A seminal show. The post What was the first MTV Unplugged performance? first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Long before little Linus walked onstage with his blue blanket in 1965 to deliver a monologue from the Gospel of St. Luke, another television show answered that question burning in the hearts of men every winter, so succinctly phrased by Charlie Brown: “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” The grandeur and majesty of the Western world … rests upon the back of the infant Jesus. “The maker of the stars under the stars and the Creator of the earth not having a place whereon to lay His head,” Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen intoned on a Christmas season episode of his widely popular 1950s television program Life Is Worth Living. “And what does it mean, why did He come?” the cleric asked. With his usual dramatic but authentic flair, Sheen answered: He did not come to make us ‘nice people.’ He came to make us new men, change our natures. That’s why the Son of God came to this earth, to make us other sons of God, to make us more than just human beings. It’s not easy, it’s very hard. You say, ‘Oh, but I’m a beast! I’m foul! I dare not be lifted up!’ Remember that He was laid in a manger — and his companions were beasts. That is our hope, our joy, our peace, our merry Christmas. With St. Nicholas having been turned into a vintage Coca-Cola commercial and a dozen soulless Hollywood iterations, with God’s gift of His only begotten Son being commemorated by a month-long mad rush to find the best and most cutthroat deals on this new gadget or that new game, and with the culture wars raging against Christianity and the religion’s Namesake, it is easier every year to forget the meaning of Christmas. Even for devout Christians, the true meaning of Christmas can become lost in the shuffle, whether that shuffle be wrapping presents and bundling the kids into the car to go to grandma’s or trying to meet fourth quarter quotas at work just to afford the holiday heating bill. With the hustle and bustle now largely over and a new year on the horizon, it is worth reflecting on Sheen’s words. The very God who made the universe did not humble Himself and take upon Himself the fleshy form of his own mortal creations so that we might be, as Sheen said, “nice people.” The grandeur and majesty of the Western world — from its wealth and depth of philosophy, law, and literature to its soaring and towering cathedrals and rich cultural heritage — rests upon the back of the infant Jesus. Christ came to earth that we ourselves might reach Heaven. His birth has taken even the lowliest, basest, and most downtrodden of souls and elevated us to the vaulted heights of eternity. Christ told us that He came to earth and was born in a manger so that we might have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). But He alone was born not to live but to die. He was laid in a wooden manger, covered in the blood of the womb, just as He would one day be hung upon a wooden cross, covered in the blood He offered as our ransom. As a tiny infant, his innocent cries pierced the Bethlehem night, much as the mournful cries of His blessed mother would be heard in Jerusalem 33 years later. The Christ child was lovingly placed in His mother’s arms and wrapped in swaddling clothes, just as Christ would later be taken down from the cross and placed in His mother’s arms and wrapped in a burial shroud. He was born to die, so that we might live. The Son of God became one of us so that we might become sons of God. That’s the true meaning of Christmas, one which we should strive to keep alive in our hearts the whole year long. READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: The Church Needs to Regress on the Death Penalty The Democrat Party’s Noxious ‘God Problem’ The post The True Meaning of Christmas appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

A New York Times story  last week reports fears by Democratic politicians of calls by some leading Republican politicians for a new Constitutional Convention. This is distinct from the customary means by which the Constitution has been amended: proposals for a single amendment originating in Congress, then ratified by three-fourths of the states. Both the calls for a new convention and Gillibrand’s recommendation are thoroughly unwise. A convention, by contrast, must be initiated by two-thirds of the states and would inevitably be open-ended: the Constitution, while authorizing such a mode of amendment, sets no limits to what its agenda could entail. Hence California Democratic state senator  Scott Wiener, for one, warns of the danger of a “runaway convention,” in which a convention adopted to consider one proposed amendment (such as a balanced-budget amendment, favored by Republicans) could wind up adding other amendments of a sort that his party fears (say, restricting abortion access or otherwise restricting civil rights). Since the Constitution sets no time limit on the dating of calls for a convention (i.e. a state call for a convention from 150 years ago would still be in play today), the danger of a radical rewriting of the Constitution cannot be dismissed. It is on account of the danger of an amendment being enacted based largely on long-ago state ratifications that it has become customary to include time limits in them. Donald Trump, for one, favors an amendment that would eliminate “birthright citizenship.” So Weiner  introduced legislation last Monday that would rescind the state’s seven previous calls for a constitutional convention, the first such move since Donald J. Trump’s election to a second term. It is ironic  that Democrats should be expressing fears about radical changes in our national charter, since several prominent liberal-leaning scholars, including Berkeley law dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Duke law professor Neal Siegel, and Harvard government professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, have published books in the last few years depicting the Constitution as outdated, undemocratic, and hence in need of radical revision. Chemerinsky is among those now warning of the dangers of a new convention. Apparently, his attitude changes with his current estimate of the likely direction a convention would take. Gillibrand Seeks a Work-Around But another prominent Democrat, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, aims to amend the Constitution by an even simpler mode. She is trying to persuade President Biden to “rescue his legacy,” as the Times reports, by adding the century-old Equal Rights Amendment, which guarantees “sex equality,” to the document simply by declaring that a provision in the proposed amendment that set a seven-year time limit for ratification when Congress approved it in 1972 (and which expired before the required number of states voted to ratify it) is unconstitutional. So according to Gillibrand, all Biden need do to enact the amendment, given that three states voted for it after the deadline, is phone the National Archivist and tell him to add the ERA to the Constitution as our 28th Amendment!  (Gillibrand has enlisted Hillary Clinton to her campaign, asking her to speak to the archivist on its behalf. Additionally, in November, 45 senators, including majority leader Chuck Schumer, wrote the President to urge him to take the action that Senator Gillibrand has called for.) In reality, the ERA was rendered superfluous by a series of Supreme Court decisions that effectively guaranteed women’s right to equality under the 14th Amendment. (This in addition to the guarantee in the 1964 Civil Rights Act). But the real motive behind Gillibrand’s proposal — which is supported by numerous other feminist activists — is believed to be as a backhanded way of restoring the Constitutional right to abortion, which the Court overturned in its 2022 Dobbs decision. This has long been a goal of pro-abortion activists, since a right to abortion lacked any grounding in the document’s text. While Gillibrand acknowledges the likelihood that the Presidential move she advocates would be stricken down by the courts, she responds that she and other feminists can’t just wait around for current Justices to die. And she apparently recognizes that a new move to get the ERA ratified by the states is unlikely to succeed. Both the calls for a new convention and Gillibrand’s recommendation are thoroughly unwise. On the one hand, Democrats are correct to fear a runaway meeting that could rewrite critical provisions of the Constitution, the main text of which was the product of months of careful deliberation by a remarkable group of statesmen. On the other hand, Gillibrand’s notion displays such a thoroughgoing disregard for the Constitution — enabling the President to amend it effectively by his own fiat — as to exhibit  an even greater disrespect for our legal order. One must hope that our Presidents and Congressmen will display a sufficient appreciation of the benefits that our Constitution provides as to resist the two sorts of proposal for amendment — one Constitutional but potentially ruinous (Republican calls for a new convention), the other (that of Gillibrand and Clinton) simply lawless. Those strongly believing in the need for particular amendments should rely on the difficult, but orderly, alternative procedure that has been relied on for all of our existing amendments. David Lewis Schaefer is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, College of the Holy Cross. READ MORE: The Republic of Venice Offers a Model for a Fractured America Grant Power Only to the Accountable The post Resist a Constitutional Convention — and Gillibrand’s Skullduggery appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In the early Sixties, the left side had human credibility. They seemed authentic, concerned about ordinary people, the sovereigns of the nation whose authority had been usurped by powerful factions. Seeger proceeded to use his name and fame to help Dylan break into New York City’s folk music scene.   The liberal left of those days defended free speech, advocated race-blind laws and practices, and opposed endless warring. In the popular mind, the right was more likely to be censorious (McCarthy), stuck on racial categories (Ross Barnett, George Wallace), and military confrontation (MacArthur, Foster Dulles). The left seemed then friendly, beckoning, human, not imprisoned in ideology. What a change Trump has wrought in the culture! Of course, it is not him alone, not at all. But the causes of the liberal left in the early Sixties are the very causes that Trump is seen to champion. Nor was it Trump who forced the left to be censorious, racialist, or rigidly ideological (TDS is a self-inflicted disorder). The last is the most important — Trump is seen as the one who sees humanity where the rigid left sees only clingers, deplorables, and garbage. He is authentic to a fault, not someone who opts for the caricature of humanity that political ideologies churn forth. It’s in the Age of Trump that a new movie about Bob Dylan has hit the screen, A Complete Unknown. It offers some insight into what really moves human beings, as real art, in whatever medium, is meant to do. It shows the pursuit of authenticity, both its exhilaration and its cost. And it gives a sense of why Dylan moved the souls of a generation to seek something not yet defined. He was always in the business of finding his own way and so his music was not about preaching but about reaching further.  As lyricist Robert Hunter (a Dylan collaborator) put it an a way Dylan would like: “If I knew the way, I would take you home.”  What we got with Dylan was the search for meaning, not final answers. For those ready to embark, he can be spectacular company. The first thing about the movie is the music. That’s as it should be. The songs speak for themselves, the music giving Dylan’s words their indispensable context. In this age of ear buds and iPhone speakers, hearing the music on the big theatre speakers throws us at once into the glorious power of Dylan’s music at its best. Timothée Chalamet, who plays Dylan, is stunning. Chalamet sings the songs himself, and in a way that is mystical and wondrous, fully inhabits Dylan’s genius. He is immersed so deeply in the character that there is no distance or separation from that seething cauldron of creativity that was Dylan’s soul at this time in particular. The film shows how that genius was a severe and relentless master. Everything else in Dylan’s life, in this film, comes in a distant second. He may hesitate for a moment, drawn by other attachments, but cannot give himself to the people who would love him as he gives himself to his onrushing muse. Only the songs and the performances engaged his full dedication. Yet it was the admiration and love for a person that moved Dylan to leave home and come to the East Coast to meet a man who inspired his devotion through music which spoke to the heart and soul. The film begins with Dylan’s pilgrimage to see Woodie Guthrie, who was in a New Jersey state hospital suffering the devastation of Huntington’s disease. Guthrie’s simple genius drew Dylan — simple in his appreciation of the simple and overlooked, and simple in the clarity of its concern and its expression in words and music.  As Pete Seeger said of Guthrie, “Any damn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.” Americans rightly distrust the fools who tell them they do not understand complexities well enough to run their own lives. Guthrie trusted the people, spoke to them straightforwardly, respected their hearts and their humanity. Dylan felt that trust to his depth and followed Woody as an acolyte before a master on the road that same authenticity.  In Guthrie’s hospital room, Dylan met Pete Seeger, who saw Dylan’s talent and heart. Seeger proceeded to use his name and fame to help Dylan break into New York City’s folk music scene.  That scene was intensely political. At that time, the campaign to dismantle segregation and gain racial equality was the foremost issue, along with the fear of nuclear war that had been brought to a peak by the Cuban missile showdown of late 1962. Guthrie and Seeger were both political, but Woody in particular made a point that differentiated himself from  today’s ideology-driven progressives:  he insisted that above all, he was a humanist.  His songs’ appeal went far beyond politics. A wide public knows the chorus of his This Land is Your Land by heart, and perhaps the first verse; very few even know of the verse which objects to private property. Seeger in the film asks that the songs should only be judged by a good listen. They are great songs. Most people hear them that way if they give a listen. They appeal to our humanity. They are not the political abstractions of today’s sorry academe. Dylan’s latched on to Guthrie’s simplicity and humanism. In his “Song to Woodie,” one of his very first, he wrote: Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song ‘Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along Seems sick and it’s hungry, it’s tired and it’s torn It looks like it’s a-dyin’ and it’s hardly been born. It is a song about shared human concern on a compelling personal level. That was what drew Dylan to Guthrie’s music. And it was to that task of laying out the human soul into words and music that he would remain true, beyond any other loyalty. This was revealed over the course of the three years to which the film confines itself. It follows Dylan’s rapid rise as he zeroed in on where the progressive mindset intersected with real human emotion. Their hearts touched, Dylan became their hero with songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are a-Changing,” and “Masters of War.”  The Break With Folk Music The progressives of the folk movement thought that this was true love and had expectations that it would last forever. But Dylan followed his own inspiration wherever it led, even if that confounded the expectations of those whose love he accepted. Like the two real loves portrayed here in the film, the folk/progressive community would come to feel betrayed and its ardent love unrequited in the end, when it mattered. The break with the folkies exploded into public view at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when Dylan defied the organizers and a very large part of his faithful audience by coming out with an electric band and playing songs like “Maggie’s Farm” and “Like a Rolling Stone,” which no longer voiced the simple black and whites of world of progressive protest, but a world of complex and baffling emotions. Instead of the prim world of leftist moral preachment, he had thrown himself and his audience into the fire of the blues and its sharing of deep emotions, by turns, wild, joyous, and troubling. Blues had become electrified and lurked in the background of rock and roll. Dylan threw himself into that electric music and its power. He would win a new, much larger audience this way. But the film shows the other side of this change. The folk music fans who had supported him and were devoted to him found themselves, like the two women in his life during this time, ignored. Dylan followed his dark muse, which still spoke to the human heart, but a heart no longer believing in a simple political gospel or an easy positivity. Robbie Robertson, who Dylan picked as his lead guitarist on his world tour at this time, described Dylan’s mindset then: [We] played these first two dates with Bob Dylan and it was kind of insane. People hated it. They didn’t disapprove — they violently hatred it…. So I meet with Bobby then and he said, “That was great!” We ended up touring all over … Just about every night, every place we played — people threw stuff at us, booed us, and sometimes charged the stage. The film shows the violence of the feelings with its recreation of Dylan’s appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Half of the audience was as outraged as a betrayed lover when Dylan came out with an electric band at top volume. Booing and jeers prompted Dylan to play louder, playing past the devoted fans who had made him famous as well as the festival organizers and to Pete Seeger himself, who had done so much to get him heard and famous. It is hard to watch. But the power of the music is undeniable — you can feel why Dylan followed it and why it appealed to so many and still does. Such radical authenticity morphs for some into an actual embrace of violence or a retreat to formula. With Dylan, the violence came in a motorcycle accident that took him off the road and he did not return to steady concertizing for years. But his muse brought him to make a reckoning within, and he often found himself in calmer waters. In a confessional mood, he wrote these lyrics during this period off the road: Love and only love, it can’t be denied No matter what you think about it You just won’t be able to do without it Take a tip from one who’s tried. But this change, and the many changes that came after, are beyond the reach of this film, which ends right after Newport 1965.  What the film gives us is the core genius as it first emerged. If it had one message, it is that the human soul cannot be reduced to rigid ideologies that don’t touch the heart and which look down on the simple understanding of the people.  It’s a message that can help us to overthrow the chokingly narrow culture that has throttled the American spirit these past years. Add Dylan’s later ruminations on love, and we have plenty to inspire us in our own creative contribution to renewed American greatness, in the various ways that the divine creative spirit moves us. READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: We Won, but True Freedom Requires More Work Love and Deterrence The post Bob Dylan’s Music and the Age of Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

What always amazes is that the Left has to re-learn the same lesson — over and over and over again. That lesson? Freedom and free markets — capitalism — works. Socialism — the building block of countries from Russia’s Soviet Union to Castro’s Cuba to today’s world of socialist wanna be’s — fails. The 2024 election was not just about the direction of America. It was … a confirmation for the post-Cold War world that freedom and capitalism did in fact win that war. Back there in the ancient world of 2019, a mere five years ago, the Heritage Foundation’s Lee Edwards had much to say on the subject. What Edwards, a Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought at Heritage, had to say is particularly relevant, as we learned mere days ago that Lee passed away at the ripe old age of 92. Of the endless volumes of words Lee poured out on this subject there was this, headlined:  Three Nations That Tried Socialism and Rejected It Lee wrote:  Socialists are fond of saying that socialism has never failed because it has never been tried. But in truth, socialism has failed in every country in which it has been tried, from the Soviet Union beginning a century ago to three modern countries that tried but ultimately rejected socialism — Israel, India, and the United Kingdom. While there were major political differences between the totalitarian rule of the Soviets and the democratic politics of Israel, India, and the U.K., all three of the latter countries adhered to socialist principles, nationalizing their major industries and placing economic decision-making in the hands of the government.   The Soviet failure has been well documented by historians. In 1985, General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev took command of a bankrupt disintegrating empire. After 70 years of Marxism, Soviet farms were unable to feed the people, factories failed to meet their quotas, people lined up for blocks in Moscow and other cities to buy bread and other necessities, and a war in Afghanistan dragged on with no end in sight of the body bags of young Soviet soldiers. The economies of the Communist nations behind the Iron Curtain were similarly enfeebled because they functioned in large measure as colonies of the Soviet Union. With no incentives to compete or modernize, the industrial sector of Eastern and Central Europe became a monument to bureaucratic inefficiency and waste, a “museum of the early industrial age.” As the New York Times pointed out at the time, Singapore, an Asian city-state of only 2 million people, exported 20 percent more machinery to the West in 1987 than all of Eastern Europe. There was more — oh so much more — from Lee Edwards on this topic.  But as America spins on from a 2024 presidential election that saw the Left’s latest champion of socialism — Vice President Kamala Harris — resoundingly defeated by former President Donald Trump, the very embodiment of free market capitalism — it is crystal clear that the latest generation of Americans understand the core meaning behind free market economics and that for their own future well-being and that of their families, free market economics — capitalism — is the key to their success. One would think that centuries removed from Adam Smith’s 1776 masterpiece The Wealth of Nations — that taught the world just how and why capitalism works — that later generations who have managed to hold on to basic centuries-old principles — e.g. the Law of Gravity, human beings need oxygen to breathe — would understand the economic gravity of freedom, capitalism, and free market economics. Alas, not so. Which has effectively resulted in one generation being led to believe, as was true in Russia or Cuba or today’s Venezuela, that if they just give socialism one more try, success is at hand. It is a fantasy, of course. And a fantasy that results in disastrous hardship for those citizens in the world whose governments impose that fantasy on them. From America to the World Why is any of this important to consider as 2025 arrives? Simple. The new President of the United States is, as mentioned, a world class capitalist. His leadership is by example. And that example is being followed not just by Americans but by one foreign country after another. Over there in Vox one finds this headline:  How the second Trump presidency could reshape the world Trump has won the election, and the world might never be the same.  The story reports:  When Donald Trump assumes the presidency again in January 2025, he will radically reshape international politics if he keeps his campaign promises. Bingo.  The 2024 election was not just about the direction of America. It was about the direction of the world at large. It was, taken in historical context, a confirmation for the post-Cold War world that freedom and capitalism did in fact win that war. That President Ronald Reagan’s vow to defeat communism and win the Cold War outright was a stunning and, in the day, unexpected success. A success that, in no small part thanks to President Donald Trump,  is not going away. As Trump said upon his November election, he intends to lead a “golden age of America” that he will launch in the “greatest political movement of all time.”  He added: .  This will truly be the golden age of America. That’s what we have to have. This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again. In a matter of weeks this new American journey begins.  Optimism overflows. With reason. Happy New Year! READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Arrest the Deputy Foreign Minister of Poland? Conservative Books for Christmas The post The Trumpian Future Beckons for America appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Could the NBA finally be paying the price for its woke ways? It’s certainly paying the price for something. The early-season TV numbers tell the tale. Across the networks with rights to broadcast league games, ESPN, TNT, and ABC, viewership is down 18 percent so far this year. That number includes the much-hyped NBA Cup, a pointless in-season tournament for which franchises repaint their floors in wild colors to inject excitement into their games. The numbers for that fiasco are down double digits from its inaugural iteration one year ago, and its final game this year drew approximately 1.5 million fewer viewers than last year’s final — 2.99 million to 4.58 million. Each team launches the ball from the three-point arc, on average, 37 times a game. The downward trend is mere exacerbation to what amounts to a decade-long drop in TV ratings. Since 2012, viewership for the league has declined by 48 percent, and of the five most sparsely viewed NBA Finals of the past 30 years, four have come in the last four years. Whether the recent dip is due to woke ways is up for debate. The “woke” part of that question is not in doubt, though. The NBA, the wokest of American sports leagues, has been leading the outrage parade since 2012 — since LeBron James and teammates donned hoodies to honor Trayvon Martin. Then came slogans scribed on players’ shoes and the backs of game uniforms — like “Say Their Names” or “I Can’t Breathe” — followed by much somber national-anthem kneeling and courts emblazoned with “Black Lives Matter” slogans during the “bubble” playoffs in 2020. Shortly after the death of Jacob Blake, a black man who was shot by police in an altercation in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020, the entire league canceled games when players boycotted. James, the de facto commissioner of wokery in the league, has since shown his true political colors. In 2021 he tweeted an anti-police message after a Columbus, Ohio cop shot a woman who was lunging at another woman with a knife, thus saving the latter’s life; James’s tweet included a picture of one of the involved policemen with the message “You’re next #Accountability,” ostensibly predicting a fate for the officer similar to that of Derek Chauvin, of George Floyd ignominy. He dispatched mocking tweets about Kyle Rittenhouse’s witness-stand tears. He was all-in for Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, and he and Stephen Curry, who is almost as glam as James, and the latter’s highly successful coach, Steve Kerr, all verbally supported Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign. Such blatant partisanship, and wokery, turns off at least one large cohort of American sports fans — conservatives. For over a decade the NBA has thrown these woke antics in the face of conservative sports fans. It’s no wonder the league’s viewership numbers are down. League president Adam Silver acknowledges the league’s dismal ratings but pins the blame on shifting viewing patterns. “Ratings are down a bit,” he admitted, but “cable television is down double digits.” Many viewers are moving to streaming services, which accounts for the dip in cable viewing, and Silver plumped the league’s forthcoming contract with Amazon Prime Video. Lots of Reasons Silver’s view is an outlier, however. Everybody — NBA stars, ex-NBA stars, pundits, average fans — has a take on the league’s tanking numbers. And all opinions point directly to the product on the floor. There are too many regular-season games, is one criticism. Said Ethan Strauss, who writes about the NBA on his House of Strauss Substack, “There’s just too much awareness that an individual game really doesn’t matter — that an individual game is one out of 82 and it’s important not to get injured, and it’s important to be there for the postseason.” Joel Embiid, star of the Philadelphia 76ers, vowed never to play in the second game of a back-to-back. Kawhi Leonard, another star, has frequently sat on the bench for entire games even when healthy — simply to conserve himself for the postseason. There’s a name for this practice — it’s called “load management.” Coach Gregg Popovitch popularized the strategy during the 2010s with his San Antonio Spurs, and although the league has attempted to curtail the practice, it remains popular with playoff teams and their star players. Imagine taking your family to an NBA game, popping $50 per for the tickets, another $50 for food or souvenirs, $20 for parking, only to watch the star player sit on the bench. Talk-show host Colin Cowherd related load management to the 2024 election: “I think load management is a shame on the league. It is a really bad look for a family of four to go to a game and Giannis doesn’t play or Embiid doesn’t play. I’m sorry. Go ask the Democrats. Be warned. Once you detach from regular people in America, you will pay a price.” Other turn-offs include player mobility between teams, making it hard for fans to form allegiance to given players who might be on the team one year and gone the next. And even the surfeit of alternate jerseys adds more ambient “noise” detracting from the main product. Teams are not required to wear their whites at home and their darks on the road, as has historically been the case, and trot onto the floor sporting the full color wheel of unis, and all varieties of names on the fronts of their jerseys. It’s disorienting to see the Celtics running onto the TD Garden floor wearing black uniforms. Numero Uno Problemo The real issue, arguably, is the significant uptick in the volume of three-point shots. The three has been in the pro game since the 1979–1980 season, with a line established 23 feet 9 inches away from the basket at the top and sides and 22 feet in the corners. At first shooting the three was a semi-desperate tactic, a way for a team trailing big late in a game to get back into it. In those early years, teams took fewer than five per game. In that first year, the team average for three-point attempts was 2.8. This year it is 37. Each team launches the ball from the three-point arc, on average, 37 times a game. The Boston Celtics throw it up there from distance 51 times a game. The fact that every team relies so heavily on the three-ball makes for one-dimensional basketball. Opines Joe Kinsey on Outkick: If you like guys chucking up bricks and running up and down the court like they’re at a YMCA, the current NBA is for you. The league is attempting an absurd 37.5 threes per game. If that number holds, it will set an all-time high, besting the 35.2 3PA record from the 2021–22 season. For comparison, the NBA was attempting 22.4 threes per game a decade ago. The current league 3-point shooting percentage sits at .359%. That latter number is the real problem. Players are shooting more from distance, true, but they’re making more of those shots. Forty-eight players this year are converting over 40 percent of their three-balls. Any NBA coach that doesn’t have his team firing up 30 or more of these bombs per game should be fired. They represent the most efficient way of scoring points. Once a three-point shot is made 33 percent of the time, it is as valuable as a two-point attempt made 50 percent of the time. Very few teams shoot 50 percent from two, but the league as a whole shoots almost 36 percent from three. That’s why it’s raining threes. The fact is, three points is too great a reward for making the shot. To bring the game into balance, to return the mid-range jumper to prominence, the three-point basket must be devalued. Many “solutions” to the problem have been proffered, some legit, some fanciful — like allowing home teams to draw the line wherever they wanted, or allowing goaltending on threes, or making the three worth 2.5 points. The obvious solution is to move the line back. Analytics have advanced to the point that every shot taken in an NBA game can be located on the court. If an optimal rate of three-point conversion is 33.33 percent — making every shot taken worth one point — analytics could provide sufficient data to allow the league to place the line at exactly the distance where 33.33 percent of shots were converted. Wrote Kirk Goldsberry, who has been studying the issue for a decade, in 2019: “Where would the line have to be so that the cumulative set of NBA 3-point tries would go in 33.33 percent of the time? … During the 2017–18 season, excluding heaves, NBA shooters made exactly 33.33 percent of their 3s from beyond 25.77 feet, a distance almost exactly two feet beyond the current line.” Move the line two feet back and fewer shooters launch long ones, and maybe the game returns to a balanced product. That would solve the three-point dilemma. Now, if the star players and coaches would stop spouting their political opinions at every opportunity, that would go a long way to solving its “woke” problem. The post What’s the Matter With the NBA? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Politics, law, education, and culture ran four-way stop signs simultaneously to detonate a mushroom cloud known as 2024. The highlights are apparent, but you may have forgotten some lesser-known events. Here’s a recap of the year’s most consequential stories. Trump wasted no time by nominating every major Fox News personality to a cabinet position. January: Claudine Gay resigned as Harvard’s president after telling Congressmembers they needed to contextualize the call to slaughter Jews on an industrial scale. A few people found this preposterous, chief among them Jews, along with much of the sane, civilized world. Harvard understood it erred and immediately interviewed Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to guide the storied school temporarily. Sadly, he didn’t get the job. February: Special prosecutor Robert Hur reported he would not charge President Biden with illegally possessing classified documents because that’s simply what lovable, infirmed grampas do. Biden took exception to the elderly description, grabbed his walker with tennis balls on its feet, hobbled before the White House press corps, and promptly forgot why he went out there in the first place. House Republicans impeached Secretary of Allowing Anyone to Illegally Walk Across the Border Alejandro Mayorkas for being criminally bad at his job. Senate Democrats voted to dismiss the case and give him a raise. March: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed 750 National Guardsmen to the New York City subway system to counter recent violent assaults. Criminals quickly overrun the guardsmen, steal their weapons, and occupy the Lexington Avenue subway stations between 51st and 53rd streets. Hochul reassures concerned citizens that the subways are safe if you don’t use them. Meanwhile, that creepy Joe Biden automaton featured in Disney’s Hall of Presidents delivered a stirring State of the Union Address in which it decried Georgia nursing student “Lincoln” Riley’s murder at the hands of “an illegal.” The Biden contraption grovellingly regretted not using the term “salt-of-the-earth migrant.” Disney decommissioned the animatronic Biden and sold it to U.S. Steel for scrap, making it infinitely more useful than the actual President Biden. April: A magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck New Jersey, rattling the East Coast and becoming the most exciting thing to happen in the Garden State since HBO filmed the Johnny Cakes episode of The Sopranos in Boonton. In politics, Cornell West named Melina Abdulla as his pick for vice president, causing a nationwide internet outage because everyone simultaneously Googled “Who the hell is Melina Abdulla?” In business, 99 Cents Only announced it would close all 371 of its stores, leading one to logically ask, “Can I buy all the doomed shops for $362.29?” May: The Justice Department sued Ticketmaster, accusing it of monopolizing its competition and increasing prices. Ticketmaster responded by charging the Justice Department a $1.5 billion lawsuit acceptance fee, a $3 billion legal jargon reading fee, and a $5 billion only-a-complete-idiot-would-pay-this-fee fee. The Justice Department paid the fee. Elsewhere, a Manhattan jury convicted Donald Trump of falsifying business records in furtherance of another crime. Which crime? Presiding Judge Juan Merchan, D-N.Y., didn’t want to bog down jurors with inconsequential details and gave them an exaggerated wink along with Choose Your Own Adventure-style jury cards with a plethora of crimes from which to pick. June: Maj. Gen. William Sherman burned Atlanta to the ground during the Civil War — easily the most catastrophic event in the city’s history. Fast-forward 160 years to when Joe Biden debated Donald Trump there. So enamored was former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with Biden’s performance, she asked Vice President Harris to procure an anatomical chart of the human back and scampered out to the nearest cutlery store. Barack Obama frantically dialed U.S. Steel to see if the Biden robot could be salvaged. July: In an otherwise uneventful month, Trump came within a flea’s whisker of having his head blown off on national television during a failed assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally. Secret Service agents had no clue anything was amiss before the crime except for countless rally-goers screaming and pointing at a rooftop toward a suspicious man aiming a rifle and wearing an “I’m going to kill Trump today” T-shirt. A few weeks later, as an oblivious Biden showered, a shadowy figure silhouetted the curtain and appeared to raise a sharp instrument while screeching violin music repeated. The president later tweeted that he was mentally fit as a rickety, 81-year-old fiddle but would drop his re-election bid. August: Vice President Harris kicked off a joyful summer by speaking platitudinous gibberish to promise price controls and post-birth abortions upon “winning” the Democratic presidential nomination. Understanding she must win Pennsylvania, helmed by Josh Shapiro, its dynamic Democratic governor who’d be a logical choice for vice president, Harris used astute political judgment to pick the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island. The Skipper, portrayed by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, bumbled around stages, spastically waving jazz hands to anyone in front of him, causing small children to flee in terror. The estates of Alan Hale Jr. and Chris Farley sued Walz for unauthorized use of their likenesses. September: Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion in California, prompting the senior Biden to unequivocally state that he will never, hand-on-the-Bible, I-swear-before-God, ever pardon his son. In Philadelphia, ABC News reporters David Muir and Linsey Davis teamed up with Harris to defeat Trump in a debate — what? No. Biden won’t pardon his son, so stop asking about it. Trump steals the show by declaring of Haitian immigrants in Ohio: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” This would later become PolitiFact’s lie of the year. Oh, for goodness’ sake, for the last time, President Biden repeatedly said he would not pardon his son. Trust him. October: The largest Nazi rally in the United States since 1939 occurred at Madison Square Garden. Torch-wielding, brown-shirted, swastika-armband-wearing troglodytes marched in time down the aisles, unfurled enormous Nazi flags, and festooned the famous New York venue with billowing Totenkopf (death head) banners where retired Knicks/Rangers jersey numbers once swayed. An alarming number of Jews and people of color joined forces with the Nazis and laughed when an evil insult comic dared to joke about Puerto Rico, sealing Vice President Harris’s inevitable victory in a few days. November: Famed Iowa pollster Ann Selzer declared Harris would win the state in a three-point landslide, causing MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow to audibly orgasm on air. The poll showed Harris leading among college-educated, suburban white women in their fifties who majored in belly dance theory at Vassar and read every Nicholas Sparks book in print. American citizens faced a daunting choice between a tough-as-nails former prosecutor and a Hitlerian convicted felon who serially lies and abuses women emotionally and physically. Selzer was slightly off by 13 points, with a cuddlier version of the Führer winning the state and national election convincingly, aided by millions of Puerto Ricans with a sense of humor. Democrats could not comprehend how Harris’s strategy of not saying anything of substance caused her to lose. The New York Times dispatched teams of anthropologists to states Trump won to understand why the unenlightened creatures lurking there voted how they did. Trump wasted no time by nominating every major Fox News personality to a cabinet position. December: President Biden unexpectedly pardoned Hunter to the extent that Hunter could’ve dropped a nuclear warhead onto Mar-a-Lago the night his father announced the pardon and still gotten away with it. In the oddest story of the year, alien drones in search of intelligent life for some reason hovered over New Jersey. Congress narrowly averted a government shutdown after Elon Musk examined a pork-laden spending bill and arched one of his eyebrows like a Bond villain. The nation’s ghouls made themselves known by glorifying an entitled trust fund baby who allegedly murdered a health insurance executive in broad daylight in New York City. This occurred roughly a week after a Manhattan jury acquitted a former marine who subdued and inadvertently killed a raving madman who threatened to murder passengers on a subway car a year earlier. Guess whose side the ghouls took. Democracy died in 2024 because people went to the polls and freely and fairly elected one person over another for president. That’s the antithesis of democracy, at least according to Nicolle Wallace, Chris Hayes, and other such lunatics. Soon, we will forget we ever democratically elected our leaders — until the special House elections occur in early 2025 to fill the seats vacated by representatives who want to work for Trump. Until then, let’s hope for a peaceful dictatorship starting on day one. READ MORE from Matt Manochio: The Power to Pardon Joe and Mika Reconcile With the Don The post Unravelling the Events of Trump’s Spectacular Year appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The U.S. financial regulatory system is a labyrinth of overlapping, duplicative, dysfunctional, and costly federal government agencies badly in need of fresh review and overhaul. With the possible exception of the healthcare industry, there is perhaps no business sector more heavily regulated in the United States than the financial sector.   Diagram credit to the U.S. Department of Treasury report, ‘A Financial System That Creates Economic Opportunities’ June 2017, page 29. The diagram above of federal financial regulators and their oversight responsibilities succinctly shows the overly complicated nature of the U.S. financial regulatory system. But big changes may be coming to this long-standing regulatory mess after the new Trump administration takes office next month. According to a Wall Street Journal article on December 12th, the Trump transition team is exploring ways to dramatically downsize, consolidate, or even abolish some federal financial regulatory agencies. Excerpts from the WSJ article: In recent interviews with potential nominees to lead bank regulatory agencies, Trump advisers and officials from his newfound Department of Government Efficiency have, for example, asked whether the president-elect could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., people familiar with the matter said. Advisers have asked the nominees under consideration for the FDIC, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, if deposit insurance could then be absorbed into the Treasury Department, some of the people said. Any proposal to eliminate the FDIC or any agency would require congressional action. While past presidents have reorganized and rebranded departments, Washington has never shut down a major cabinet-level agency and rarely closed other agencies like the FDIC that are not. The discussions underscore the drastic approach Trump could take in his attempt to slash the size of the government and ease oversight, including for the highly regulated financial industry. Potential bank regulator nominees have interviewed with Treasury Secretary pick Scott Bessent and the new DOGE department, the outside advisory group co-chaired by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, some of the people said. Musk last month also called for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency Republicans have long hated. “There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies,” Musk said. Trump advisers and potential nominees have also discussed plans to either combine or otherwise restructure the main federal bank regulators: the FDIC, OCC and the Federal Reserve….” As a former federal financial regulatory employee, I wholeheartedly endorse the abolition of both the FDIC and the CFPB. Both agencies are massively overstaffed, badly bloated, and heavily politicized. The regulations and compliance enforcement actions that they impose on the financial sector are burdensome, costly, and mostly counter-productive. (READ MORE from Steve Dewey: Turmoil at the FDIC) But any overhaul can only be achieved while Republicans have control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The standard argument for the existence of the FDIC is its responsibility for providing deposit insurance for bank customers. However, there have been numerous studies since the FDIC’s creation in 1933 that government-funded deposit insurance establishes an inherent moral hazard that actually leads to more, not less, bank failures and financial crises. In a study authored by Thomas Hogan and Kristine Johnson, “Alternatives to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,” published in The Independent Review, Winter 2016, privatization of bank deposit insurance and the abolition of the FDIC were considered. Key excerpts from the study: [T]hree potential changes that might be made to the current system of deposit insurance managed by the FDIC. First, international studies find that private or semi-privately managed deposit insurance systems tend to outperform public systems. The FDIC might therefore be partly or fully privatized in a manner similar to most European deposit insurance systems. Second, the evidence shows that lower levels of mandated deposit insurance coverage tend to increase stability in the banking system. The current maximum level of $250,000 in mandated FDIC deposit insurance coverage can be greatly reduced without endangering the vast majority of depositors, a change that is likely to benefit smaller depositors by increasing stability and reducing costs. Finally, we propose that mandated insurance could be eliminated and that the FDIC be privatized or abolished altogether. Historical evidence of deposit insurance prior to the FDIC indicates that private mechanisms, such as clearinghouses, coinsurance programs, and systems of self-regulation are likely to emerge to stem bank risk. The empirical evidence indicates that these proposals are likely to increase efficiency and stability in the U.S. banking system. As for the CFPB, it was created in Title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act). The progressive Democrat sponsors of this legislation, former Senator Chris Dodd and former Congressman Barney Frank, were successful in setting up the CFPB to be uniquely independent of congressional budget authority and oversight. The CFPB’s funding, rather than being authorized by Congress, would come from the Federal Reserve and with funding amounts to be at the discretion of the CFPB itself. Thus, the legislation was crafted to keep the CFPB as free from congressional oversight as possible. (READ MORE: Back-to-Back Bank Closures: The Fallout From the Failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank) Legal scholar Peter Wallison, Senior Fellow Emeritus of the American Enterprise Institute, served as a member of the 1–member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) established by Congress in 2009 to investigate and report on the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. Mr. Wallison was a dissenter on the final report issued by the FCIC in January 2011. Subsequent to serving on the FCIC, Mr. Wallison authored a 546-page book on the Dodd-Frank Act in 2013 entitled “Bad History, Worse Policy.” In his book, Mr. Wallison was highly critical of the creation of the CFPB in the Dodd-Frank Act. He wrote: Another provision of the Dodd-Frank Act that is derived from the left’s narrative is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was given authority under Title X of the act to police all financial relationships between consumers and firms of any kind — not just financial firms. In the U.S. constitutional structure, Congress has the power to appropriate funds for the operations of the executive branch. However, the Dodd-Frank Act provides a unique funding mechanism for the CFPB, granting it a direct statutory allocation of funds from the Federal Reserve. So Congress has no power to control the scope of the agency’s activities through appropriations … although the CFPB’s funds come from the Fed, the Dodd-Frank Act forbids the Fed to exercise any control over the agency. In other words, the CFPB, alone among federal agencies (except the Fed itself), is free of any political or policy controls. A much more recent and even more devastating indictment of the U.S. financial regulatory system was provided by the Bank Policy Institute just last month, November 19th, in an article posted on its website, “Bank Supervision is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.” Excerpts from the article: Banks are unique among U.S. companies because they are not only subject to intense regulation but also directly overseen by an army of well over 5,000 government examiners. The banking agencies refer to this function as “supervision,” and that term itself illustrates the problem: by statute, the agencies are only authorized to examine banks for legal compliance and unsafe and unsound practices, but over time they have expanded their function to now “supervise” and micromanage banks’ operations and governance, and increasingly dictate their business choices based on how the government thinks they should operate. Furthermore, this power is subject to no checks and balances: “supervision” operates in secret based on the varying views of individual examiners, and the agencies have created their own enforcement regime, not based on rule or law, to impose significant penalties on banks that do not follow their mandates. These penalties can be severe and greatly affect the ability of banks to run their business; they range from limits on business growth, orders to divest from certain business lines and customers, denials of mergers and acquisitions and increases in deposit insurance fees, among other things. The banking agencies are able to impose severe mandates on banks for one reason: they have established a secret enforcement regime that allows them to impose massive sanctions without any due process or, in most cases, public disclosure. In the past, and under the law, a banking agency’s only recourse to force a bank to change its practices was a formal enforcement order that came with a right of the bank to receive notice of the charges and contest them in court. Now, there is effectively no way for a bank to contest a supervisory mandate. The above excerpts from the writings of highly credible financial regulatory experts supports the rationale of the Trump transition team in exploring a major overhaul and simplification of the nation’s financial regulatory system. But any overhaul can only be achieved while Republicans have control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives with a reform-minded Trump-Vance administration. Democrats en masse will surely oppose any major reforms that downsize, weaken, or abolish any federal regulatory agencies. Steve Dewey is a retired federal financial regulator and founder of GeoFinancial Trends, LLC (www.geofinancialtrends.org). He can be reached at steve@geofinancialtrends.org The post Overhaul the Financial Regulatory System appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from Sarah Westall: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

by Peter Breggin MD & Ginger Breggin, America Outloud: There is currently a case before the Hague that will determine the UN’s capacity to bully the rest of the world on climate change. Here is the UN’s statement on the importance of the ongoing legal case: This opinion on climate change can help inform subsequent judicial proceedings such as domestic […]