Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Victor Davis Hanson Rips Goldman Sachs For Propping Up Harris
Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson called out Goldman Sachs on Tuesday for suggesting the economy under Vice President Kamala Harris could be more beneficial, arguing the group and others like it are pushing an agenda that could “destroy” middle-class Americans.
Last week, Goldman Sachs economists released a note suggesting Harris’ policies might provide a “very slight boost” to gross domestic product investment, while former President Donald Trump’s plans could negatively impact growth due to “tariffs and tighter immigration policy.” On his podcast, “The Victor Davis Hanson Show,” Hanson questioned why voters should heed Goldman Sachs when the firm won’t face the consequences of “whatever disastrous policies” could come from a potential Harris administration.
“Why would we listen to someone who makes so much money that will be immune from whatever disastrous policies that will destroy the rest of us? And then they can afford the luxury for social or cultural reasons of supporting a neo-socialist, and that’s what we’re talking about. We really are,” Hanson said. “Reminds me of the aristocrats during the Bolshevik Warsaw revolution, who all thought that Lenin was kind of cute and neat. But that they had so much land and so much money that he would never go after them, and even if he did, it wouldn’t hurt them.”
“I don’t listen to anything Goldman Sachs says, I’m not — I have no animus toward them, but they’re just, they live in a different world, all those people,” Hanson continued.
Hanson then called out former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent endorsement of Harris, expressing concern that Cheney’s approval of the vice president also implies approval of her potential attorney general choices, such as Keith Ellison, who has received donations from left-wing billionaire George Soros.
“Dick Cheney is endorsing the Soros attorney generals, and I don’t understand the ‘Never Trumpers’ or the Goldman Sachs people, that’s what they endorse. They don’t just endorse being kind of liked by the left and kind of having better press coverage … But what they’re really doing to the middle class is they are promoting an agenda that will destroy the middle class,” Hanson said.
The senior fellow continued to slam Democrats as he stated they “lie” about wanting to push policies that secure borders, have a “low tax deregulated economy to spur investment and entrepreneurship” and are “tough” on “deterrent foreign policy.”
“The fact is, there’s two different agendas, and they’re antithetical. One agenda is 90% similar to all of the people’s, all of these characters that I mentioned to their lifelong advocacies,” Hanson continued. “So why are they rejecting 90% of what they told us was essential to give them money or to give them votes or to give them support?”
“And the answer is they got their feelings hurt. They lost their magazine, they lost their speaking fees, they lost their TV billets, they lost their authorities. No one listens to them. They’re has beens, they destroyed their careers. They committed career suicide. And they’re angry, and they blame it all on the orange man,” Hanson said.
After unveiling her economic policies in mid-August, Harris faced backlash from political pundits on both sides of the aisle, particularly over her proposal to place a federal ban on “corporate price gouging” in order to lower high grocery store prices. Critics stated that not only would the proposal potentially drive up prices but also create black markets.
Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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Attending Church Regularly Will Lengthen Your Life More Than Diet, Exercise, Longevity Expert Says
Attending church services may open the door to eternal life—but it will also extend your life on Earth more than diet or exercise, according to the foremost expert on global longevity.
Dan Buettner, who won three Emmy Awards for his groundbreaking 2023 documentary “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones,” revealed the deep benefits that faith in God renders to those who want to live a long and prosperous life. Although America faces an epidemic of chronic diseases, “only about 20% of how long you live is dictated by your genes,” he told “Mornings with Maria” on Aug. 30. A healthy lifestyle incorporating diet, exercise, and stress management means the average person can live “12 more years in good health.”
But the statistics he shared proved that an active faith in God, including weekly church attendance, had potentially the biggest impact on extending earthly life.
Buettner’s documentary investigated regions in the world known for having the longest average lifespan. Researchers interviewed 263 centenarians—people who had lived to the age of 100—and found all but five “belonged to some faith-based community.”
The healthiest elderly had a common characteristic: “having a faith. We know people who go to church—or temple, or even mosque—and show up four times per month are living four to 14 years longer than people who aren’t.” The figure may come from a study finding regular church attendance lengthened the average American’s life by seven years—and 14 years for African Americans.
That number dwarfed other, more intuitive lifehacks, including regular exercise and diet. “For a 20-year-old, if you move away from the standard American diet towards a Blue Zone diet—which is to say whole food, plant-based—it’s worth about 10 years of extra life expectancy, and for a 60-year-old, it’s still worth about six years,” he said.
One food, particularly, stood out above others: beans. “If you’re eating a cup of beans a day, it’s worth about four extra years of life expectancy over getting your protein from less healthy sources,” Buettner said, as he raved about minestrone soup. “Every time that you mix a grain with a bean, they come together, they make a whole protein. … These are cheap foods, they’re shelf stable, and every American can afford them.”
Those in the healthiest lifestyle moved organically, about every 20 minutes, without sitting for long periods of time. But anyone can benefit from simple exercise, such as walking. “If you have zero physical activity in your life, you can raise your life expectancy three years if you just walk 20 minutes a day,” Buettner told Bartiromo.
Strong family relationships also put years in your life. Centenaries agree on “putting family first, keeping your aging parents nearby, investing in your partner, investing in your children,” he continued. “People who are in a committed relationship are living anywhere from two to six years longer than people who are alone in life.”
If you’re keeping track, you can add three years to your life with exercise, four years by eating beans, six years by being in a committed relationship, six to 10 years by eating a whole foods and plant-based diet, and seven to 14 years by going to church every week.
Another aspect of church life that may lengthen your life is stress management. A key factor in living to 100 is “downshifting: either through prayer, meditation, simply expressing gratitude before a meal.” Regular prayer incorporates “making sure our day has certain times where we lower the stress of the human condition, lower inflammation,” said Buettner, a 2011 fellow at National Geographic and muti-time grant awardee.
Environmental factors—including the people and businesses around you—also play a role. “If you live in a neighborhood with more than five fast food restaurants within half a mile of your home, you’re about 35% more likely to be obese than if there are fewer than three,” Buettner added. “If your three best friends are obese and unhealthy, you are 150% more likely to be overweight yourself.”
The study is but one of many that have found physical, mental, and psychological benefits of faith, Bible reading, and church attendance:
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a report in March 2023 stating that an epidemic of loneliness has produced health impacts “even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.” Americans’ “health may be undermined” by their declining participation in “[r]eligious or faith-based groups.”
Regular “religious practice has significant effects” in reducing the faithful’s odds of dying from suicides, drug poisonings, and alcoholic liver disease, according to a 2023 study.
The Blue Zones commend cultures that promote a sense of purpose. “[R]eligious Americans tend to believe their life is meaningful more often than do those who are not religious,” found a 2023 study.
Americans who believe in God and value marriage are more likely to be “very happy” than isolated secularists, according to a Wall Street Journal-NORC poll taken last March. While only a thin sliver of Americans (12%) consider themselves “very happy,” 68% of the happiest people surveyed say they believe in God.
An overwhelming 82% of Christians describe their outlook as optimistic and take pride in their church, according to a 2023 study.
Christians who regularly read the Bible report a higher score on the Human Flourishing Index—which measures “happiness & life satisfaction,” “mental & physical health,” “meaning & purpose,” “character & virtue,” “close societal relationships” and “financial & material stability”—than nonpracticing Christians or the Nones/religiously unaffiliated, a 2023 study found.
“Young-adult Gen-Xers in the strongly religious class across the three measurements generally reported better mental health when they reached established adulthood than those in the nonreligious class,” reported a 2022 Syracuse University study.
Women who attend church at least once a week had a 68% lower chance of dying a death of despair than non-churchgoers; men who go to church frequently lower their risk by one-third, according to a 2020 Harvard study.
Americans who attended religious services regularly were 44% more likely to say they were “very happy” than the religiously inactive, concluded a 2019 Pew Research Center survey.
A 2019 study found “robust effects of religiosity on depression that are stronger for the most depressed.”
Even if they leave behind religious practices, “people who attended weekly religious services or practiced daily prayer or meditation in their youth reported greater life satisfaction and positivity in their 20s—and were less likely to subsequently have depressive symptoms, smoke, use illicit drugs, or have a sexually transmitted infection—than people raised with less regular spiritual habits,” discovered a 2018 study from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
A 2017 study found church attendance significantly lowers the body’s reaction to stress and cuts the worshiper’s chance of dying in half. “More frequent churchgoers (more than once a week) had a 55% reduction of all-cause mortality risk compared with non-churchgoers,” reported the study.
Attending church more than once a week reduced a woman’s likelihood of dying by 33%, a 2016 Harvard study concluded.
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‘We Will bring back abortion freedom by ‘Fixing’ the Filibuster, Cruz’s Senate Rival Says
Rep. Colin Allred, the Texas Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Cruz in November, said he would support “fixing” the filibuster in part so that a hypothetical Democratic-majority Senate could pass an abortion bill that he claims would codify the Supreme Court’s 1971 Roe v. Wade abortion decision.
Tim Miller, a former Republican and podcast host for The Bulwark, interviewed Allred, a former NFL linebacker and member of the House of Representatives, at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Saturday. Miller asked a softball question, suggesting that Allred (along with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris) is not as liberal as his critics suggest, but Allred took the opportunity to pledge to “fix” the filibuster.
“If Kamala Harris gets in there, and if the Democrats hold on to the Senate, if Colin Allred gets in there and there’s 50 Democratic senators, they’re going to kill the filibuster, they’re going to pass the Green New Deal, they’re going to socialize health care, they’re going to expand the Supreme Court to 19 people … is that realistic?” Miller asked, suggesting that anyone who predicts these radical moves from Allred would be mistaken.
Rather than taking the bait, Allred pledged to change the filibuster, a Senate rule that currently requires a 60-vote majority to pass certain forms of legislation.
“The filibuster has to change because it’s broken,” the Democrat replied. “The history of the filibuster, as many Senate observers will know, is that it was used almost exclusively to block civil rights legislation, to block anti-lynching legislation. I’m a civil rights lawyer by training. This is personal for me.”
(While opponents of civil rights legislation did use the filibuster, many others have employed the filibuster, as well, to kill countless other bills. It is no more than a legislative mechanism that can be used for good or bad purposes.)
Allred noted that a previous version of the filibuster would hold up Senate business, while the new version of the filibuster applies “to every single bill, and you have a dual track,” where the Senate can pass other legislation while senators block specific bills through the filibuster.
“It has contributed to hyperpartisanship and has actually made the Senate less functional,” he argued.
Supporters of the current filibuster, such as outgoing Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., argue that the 60-vote threshold prevents radical bills from passing the chamber and contributes to friendliness in the upper body of the legislature.
“The whole point of the filibuster, like the whole point of the Senate itself, is to provide for a place where we can have considered, deliberative debate, and can forge compromise and consensus among our diverse and currently divided populace,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said in 2021.
Allred noted that in the House of Representatives, where he currently serves, the majority rules. “If you’re not in the majority, you have nothing,” he said. “The Senate doesn’t operate that way, and I don’t want to see it become like the House, but the current filibuster doesn’t work.”
The Texas Democrat insisted, “I want to maintain the bipartisan nature of the Senate,” but he called for altering the filibuster in a way that would enable Democrats to “codify Roe v. Wade.”
“And so, to me, we do have to reform it. We have to fix it. We have to go back to the original formulation for it,” he said. “That is also why we will codify Roe v. Wade and make it the law of the land.”
But the Democrat did not explain how “fixing” the filibuster would help Democrats pass legislation to “codify Roe v. Wade.”
In September 2021, Allred voted with most of his fellow Democrats to pass HR 3755, the Women’s Health Protection Act. He has co-sponsored the legislation, claiming that it “would codify Roe v. Wade into federal law.”
Yet the bill goes further than Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision in which the Supreme Court reinterpreted the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to include a right to abortion. The court ruled that states could not ban abortion before the term of “fetal viability,” the point at which an infant can survive outside the womb. The court overturned that decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), returning the issue of abortion to the states.
While some states have restricted abortion to early in pregnancy before babies can feel pain, others have extended abortion up until the moment of birth.
The Women’s Health Protection Act specifically states that the right to abortion “shall not be limited or otherwise infringed.” It would have allowed abortion providers to determine whether a pregnancy is considered “viable” or not, effectively enabling abortions at any point.
“Make no mistake. It is not Roe v. Wade codification,” Manchin, who broke from his party and voted against the legislation, said in 2022. “It wipes 500 state laws off the books. It expands abortion.”
Allred went on to suggest that banning abortion involves forbidding the removal of a nonviable fetus in an ectopic pregnancy (where the embryo lodges outside the uterus, usually in a fallopian tube). He noted that two Texas women sued hospitals, claiming the hospitals refused to treat their ectopic pregnancies for fear of Texas’ abortion law, yet he did not note that Texas law does not forbid treating ectopic pregnancy and that those procedures are not abortions.
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Australia: Violent turn by pro-Palestinian movement a strategic mistake as police crush strong-arm tactics
Victoria Police has sent the clearest possible message to pro-Palestinian and anti-war protesters, with a series of deafening blasts and front-foot policing designed to contain violent extremism.
For the first time since the pandemic unrest, police have pulled out the rubber bullets, batons, teargas and stun grenades to put protesters back in their collective box.
By doing so, police are flagging to protesters that violence against officers and their horses will not be tolerated, regardless of the cause.
While the Land Forces 24 conference was the purported target of the protesters, the 2000 or so people who marched were united under the banner of supporting Gaza.
However, the strategy, fuelled by hard core socialists, relied heavily on violent resistance. This was a mistake.
Throwing acid, tearing down security walls, hurling stones and horse manure at police and their horses triggered the firmest anti-riot response in years.
The decision to adopt violent protest tactics was a sharp shift from the past 11 months, when most of the public pro-Palestine rallies have erred on the side of peace.
Wednesday’s rally changes this dynamic.
For much of the battle in the late morning, protesters gave the police the moral authority to strike back with force.
The protesters also lost the strategic war.
While they were hurling projectiles at police, the delegates to the conference were quietly walking into the Melbourne convention centre through a front door 150m away.
Present at the protest was Nasser Mashni, president of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network, who lent his support to the Gaza cause but had no involvement in the violence.
Free Palestine Melbourne banners were common, as was the Socialist Alternative, the Victorian Socialists and Students for Palestine.
At one point the protesters chanted “the people united, will never be defeated’’, a trusty old Trades Hall chant.
In other words, the protesters were an effective anti-war coalition that mirrored Melbourne’s weekly anti-Israel parades, with leaflets being distributed for Marxism Discussion Groups at Brunswick’s Red Flag Bookstore, hosted by the Socialist Alternative.
In some ways it makes you want to smile.
But there is a danger in what has happened.
The protest leaders have sharply raised the temperature on the Middle East in what is Australia’s protest capital.
It now means that when protesters step out, they will know how to maximise attention for their cause.
This is not something that police or the Victorian or Australian governments will be looking for.
The plan has been for nearly a year to encourage respectful dialogue.
That ended the moment the protesters chose anarchy over peace.
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