among the civilian population which (1) wholeheartedly still supports Hamas as their leaders and (2) are used as human shields in what is a directly-observable war crime. (READ MORE: Five Quick Things: The DNC-Free 5QT) Why is our government attempting to treat with Hamas when they’re holding our citizens as hostages? Why are we providing humanitarian aid that we know will be stolen by Hamas thugs and used as military rations and supplies? Are these people stupid? To this day Israel’s adversaries refuse even to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. To this day those people deny that the land was Israel’s almost from the beginning of time. The Democrat Party opened their convention last week by promulgating a platform which began with a “land acknowledgement” that essentially claimed America is a nation built on stolen land, and yet the presidential administration that party bent the rules of American elections far past their breaking point to create, and now seems to want to disavow, cannot recognize that the Palestinian claims on historic Jewish land are not legitimate. It comes off as a rejection of and refusal to defend Western civilization. He’s not part of the administration, and nobody really listens to him anymore, but James Carville managed to do a good job of giving away the mentality at hand last week… Democratic strategist James Carville during a Thursday podcast said Republicans only characterize themselves as Israel supporters because Jews are more white than Palestinians. Over 70% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents report having a positive view of Israel, while only 44% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents share this perception, according to Pew Research Center in 2022. Carville, on “Politics War Room,” said “racism” is what motivates the views of Israelis and Palestinians in response to a listener’s question regarding the Republican Party’s alleged embrace of “neo-Nazis,” which the listener suggested is inconsistent with the party’s pro-Israel stance. “It’s really about the misogyny and the racism that drives the thing, and we got to recognize that. It’s not about any policy prescription. And the reason I suspect that most of these people describe themselves as pro-Israel is because the Jews are whiter than the Palestinians, which I think drives a lot of what they are,” Carville said. Does it matter that most Israelis are Sephardic Jews rather than Ashkenazi? Apparently not, as that would invalidate the ethnic claims Carville makes. But that isn’t what matters here. The Israelis are an outpost of Western civilization and the Palestinians are antagonistic to it. They proved that by what they did to Beirut, another former outpost of Western civilization until the 1970’s, for example. And somehow it’s a bad thing that Republicans respect Israel as a Western nation, because Western civilization, in whose bosom James Carville has prospered, is a bad thing. Which is idiotic in its own right. Just a little more than four years ago we had the Abraham Accords, in which a large chunk of the Arab world showed they were willing to break bread and normalize relations with the Israelis. Those negotiations came courtesy of a presidential administration unburdened by the failed “peace process” that our failure-addicted old-line diplomats had carried on for decades. And now we’re back to the same old thing, begging Hamas for a cease-fire and demanding the Israelis tie their hands behind their backs rather than exhorting them to finish the job and grind the genocidal Hamas refuseniks into the dust they must become. These people do not learn. It’s either that or they see a grift for the taking, because war and the “humanitarian” aid that comes with it offer lots of opportunities for the skim. And what we know is the Palestinians aren’t very picky about how much swag actually goes where it’s intended. That’s awfully cold comfort for the families of our people still in Hamas, or even Iranian, captivity. It’s too bad our brilliant diplomats and the two-bit hack politicians supposedly controlling them don’t really give a damn. The post When It Comes to Israel, These People Are Idiots appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

“First and foremost, I avoid all confrontation,” Robert Freeman, a 47-year-old bus driver in Queens, remarked to the New York Times. “Me, I just concentrate on driving, and I don’t say nothing.” It was an apt summary of the city’s attitude towards petty criminals, who have been all too happy to take advantage of New York’s deteriorating public order — including in Freeman’s line of work. The idea, in short, was that “‘untended’ behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls.” Today, the Times reports that nearly half of all bus riders in the city are now simply neglecting to pay the fare. New York is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year to fare evasion in the bus system alone, but if its leaders intend to do anything serious about it, they haven’t said so. In fact, the issue appears to have substantially worsened in recent years. In 2018, prior to the pandemic, the fare evasion rate on New York buses was 18 percent, costing the city about $128 million that year. That rate was approximately double the city’s historical levels, and “at least double the rate of other cities across the world,” the Times reported. (At the time, the rate of fare evasion was 11 percent in Paris, 5 percent in Toronto, and just 1.5 percent in London). By 2022, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was hemorrhaging $315 million annually in bus fare evasion. By the first quarter of 2024, the share of riders who were fleecing the city had jumped to nearly 48 percent. “Transit experts,” writes the Times, “say some New Yorkers don’t pay to board the bus because they cannot afford the fare.” This seems to be the experts’ explanation for any and all crime, no matter the context; the idea that crime is enabled by criminality has long since fallen out of fashion. (The responsibility always lies with society, which inflicted criminality upon the guiltless criminal). (READ MORE from Nate Hochman: Two’s a Crowd When It Comes to Citizenship) But the “root cause” theory of fare evasion — like the “root cause” theory of all crime — fails to stand up to a few moments of scrutiny. No serious person believes that the share of New York bus riders who are too desperately poor to afford the $2.90 fare has increased by 40 percent over the past five years. A more coherent explanation can be found in a passing aside later on in the Times report: “The pandemic also reinforced the perception that fares were optional, after the authority made bus rides free for a few months in 2020.” Riders were given a taste of free fare, and city authorities gave them no real reason to let it go. The simple and obvious truth is that New York’s dilemma — not just with fare evasion, but for serious felony offenses, which continue to climb to record levels despite Mayor Eric Adams’ insistence that “crime is down” — is the result of a city that has lost the will to enforce its own laws. The widespread belief — sometimes explicit, always implicit — that the act of policing crime is far worse than crime itself animates both New York’s politicians and the activists, journalists, and intellectuals who they answer to. New York City Transit President Andy Byford learned this the hard way in 2019, when he made the fatal mistake of suggesting “cops on buses” to fight the fare evasion crisis. The backlash was swift and unforgiving. Byford’s “comment,” reported a local outlet, “raised the specter of the NYPD’s reviled, repudiated, and ultimately rejected stop-and-frisk program from the Bloomberg Administration.” (Although Byford “came to New York only last year after stints in Canada and Australia and might not be fully aware of the NYPD’s legacy of racially biased enforcement,” the paper reasoned). Just a few days later, “facing an outcry from transit and equity advocates,” the MTA hurriedly walked back its plan. It is impossible to imagine a city doing anything meaningful to reduce crime — petty or serious — in such political conditions. (Even Mayor Adams, a former police captain and ostensibly a moderate on crime and policing, “appears to have been stymied by the Democratic establishment” on his calls “for a tougher criminal justice system,” the New York Post noted earlier this year). And if a city cannot enforce a basic public order, it can’t hope to do much of anything else, either. Decline is often more of a whimper than a bang. It is a slow death, enacted by a thousand small cuts. Between the periodic spasms of violent riots or other high-profile dramas, decline looks and feels like the constant drumbeat of little things getting worse in little ways. It’s profane graffiti appearing in public spaces; the smell of a subway station worsening, just slightly, with every passing month; neighborhoods where the street cleaners no longer show up to scrub the pavement. (READ MORE: Tim Walz: The Mogadishuan Candidate) This was the simple-yet-brilliant premise behind the “broken windows” theory of crime — a phrase that is used as something akin to a cuss word in liberal criminal justice circles today. The idea, in short, was that “‘untended’ behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls,” wrote George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, the authors of the theory, in their seminal 1982 essay on the topic. Kelling and Wilson continue: A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other’s children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle. A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers. Anyone who has visited New York City over the past few years will immediately recognize the authors’ description, for it is precisely what is taking place in the Big Apple. If city leaders are serious about cracking down on fare evasion, they might consider getting serious about enforcing the law. But don’t hold your breath. The post New York’s Broken Windows appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

On American campuses since October 7th of 2023 Jewish students have been targeted with unprecedented levels of harassment and intimidation. Calls to “globalize the intifada” inside and outside classrooms, encampments where Zionists are barred by thug minders, countless demonstrations where Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi flags are waved to cries to “from the river to the sea…. ” Jews and others have learned that a substantial portion of the student body and faculty, particularly at elite institutions, wishes for their extinction. Only continued pressure will force academia to reform. As the school year approaches groups such as Columbia University’s “Apartheid Divest” coalition of anti-Israel and anti-American organizations have been frank about their fight for the “total eradication of Western civilization” and their upset at the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Their counterparts in cities around the world have been even more vocal in support of Hamas, vandalizing monuments with slogans like “Hamas is coming,” burning Israeli and American flags, clashing with police, and being promptly released by District Attorneys. (READ MORE: The Myth of Student Protest) But the problem goes further than the Jewish students’ or the public’s safety. New reports have shown that Iranian information operations have supported pro-Hamas protestors on Canadian campuses. And for almost a year reports have accumulated showing Iranian, Chinese, and Russian influence campaigns in cyberspace, notably through TikTok, vastly amplifying pro-Hamas messaging. Little appears to have been done except to publicize the problem. When Congress tried to force TikTok to find an American rather than Chinese owner, the app and its users went into high gear claiming this “ban” was done to support Israel. New warnings from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines have now indicated direct if unspecified Iranian support for campus protestors. Ayatollah Khameini has praised the pro-Hamas protestors as a key part of the anti-Israel resistance. Here too it is unclear if the U.S. Government has taken any action. Other malign actors tied to the Communist Chinese Party like millionaire Neville Singham have been instrumental in funding anti-Israel street protests and perennial pro-Communist (and pro-Hamas) groups like Code Pink. Other rogue millionaires like Fergie Chambers have bailed out protestors and vandals from Palestine Action who have attacked Israeli owned factories in the U.S. During the spring semester universities pointed correctly to outside actors as participants in protests that disrupted campuses across the country. Media dismissed these as cosplaying radicals and District Attorneys dismissed the majority of charges. But the larger picture of street warfare and information warfare against Israel, Jews, and the U.S. itself cannot be ignored. This is particularly the case on the eve of the Democratic National Convention when pro-Hamas and anti-American groups demonstrated in Chicago. American campuses are an information battleground softened up by billions of dollars of Qatari, Chinese, Saudi, and Turkish dollars, careful influence buying that took place over three decades. The fact that institutions like Columbia and Harvard are comprised of foreign students, 55 percent and 26 percent, respectively shows another side of the influence peddling scam. This is not to say that all foreign students engage in violence against Jews and others, but many do not share American values of tolerance and pluralism. Of course, neither do many of their professors, who in their support for fighting “settler colonialism” and Western imperialism — read Israel and the US — have been forthright in wanting to see both demolished by any means necessary. Pro-Hamas forces trained in summer camps on protesting and have promised disruptions and even violence. The stage is set for an unpleasant semester. But the larger question is the national security threat posed by anti-Israel and anti-U.S. forces on campuses. These institutions are foundational to American security and prosperity, even as their values have moved further away from those accepted by the majority of Americans. To see campuses taken over is a disgrace, but to see them subverted to causes antithetical to American values is a strategic menace. Setting clear rules regarding the time, place, and manner of protests is an absolute necessity. Classrooms (compromised though many are by professors themselves) must be off-limits along with any form of harassment, including encampments that restrict free movement. Expelling violent protestors is another obvious but partial solution, as is closer vetting of prospective students. Restructuring departments that have become integral to the protestors, like Middle Eastern studies, is vastly harder and frankly almost impossible. (READ MORE: Grade Inflation and Campus Protests) It is necessary to continue to shine a bright light on how these and other departments — including others basic to American culture such as English, and critical to modern life, such as medicine — that have pledged their fealty to the eradication of Israel and the U.S., is necessary. Demanding institutions support not only values like free inquiry and free speech but basic conceptions of American life is equally necessary. The recent decision by the American Association of University Professors to endorse academic boycotts compromises academic integrity further still. With university donors in revolt, Jewish students avoiding the Ivy League, and academia as a whole starting to plunge over the demographic cliff, the future has now arrived. Only continued pressure will force academia to reform, which must include a rediscovery of the American values that have been dormant of the heart of the enterprise. Alex Joffe is the director of strategic initiatives for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) and Asaf Romirowsky is the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) and the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). The post American Campuses Threaten Students and the Nation appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The internet is currently controlled through searching, and if Google single-handedly dominates the means through which searching works, then Google effectively controls the internet. Recently, a judge officially ruled that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” The Big Tech behemoth also engages in rampant censorship, placing “unauthoritative” voices in a digital ghetto. Now that Google is finally recognized as a bad actor in the search engine and ad industries, it is time to make sure that it does not continue to wield unparalleled control over the internet and consumers. We must not allow Google to maintain their monopoly over such a powerful tool as internet search. The main point of U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta’s August 5th ruling is that Google unlawfully spent large sums of money to serve as the default search engine for top web browsers. In 2021, Google paid Apple a whopping $18 billion to serve as its default search engine. The judgment also called out Google’s unreasonable ad costs that went above free market pricing. (READ MORE from Caleb Larson: Amazon Should Be Pro-America, Not Pro-China) Google was not only exerting total control over what users could find on the internet, but they were also preventing other companies from reaching these users. Internet users do not often change the default search engine on their devices and browsers. Additionally, if they do not know the website they want to access at first, they are going straight to their search engine, most of the Google, to find what they are looking for. It makes sense then that Google would want to serve as the default search engine of widely used browsers while also making it more difficult to switch from that default. This strategy has allowed them to facilitate 99,000 search queries a second and obtain 92% of the search engine market. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, says that his company provides a better search engine service for users. However, the experience of many people and companies affected by Google’s antics betrays that claim. The Internet’s Politics Kansas Senator Roger Marshall plans to investigate Google for its decision to limit its suggested search autofill functionality from displaying “Trump” after users type “assassination attempt on” into the search field. Video emerged of former Google VP of Search Products Marissa Mayer revealing that Google prioritizes its own product links over its competitors despite the influence of other metrics like popularity. In the lead up to the national vote in the U.K., Google banned the advertising account of Reform UK only to reinstate it after seeing the public outcry. Google’s search behavior regarding the U.S. presidential election has been particularly awful. Research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein evaluated the behavior of Google’s algorithm for the last decade, and he found that in 2020 the results were so skewed to promote Biden that they resulted in six million votes shifting towards him. Google was accused of burying the Rumble exclusive link to the GOP debate live stream by CEO Chris Pavlovski, who says that it put corporate media at the top of search results for the stream. MRC Free Speech America researchers were unable to find any 2024 presidential campaign websites of Republicans on the first page of search results a day before the first Republican Party presidential primary debate. Instead, they saw the websites of Democrat candidates both current and past. The list of ways in which Google fails to provide a superior search experience could go on and on. Google and AI Google is now looking to fundamentally change the very nature of internet searching in their favor with AI. The new plan is for “Google [to] do the Googling” and entirely remove the last bit of influence that searchers still have on the results they find. Through summaries compiled through AI rather than traditional links, Google would essentially work as the one providing the answers to search queries. With this final step into their role as truth arbiter, Google has removed any doubt of their ambitions to obtain total control over the internet. The recent judgment against Google and their monopoly provides a chance to stop this dystopian evolution of the internet into Google’s manipulation tool. Real change to the make-up of the search industry must come from proportionate penalties on Google for their actions. We must not allow Google to maintain their monopoly over such a powerful tool as internet search. With it, they can silence voices contrary to their corporate agenda, rake in billions of dollars through advertisement pricing manipulation, and unfairly promote their own products and services. (READ MORE: Google’s Found Guilty for Illegal Monopoly on Internet Search) The internet’s viability for promoting America’s wellbeing is directly tied to search engines, and it will never reach its full potential if Google continues to dominate in the current fashion. Caleb Larson is a cybersecurity researcher, policy analyst with the Internet Accountability Project, Heritage Foundation alum, and contributor at The Federalist where he writes about cybersecurity-related issues facing the United States. The post Google Controls the Internet … and Us! appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

A couple of years ago I wrote here about a couple whom I described as Norway’s answer to Britain’s Harry and Meghan, although it now occurs to me that the royal half of the couple in question might also be compared to the late Princess Margaret. Margaret, it will be remembered, was Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister, the Goofus to her Gallant, the Naughty Girl to her Goody Two-Shoes. While Liz was devoutly devoted to her duties as sovereign, virtually never getting a step wrong, Margaret was a notorious playgirl. Years after she was prevented by an eighteenth-century law from marrying the divorced man with whom she’d fallen in love, RAF Captain Peter Townsend, she wed a celebrity photographer, Antony Armstrong-Jones, whom she later divorced. [T]he only surprise in all of this is that there isn’t a sizable movement in Norway to exchange this mediocre mess of a monarchy for a republic. Before, during, and after that marriage, she kept up, shall we say, a busy social life; her many liaisons, not a few of them with international celebrities, were eagerly reported by the tabloids and gossip rags. Norway’s answer to Margaret isn’t promiscuous, so far as I know, but her private life has also been the subject of hysterical tabloid and gossip-rag headlines in her native country. As I noted in my earlier article, Märtha Louise, the 52-year-old daughter of King Harald V and lone sibling of Crown Prince Haakon, was married for fifteen years to Ari Behn, a famously unimpressive novelist and archetypal beta-male man-about-town who consorted regularly with C-level Norwegian celebrities and, sadly, ended up killing himself on Christmas Day 2019, two years after divorcing Märtha Louise. (READ MORE from Bruce Bawer: Remembering the Enchanting Alain Delon) Soon afterwards, it began to be reported that Märtha Louise had a new amour who, like Behn, was a shameless fame whore but who was otherwise, in many ways, his exact opposite: Durek Verrett, a big, bald, black shaman from Los Angeles who has admitted to being bisexual and who is looked up to as something of a guru to a number of ditzy Hollywood stars, among them Gwyneth Paltrow. Now 49, Durek is also the author of a self-help book, Spirit Hacking: Shamanic Keys to Reclaim Your Personal Power, Transform Yourself, and Light Up the World, in which he explains that at age fourteen he was visited by a wizard who “flew right through him and burned a hole in his body,” whereupon “an army of angels” appeared. And that’s just the beginning of his most remarkable life journey. Later in his teens, in connection with a home break-in and subsequent fire, he spent a year in prison, another year in a youth detention center, and some time in solitary confinement. If you read Verrett’s book, you’ll learn that cancer is caused by the patient’s wish to die, but that it can be cured by — who else? — none other than Verrett himself. Hear that, Sloan Kettering? Time to close your doors. Two years ago, Märtha Louise and Verrett got engaged. For a while they shacked up together in L.A.; now they’re apparently living in Norway with her three daughters by Ari Behn. (“Living in Norway has unlocked a new level of bliss, darlings!,” gushed the ever-effervescent Durek online.) How could the princess fall for such an obvious shakedown artist, such a transparent fourflusher, such a classic example of a southern California con man, whose modus operandi is preying brazenly on the rich, famous, and stupid? Because, as it happens, Märtha Louise herself has long been operating very similar pseudo-spiritual scams. From 2007 to 2018, for example,  she ran an “alternative therapy center,” known in the Norwegian press as the “angel school,” her claim being that she could communicate with angels and with the dead, no less. Obviously, then, these two were made for each other. In fact they profess to have known each other in previous lives in ancient Egypt, which is nice. On the occasion of their engagement, Verrett wrote on Instagram: “I’m overjoyed with tears that I get to spend the rest of my life with the most pure hearted, angelic, wise, powerhouse woman who represents all levels of a goddess in my eyes. Together as a soulful spiritual couple, we will use our power to support the people to create a world based in love and acceptance.” The wedding between these two spiritually enlightened beings — or, depending on your point of view, outrageously shady entrepreneurs — is scheduled for August 31. Recently, it was reported that the couple had sold the exclusive rights to photograph their wedding to the British celebrity magazine Hello and the exclusive TV rights to Netflix, which has apparently assigned Rebecca Chaiklin, executive producer of such projects as Tiger King (2020), to the project. (READ MORE: Elizabeth the Great) According to Hello, the actual nuptials, which will take place in the village of Geiranger, on the shore of the Geiranger fjord, will be the centerpiece of a three-day “extravaganza” — including a meet-and-greet party in the quaint nearby city of Ålesund, a boat trip, a salsa party, and a wedding breakfast and reception. The site of the wedding itself is a supremely picturesque location — something right out of a painting from the Norwegian romantic nationalist period (one is reminded of Hans Gude and Adolph Tidemann’s classic 1848 canvas Bridal Procession on the Hardanger Fjord) — and couldn’t be more different from L.A. Hello also reports that the couple have asked guests to forego the usual formal attire and instead dress in a “sexy and cool” fashion. Nor have they been shy about monetizing their marriage. In order to safeguard their big hauls from Hello and Netflix, Märtha Louise og Durek’s representatives have reportedly exchanged unfriendly e-mails with the police in Møre og Romsdal (the county in which Geiranger is located), who have refused their demand that the airspace over the wedding site be closed for three days so that the Norwegian media would be unable to film the wedding using drones. Iselin Nevstd Øvrelid, the communications director for the county police, has explained that the police have no power to deny the news media the right to film or photograph anything from the air. The photo and TV rights to their wedding aren’t the only things that Märtha Louise and Durek have sold. They actually marketed their own “wedding gin” — until Vinmonopolet, the government-owned business that holds a monopoly on selling alcoholic beverages in Norway, stopped sales of the product on the grounds that the couple’s energetic promotion of it might violate Norway’s law against advertising booze. The authorities were also troubled by the label on the bottle, which featured the couple’s “wedding monogram” and Märtha Louise’s royal title. In July, after the label was changed, the wedding gin was returned to Vinmonopolet’s shelves. Then there’s the letter that one of the couple’s lawyers sent to Durek’s 81-year-old mother, threatening her with a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit if she didn’t take back certain things she’d said about her son in a TV interview. She’s not the first person to have gotten a letter from the same lawyer for speaking out publicly about Märtha Louise and Durek. What do Norwegians make of all this? Let’s just say that most of them, at least those who live outside of the sexier and cooler precincts of downtown Oslo, aren’t terribly thrilled. Märtha Louise blames negative public attitudes on racism and complains of “microaggressions.” (Obviously she learned a lot during her time in L.A.) In any event, by now, Norwegians should be accustomed to royal scandals. A couple of decades ago, many of them were shocked when the rather nerdy Crown Prince Haakon announced his engagement to the stunning, leggy Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby, who in a bizarre speech to the Norwegian public admitted to having been something of a floozy. (As she put it, she had led a “wild” life prior to her betrothal. Haakon was not asked to make any official statement about his own sexual past.) Well, as they say in Norway, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Earlier this month, Marius Borg Høiby, the strikingly handsome but otherwise unimpressive son, now 27, whom Mette-Marit had with one of her many premarital bedmates and who’s been treated since childhood as a sort of auxiliary member of the royal family, made headlines when a woman, identified as his girlfriend, called the cops on him for attacking her physically. Marius (a former car mechanic who, it emerged this week, carries a diplomatic passport), has admitted guilt and apologized publicly through his lawyers, maintaining that he has “several mental disorders” and longtime problems with “substance abuse.” Oh well. Every family has problems, right? Still, it seems to me that the only surprise in all of this is that there isn’t a sizable movement in Norway to exchange this mediocre mess of a monarchy for a republic. Or something. Anything. The post Märtha and Durek Cash In on Their Wedding appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Watching snippets of the DNC last week (because snippets are all I can tolerate in this political season) reminded me of my days in a yoga cult in California. Their themes of joy are reminiscent of an oft repeated motto hanging in every yoga studio from San Diego to San Francisco: “Good vibes only.” Finally, like the newly minted candidate’s campaign, many cults are predicated on vibes rather than substance and outcomes. Full disclosure: I do own a hoodie sweatshirt with this catchphrase on it and, I am not going to lie, it is one of my favorites. At least I’m honest, unlike the performances we witnessed at the DNC. In the “spiritual but not religious” circles I ran in, this is what’s known as “spiritual bypassing” — covering up pain, suffering, and reality in general with tones of positivity and the belief that if we just speak or sing of happier places and times, it will be so. It’s based on the conviction that we create our own reality rather than contend with it. It seems rather peculiar to hear everyone on the left and, of course, the entire mainstream media, speak of joy and the presence of “hope” in the air when a good majority of the country is struggling under staggering inflation, debt, and cultural decay with the potential of war knocking on our door. I’m all for positive thinking and seeing the glass half full, but not recognizing that most are drinking cough syrup while you’re toasting with a glass of champagne seems rather tone deaf. Or hypocritical. Take your pick. I was particularly baffled by Michelle Obama’s denouncement of wealth. Her father and mother didn’t aspire to be wealthy, she proclaimed. “In fact, they were suspicious of folks who took more than they needed.” I wonder if her parents gave her and Barack the side eye every time they saw them? I wonder how agonizing it must have been staying in any one of their four multimillion dollar homes? I bet not one Democrat batted an eye at the obvious duplicity. Delusion seems to be a necessary tool of the Democrat party these days. After the past three years, I understand why people just want to feel good. It’s been a tough road for almost everyone, no matter what side of the aisle you sit on. It would be great to have cause for celebration. But the truth is, many don’t have much to celebrate right now. (READ MORE from Jennifer Galardi: It’s Globe-fficial: Hollywood Has Lost Its Sense of Humor) Rather than acknowledge the mess they created, Democrats are determined to cover the painful reality, thinly veiling their hypocrisy with their good vibes, the truth lying just beneath the surface for all to see. However, no matter how transparent the lies are to some, others just can’t grasp them. They are swayed by speeches and proclamations of joy and love. It can be quite intoxicating, especially for someone who feels disenfranchised or lacks self-confidence. Using words to manipulate and play with emotion is a tremendous skill and one that both the elite in the Democrat party and cult leaders share. Rarely do members of a cult apprehend they are in one. Most get in for all the right reasons, often for personal development and to be a better person. Sound familiar? ‘Morals’ of the Cult Furthermore, a good portion of cults claim spiritual pursuits as their ends and one can make a strong case that the causes of the left are more religious than traditional religions are. The religions of the left have all the markings of say, Christianity, however their sins are not those that transgress the boundaries of moral virtue, but rather those that do not align with the current dogma. Typically, a Democratic sin is based on some immutable characteristic — race or sex — rather than modifiable behavior. So, there is no repentance and absolutely no forgiveness in woke religion. This is similar to the struggle sessions often performed in cults whereby a member is demeaned and broken in order to be rebuilt and reshaped to adhere to group doctrine. Finally, like the newly minted candidate’s campaign, many cults are predicated on vibes rather than substance and outcomes. There’s never accountability, particularly for those at the top of the chain. Spiritual leaders can speak rudely, lie, have sexual dalliances with whomever they desire. But you better damn well be quiet with your feet covered and sit at attention when they walk in the room. Don’t question their methods. Don’t question what you’re taught. Just “do the work” and remember — if you’re not progressing or feeling the joy, it’s your fault. You better fork over some more money, or votes, for more enlightenment. (READ MORE: CPAC: Why Jennifer Galardi Left Hollywood Behind) Lastly, and perhaps the hardest thing to understand, is you can never make someone in a cult realize they are in one. Often, they only see the truth after they’ve been so badly hurt or victimized that they are forced to see it. For others, one good wakeup call — like Covid — is all it takes to reveal the large-scale manipulation. Still, for many, neither of these will do. It is, as one wise book tells us, through grace alone they are saved. The good news is, once out of a cult, one becomes more discerning. It is easier to spot the phonies with their doublespeak and fake vibes. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another four years of hard-hitting realities for some in the Democratic party to wake up because, by then, it may be too late. The post The Democrat Party is a Cult appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from The Salty Cracker:  TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

? NEW: President Trump says he’s looking to put both Elon Musk AND RFK Jr. in his cabinet when elected This is the deep state’s WORST nightmare ? Trump says he’d put @elonmusk in charge of “cutting the fat” out of government, and RFK Jr. would be in charge of Making America… pic.twitter.com/T4sixVoWHL — Nick […]

by J.B. Shurk, All News Pipeline: One of the few interesting things about America’s highly choreographed political conventions is the gathering of people outside these events.  Supporters and protesters show up to yell at the top of their lungs for days.  What kinds of taunts do these opposing groups scream at each other?  Remarkably, they accuse each other […]