OMG SHE IS SOOOOO DUMB. No one can tell me she was out there out of her own 'talent'!!!! She is just a pawn of the NWO that's all!!!!

? Cancer story time......WAKE THE F$&@ UP PEOPLE!!!!

Go little old lady!!

It was inevitable that, when President Biden’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention transferred their allegiance to Vice President Kamala Harris, the corporate media would begin bowdlerizing her biography. Their shameless revision of her long history of hard left positions on virtually every issue should have surprised no one. Far less predictable, however, will be the voter response to the makeover. Will they accept the new Kamala Harris “unburdened by what has been”? Or will they remember that she was the point person for Biden’s disastrous immigration policy and a fervent cheerleader for his other failures, including the wild spending that caused inflation. Even if Harris is able to shed all that baggage, she is seen by many voters as culpable for the cover-up of President Biden’s cognitive decline. The New York Post reports that, according to a YouGov poll conducted last week, “More than 9 in 10 voters who believe Biden’s health was covered up blame Kamala Harris.” This is hardly surprising. She had to have known he was unfit to fulfill his duties. Moreover, as Vice President, Harris is the only official who possesses the constitutional authority to set the 25th Amendment in motion. Yet her cynicism and personal ambition obviously outweighed any concern that Biden’s cognitive decline presents a clear and present danger to the country as long as he remains in office. As Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement released on the day Biden dropped out of the presidential race, “If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President.” This is obviously true but Biden clearly plans to remain in office until January 20, 2025. Nor will Harris expend valuable time and political capital in a hopeless attempt to force him out. To do so would doom her chances of defeating former President Trump in November. The odds are already against her. Thus, the corporate media have attempted to purge awkward facts from the public memory, particularly if they involve the highest profile task Biden ever gave Harris. As AP reported on March 24, 2021: 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 and work with Central American nations to address root causes of the problem … For Harris, the assignment gives her the first big opportunity to step to the front of the stage on a matter of enormous consequence for the administration. As the first Black woman elected vice president, Harris arrived on the job as a trailblazer. It has remained opaque how Biden would utilize her. Unfortunately for Harris — and the country as a whole — her feckless approach to this assignment resulted in the worst border crisis in U.S. history. Countless millions of illegal aliens flooded across the southern border bringing with them chaos, crime and unsustainable costs to the nation’s education, health care, law enforcement and criminal justice systems. The corporate media has attempted to absolve Harris of responsibility by attacking a straw man. Despite repeatedly referring to her as the “border czar,” dozens of news outlets now insist that she never actually held that title. Time, for example, ran an article last week titled, “Kamala Harris Was Never Biden’s ‘Border Czar.’” This clearly misses the point. Perhaps the worst defense of her negligence of the border crisis was provided by Harris herself during an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. When he pointed out that she had never bothered to visit the border she responded, “And I haven’t been to Europe.” This flippant answer was punctuated by her trademark cackle and this comment: “I don’t understand the point that you’re making.” We don’t have enough space to discuss all that Harris doesn’t understand. But we know she supports the decriminalization of illegal immigration. In 2015, Harris told an interviewer with CBSLA (Los Angeles), “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” CNN reports that this fits her overall perspective on law enforcement: Part of what we have to do here is also look at the militarization of police departments and, and the kind of money that is going to that … In many cities in America, over one third of their city budget goes to police. So, we have to have this conversation. What are we doing? What about the money going to social services? What about the money going to helping people with job training? What about helping with the mental health issues that communities are being plagued with for which we’re putting no resources? If it isn’t obvious, Harris is talking about defunding the police. She also wants to reexamine Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): “There’s no question that we’ve got to critically reexamine ICE and its role, and the way that it is being administered, and the work it is doing. And we need to probably think about starting from scratch.” She is also a gun grabber: “I support a mandatory buyback program that will get weapons of war off our streets, with civil penalties imposed for noncompliance.” By “weapons of war,” she means semi automatic rifles like the one that Thomas Matthew Crooks used in his attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. Presumably, she thinks that the rifle shot Trump in the ear rather than Crooks. The above is just a brief sample of our Vice President’s far left positions. She is obviously an extremist who can never be elected President unless the corporate media can prevent the voters from discovering her genuine views about everything from abortion to Zuck Bucks. Harris is no mere puppet of the left as Biden was. She is the genuine article. Can the corporate media keep this hidden from the voters for the next 100 days? It seems unlikely. Her well-documented history of hard left positions will be highlighted on X and long form journalism sites. And there is still the sticker shock that the ordinary American experiences when she goes to the grocery store. We will find out when the autumn leaves start to fall. The post Will the Media Makeover of Harris Work? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

When Josh Shapiro ran for governor of Pennsylvania against a weak Republican candidate in 2022, he postured as a moderate Democrat willing to embrace school choice and mollify critics of energy tax schemes. If he is elevated to the national stage, the Trump team could have field day exposing how beholden the Pennsylvania governor is to far left special interests. But because he is bought and paid for by government unions and progressive environmental activists, Shapiro has cut a left-leaning path since taking office that leaves school children and trade unions in the lurch. Although a broad cross section of Pennsylvania residents favor scholarships for students stuck in failing schools, and regulatory relief for companies that deliver affordable energy, Shapiro clearly takes his stage direction from well-endowed benefactors who operate against the public interest. His duplicity on policy may yet pay off so long as voters remain focused on what their governor says and not what he does. Polls show Shapiro remains reasonably popular in the state despite his lack of any tangible legislative accomplishments. That alone could suffice for Vice President Kamala Harris to select Shapiro as her running mate. With 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is arguably the most critical swing state and one that at least until recently leaned toward Democrats in presidential races. Donald Trump appears to have made inroads with blue collar workers and union members that eluded previous Republican contenders. Before President Biden dropped out of the race, he consistently trailed Trump in Pennsylvania. If anything, Harris performs worse in a head-to-head matchup against the Republican presidential nominee, according to fresh figures. In a revealing survey of “likely Pennsylvania voters” conducted July 20-23, Steve Cortes with the League of American Workers found Trump leading Harris by 47 to 45 percent. Not exactly a big lead, but the favorable press coverage Harris received in the past few days may have inflated her numbers. Shapiro would presumably give Harris a much-needed boost in a state that could decide the election. Recall that Trump was the first Republican since President Reagan to win Pennsylvania back in 2016 when he defeated Hillary Clinton. He narrowly lost the state to Biden in 2020 but improved his margins in certain areas. So, would Shapiro be able to cancel out Trump’s advantage? The short answer is: only if Republicans let him. Does He Have the Courage of His Convictions? The more comprehensive answer delving into who Josh Shapiro is, what he believes, and what likely voter should know segues into public policy questions that have become more prominent not just in Pennsylvania but across the country. This is where Shapiro could run into the buzzsaw of public opinion. Proponents of school choice, for instance, were initially encouraged when Shapiro expressed support for scholarships that would enable students in the worst performing schools to cover the cost of private schools. But when his leadership was most needed, Shapiro bowed and yielded to the demands of his benefactors in the teachers’ unions. The governor’s flip flop first appeared in August 2023 when he vetoed legislation that would provide students in the worst performing schools with “Lifeline Scholarships.” The proposal, which Shapiro repeatedly endorsed on the campaign trail, would enable parents to receive a portion of their tax dollars back in the form of “Education Opportunity Accounts” to cover private school tuition, and other school related fees. Shapiro had another bite at the apple during state budget negotiations a few weeks ago, but capitulated once again to the opponents of educational freedom. Even as he continues to feign support for school choice in his public statements, the hard reality is that Shapiro’s 2024 budget proposal omits the funding needed for the scholarships. The sly technique at work is reminiscent of what President Richard Nixon’s attorney general once told the press: “Watch What We Do, Not What We Say.” John Mitchell has nothing on Josh Shapiro. But the Nixonian tap dance around the cause of education reform is ripe for exposure on the presidential campaign trail. Recent polling from the Commonwealth Foundation, a free market think tank based in Harrisburg, shows that 64 percent of Pennsylvania voters support scholarships benefiting the poorest families victimized by failing schools. At the national level, polls show that public support for additional options in K-12 education has continued to expand since the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest data from Real Clear Opinion Research shows that more than 70 percent of registered voters across party lines support school choice while a survey of parents this past January found that 72 percent “considered new schools for their children” in 2023, a figure which represents a 35 percentincrease from 2022. By walking back his campaign pledge, Shapiro is running against strong currents of public opinion. If he is elevated to the national stage, the Trump team could have field day exposing how beholden the Pennsylvania governor is to far left special interests. During the 2021-2022 election cycle, Shapiro was the number one recipient of government union money in the whole country —receiving more than $4.5 million, according to campaign finance records. The National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) were the top contributors. Each of the unions has a long history of supporting progressive causes that run counter to the values of American voters in critical swing states like Pennsylvania. The NEA, for instance, has been a persistent opponent of initiatives that empower parents with the ability to select from a range of private and public educational options, according to Influence Watch. NEA also makes substantial contributions to progressive organizations through its grant program and its political action committees. Union operatives clearly view Shapiro as an ideal conduit for advancing a radical agenda. Campaign finance records show that some of the largest and more recent donations from the NEA’s PACs to Shapiro include $250,000 and $150,000 in 2022. The Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state affiliate of the NEA, also rang the bell that same year, making contributions through its political action committees in the amount of $350,000, $125,000, and $100,000. The American Federation of Teachers contributed $500,000 in 2023, and its affiliate group the Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers contributed $250,000 that same year. AFSCME made two contributions in the amount of $500,000 in 2022 and one in the amount of $250,000. So, it’s not just the teachers’ unions, but government unions as whole that are driving Shapiro further away from his campaign rhetoric. The incestuous relationship may yet trip him up politically. As it turns out, the PSEA may have engaged in what litigants describe as a “money laundering” operation to camouflage the actual amounts the union funneled into Shapiro’s gubernatorial campaign. Just a few days ago, the Freedom Foundation, a free market “action tank” that challenges the political power of public employee unions, filed complaints with federal and state officials that allege the PSEA, in collaboration with the Democratic Governors Association (DGA), engaged in illegal funding techniques to obscure the actual amounts they were donating to Shapiro. A press release from the foundation describes how the two groups orchestrated an “illegal scheme” during the 2022 Pennsylvania general election “to surreptitiously use nearly $1.5 million in teachers’ union dues to back then-candidate Josh Shapiro’s gubernatorial campaign.” The state’s campaign finance and collective bargaining laws prohibit unions from using their general treasury funds to make contributions to political candidates. Yet, the PSEA “made two six-figure contributions from its general treasury to the Fund for Student Success (FSS), a little-known political fund operated the union, which then contributed the funds to the DGA in May 2022, which in turn, contributed heavily to Shapiro’s successful campaign for governor,” according to the release. These revelations come at an inopportune moment for Democrats looking to Shapiro as their salvation against Trump in Pennsylvania Regardless of what the fallout might be from the Freedom Foundation’s allegations, there’s a compelling argument to be made that Shapiro is merely an appendage of the teachers’ unions unwilling to extend a lifeline to K-12 students in failing schools. The fact that he would veto his own campaign pledge just a few months after taking office suggests he has been auditioning for the Oval Office for some time. Union officials would never countenance allowing someone on the Democratic Party ticket who supported school choice no matter how modest the proposal. But the perfidy does not end here. Trade unions that have made generous contributions to Shapiro stand to lose out under energy tax initiatives the governor has embraced. As an alternative to making Pennsylvania an active player in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate climate agreement widely known as RGGI, Shapiro has floated his own version of an energy tax plan. Officially dubbed the Pennsylvania Climate Emissions Reduction Act or PACER, Shapiro’s plan would produce a massive new tax further exacerbating costs for Pennsylvania businesses and households already beset with high inflation. Like RGGI, Shapiro’s PACER plan is built around “cap and trade”regulations that would limit greenhouse gas emissions in the name of climate change. Union workers attached to fossil fuel companies in Pennsylvania are especially vulnerable to new climate regulations that could shut down their energy companies. By contributing to Shapiro, the unions have effectively financed the demise of the jobs their members depend upon in the energy sector. Campaign finance records show that since 2021 several trade unions donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Shapiro. Local 0690, Plumbers Union Political Action Fund donated $110,000; Western Pennsylvania Laborers PAC, $290,000; Teamsters Local 0115, $200,000; Local 0449, Steamfitters Union PAC, $321,000; Local 5, IBEW PAC, $455,000; Local 19, Sheet Metal Workers Union League for Political Education, $459,500; Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 520 PAC, $107,500; Local Union 712, IBEW COPE, $26,000; Greater PA Carpenters PAC, $1,014,073; and Local 0524, United Association Steamfitters, $3,500. The unions did a receive a bit of good news last fall when the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled in their favor against having the state become part of RGGI. Unions, along with industry groups and lawmakers, successfully argued in court that executive agencies did not have the authority to join the agreement since RGGI would result in new taxes on energy production that only the Pennsylvania General Assembly can approve. But Shapiro, supposedly a friend of organized labor, decided to appeal the ruling to the state supreme court. Whose Side Is Shapiro On? One reason the unions may not be receiving any return on the investment they made into Shapiro is because the Democratic Party has become beholden to left-leaning environmental activists that support RGGI. These include the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, and the Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania, which have all contributed to Shapiro. The split between trade unions and green activists among Democrats provides Trump with yet another opportunity to capitalize on the gains he has made with blue collar workers. By running against energy taxes, the Trump ticket could easily put Shapiro on defense. A new poll from the Commonwealth Foundation shows that rising household energy bills are a major concern of voters. But there’s additional intrigue. House Republicans have opened an investigation into an entity that calls itself the Energy Foundation China, a former affiliate of the Energy Foundation, a left-leaning grant operation. Although both organizations list San Francisco as their headquarters, a Fox News investigation concluded that the “majority” of the operations for the Energy Foundation China take place in China and that the foundation’s staff is closely tied in with the Communist Party of China (CCP). For its part, the Energy Foundation has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to groups in Pennsylvania that actively oppose oil and gas production throughout the United States. Big Green Inc., a project of the Institute for Energy Research, a free market group in Washington, D.C., carefully tracks these grants. The NRDC is among the top recipients of Energy Foundation grants. Although the group has denied receiving money from China, NRDC has maintained close relationships with Chinese officials and the CCP, according to Influence Watch. Since Pennsylvania is No. 2 only to Texas in terms of natural gas production, there are geopolitical implications attached to Shapiro’s anti-energy plans. By working to impose costly new regulations on Pennsylvania, Shapiro — Trump could argue — is doing the bidding of Beijing either knowingly or unknowingly. Shapiro, a Georgetown law graduate, first entered the political fray in 2004 when he won a seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives representing the 153rd district. He was reelected in 2006, 2008, and 2010. From there he continued to move up. Shapiro was elected as the state’s attorney general in 2016 and re-elected in 2020. Given his long, successful political history in Pennsylvania, he would seem a compelling choice for Harris. That fact that he won the 2022 governor’s race by a wide margin is another point in his favor. But he also ran against a candidate who didn’t bother doing any campaigning or fundraising. That’s not going to be the case with Trump. If Shapiro is tapped, voters could quickly discover that the money trail flowing into his campaign does not lead back to parents and children who benefit from school choice or to union workers concerned about their jobs. Then there are the average citizens who favor what Trump might call an “America First” energy policy who are also left out. There’s a lot to expose if the Republicans are game. The post Who Is Josh Shapiro? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Early surveys are showing that Kamala Harris, who was polling 6-8 points behind former President Donald Trump, essentially has caught up. It means nothing. I have written a million times about the fickleness of the American voter.  It is commonplace in the world of politics for polls to gyrate after certain dramatic events. Then, a few weeks later, everyone lands back on earth: conservatives are back to voting Republican, leftists (liberals and woke “progressives”) are back to voting Democrat, and Independents and their ilk are back to voting “Not Sure” and “I Don’t Know.” It always is this way. After a president’s stirring State of the Union (SOTU) address, standing on a podium before the joint session of the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, with the Vice President and the Speaker of the House sitting behind him, and interrupted between 20-60 times by standing ovations, the next day the president’s approval ratings jump by 3-7 points. Less than a month later, the polls are back. After a party’s national convention projects four days of unity, culminating with the acclimation that comes with the formal nomination of the new presidential candidate, the polls go up. A month later, the polls go back.  Name a vice presidential running mate, the polls go up. A few weeks later, they settle down. Let the president be shot, his polls go up. Let him stand up, despite being shot, and defiantly raise his fist and proclaim “Fight!” and the polls go higher. A month later, the polls go back to where they were. The exception: if the assassin actually succeeds in murdering the president. Then the polls remain up for a month or two before settling down. Therefore, it is to be expected that Harris’s elevation as unelected Democrat nominee for president of the United States would be met with positive polling. Republicans would oppose her anyway. Democrats would vote for her anyway. And the Independent and “Don’t Know” and “Not Sure” crowds — the “American people” who “are too smart to …” — shift, as expected, to liking her. Soon, she will get another upward bump from the Democrat National Convention, and the Democrats’ mainstream media will proclaim that the Harris campaign is now unstoppable. That will resolve soon enough. After the excitement of the moment — a SOTU address, an RNC or DNC, an assassination attempt, an unelected candidacy — people wake up to their newly minted hero’s latest gaffes, failures, peccadilloes, and peculations. The opposing party advertises all the new hero’s failings and how the new hero will leave the border unprotected, take away your health insurance, destroy your retirement savings, encourage an environment that convinces your kids and grandkids that they are the opposite gender — or no gender . . . or all genders — and will defund the police who protect you, and the polls will go back. The key is how to campaign once reality returns around Labor Day. In the first week of Harris’s emergence, the time was reasonable to inform the greater public of the full picture: She made her way into politics by consorting with California Democrat political kingmaker Willie Brown, 30 years her elder and married to Blanche Brown, who did not take well to the posed photographs at soirées with Willie in tuxedo holding a half-full cocktail glass and Kamala Harris wearing raiment unbefitting my three grown daughters that age. With Willie’s patronage, she was appointed to one political slot after another, became San Francisco district attorney, glided into California attorney general and then to United States Senate. California is essentially a one-party state. Democrats win all the statewide offices. Whoever Willie Brown placed on the ticket would win. It was like Tammany Hall in New York. That information was important to share the first week or two after she rose to be the unelected Democrat candidate for president. But now we are moving to the serious part of the campaign. Going forward, the focus must be on exposing Harris on policy issues, not her disgraceful personal character and behavior. Those who want to know that do know that. Those who don’t, don’t and won’t. What matters going forward is policy. Ask the Independent voter, the suburban mom, the college graduate, the union worker, the senior citizen, to weigh these things: Kamala Harris, San Francisco Democrat, publicly stated in a televised appearance that she will take away your private health insurance. Is that OK with you? Will that improve your family’s and your life? Kamala Harris, San Francisco Democrat, served as Pres. Biden’s Border Czar the past four years. During that time, a secured border utterly collapsed, and more than 10 million illegally entered our country, including previously convicted rapists and murderers, several of whom have proceeded to rape and murder Americans, just like you, here. Is that OK with you? Will that improve your family’s and your life? Kamala Harris, San Francisco Democrat, promises she will have American taxpayers like you pay for the healthcare of every illegal immigrant in America. That’s more than 20 million illegal immigrants. How much does healthcare cost you — your insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays, out-of-pocket, out-of-network? Well, she will give exactly that to the 20+ million who are here illegally. The money has to come from somewhere because the doctors and pharmacies and urgent cares and hospitals will expect to be paid. That money can come only from one place: you. Is that OK with you? Will that improve your family’s and your life? The Social Security trust fund and Medicare are in trouble. You have heard about that for many years. The concern is that there will not be enough to pay your benefits in the future because they may run out of money. Kamala Harris, San Francisco Democrat, wants to extend Medicare coverage to 20+ million illegal immigrants. You know what healthcare costs. Is that OK with you? Will that improve your family’s and your life? Kamala Harris, San Francisco Democrat, enabled Pres. Biden’s war on American energy. She will make it even worse because she promises to ban fracking — hydraulic fracturing. When we get energy from our own oil and natural gas, it is cheaper than buying it from other people, who understandably want to profit. Also, because we can produce so much energy at home, we even can have extra, as we did with Pres. Trump, so can sell the extra to other countries, enabling us to profit. The Biden and Harris policies have caused energy and fuel prices to shoot way higher as we had to import oil from Arab Muslim tyrants and dictators at their profit. You now pay twice as much or more at the gas pump. Is that OK with you? Will that improve your family’s and your life? Because Harris drove energy and fuel prices so high, doubling gasoline costs, it costs trucking and other shipping companies more money to truck and ship food to the supermarkets and groceries. The shippers need to make their income, so they pass their added costs to the supermarkets and groceries. The supermarkets and grocers need to make their income so they pass their added costs to you. That’s why food is so crazy-much more expensive that you have to skip a meal every day or once in a while. Is that OK with you? Will that improve your family’s and your life? Kamala Harris, San Francisco Democrat, supports a woke agenda on crime to defund police, to free people arrested for violent crimes without requiring them to post bail, and herself has raised money for a fund that bailed violent criminals out, with several of them proceeding to murder. Is that OK with you? Will your family and you be safer with Harris having the power to manage crime and law enforcement? Forget about Ukraine and Israel for now. Just think about America. North Korea is developing nuclear weapons that can reach and do to America what we did to Japan to end WWII. Putin in Russia has those and is making more. So is China. So is Iran. In other words, these far-away places now have the technology, or soon will, not only to have nuclear bombs that can do worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also that can evaporate your city. Their worst designs are deterred by a strong president whom they respect and fear. We actually saw that when Donald Trump was president: Putin did not invade any countries, and North Korea stopped testing nuclear weapons. That changed when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris came in. Do you think that Kamala Harris, San Francisco Democrat, will protect your family and you from those nuclear threats better than Donald Trump will? Kamala Harris, San Francisco Democrat, supports a public education system where schools can hide from parents information when their kids at school ask to be called by different pronouns and ask about sex-change operations. Is that OK with you? Will that improve your family’s andyour life? In 2019, Kamala Harris, San Francisco Democrat, proposed that we should spend $14.5 trillion in new spending. To get that $14.5 trillion, taxes would have to shoot up. But more than that: When $14.5 trillion suddenly shows up in people’s wallets, sellers realize that everyone has more money, so they raise their prices accordingly since they assume everyone can afford higher costs. That’s called “inflation.” Have you noticed that, every time the government pumps billions or trillions into the economy, seeming to make everyone richer, only a few months later all prices for everything shoot up — and stay there? Heating in winter, air conditioning in summer, food, clothes, gas for the car, rent for housing, tuition, airfare, Disneyland, movies, cable TV — everything? And in a short time, everyone who was supposed to get richer from all that new money ends up exactly where they were before. Yet the thing is, although even more new money will not be coming again the next day, those higher prices remain where they have jumped to; they don’t come back down. Is that OK with you? Will that improve your family’s and your life? In 2018, Kamala Harris, San Francisco Democrat, was ranked the fourth most leftist among 100 United States Senators. Two years later, she had risen to the second-most leftist in the entire U.S. Senate, “beaten” only by Bernie Sanders. Is that OK with you? Will that improve your family’s and your life? It is very common in American politics for extreme-leftist Senators, who spend five years and nine months of their six-year terms advocating and voting for terrible extreme-left policies that advance their woke ideologies but that hurt Americans, to temporarily change their tunes during the final three months of their terms. That way, they make it seem that they have heard their voters and changed their ways. The voters believe they have changed, so reelect them, and then those senators go back to extreme-left voting for another five years and nine months. It continues until they get kicked out when their voters no longer trust them. Over the past four years, Kamala Harris, San Francisco Democrat, repeatedly looked TV interviewers in the eye and looked the American people — including you — in the eye and continued saying that Joe Biden was energetic, mentally sharp and focused — repeating her assertions over and over until the day he acknowledged he was out of steam, physically and mentally. Can you trust Kamala Harris when she looks you in the eye, and she says she will change from pursuing her lifetime extreme-left San Francisco woke agenda? Is her lifetime of lying to your face OK with you? Will that improve your family’s and your life? This is the campaign ahead.  To impact the Independents, the “Not Sures,” and the “Don’t Knows,” the above twelve lines of inquiry are where the campaign should go. Subscribe to Rav Fischer’s YouTube channel here at bit.ly/3REFTbk  and follow him on X (Twitter) at @DovFischerRabbi to find his latest informative and inspiring classes, interviews, speeches, and observations. The post The Path to Beating Harris appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Department of Homeland Security director Alejandro Mayorkas is assembling a 45-day  “independent security review” of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13. For this task Mayorkas selected: Chief David Mitchell, the former superintendent of Maryland State Police and former Secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security for the State of Delaware; Mark Filip, a former federal judge and Deputy Attorney General to President George W. Bush; Ms. Frances Townsend, former Homeland Security Advisor to President George W. Bush; and former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Her stint in that job gives the people cause to wonder. Napolitano made the University of California a sanctuary, founding and funding the UC Center for Undocumented Student Legal Services, and ruling that UC campus police would not cooperate with federal authorities. Following the lead of President Obama, Napolitano expunged the word “terrorism” from the DHS lexicon and purged experts showing the connection between militant Islam and terrorism. On Napolitano’s watch, the DHS published: Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment. In effect, the DHS targeted Americans dedicated to their constitutional rights as domestic terrorists and violent extremists. This is the same shift going on in the Biden-Harris Administration. Napolitano also began releasing detainees from immigration jails and distorted the numbers. She claimed the border was more secure than ever and resisted state efforts to stem illegal crossings. Napolitano’s tenure at DHS, according to Sen. Jeff Sessions, was “defined by a consistent disrespect for the rule of law.” Consider also Napolitano’s reign as president of the University of California, starting in 2013. Under the California Civil Rights Initiative (Proposition 209), approved by voters in 1996, state universities cannot impose racial and ethnic preferences in admissions. Napolitano, who was never an educator, criticized the measure as a barrier to “diversity.” Napolitano made the University of California a sanctuary, founding and funding the UC Center for Undocumented Student Legal Services, and ruling that UC campus police would not cooperate with federal authorities. While hiking tuition, Napolitano secretly amassed a slush fund of $175 million, which she spent on perks for staff and UC chancellors. State auditor Elaine Howle reported that Napolitano’s office “intentionally interfered” with their investigators. At one UC Regents meeting, students shouted “Arrest Napolitano!” and “Janet must go!” Napolitano was never held accountable and remained in the UC post until August 2020. (READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: Beware the University of California’s Parent Ploy) Before serving as Obama’s DHS boss, Napolitano was governor of Arizona. In that post she appointed Scott Bales, her former campaign attorney, to the state supreme court. Gov. Napolitano also vetoed bills aimed at fighting illegal immigration, which she further enabled at the DHS. A University of Virginia law alum, Janet Napolitano made her public debut in the 1991 campaign to keep Clarence Thomas off the U.S. Supreme Court. Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexually harassing her and Napolitano represented Hill in the matter. After a conversation with Napolitano, Hill witness Susan Hoerchner suddenly had a memory lapse about the date of alleged harassment in the office. If Napolitano wielded any influence that would be subornation of perjury, a felony, but the attorney refused to answer senators’ questions. As one report said, “it would be a grave injustice if the Democratic majority allows Napolitano to keep her secret and become a federal law enforcement official.” Janet Napolitano has zero experience in the intelligence field but in May of 2022 Joe Biden appointed her to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which provides “with an independent source of advice on the effectiveness with which the Intelligence Community is meeting the nation’s intelligence needs and the vigor and insight with which the community plans for the future.” DHS boss Mayorkas now appoints Napolitano for an independent review of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, currently a Republican candidate for the presidency. If the people thought Janet Napolitano was the worst possible choice, and that the “independent” review will turn out to be a whitewash or coverup, it would be hard to blame them. Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. (The photo file of Ms. Napolitano is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.) The post Is Janet Napolitano Fit to Investigate the Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Marc Polmans made a ballgame of it on the first day of the qualifying draw at Washington’s storied tennis tournament, these days called the Mubadala DC Citi Open, at Kennedy and 16th St. in Rock Creek Park. Polmans went down 3-6 in the first set to a dominating Thai-Son Kwiatkowski but he dug in against the big-serving Virginian in a close second set, 7-5, and then kept his nerve while using every chance to maintain the shift in momentum to take the third set, 6-2. That’s how it sometimes goes. The fact remains that when you are on the Tour year after year and get into the main draws and get through a round or two, that is not nothing. There must be a lesson there, and not only in Washington during an election year, where hopes rise and fall by the week. Kwiatkowski looked unbeatable in that first set. He held in the fourth game with repeat aces clocked at 136 and 140 mph, followed up by breaking Polmans at love with aggressive groundstrokes, 4-1. He lost the next two games, but took charge again on his next hold which included a huge ace to the T to get to 40-love, followed up by a quick put away on Polmans’ weak return of serve. On Polmans’ next service, Kwiatkowski quickly got a triple break point and it was over on the next rally as Polmans sent a backhand into the net. It was a warm day, upper 80s, but the Stadium court had a respectable crowd for a qualifying match. Polmans played more steadily in the second set, saved a match point in the course of holding the tenth game, suddenly stepped on the gas in the eleventh and, surprise, broke the Virginian’s huge serve. A few flubs and shanks followed, as the tension rose, but Polmans held his serve for the set and in the process evidently got into Kwiatkowski’s head — tennis players call this disrupting the other man’s game — and made the third set almost an embarrassment, winning it 6-2 to close down what had been a close contest. Both in their late 20s, the Australian Marc Polmans and the American Thai-Son Kwiatkowski are still young enough for the breakthrough that they had, and still have, every reason to expect; after all, this is their profession and they both hit beautifully when they want to. That is the problem of course, wanting to do the right thing all the time, another lesson the politicos downtown ought to take to heart. Kwiatkowski played for the Virginia Cavaliers and won the NCAA Men’s singles championship in 2017. Polmans was an Australian Open boys’ doubles champion in 2017 and is a permanent threat in doubles draws, as well as a danger in singles: he has made the second round in all the majors except the U.S. Open. Everyone has heard about winning being not the better thing but the only thing, the fact remains that when you are on the Tour year after year and get into the main draws and get through a round or two, that is not nothing. (READ MORE from Roger Kaplan: The Next Generation Closes the Citi Open) It does not always work out as planned. In the second day of the qualifiers, Polmans almost pulled off another brilliant come-from-behind, going down 3-6 against Maxime Cressy, bouncing back 6-2 in the second, and finally accepting a bagel in the third as the big (six-seven) Max steadied his serve (which had been awful in the second set) and got his serve and volley game going, one of the best on the Tour. He had an uneven 2023 season but the French-American (born in Paris, high school and college in California, he represents the USA in competition) is looking fit and powerful even if the consistency — that mysterious quality again — can slip. There will be a handful of big and strong Americans, all with some consistency questions, at the Mubadala Citi Open. At least two other big service men, Ben Shelton and Reilly Opelka, are ready to trade ace for ace with Cressy. Favorite son Frances Tiafoe, who gets a bye in the first round, will face Cressy in the second if the latter gets there. And there is also a women’s draw, and doubles in both genders, which is more than enough to take distracted minds off politics and the Olympic Games: enough even to be thankful for the weather, which promises to be balmy all week. The post Tennis Spectacle at Rock Creek Park appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

When he quit the presidential race, Joe Biden did the right thing for the Democratic Party but not for the nation. He didn’t resign the presidency. The stumbling, bumbling old man who only works between 10 am and 4 pm, is still president and will be until 20 January 2025. How much more can he — and Kamala Harris — do to the country until then? The mind boggles. Harris won’t end the military’s devotion to wokeness. She will instead worsen this enormously dangerous problem. As this column has often said, Biden had no agenda other than to reverse everything former president Trump did while he was in office. In that, and in that alone, he succeeded except for one thing. Trump’s 2018 cancellation of Obama’s 2015 nuclear weapons agreement with Iran has, so far, escaped Biden mostly because Iran wouldn’t cooperate with any agreement that said international inspectors — even the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency — could access its nuclear weapons development sites. It was Iran’s judgment — a correct one that — that a new agreement wouldn’t benefit it sufficiently. They are confident that their nuclear weapons development will continue without American interference. Never mind that Iran is funding some of the riots and protests in the United States right now. Look for another attempt to revive the Obama 2015 agreement before Biden leaves office. We won’t rehash all of Biden’s failures here. Among the lowlights are the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, radical new spending that caused the worst inflation in forty years, millions of illegal aliens welcomed into this country and so much more, including Biden’s unceasing efforts to pressure the Israelis into a cease-fire agreement that would leave the Hamas terrorists in charge in the Gaza Strip. Because Harris was part of all of this — Biden reportedly wanted her to be “the last person in the room” and thus have the last word on his decisions — she is more than complicit in some of the worst decisions ever made by any U.S. administration. A Harris administration would carry on with Biden’s agenda and perform according to Biden’s low standards. Many conservatives are forecasting that a Kamala Harris administration would be even worse than the Biden regime. In truth, the two would be indistinguishably awful. Let’s start with the rating that then-Senator Harris received from GovTrack.us in 2019: she was found to be the most liberal senator despite the fact that both comically-communist Sen. Bernie Sanders and uberliberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren were in competition with her for the title. (GovTrack is now trying to retract the entry that so labeled her. Too late, boys and girls.) To illustrate further we have only to point out that she has supported defunding the police and also her effort to help bail out the rioters arrested after the death of George Floyd in police custody. Harris is among the most radical of liberals. And let’s remember that in April Biden called Harris a diversity hire. She was chosen for her gender and her color, not because she was the best candidate for the job. In 2021, Harris — despite media caterwauling to the contrary — was appointed Biden’s border chief. During her watch at least eleven million illegal aliens were welcomed into the U.S. Included among them are about two million “gotaways” — among them criminals, terrorists, and others with malicious intent — who eluded the border patrol. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Our Border and the Gotaways) Harris will keep the borders open. That is and will continue to be a great threat to national security if she’s elected. Then there’s the fact that Harris is superbly unqualified for the presidency. Neither her education nor her experience qualifies her for the job. And Harris has never been the sharpest knife in the drawer. Despite that, Biden also gave her charge of artificial intelligence. As I have written here and elsewhere, Harris is intellectually incapable of dealing with AI. She can’t even understand its threats and benefits and has done nothing to protect this nation from its dangers. Nor will she if she’s elected president. Biden has forced “wokeness” on our military. If we began today, it would probably take twenty years — and the firing of a lot of generals and admirals — to rid the military of it. Harris won’t end the military’s devotion to wokeness: she will instead worsen this enormously dangerous problem. Harris displayed her complete contempt for Israel by going to a sorority event rather than attend Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Wednesday speech to a joint session of Congress. On Thursday she and Biden met separately with Netanyahu. They again demanded that Israel agree to a cease-fire despite two overwhelming facts. First, Israel has already agreed to Biden’s framework for such an agreement and it is the Hamas terrorists who are the obstacle to getting the hostages released. Second, unless Hamas is eradicated it will retake control of the Gaza Strip and commit more attacks like the one on October 7 that caused this war. After the meeting with Netanyahu, she reemphasized that Israel should end the war in Gaza. Her level of understanding of this war and everything else in foreign policy disqualifies her for the presidency. If she’s elected, Harris will probably try to renew Obama’s 2015 nuclear weapons agreement with Iran. She doesn’t understand that Iran has had, thanks to that agreement and despite Trump’s revocation of it, more than adequate time to develop nuclear weapons. Nor does she understand that Iran will never surrender its nuclear weapons program peacefully. Former president Trump will have to hang all of these facts around Harris’s neck in the coming campaign. Both he and vice-presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance must do so relentlessly. Nevertheless, we cannot be overconfident despite Harris’s overwhelming handicaps. There are too many people out there who hate Trump with an irrational passion. He’s not going to win easily, if at all. The post What’s Next for Biden and Harris? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

If you love history, art, beauty, romance, and God, you will appreciate the rare times in your life when all five converge. One such instance occurred to me more than thirty years ago in a little church in Dijon, France. And not even the hideous, satanic opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics last weekend can blemish the memory, only make it more precious. The great Christian triumph made France one of the great arsenals of Western Civilization for a thousand years with its mixture of spiritual and secular power. I was staying with a girlfriend who was studying French at the Centre International d’études Françaises. Jenny was beautiful inside and out, hysterically funny, and wicked smart. One cold night just before Christmas, we went for a stroll around town with no destination in mind. As we neared a vintage chapel, we heard sublime classical violin music emanating from within — Michel Corrette’s Sinfonia I, A La Venue de Noël (In the Coming of Noël). Thoroughly enchanted, we went inside. On stage sat four lovely young women playing string instruments and three young men on trumpets, conducted by an old priest. It was only a rehearsal, so the pews were empty. Jenny and I sat down and bonded. Everything gelled for me — the Christmas spirit, a gorgeous girl, and the wonderful music in a country that celebrated these blessings. French capitulation jokes aside, I cherished France’s vital role in preserving Christianity and advancing artistic beauty. My favorite book of all time is still The Three Musketeers, the immortal tale of male camaraderie (“All for one and one for all”), romantic attraction versus sexual lust (the ultimate femme-fatale villainess, Milady de Winter), and the empiric alliance between Church (Cardinal Richelieu) and State (King Louis XIII). Affection for Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel led me further back into the history of France, to the decisive Christian victory over Islam at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD. Having Islamicized much of Spain at the time, its Muslim conquerors expanded eastward into Frankish territory (pre-France until 987). A massive Arab army attacked the defending Frankish force commanded by Charles (later nicknamed Charles the Hammer — Martel) on the battlefield near Tours. According to the historic tome, the Chronicles of 754, “The northern people remained immobile like a wall, holding together like a glacier in the cold regions, and in the blink of an eye annihilated the Arabs with the sword.” The great Christian triumph made France one of the great arsenals of Western Civilization for a thousand years with its mixture of spiritual and secular power. It birthed the heights of architecture culminating in the magnificent Notre Dame Cathedral, literature (Dumas, Hugo, Flaubert, many others), painting (Monet, Cezanne, Matisse), music (Berlioz, Debussy, Bizet), philosophy (Descartes, Pascal, Voltaire, Rousseau), and unbeatable military might. This lasted even past the fanatical bloodshed of the French Revolution and the fall of Napoleon all the way to World War I. Yet even during World War II, in which the French Army was humiliated early on, the indominable spirit of France inspired the world through the 20th century. So much so that one scene in arguably the greatest movie ever made, Casablanca, continued to choke up audiences long after the cynical, countercultural 1960s. Of course, it’s the scene where Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), with the assent of Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), drowns out a chorus of Nazi soldiers by leading a stirring rendition of La Marseillaise. But you can’t beat something with nothing. Charles Martel defeated the Muslims at Tours in the name of Jesus Christ. In the 21st century, like most of Europe, France stopped believing in Christ. Its new gods were leftism, hedonism, narcissism, and big government, which have diminished America as well. France ceased fighting Islamists and instead invited them in by the millions — outsiders hostile to Judeo-Christian Western values. And when the people of France voted in droves to stop them earlier this month, leftist parties united to thwart their own citizens and common sense. (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: Beauty’s Last Stand — TV Christmas Movies) Five years ago, Notre Dame Cathedral burned. Whether a sign from God or another protest blow against Him hardly matters. For the cathedral inside was already mostly empty of believers, like the Catholic Church in France, reviled by socialist leaders such as President Macron and the mainstream intelligentsia. Consequently, the demonic drag-queen freak show disparaging the Last Supper that opened the Paris Olympics on Saturday came as no surprise to us Christians, despite how badly the perpetrators hoped it would be. We’ll continue going to worship God while they damn themselves. In fact, the only shock was theirs — that enough of us disparaged them as gutless losers. And that some brave Olympic sponsors like C Spire withdrew advertising. So, the Olympics organizers had to issue an apology. But we know that if they had any real courage, they would mock a religion that hates them and their perversions — Islam. Because if they ever did, there would soon be more headless French people than went under the guillotine in the Reign of Terror. Jenny would have laughed at that joke. I kept in long-distance touch with her over the years. A thorough liberal who worked for PETA, she enjoyed my conservative shots at her side, even acknowledging the truth of some of them. She complimented my first two novels, Jake for Mayor and Paper Tigers, but didn’t get to read my third, The Christmas Spirit. She died of breast cancer, which broke my heart. But her sister Caroline told me that until the very end, she often spoke about that magic night we shared at the little church in Dijon. I’m sorry we’ll never have Paris. ***** Where have all the cool men, hot women, and non-woke storytelling gone? For one place my timely new political thriller novel, The Washington Trail, about two DC private eyes, a femme-fatale, and a plot to end America in a volatile election year. Pre-order today, and get it in just two weeks (August 13th). The post We’ll Never Have Paris appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.