Category Archives: Ron Paul

The American Independent Foundation asked every major candidate running for U.S. Senate in 2022 about their COVID-19 vaccination status.

At least six candidates running for U.S. Senate in 2022 remain unvaccinated against the coronavirus, an American Independent Foundation analysis shows.

All of the unvaccinated candidates are Republicans, conforming with trends showing a wide partisan gap in the United States' vaccination rate. Every Democratic candidate for Senate has received at least one COVID-19 shot.

There are 91 major Senate candidates running for office in 2022. That number includes incumbents seeking re-election, challengers seeking to replace those candidates, and individuals running in states with open seats.

Of those candidates identified, 50 had spoken publicly to their status as vaccinated against COVID-19 or were reported to be fully or partially vaccinated by other news organizations. Five had previously stated publicly that they were not vaccinated or were reported to be so. And the remainder had not commented on whether they had received the shots.

All U.S. senators seeking re-election are vaccinated except for two: Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) andRand Paul (R-KY). Johnson has yet to formally announce his re-election bid but is expected to seek another term. "I'm not going to get the vaccine," Johnson said in a recent interview with C-SPAN. He added that if members of Congress were required to get vaccinated, "I would just stop coming here."

Paul, like Johnson, has previously contracted the virus, and the two argue that grants them a so-called "natural immunity" such that they do not require vaccination. Though studies have shown that previous infection does provide some level of protection, the CDC still recommends that everyone eligible gets vaccinated against COVID-19. Moreover, a recent CDC study showed that unvaccinated Americans who previously contracted the virus were over five times more likely to get COVID again than those who were fully vaccinated.

Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who running to replace Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), told a local radio show in August that he was not vaccinated. He has also come under fire for not having a plan to get more people vaccinated. Greitens' campaign did not respond to multiple inquiries about his vaccination status.

Fellow Missouri Senate candidate Mark McCloskey has similarly refused to get vaccinated, according to the Missouri Independent. McCloskey rose to prominence after he and his wife brandished guns at protestors demonstrating in response to the murder of George Floyd. McCloskey recently suggested that people who refuse the vaccine would get "their name on a list" and would eventually "get eliminated." His campaign did not respond to multiple inquiries.

Mark Pukita, an Ohio IT executive seeking to replace Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), bragged in a GOP candidate forum earlier this month that he was the "only one up here" who was not vaccinated, though fellow GOP candidate Josh Mandell has refused to disclose his vaccination status and did not respond to multiple inquiries. Pukita may remain unvaccinated, but he holds up to $50,000 in Johnson & Johnson stock and up to $15,000 in Pfizer stock, two companies that manufacture COVID-19 vaccines.

Jason Beebe, who serves as mayor of Prineville, Oregon, and recently announced a long-shot bid to oust incumbent Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), confirmed to the American Independent Foundation in an email that he was unvaccinated. "I have talked with my doctor and am waiting for more testing and results," Beebe said.

Beyond those who have stated publicly or confirmed privately that they were unvaccinated, several leading candidates have refused to disclose their status altogether.

Herschel Walker, a retired football player running to unseat Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), has refused to say if he is vaccinated. In October, Walker's campaign canceled a fundraiser with a conservative film producer whose Twitter profile picture showed a swastika made of needles. Walker's campaigndid not respond to multiple inquiries about his vaccination status.

Senate candidate Marc Brnovich, who currently serves as Arizona's attorney general, has also refused to say whether he has been vaccinated. A reporter asked Brnovich about his vaccination status on Monday, to which he responded, "Have you had an STD?" Brnovich's campaign did not respond to multiple inquiries from the American Independent Foundation.

Public health officials are increasingly worried about a resurgence of COVID-19 cases heading into the winter months. Still, research has found that hesitant people may be persuaded to get vaccinated with the encouragement of local officials they know and trust, including their political representatives. Public opinion research has shown that as more conservative leaders come to support vaccines, so do their followers.

"If you can get Republican [leaders] to stand up for science, to stand up for public health, to stand up for vaccines, you're going to have an easier time convincing Republicans in public to do the same," Matt Motta, assistant professor of political science at Oklahoma State University, told the American Independent Foundation in August.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

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At least 6 Senate candidates have refused a COVID vaccine and they're all Republican - The American Independent

OH! So thats why everyone was talking about hacked voting machines.

The only women on the board of NYUs Federalist Society chapter resigned in protest after the chapter decided to invite a male anti-abortion speaker who doesnt even bother with fig leaf legal justifications for his opposition to Roe and instead just thinks the courts should embrace theocracy. This prompted the resigning board members to draft a letter outlining their frustrations with the whole process and their systematic marginalization.

Not to belittle the honest concerns of these women, but this letter reads like we joined the Zombie Cannibalism Club for the camaraderie and were shocked and dismayed by all the zombie cannibalism going on around here.

In a discussion following the second vote, the President admitted that the motivation for this event was to have a pro-life vs. pro-choice debate and express a view of what the law should be, admitting his initial reasoning for the event (a discussion of the legal arguments in Dobbs) was pretextual. This runs in direct opposition to one of the primary tenets of the Federalist Society rule of law, which is for the judiciary to say what the law is and not what it should be.

Oh. No. Thats not the primary tenet of this organization at all. If there is a primary tenet to the Federalist Society it might actually be the word pretextual. Its just a debate society to the extent it dupes the occasional moderate lawyer into showing up and lending the organization their credibility. But the core mission is always to cultivate a right-wing legal subculture.

Instead, certain board members have suggested the most polarising Ben Shapiro-esque activist lawyer types to come talk. .

Yeah thats the Federalist Society. Chapters of this organization invited anti-gay bigots to rail against Windsor and Obergefell while they were coming up and cultivated a borderline obsession with Chick-fil-A that carries on to this day. Chapters run counter Pride Days! The authors decry their chapters antics as if this is some sort of new turn, but this is what the Federalist Society has always been.

Except they used to serve pizza.

Speakers who will alienate female members of the board, will draw a lot of anger from the NYU Law community, and make it clear that NYU Law FedSoc does not stand for the principles it claims it stands for of being a nonpartisan organisation interested in rule of law and individual rights, and instead is an activist conservative Republican organisation disinterested in legitimate legal inquiry.

On the subject of giving out free pizza, theres always one or two FedSoc members who just stumbled into a classroom looking for a cheap meal and who really dont care about the clubs ideological mission. But one would hope that by the time a student makes it onto the BOARD theyd figured out what was up. The organizations leadership was actively moonlighting for the Trump White House. The whole point of the Federalist Society is to identify and nurture right-wing law students so they can become right-wing jurists when they get older. Or maybe they dont even need to get older first. Its a purely ideological mission.

Please accept our sincerest apologies for failing to prevent NYU Laws chapter of the Federalist Society from following the national trend of becoming Turning Point USA, Law School Edition.

Ill just let the astronauts answer this one.

Giving these women the benefit of the doubt, maybe theyd hoped to make the NYU chapter into a more old-school Ron Paul libertarian sort of thing. But thats not how these things work. The motivation for most people joining this club will always be to shore up connections with right-wing legal figures and, for better or worse, that favors the most aggressive trolling. There may have been a kernel of a civil, measured Federalist Society at one point, but a civil, measured Federalist Society doesnt get people plugged in with the power players in the conservative legal movement and those power players are folks like these activist anti-abortion attorneys. The group will always gravitate to the more radical corners of the movement because the people they need to impress to get their clerkships and Jones Day offers and House internships are all firmly ensconced in the more radical corners of the movement.

And so it goes.

Joe Patriceis a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free toemail any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him onTwitterif youre interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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Women Resign From Law School FedSoc Board After Realizing What FedSoc Is All About - Above the Law

Many Democrats, liberals, traditional conservatives, and even some leftists continue to tell themselves that the election of Joe Biden was the first step toward restoring U.S. standing in the world after the damage caused by Donald Trump. And in a variety of ways many stylistic and some substantive that perspective has merit. But when it comes to national security policy, the U.S. has been on a steady, hypermilitarized arc for decades. Taken broadly, U.S. policy has been largely consistent on national security and counterterrorism matters from 9/11 to the present.

The ascent of the charlatan businessman Trump to the presidency in 2016 was a logical if somewhat on-the-nose plot twist in the U.S. imperial saga that managed to distill many truths about this nation into a four-year televised and live-tweeted debacle.

The continued media drumbeat that Trump remains the gravest enduring threat to U.S. democracy is fueled by legitimate concerns over Trumps frantic efforts to use the office of the presidency to overturn the election results, which came to a head with the violent demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. These dangerous actions, taken in concert with ongoing Republican efforts at voter disenfranchisement and the peddling of false conspiracy theories, merit serious concern. The Trumpist movement, especially its members in Congress, poses a clear threat to the democratic process. But even in the face of this threat, the bipartisan imperial consensus was so strong that the Democrats continued to increase Trumps national security powers throughout his presidency.

The bipartisan imperial consensus was so strong that the Democrats continued to increase Trumps national security powers throughout his presidency.

This reflexive bipartisan militarism stands in stark opposition to the Democratic Partys sweeping and fallacious rhetoric that the bad face of the U.S. emerges only when Republicans seize executive power and that the sole remedy is electing Democrats. Civilian victims of Barack Obamas drone strikes might have another view. Before Trump, according to Democratic doctrine, the evils of U.S. policy originated with George W. Bush and his co-president Dick Cheney. Yet under both Trump and Bush, the rhetoric from many Democrats was pathologically disconnected from their support for ever-expanding militarist and surveillance policies.

The Democratic party, in its self-tailored version of history, has always been a steadfast force of resistance against GOP excesses and abuses. The Democrats appear to see no contradiction between fighting Republican attacks on voting rights and their own enthusiastic embrace of empire in foreign policy. Without support from the leadership of the Democratic Party and votes from rank-and-file congressional Democrats many of the worst national security policies of the past two decades would have been impossible to implement or would have required enormous political battles or an even greater, and abusive, use of executive power to accomplish.

If the Democratic Party offered a true resistance to the GOP, the history of the post-9/11 world would be very different. Instead of California Democrat Rep.Barbara Lee standing as the lone vote in the entire Congress against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force the blank check for global war days after September 11, 2001, we would have seen the majority of Democrats join her in a chorus of opposition and restraint. Sen.Russ Feingold, Democrat from Wisconsin, would not have been the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act. The legislative authorities for the Iraq War would have been thwarted without the support of a majority of Democratic senators: 29 voted in its favor, including the current president. Without that backing, the Bush-Cheney administration would have had to openly and publicly own its maniacal belief that when it comes to national security policy, the executive branch can and should function as a de facto dictatorship.

While a vocal minority of Democrats spent much of the two terms of the Bush administration fighting against the Iraq War and the grave human rights abuses being committed by the CIA and military, the leadership of the party consistently abetted the Bush-Cheney agenda. When it mattered most, the party failed to offer more than meager protests.After the Democrats gained a House majority in the 2006 midterm elections, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made clear there would be no accountability at the highest levels of power. I have said it before and I will say it again: Impeachment is off the table, Pelosi asserted. We pledge partnerships with Congress and the Republicans in Congress, and the president not partisanship.

There is an understandable tendency to view the past20 years of U.S. militarism as a defining era unto itself. And, in some crucial ways, the full spectrum of U.S. responses to the September 11 attacks did alter the world and, with it, the U.S. way of war. But at their core, the most consequential actions emanating from Washington, D.C., after 9/11 were already in motion. The Bush administration came to power with an eye toward regime change in Iraq. But it did so emboldened by the bipartisan vote during Bill Clintons tenure that made regime change official U.S. policy, backed up by constant bombings of Iraq throughout Clintons two terms. Even Bernie Sanders, then a House representative,supported that bill, which was largely the work of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century. Under Clinton, the U.S. was already moving toward a system of remote lethal strikes and small wars, though it was much more reliant on legacy systems like cruise missiles rather than the now ubiquitous armed drones. The precursor of the Patriot Act was passed with significant support from both parties, with Biden serving as one of its lead architects, a fact he regularly and proudly cited. The U.S. was already operating a well-oiled economic warfare machine with its use of crippling sanctions in an effort to overthrow governments or punish populations into submission.

The most significant milestones of the past two decades liein the synergy that exists among the various political factions between U.S. elections.

In its malignant genius, the Bush-Cheney administration stacked with career hawks who knew how to work the levers of power saw opportunity in the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They saw the value of tapping into the rage, shock, and, most importantly, fear that gripped the nation in the aftermath of the terror attacks to accelerate the implementation of their agenda. The Democratic Party willingly folded itself into the Bush administrations aspirations and bestowed upon it sweeping war and surveillance powers. The most significant milestones of the past two decades lie not with the victories of extroverted villainous Republicans like Bush or Trump, but in the synergy that exists among the various political factions between U.S. elections.

Yemeni children look at graffiti protesting U.S. drone strikes on Sept. 19, 2018, in Sanaa, Yemen.

Photo: Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images

When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, the party had an opportunity to showcase what an antidote to Bush-Cheney policymaking would look like. This prospect was a major part of the success of the Obama campaigns against both Hillary Clinton, an Iraq War supporter, and John McCain, a notorious militarist. Instead, Obama expanded some of the most dangerous aspects of the Bush-Cheney war apparatus while shielding the CIA, military leaders, and the entire Bush administration from any accountability. Obama surged troops in Afghanistan and empowered both the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command to engage in expanded global targeted killing operations. He embraced the widespread use of covert operations, ratcheted up drone strikes in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, initiated air wars in Somalia and Yemen that endure to this day, and waged a disastrous regime change war in Libya.

Obama used his credibility among the base of the Democratic Party in an effort to normalize assassination as an acceptable, if not preferable, tool of U.S. policy. Obama relied so heavily on drone strikes that they became a policy unto themselves, and he publicly asserted the right of the U.S. president to assassinate American citizens by means of targeted killing, based on the vague notion that they might someday threaten national security or even U.S. interests. While the U.S. government has long engaged in covert assassinations, Obama transformed and legitimizedsuch operationswith his intricate attempts to rebrand the practice and to publicly argue in favor of its legality and morality.

Obamas Justice Department defended former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others against charges of war crimes in civil litigation and refused to hold the CIA accountable for its widespread use of torture and extraordinary rendition. Obama simultaneously prosecuted whistleblowers with a vengeance using a warped interpretation of the 1917 Espionage Act. His CIA director, John Brennan,lied about the agency spying on U.S. Senate torture investigators, and his director of national intelligence, James Clapper, lied under oath when testifying about mass surveillance and the bulk collection of communications among U.S. citizens.

By the time Obama prepared to leave office, his administration had built up what amounted to a secret parallel judicial system to enforce the long-standing U.S. global killing regime. During Obamas second term, his administration cobbled together a ramshackle set of guidelines for targeted killings that he said he hoped would bring legal structure, oversight, and transparency to his signature military tactic. But these guidelines had no teeth that the next commander in chief could not easily knock out. In selling his targeted killing policy, Obama repeatedly banked on the notion that he could be personally trusted to make these decisions in secret. That mentality led to a total absence of meaningful checks, by the time the 2016 election was decided, against a dangerous and now institutionalized claim of sweeping and lethal presidential powers.

President Donald Trump speaks to the troops during a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan on Nov. 28, 2019.

Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trumps defeat of Hillary Clinton sent shockwaves through the national security state and the Washington, D.C., political establishment. On war policy, Trump was difficult to assess before assuming office because his messaging and pronouncements were often contradicted by other statements or moves he made. As a candidate, and as president, Trump would stake out Ron Paul-esque libertarian opposition to U.S. wars and militarism, and in the next speech and sometimes next breath he would engage in a grotesque soliloquy about taking a nations oil, murdering families of terror suspects, or wiping countries off the map. Rhetoric can itself be dangerous when it is emanating from the mouth of a man who controls nuclear weapons and vast military forces, so it was always reasonable to be deeply concerned over thetemperamentalravings of the 45th president. Yet in the end, most of his rants fizzled into bluster. This was in part a byproduct of the competing factions within the administration pushing contradictory agendas, including on war policy and the response to the 2020 election results.

In matters of war, the truth is that there were not many substantive national security anomalies brought about by Trumps control of the White House. Trump was far more belligerent than Jimmy Carter, but he was not even in the same league as Bush and Cheney when it came to global mass killing. While steering clear of the sustained large-scale ground operations that marked both Bush presidencies in Iraq, Trump and Obama showed great willingness to use U.S. military and CIA force, particularly in undeclared war zones, and ran operations that consistently killed large numbers of civilians. Obama initiated new military action in more countries than Trump.

The truth is that there were not many substantive national security anomalies brought about by Trumps control of the White House.

Stylistically, of course, there were many differences between Trump and former U.S. presidents, and his rhetoric was often terrifying and appalling. But in national security policy, Trump generally operated within the norms of the modern U.S. presidency and received mainstream praise for it. How could anyone forget the moments early in his tenure when establishment media pundits declared that Trump became president after he unleashed missiles on Syria or after he spoke during the State of the Union of a U.S. soldier killed in a deadly and unnecessary ground operation that he had authorized in Yemen?

Trump swiftly undid many of the modest rules implemented during Obamas second term aimed at reducing civilian deaths in U.S. drone and other airstrikes and gave greater latitude to field commanders and mid-level officials to authorize such strikes. Trump dispensed with Obamas superfluous policies for acknowledging deaths caused by CIA actions and lowered the threshold for killing unknown people, particularly military aged males.

Trump easily did away with virtually all the policy constraints and scholarly debates. His rules glance at law, and lay bare how easily a president thinks it may be set aside in service of vague national security interests. Its hard not to see these rules as a license to kill, argued Hina Shamsi, head of the American Civil Liberties Unions national security project. The Trump rules served as open-ended authorization for the United States to kill virtually anyone it designates as a terrorist threat, anywhere in the world, without reference to the laws prohibiting extrajudicial killing under human rights law. The Trump rules may seem more extreme but in core ways they merely continue an unlawful U.S. extrajudicial killing program.

While using the military to continue pummeling Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Trump expanded the U.S. drone war ratcheted up by Obama in Somalia. By the end of Trumps presidency, the civilian death toll from U.S. drone strikes, mostly during Obama and Trump years, was astonishing. A report from U.K.-based watchdog group Airwars found that at least 22,679, and potentially as many as 48,308 civilians, have been likely killed by US strikes since 9/11.

Yemen policy under Trump was in step with decades of U.S. support for the brutal dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, and he did his absolute best to top the Bush family in cozying up to the royals. Once Trump took power, a narrative emerged that pretended it was Trump, not Obama, who started the U.S.-fueled horror show in Yemen. While he certainly escalated U.S. support for Saudi Arabias murderous campaign, it was the Obama administration that began a secret and sustained U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen in 2009 and gave the Saudis the official green light for aerial bombardment of Yemen in 2015 with the aid of U.S. weapons. In September 2016, at the end of his presidency, Obama approved a $115 billion arms sale to the Saudis, which at the time was the most of any U.S. administration in the 71-year U.S.-Saudi alliance. Under pressure from human rights activists and some members of Congress, Obama excluded the sale of certain precision-guided munitions, citing the worsening situation in Yemen. Trump reversed Obamas exclusion and included the weapons as part of his own tremendous arms deal with the Saudis announced in May 2017. Absent the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Turkey in 2018, it is not certain that the effort to confront U.S. support for Saudi Arabias genocidal war in Yemen would have gained its unprecedented momentum. Trumps grotesque embrace of the Saudi dictatorship, particularly his defense of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the murder, was also a decisive factor in gaining some Republican support for cutting off weapons shipments. Trump vetoed the legislation.

Trumps appointment of neoconservatives to his war cabinet, chief among them John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, at times resulted in a strange mixture of Cheney-style policymaking that undermined Trumps more dominant rhetorical projection of a right-wing libertarian foreign policy outlook. Among Trumps most dangerous military acts as president was the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in Baghdad. That strike risked starting a full-blown war with Iran. While many Democrats expressed strong opposition to the strike, there is and has long been a powerful chorus of voices within the party that actually believes more military confrontation of Iran is warranted, so it is hardly a given that Democrats would have stopped Trump from moving forward. Some top Democrats, while criticizing Trump for keeping the operation secret from congressional leaders and offering other procedural objections, celebrated the assassination. Then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.,said Suleimani was a notorious terrorist and that no one should shed a tear over his death.

For four years, the most prominent figures in the Democratic Party, along with most of its congressional foot soldiers, told us that Trump was a Russian stooge and the most dangerous president in history all while simultaneously lavishing his administration with sweeping surveillance powers and record-shattering military budgets. In 2019, months before the Suleimani strike, Rep.Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, offered an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have prohibited such actions, but it was removed from the final bill. Any member who voted for the NDAA a blank check cant now express dismay that Trump may have launched another war in the Middle East, Khanna wrote on Twitter after Suleimanis assassination. My Amendment, which was stripped, would have cut off $$ for any offensive attack against Iran including against officials like Soleimani.

The NDAA passed with overwhelming Democratic support. We saw the same pattern when Democrats sided with their Republican colleagues in extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, one of the key state organs of domestic spy operations. In 2020, at the peak of Trumps insanity, 10 Democrats blocked an effort by Sen.Ron Wyden, D-Ore., to stop the FBIs warrantless surveillance of web browser history. Some leading Democrats joined with neoconservative Republicans in the waning days of Trumps presidency in an effort to impede him from ending the war in Afghanistan.

It would be a mistake to view these congressional actions as hypocrisy. They should be seen, rather, as key indicators of the core agenda of the Democratic Party leadership on matters of militarism and national security. Even with a president in power whom its members constantly portrayed as an unstable authoritarian, the Democratic Party refused to close the spigot on the commander in chiefs vast powers.

President Joe Biden addresses the 76th Session of the U.N. General Assembly at the U.N. headquarters in New York City on Sept. 21, 2021.

Photo: Eduardo Munoz/Getty Images

On war policy, Joe Biden was never the grandfatherly career politician who would heal the nation after Trump and move us to a new era of peace. For the national security establishment in D.C., Biden represented the only viable candidate to stop Bernie Sanders in the primary and to bring decorum back to imperialism by unseating Trump. Unlike Trump, Biden is a lifelong creature of Washington and one of the most consequential politicians in the shaping of modern U.S. foreign and national security policy. Biden was an essential player in the premiere foreign policy debacle of modern U.S. history: the invasion of Iraq. He was a strong supporter of the invasion of Afghanistan, claimed credit for authoring large parts of the Patriot Act, and was one of the most passionate defenders of Israeli aggression and war crimes in Congress. As Obamas vice president, he helped shape the U.S. military posture as a global, high-tech octopus whose tentacles can strike anywhere at any time in the name of national security.

In September, Biden delivered his first address as president before the United Nations General Assembly. I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war, Biden said. Weve turned the page. It was an astonishing, brazen statement. While Biden did withdraw from Afghanistan, he has made clear that the U.S. will continue to use drone strikes and other methods to wage war in the country. By the time he appeared on the dais at U.N. headquarters, Biden had already authorized bombings in Syria and Iraq and drone strikes in Somalia and Afghanistan. Embedded within Bidens false turned the page claim was a recurring theme of American Exceptionalism: the U.S. governments characterizations of its own actions need not be based in reality or supported by facts.

Biden deserves credit for moving forward, in the face of some powerful opposition, with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But the plan he implemented was primarily developed by the Trump administration. Biden has indicated that he would have approached the withdrawal differently, but ultimately justified proceeding under the terms of the Doha agreement with the Taliban by stating that the U.S. needed to respect its international agreements. It is perhaps not what I would have negotiated myself, but it was an agreement made by the United States government, and that means something, Biden said in April when he announced the withdrawal.

Biden was in a tough spot. If he did not move forward at that moment, the U.S. presence would likely have dragged on indefinitely, despite his pledges. Instead, he knowingly subjected himself to cheap shots, mostly from Republican political figures and the conservative media who seized on the chaos to blame him for implementing Trumps policy. More significantly, Biden forcefully rejected pressure from military brass, two prominent former secretaries of state, and some lawmakers within his own party. There are legitimate questions that demand answers about the bloodshed that accompanied the withdrawal, and the Biden administration must answer for these. But the deadly attack on the Kabul airport at the onset of the withdrawal and the heartbreaking scenes of Afghans desperately trying to escape against the backdrop of the Taliban waltzing back to power will be far more seriously scrutinized in the months ahead on Capitol Hill than the much-needed reckoning with the 20-year catastrophe of U.S. policy in Afghanistan.

It is not difficult to imagine a plausible alternative scenario in which Biden kept small teams of CIA and JSOC operators inside Afghanistan for years to come, as he proposed in 2009 when he was vice president and argued against the surge. The option to keep a few thousand troops was being pushed by military officials as well as some influential Democratic senators. That could have laid the groundwork for episodic surges of conventional forces, as happened after Obama withdrew from Iraq. Biden clearly did not want to face the prospect of taking ownership of an utterly failed 20-year-old war that was always going to end with the Taliban in power. While he deserves credit for staying the course on withdrawal, it was Trump who put that policy into motion.

Despite the withdrawal, the Biden administration has already shown that it will continue to use drones and covert strike teams to hit targets in nations where the U.S. lacks ground capabilities. These assassinations are now being officially rebranded as over-the-horizon operations, the chosen messaging for a long-standing policy of conducting drone strikes in countries with which the U.S. is not officially at war.

Relatives and neighbors of the Ahmadi family gathered around the incinerated husk of their car, which was targeted and hit by an American drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 30, 2021.

Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

When Biden was sworn into office, his administration said it was undertaking a comprehensive review of the targeted killing process and reviewing the changes made by Trump to determine its own policy. Biden did not authorize any known drone strikes during his first six months in office. In March, the New York Times reported that the administration had quietly imposed some limits on drone strikes, rolling back Trumps delegation of authority to strike. The order was issued bynational security adviserJake Sullivan on the day of Bidens inauguration. The military and the C.I.A. must now obtain White House permission to attack terrorism suspects in poorly governed places where there are scant American ground troops, like Somalia and Yemen, said the Times. Bidens no-drone-strike streak was broken in late July when the military conducted a strike in Somalia, claiming it was a defensive measure. That was followed by two more strikes. Biden has also authorized drone strikes in Syria.

But it was an August 29 drone strike during the withdrawal from Afghanistan that provided the most harrowing flashback to the Obama era. The Pentagon claimed the target was a car driven by Islamic State members transporting explosives to be used in another attack on the Kabul airport. Two days after the strike, Biden held up the operation as proof of the concept that the U.S. would continue to hammer the nails of terrorism remotely. We have whats called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground, Biden said. With flashes of Bush-like bravado, Biden boasted: Weve shown that capacity just in the last week. We struck ISIS-K remotely, days after they murdered 13 of our servicemembers and dozens of innocent Afghans. And to ISIS-K: We are not done with you yet.

But the victims were not ISIS members. They were civilians.

The strike had actually wiped out a family, seven of them children. The driver of the car, Zemari Ahmadi, was a longtime employee of a U.S. aid organization. Almost everything senior defense officials asserted in the hours, and then days, and then weeks after the Aug.29 drone strike turned out to be false, reportedthe New York Times, whose investigation exposed the stream of lies and misinformation offered by U.S. officials. Despite the fact that at least one child could clearly be seen in footage filmed as part of the eight-hour surveillance operation before the strike, a Pentagon internal inquiry cleared all U.S. personnel of any wrongdoing. The general in charge of the review said the operatives who carried out the strike had a genuine belief that there was an imminent threat to U.S. forces.

The bipartisan self-exoneration machine for U.S. crimes abroad has long been a centerpiece of the imperial stance and complements the broad consensus in Washington, D.C., on a range of national security issues. Biden pledged early on in his administration that he was ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen. In reality, the U.S. has continued to support the Saudi scorched earth campaign by pretending it is defensive when it is clearly not and continues to allow U.S. naval operations in support of the catastrophic Saudi blockade. Saudi Arabias aim is to starve Yemen into a state of subjugation. While the supposed target is the pro-Iranian Houthi movement that seized power in Sanaa in 2015, the lethal suffering is being meted out against ordinary Yemenis of various political and tribal affiliations. In August, UNICEFassessed that the situation is worsening on all levels, especially for children, with five million Yemenis one step away from succumbing to famine and the diseases that go with it, and 10 million more are right behind them.

Far from treating Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi regime as pariahs, as Biden promised on the campaign trail, his administration has continued to support the kingdoms genocidal war in Yemen and to maintain an intimate military and diplomatic relationship with Riyadh. This is not to say that there are no differences between Biden and Trump on the U.S. approach to Saudi Arabia. Trump broke with U.S. tradition and chose Riyadh as his first foreign destination as president. During the trip, Trump announced a significant expansion of U.S. support for the Saudis in the form of what he claimed was a 10-year, $350 billion arms deal and participated in a bizarre gathering with King Salman and other despots laying hands on a glowing orb. By contrast, Biden has refused to meet with the crown prince, the de facto Saudi ruler, and, as The Intercept recently reported, the Saudis have retaliated against what they consider to be Bidens degradation of their status by intentionally driving up oil prices.

Rather than cutting off the Saudis, the Biden policy is to evaluate, on a case-by-case basis, proposed weapons sales and transfers based on two criteria: our interests and our values.

Despite U.S. intelligence concluding that the crown prince ordered Khashoggis execution in Turkey, Biden has refused to impose sanctions or deliver any meaningful U.S. response to the murder. We have talked about this, in terms of our partnership with Saudi Arabia, as a recalibration. Its not a rupture, said State Department spokesperson Ned Price when asked about Bidens retreat from his make them in fact the pariah that they are campaign pledge. I would contextualize that by making the point that it is undeniable that Saudi Arabia is a hugely influential country in the Arab world and beyond. Price made clear we stand with Saudi Arabia in its efforts to defend itself, including with U.S. weaponry and intelligence. Rather than cutting off the Saudis, Price said, the Biden policy is to evaluate, on a case-by-case basis, proposed weapons sales and transfers based on two criteria: our interests and our values. In September, the Biden administration approved a $500 million allocation to support a range of Saudi attack helicopters and in early November sent Congress notification of its first proposed weapons sale to the kingdom: some $650 million in missile systems. The State Department claims that the weapon deals will support U.S. foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political and economic progress in the Middle East. Bidens tough talk, it seems, was substantively a stream of opportunistic election-year hot air.

We should never be selling human rights abusers weapons, but we certainly should not be doing so in the midst of a humanitarian crisis they are responsible for,said Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota.Omar has been steadfast in opposing the arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and on November 12 she introduced a joint resolution to block it.Congress has the authority to stop these sales, and we must exercise that power. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a tenacious opponent of U.S. support for Saudi Arabia, is spearheading a related effortwith Bernie Sandersin the Senate to ban the sales.

Less than a year into its tenure, the Biden administration has approveda range ofweapons sales to nearly two dozen countries, including a host of nations with atrocious human rights records. Despite Bidens campaign pledge that there would be no more blank checks for the Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a man Trump lovingly referred to as his favorite dictator, the administration has already approved more than $1 billion in security assistance to Egypt, withholding only a symbolic portion of the aid in response to widespread human rights abuses. Biden has moved forward with Trumps $23 billion weapons deal for the United Arab Emirates, including armed drones and F-35 attack planes. The highly touted Abraham Accords that supposedly broke a decades-long bottleneck in Arab-Israeli peacemaking have turned into an arms bonanza, observedMohamad Bazzi,director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. Biden, he charged, is turning the normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries into an arms race that could fuel new conflicts in the Middle East. In June, the White House notified Congress of its intent to sell some $2.5 billion in fighter jets, missiles, and other weapons to the Philippines, which is ruled by the despotic leader Rodrigo Duterte who has boasted, I dont care about human rights.

While it has almost entirely disappeared from the discourse, the U.S. still has some 2,500 publicly acknowledged troops on the ground in Iraq under the auspices of containing ISIS and supporting Iraqi forces. Biden has stated that by the end of 2021 these troops will no longer be part of a combat mission. Instead, they are being reclassified as advisers to Iraqi troops and serve as quick response forces to take action against remaining ISIS fighters. Most of those soldiers are projected to remain in Iraq indefinitely, as will the 900 U.S. troops on the ground in northeast Syria. Lingering over these ongoing troop deployments is the unresolved question of Bidens approach to Iran, which is geographically situated near a series of U.S. military disasters, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria. Tehran is also facing yet another Israeli administration that wants to escalate the conflict between the two countries and is publicly lobbying Biden to act more aggressively.

Throughout the 2020 campaign, Biden touted his role, as vice president, in securing the Iran nuclear deal and vowed to reverse Trumps abandonment of it. Two of Bidens top national security officials, Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, spearheaded the Obama administrations Iran negotiations. But nearly a year into the new presidency, there has been little momentum. After four years of Trumps open hostilities, threats, expanded sanctions, and the assassination of Suleimani, Iran has erected even greater barriers to negotiations with the U.S. While the Iranian people continue to suffer from U.S. sanctions, Tehran has steadily engaged in a realignment, and the so-called hard-liners who opposed a deal with the West have been emboldened by the failures of the short-lived agreement with the Obama administration. For his part, Biden has not made resuming talks a major priority or shown a willingness to make concessions.

President Joe Biden meets with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 27, 2021.

Photo: Sarahbeth Maney/Getty Images

Sitting alongside newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at the White House in late August, Biden said, If diplomacy fails with Iran, were ready to turn to other options. As an indication of how the U.S. embrace of drone warfare has spread globally, the Biden administration has accused Iran of sponsoring a series of drone strikes against a U.S. outpost in Syria in October. With regards to the issue of how were going to respond to their actions against interest of the U.S., whether they are drone strikes or anything else, is were going to respond, Biden said at a press conference at the end of the G20 summit in Rome. We will continue to respond.On November 10, the U.S. Navys Fifth Fleet began a series of jointmilitary exercises with Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain in the Red Sea. The exercises were the first-ever confirmed among these nations and grew out ofthe Trump administrations so-called Abraham Accords. It is exciting to see US forces training with regional partners to enhance our collective maritime security capabilities, said the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.

Alongside this rhetoric, the White House also appears to be intensifying its behind-the-scenes efforts to target Iran economically. The Biden administration, according to a report from Reuters, has begun encouraging China to cut off Iranian oil imports, a move that could indicate the White House is contemplating a greater expansion of sanctions and other methods of economic warfare. During his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly in September, Irans newly elected leader Ebrahim Raisi struck a pessimistic note about prospects for a substantive shift in policy from Trump to Biden. The world doesnt care about America First or America is Back, he said. Economic sanctions are the U.S.s new way of war with the nations of the world, he said. Sanctions, especially sanctions on medicine at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, are crimes against humanity. He added, We dont trust the promises made by the U.S. government.

Those sentiments seem to be underscored by a significant number of Iranians, according to an October poll by the University of Maryland. The poll found that a large majority of respondents did not believe the U.S. would abide by the nuclear deal if the U.S. reentered and that Iranians had only a marginally more favorable view of Biden than Trump. With regular skirmishesbetween U.S. and Iranian ships in international waters and U.S. accusations that Iran is facilitating drone strikes and other attacks on U.S. forces in Syria, there will be consistent pressure on Biden to escalate the situation. This scenario could also benefit hard-line factions in Iran who oppose reengagement with the U.S. and its allies. In early November, Irans foreign ministry laid out its conditions for returning to the nuclear deal. Among its demands was the lifting of all economic sanctions imposed after Trump abandoned the agreement, that the U.S. admit its responsibility for destroying it, and that Biden pledge that the U.S. will not renege on its commitments again.

The Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system intercepts Hamas rockets in the sky above the Gaza Strip on May 16, 2021.

Photo: Anas Baba/AFP via Getty Images

While there is much media focus these days on the intensely polarized dynamic on Capitol Hill between Democrats and Republicans, as well as domestic legislative battles among Democrats, none of this has stopped the work of the empire from moving forward.Legislation aimed at increasing funding for social programs, education, and other public goods is consistently held hostage by politicians harping over the costs. This has been the case with Bidens Build Back Better legislation, which has seen some conservative Democrats join their Republican colleagues in gutting social spending in the name of fiscal responsibility. The original BBB 10-year projection was $3.5 trillion and has been steadily chiseled down to half that size to appease critics.Juxtapose this with the bipartisan defense spending spree that has theU.S. on course to produce a Pentagon budget of more than $7 trillion over the next decade, and the priorities of this governments political class come into sharp focus.

The Biden administrations staunch defense of Israels war of annihilation against the Palestinians and its collective punishment of the citizens of Gaza through a sustained bombing campaign last spring is now a footnote. Bidens unwavering support for his great, great friend Benjamin Netanyahu during the Ramadan siege of Gaza, as well as his embrace of Trumps shambolic Abraham Accords, indicates how little substantive distance there is between the previous administration and Biden on some core international priorities. From Trump to Biden, U.S. policy has been consistent, with large bipartisan majorities in Congress continuing the upward trajectory of U.S. military aid and weapons sales to Israel.

In September, after Biden asked for the increased funding to replenish the rockets used by Israel during its siege of Gaza earlier in the year, the House authorized a whopping $1 billion for Israels Iron Dome system in a blowout 420-9 vote. Thank you to the members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrats and Republicans alike, for the sweeping support for Israel and commitment to its security, saidBennett, the Israeli prime minister, taking a swipe at the tiny group of eight Democrats and one Republican who voted against it. Those who try to challenge this support received a timeless answer. That money is in addition to the $500 million the U.S. gives to Israel for missile defense every year as part of a nearly $4 billion annual package. The funding being appropriated today simply continues and strengthens this support, said Pelosi. Passage of this bill reflects the great unity, in Congress on a bipartisan and bicameral basis, for Israel. Security assistance to Israel is vital, because Israel security is an imperative for Americas security.

The same month, a large bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives passed a massive $768 billion defense spending bill, allocating some $25 billion more than the Biden administration requested. Efforts by some progressive Democrats to thwart the unrequested increase were defeated when more than a dozen Democrats joined the Republicans to block their amendments. We have produced a product that everybody in this House can be proud of, said Democratic Rep.Adam Smith, chair of the Armed Services Committee. The ranking Republican on that committee, Republican Mike Rogers, told Politico that the bill is laser-focused on preparing our military to prevail in a conflict with China.

Soldiers hold machine guns and grenade launchers in position as part of a military exercise simulating the defense against the intrusion of Chinese military, amid rising tensions between Taipei and Beijing, in Tainan, Taiwan, on Nov. 11, 2021.

Photo: Ceng Shou Yi/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Perhaps the most enduring foreign policy moves to come in the Biden administration will center around the U.S. posture toward Beijing. Successive U.S. administrations have gradually shifted toward a more adversarial China stance. At the same time, China has steadily spread its sphere of soft power influence globally and, along with Russia, has reasserted itself as an alternative to the U.S. as a prime business and diplomatic partner. On Capitol Hill, a sort of bloodlust has been brewing over China, with Democratic and Republican lawmakers pushing for more aggressive U.S. policy, particularly to confront Chinas actions in self-governed Taiwan. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. was moving toward a strategy that would enable Taiwan to develop an effective asymmetric defense strategy and capabilities that will help ensure its security, freedom from coercion, resilience and ability to engage China on its own terms, according to a declassified strategy document that also called for an enhanced combat-credible U.S. military presence and posture in the Indo-Pacific region to uphold U.S. interests and security commitments. The objective is to defeat Chinese actions across the spectrum of conflict.

At a CNN town hall on October 22, Biden was asked whether the U.S. could keep up with China militarily and whether it would defend Taiwan. Yes and yes, Biden replied. Militarily, China, Russia, and the rest of the world knows we have the most powerful military in the history of the world. Dont worry about whether were going to theyre going to be more powerful. What you do have to worry about is whether or not theyre going to engage in activities that will put them in a position where there they may make a serious mistake. Asked directly if the U.S. would come to Taiwans aid if China attacked it, Biden said, Yes, we have a commitment to do that. At least one Democratic lawmaker has floated the idea of preemptively giving Biden war powers against China in the form of a very narrow and specific contingent authorization for the use of military force to prevent China from invading Taiwan, or deter them. Rep. Elaine Luria, the vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee and a retired Navy officer, told Politico the aim would be to remove strategic ambiguity and the need to wait for congressional debate.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has staked out a hard-line position on Taiwan, calling for a return to Taiwans independent participation at the U.N., which has not happened since 1971. Beijings Foreign Ministry spokesperson strongly rebuked this move, sayingBlinkens statement seriously violates the one-China principle and the stipulations of the three China-US joint communiqus, violates the promise it has made, violates the basic norms governing international relations, and has sent a seriously wrong signals to the Taiwan independence forces.

Under Bush, Obama, and Trump, the U.S. has increased arms sales to Taiwan, and the islands president recently confirmed in an interview with CNN the presence there of U.S. soldiers. It was the first official confirmation of the U.S. military deployment by a Taiwanese president in decades. It has been an open secret for some time that U.S. special operations forces are operating in Taiwan, and the Pentagon actually posted a since-deleted video in 2020 showing its special forces engaged in a joint training exercise,called Balance Tamper, with Taiwanese troops. In August, the Biden administration proposed its first $750 million arms sale to Taiwan following Trumps approval of more than $20 billion dollars in sales of a range of tanks, MQ-9 Reaper drones, and other sophisticated attack aircraft, as well as cruise missiles. The Obama administration approved roughly $14 billion worth of sales. Beijing, which has intensified its military maneuvers around Taiwan, has expressed outrage at the acceleration of the weapons sales. Chinese President Xi Jinping recently warned that the Asia-Pacific region cannot and should not relapse into the confrontation and division of the cold war era.

Duringa virtual summit between Biden and Xi on November 15, bothleaders acknowledged the potential for grave dangers posed by an acrimonious relationship, and the White House sought to portray the meeting as Bidens effort to mold a competition-without-conflict doctrine on China. Still, Xi warned Biden that the U.S. was playing with fire with its stance on Taiwan and cautioned againstbuildingdivisions and alliances that wouldinevitably bring disaster to the world.

The fact remains that the U.S. is the largest arms dealer in the world.

While U.S. rhetoric about China has grownincrementally belligerent over the past decade, it is important to note that the U.S. spends more on defense than China, Russia, India, the U.K., Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, and Australia combined. U.S. politicians go to great lengths to emphasize the menacing nature of Russia and China on the international stage, but the fact remains that the U.S. is the largest arms dealer in the world. A recent report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which has documented international weapons sales and trafficking since 1950, found that since 2011, the U.S. has significantly increased its share of global arms sales, as have NATO members Germany and France. During the same period, Russian and Chinese weapons exports have decreased.

China is a robust military power within its sphere of influence and geographic control, but its ability to impose its will globally by force is anemic compared to the U.S., particularly when combined with the broader capabilities and spending power of the NATO alliance. [T]he view that China is the United States chief competitor and even adversary has become widespread and ingrained, and the similarities in the two administrations approaches far outweigh any differences, noted Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. U.S. policy toward China has hardly changed since Biden became president.

President Joe Biden and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, right, talk at a 9/11 memorial after a summit at NATO headquarters in Brussels on June 14, 2021.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

On Bidens first trip to Europe as president, to attend the June G7 summit and then meetings with NATO, he was welcomed as a hero. Trump had consistently ridiculed NATO and many European countries and repeatedly violated diplomatic norms, threatening to pull the U.S. out of the alliance and characterizing it as an unnecessary and irrelevant waste of U.S. resources. Such talk, contrasted with Trumps warm rhetoric about Russian leader Vladimir Putin, was a cause of constant concern among NATO nations. Trumps threats to withdraw had sent officials scrambling to prevent the annual gathering of NATO leaders in Brussels last July from turning into a disaster, reported the New York Times in 2019. The Times added that a NATO summit in Washington, D.C., to mark the alliances 70th anniversary was downgraded to a foreign ministers gathering, as some diplomats feared that Mr.Trump could use a Washington summit meeting to renew his attacks on the alliance. Foreign Policy described Bidens reception at the NATO gathering last June: A long-lost friend returned to the global stage, just as he promised his country would do. And who could ignore the expressions of relief even joy on the faces of global leaders. It was the return of the prodigal superpower.

At the NATO meetings, Biden and other leaders emphasized expanding the scope of what they consider to be the alliances role in protecting Western interests with a focus on the growing influence not only of Russia, but also of China, a nation far from the north Atlantic. NATO is critically important for U.S. interests in and of itself. If there werent one, wed have to invent one, Biden said. It allows America to conduct its business around the world in a way that never would have occurred were it not for NATO. Jens Stoltenberg, NATOs secretary general, celebrated the return of Biden and spoke of the need to confront Beijing. China is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal with more warheads and a larger number of sophisticated delivery systems, he said. It is opaque in implementing its military modernization. It is cooperating militarily with Russia, including through exercises in the Euro-Atlantic area.

Biden welcomed the launch of the NATO 2030 agenda, which lays the groundwork for an increasingly confrontational disposition toward both Russia and China. The last time NATO put together a strategic plan was back in 2010, when Russia was considered a partner and China wasnt even mentioned, Biden observed. That era, he noted, was over. We talked about the long-term systemic challenges that Chinas activities pose to our collective security today. A NATO fact sheet on the 2030 agenda states: The rules-based international order, which underpins the security, freedom and prosperity of Allies, is under pressure from authoritarian countries, like Russia and China, that do not share our values. This has implications for our security, values, and democratic way of life.

U.S. policy has, for years, steadily pushed China and Russia into even tighter partnership. The escalation of rhetoric from NATO, particularly about China, is likely to further embolden leaders in both Beijing and Moscow. This dynamic in turn strengthens the position of neo-Cold Warriors in Congress and the U.S. national security bureaucracy who have agitated for a more hostile U.S. and NATO posture.

Biden has long been a staunch supporter of NATO expansion and was instrumental in several NATO military actions in the 1990s, including the 1999 bombing of Serbia and Montenegro. In that case, Biden was a chief architect of President Bill Clintons 78-day bombing campaign, which was waged in defiance of congressional opposition. But after the 9/11 attacks, Biden praised the Bush administration for its overtures to Putin. In remarks delivered at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing in 2002, Biden emphasized the centrality of NATO expansion to U.S. interests and expressed optimism that the U.S. could work with Putin. Im pleased that President Bush is carrying on an important work begun by the last administration of bringing new members into NATO and reaching out to Russia. 9/11 has created historic opportunities to continue to process a reconciliation with Russia, Biden said, describing Putin as a Western-friendly Russian leader of a type not seen since Peter the Great.

Bidens rosy assessment of Putin would soon fade away as the mirage of post-9/11 camaraderie disappeared, and Biden and Putin found themselves at sharp odds over NATO expansion. NATOs aggressive push eastward since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union has been a constant point of concern and anger in Russia, and Putin in particular has made challenging that expansion a priority. Biden claims that as vice president in 2011 he told Putin directly, Im looking into your eyes, and I dont think you have a soul. Putin, he said, looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, We understand one another.

The elite foreign policy consensus on Putin often reduces Moscows actions to cartoonish villainy.

The elite foreign policy consensus on Putin often reduces Moscows actions to cartoonish villainy. This perspective, which was also shared by a powerful faction of Russia hawks within the Trump administration, encourages a view that the U.S. with its foreign military bases and multiple simultaneous wars has the moral standing and credibility to judge and police Russias actions. Russia is, without question, a violent actor that has repeatedly shown little hesitation to use force both internally and externally. But refusing to consider the security and sovereignty concerns that fuel some of Moscows actions bolsters an ahistorical narrative.

During the Obama presidency, the deteriorating relations culminated in an incendiary situation when a pro-Western government seized power in Ukraine in 2014, following sustained anti-government protests backed by the U.S. and European Union nations. The Russian government accused the U.S. and NATO of fomenting an anti-constitutional armed coup that brought down the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. A civil war erupted. On one side were supporters of the new government, including not just military and police forces but also neo-Nazi paramilitaries; on the other were pro-Russian militia backed by Moscow. In response, Putin deployed Russian troops to annex the Crimean Peninsula, which the U.S., NATO, and Ukraine all maintain is Ukrainian territory. At the time, Biden was the Obama administrations point man on Ukraine and an aggressive proponent of moving Ukraine toward NATO membership.

In 2015, Noam Chomsky who would go on to win the praise of mainstream liberals for his criticisms of Trump and support for Biden argued that it was a mistake to ignore Russias overarching concerns about the U.S. and NATO roles in Ukraine. Whatever you think about Putin think hes the worst monster since Hitler they still have a case, and its a case that no Russian leader is going to back down from, Chomsky said on Democracy Now! in 2015, noting that the new Ukrainian government passed a resolution to move forward with NATO membership. Russia is surrounded by U.S. offensive weapons sometimes theyre called defense, but theyre all offensive weapons. No Russian leader, no matter who it is, could tolerate Ukraine, right at the geostrategic center of Russian concerns, joining a hostile military alliance.

Since then, Moscow has periodically deployed forces in large numbers to border areas of Ukraine, sparking saber-rattling from the U.S. This dynamic has made the former Soviet republic an increasingly important front line in NATOs fight to push east and Putins campaign to reverse it. The U.S. has steadily ramped up its support, both overt and covert, for anti-Russian forces in Ukraine. The Kremlin has simultaneously supported armed, pro-Russian separatist militias, particularly in the east of the country, where thousands have died in a bloody civil war raging over the past seven years.Since 2015, the U.S. has had troops in western Ukraine on what is officially a training mission, and, under Biden, the U.S. and NATO have increased naval activities in the Black Sea region. Moscow has accused the administration of seeking to provoke Russia through such aggressive U.S. military action. In October, after NATO expelledeight Russian diplomats from Brussels and accused them of beingundeclared intelligence agents,the Kremlinannounced it was ending its diplomatic engagement with NATO andshutting down the alliances diplomatic mission in Moscow.

Ukraine is set to receive nearly half a billion dollars in security assistance, with Biden continuing the Trump administrations transfer of lethal weapons and military training. In November, Ukraines embassy in Washington, D.C., posted a tweet, boasting that it had received the delivery of approx 80,000 kilos of ammunition from the U.S., stating that it was part of the increased security assistance directed by President Biden asa demonstration ofcommitment to the success of a stable, democratic, & free Ukraine. The November 14 tweet contained images of what appeared to be the offloading of munitions at an airstrip. The situation has steadily deterioratedduring the first year of Bidens presidency and, with Moscow and the U.S. and NATO all intensifying their activities around Ukraine, some analysts of the region have warnedthat the developments could once again lead to overt conflict.There are very, very dark clouds on the horizon,Michael Kofman, director of the Russia studies program at the Center for Naval Analyses, toldU.S. military publication Stars and Stripes. Russia, he said, has full control over how they deliver gas supplies to Europe, adding, Winter is perfect time for a military operation.

Biden has maintained the Trump administrations opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic to Germany, which could double Russian gas exports to Europe and cut off a source of income to Ukraine. In mid-November, German energy regulators, citing laws governing the operation of subsidiaries, temporarily suspended certification of the project amid pressure from Washington,some EU states,and Ukraine. Kyiv has accused Russia ofblackmailing Europe by inflating gas pricesand argued that if Moscow is allowed to circumvent Ukraine, it wouldemboldenPutin to consider a full invasion.

As vice president, Biden was a central player in bolstering Ukraines military and intelligence capabilities while simultaneously working to impose and expand sanctions on Russia over its Ukraine policies. (That role came under intense scrutiny as the scandals that led to Trumps first impeachment unfolded.) The United States does not and will never recognize Russias purported annexation of the [Crimean] peninsula, and we will stand with Ukraine against Russias aggressive acts, Biden said a month into his presidency. We will continue to work to hold Russia accountable for its abuses and aggression in Ukraine.

Despite Trumps subservient rhetoric toward Putin, on a policy level there is more continuity than difference between the two administrations. The Trump administration was an aggressive opponent of many of Russias international actions, expelling Russian diplomats and imposing an array of sanctions against government officials and private citizens. Russia hawks within the Trump administration fought to increase funding to the European Defense Initiative by more than 40 percent from Obama-era levels and opened the official flow of lethal aid to Ukraine, a move Obama had publicly resisted. Daniel Vajdich, a senior fellow at the pro-NATO Atlantic Council, argued, When you actually look at the substance of what [the Trump] administration has done, not the rhetoric but the substance, this administration has been much tougher on Russia than any in the post-Cold War era.

Those sentiments were echoed by Richard Haass, the Council on Foreign Relations president. [W]hatever Trumps personal regard for Putin, the Trump administrations posture toward Russia was in fact fairly tough. It introduced new sanctions, closed Russian consulates in the United States, and enhanced and expanded U.S. military support to Ukraine all of which has continued under Biden, Haass wrote in a blunt assessment of the foreign and national security policies of the Biden administration. Haass asserted that there is far more continuity between the foreign policy of the current president and that of the former president than is typically recognized.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump watch a Navy Blue Angels and Air Force Thunderbirds fly over at Trumps Salute to America event on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 4, 2020.

Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

The Trump era was, for many people, terrifying. And for understandable reasons. Yet it is important to strip away the veneer of Trumps insanity and audacity, without minimizing the actual dangers he posed, so that we can analyze his administrations policies and set them in a proper historical context. Doing so makes clear that U.S. commitments to militarism and permanent global war are enduring and bipartisan even when large swaths of the electorate and the political class despise a president and view him as corrupt, incompetent, and dangerous.

What does it say about a country that manages to stay the imperial course through such a diverse succession of leaders as George W. Bush (and Dick Cheney), Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden?

A nation that was willing to confront its bipartisan addiction to wars, militarism, and the national security state would have viewed Trump as an extroverted and blunt representation of the worst aspects of the U.S. role in the world. His time in office should have spurred deep reflection and a desire to change course. Instead, mainstream discourse has devolved into a stream of ahistorical drivel that treats Trump as a grand anomaly and pretends that the pre-Trump course was somehow just, moral, or smart.

The Biden presidency is a caretaker government, and its constituency is the War Party.

Biden has spent a half-century in public office in what has effectively been a career-spanning run for the presidency. In the end, his long-sought victory in 2020 was the product of the stubborn inevitability that has marked his political life and that of Americas enduring militarist juggernaut. It is fitting that Bidens rise to the nations highest office follows the historic election of a former reality television star. Bidens ascent embodies the essence of a decaying empire struggling to maintain its dominance by steering the ship of state back to familiar waters. But the Biden presidency is, perhaps more than any in recent history, a caretaker government, and on issues of counterterrorism, militarism, and national security, its constituency is the War Party. The bedrock principles of this bipartisan coalition revolve around a nonnegotiable set of understandings:

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From Bush to Obama, and Trump to Biden, U.S. Militarism Is the Great Unifier - The Intercept

The Long Slide: Thirty Years in American Journalismby tucker carlsonthreshold editions, 288 pages, $28

Tucker Carlson has become such a fixture in the world of cable-television news that its easy to forget he began his journalistic career as a writer. And a very good one at that, as this wide-ranging and immensely entertaining selection of essays from the past three decades serves to demonstrate. Carlsons easygoing, witty, and compulsively readable prose has appeared everywhere from The Weekly Standard (where he was on staff during the nineties) to the New York Times, the Spectator, Forbes, New Republic, Talk, GQ, Esquire, and Politico, which in January 2016 published Carlsons astonishing and prophetic article titled Donald Trump is Shocking, Vulgar, and Right. That essay has been preserved for posterity in these pages, along with twenty-two other pieces, plus a bombshell of an introduction written expressly for the occasion. More of that in a moment.

The first response of many of todays readers, particularly those who dont like the tenor of Carlsons generally right-populist politics or the preppy swagger and bubbly humor of his TV persona, will be to dismiss The Long Slide as an effort to cash in on the authors current notoriety by recycling old material to make a buck. That was my assumption when I first opened this collection. But the book has an underlying unity, and a serious message. It evokes a bygone age, an era of magazine and newspaper journalism that seems golden in retrospect, and is now so completely gone that one must strain to imagine that it ever existed at all. The simple fact is that almost none of these essays could be published today, certainly not in the same venues: They are full of language and imagery and a certain brisk cheerfulness toward their subject matter that could not possibly pass muster with the Twittering mob of humorless and ignorant moralists who dictate the editorial policies of todays elite journalism.

Carlsons writing style reflects the influence of the New Journalists such as Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson, who brought a jaunty, whiz-bang you-are-there narrative verve and high-spirited drama to the task of telling vividly detailed stories about unusual people and places, generally relating them in the first person. Carlsons prose is not as spectacular as Wolfes or as thrillingly unhinged as Thompsons. But it has its own virtues, being crystal clear, conversational, direct, and vigorous, never sending a lardy adjective to do the work of a well-chosen image, and never using gimmicky wild punctuation or stretched-out words to fortify a point. Hes a blue-blazer and button-down-collar guy, not a compulsive wearer of prim white suits or a wigged-out drug gourmand wearing a bucket hat and aviator glasses. But many of Carlsons writings give the same sense of reporting as an unfolding adventure, a traveling road show revolving around the reactions and experiences of the author himself.

Carlson usually shows a certain fundamental affection for the people he writes about, even if he also ribs or mocks them in some ways. In particular, there is none of that ugly contempt for the booboisie and ordinary Americans that one finds, for example, in the pages of H. L. Mencken, and in a great deal of prestige journalism. Instead, he reserves his contempt for the well-heeled know-it-alls who genuinely deserve it. In that sense, the Carlson of these essays does not seem very different from the Carlson of today. He always has been a bit of a traitor to his class, and commendably so.

That provides another good reason for this books existence. There is a cottage industry of articles out there, no doubt drawing upon thousands of gossipy lunch conversations among employed and semi-employed members of journalisms envious Hive, about the horrifying transformation that Carlson is alleged to have undergone. Tucker Carlsons transition, says the speechwriter-comedian Jon Lovett, from conservative serious-ish writer to blustery CNN guy to Daily Caller troll to race-baiting Fox News host is like ice core data on what led to this moment in our politics. Or consider the words of Liz Lenz in the Columbia Journalism Review: If we can figure out how an intelligent writer and conservative can go from writing National Magazine Awardnominated articles and being hailed by some of the best editors in the business, to shouting about immigrants on Fox News, perhaps we can understand what is happening to this country, or at least to journalism, in 2018.

Both of these no-doubt-formidable analysts are on to something. Tucker Carlson is indeed a figure of real significance in the culture of todays journalism. But not for the reasons they think. They might get further in their ruminations if they were willing to entertain the thought that it is not Carlson, but their own industry, that has changed almost beyond recognition; and that he is a brave outlier standing against a smug profession that routinely confers plaudits and prizes on itself for demonstrably false reporting and naked political advocacy.

Carlsons topics here run the gamut. The first of the essays is a long, elaborate, and rollicking tale (originally published in that New Journalism redoubt, Esquire) about a 2003 trip to West Africa in the company of some Nation of Islam members, plus Cornel West and Al Sharpton, all of whom were seeking to stop the civil war in the nation of Liberia. If that sounds like a perfect concept for a certain kind of situation comedythe rather plummy, very white, and bow-tied Carlson plunked down into and cooped up on an 11-hour Ghana Airlines flight with a group of black nationalists who couldnt mediate their way out of a paper bagyou have the idea. Throw in Professor West delivering himself of earnest disquisitions about the dialectic and paradigms and the horrors of an imperial imposition, and a Chicago pastor railing against the deadly corrupting evils of such television fare as I Love Lucy, and we have a comic feast on our hands.

Yet the article is far more than mockery. Carlson always seeks to humanize, not demonize, his subjects. West comes off as a bit of a fool but not a fake. The NOI members are earnest believers in some very strange and disturbing things, but also terrific conversationalists, smart and informed and well-mannered. And perhaps the greatest surprise of all is how well Sharpton comes off. There is a certain residual decency that shines through, underneath all the bluster and manipulation. If you find that hard to believe, all I can say is that you need to read the essay. It wont be a spoiler, though, for me to tell you in advance that the mission to Liberia failed.

Along with their humor, the essays excel in a certain kind of broad-brush portraiture. We see Ron Paul, the straight-arrow libertarian whose commitment to ideas is so intense that his aides must guard the absent-minded candidate against wandering into a gaggle of prostitutes in front of the cameras. We meet James Carville, the populist plutocrat and Democratic campaign consultant extraordinaire whom Carlson describes unsparingly, but then calls one of my favorite people in the world . . . a genuinely wise man whom he has consulted repeatedly for career advice.

There is an engrossing portrait of a driven John McCain campaigning for the Republican nomination for president in 2000: an endlessly complex and enigmatic bundle of contradictionsone minute a petty schemer, the next minute a soaring idealist, spontaneous to a fault, a witty devil-may-care quote-machine irresistible to journalists, but also a man whose high spirits and spurts of generosity and altruism would often give way to a darkness in his nature that led to regular eruptions of sheer destructiveness. A similarly subtle profile of George W. Bush as of September 1999 shows him as a remarkably open man, equipped with a brilliantly pungent sense of humor as well as a long memory for slights and grudges, whose main qualification for the White House was the fact that, unlike so many other maniacally aspirant politicians, the job of president appeared to be one that he could take or leave.

Not all of the portraits are of famous people. Carlson the writer resembles Wolfe in embracing the full spectrum of American eccentricity, and marveling at the strong and colorful oddities that a free society allows to exist. Carlsons childhood fascination with dangerous toys and explosives led him to discover Joel Suprise of Appleton, Wisconsin, whose fascination with creating ever more powerful and elaborate potato cannons led him to start his own business, the Spudgun Technology Center, which still exists today. Two essays are devoted to Derek Richardson, a con-man beggar and identity thief whom Carlson tracked down after himself being the credulous victim of the mans game. The second essay ends sadly, with the revelation of the failed life and parental disappointment behind the trajectory of this chronic deadbeat.

As this example suggests, not all of the essays are light and easy. There are serious and highly detailed accounts of the heavy use of private contractors in prosecuting Operation Iraqi Freedom, and on the persistent appeal of eugenics, though it now goes by such names as genetic counseling and prenatal diagnosis. But Carlson generally eschews the kind of moralizing and sermonizing that is required of our new media masters, preferring to show the spectacle to his readers, and leave it to them to decide what they think about it.

The introduction, however, takes a different tack. It is Carlsons apologia for the book, and it is hard-hitting. He remarks upon the changed tone of journalism since the days when these essays were written. In 1991, journalists were proud to be open-minded, and I was proud to become one. . . . Editors saw themselves as the guardians of free speech and unfettered inquiry. . . . Being despised was something you bragged about. It meant you were telling the truth.

He then goes on to describe a portion of the long slide alluded to in his title, concentrating on the descent of the book trade. He tells the story of Simon & Schusters rapid decline, beginning with its 2017 cancellation under pressure of a book deal with gay-conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. The story culminates in an excruciatingly embarrassing dialogue between Carlson and two S&S executives who find themselves unable to explain the companys decision to cancel Sen. Josh Hawleys The Tyranny of Big Tech, while moving full steam ahead with Hunter Bidens pseudo-book Beautiful Thingseven as Biden was under active investigation by the Justice Department for his shady business dealings in China.

The only possible explanation for this asymmetry is that publishing today, like journalism, has become nakedly politicized. It never occurred to me, Carlson says, that a story of mine might be killed, or rewritten into mush, because some executive thought Id voted the wrong way. If small-minded partisans had been in charge, I never could have stayed in the business. Now they are the ones in charge. At this point, people with my opinions cant [stay in the business]. Theyve been driven from traditional journalism.

And there is the problem. Anyone serious-ishly interested in examining ice core data on the causes of journalisms decline, and achieving a better understanding of what is happening to this country, need look no further than this story, along with the rest of the book. There the reader will find some sparkling examples of what a talented journalist once could do in a society freer than todays. Perhaps the next generation will make use of them.

Wilfred McClay is professor of history at Hillsdale College, and author most recently of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.

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Tucker Carlson, Class Traitor | Wilfred M. McClay - First Things

SINGAPORE (CelebrityAccess) ASM Global, the venue management and consultancy formed by a merger of AEG Facilities and SMG Worldwide, announced a major expansion in the Asia Pacific region with plans to open a regional headquarters in Singapore.

We believe that this part of the world is ready for a phase of robust growth, and were investing in personnel and plans to ensure were at the forefront of a significant growth curve, said ASM Global CEO and President Ron Bension.

ASM Globals new regional command post will be led by a joint leadership team that includes the appointment of executive vice president of operations Paul Sergeant, OBE, and Ed Sanderson as executive vice president of venue development.

Sergeant, who joined ASM Global three years ago, brings more than 3 decades of relevant experience to the role. He most recently served as senior vice president. A seasoned industry veteran as well, Mr. Sandersons resume includss more than 2 decades of commercial and operational experience in venues and facilities across Asia, most recently with Populous.

Both Sanderson and Sergeant are expected to take up their roles in Singapore by the end of the year.

This is an exciting development and reinforcement of the importance of this region to our organization and the expansion of our regionally based business activities, said ASM Global APAC Chairman and Chief Executive Harvey Lister AM. Having our ASM Global APAC industry professionals like Paul and Ed on the ground will bring a wealth of local knowledge and experience to our operations.

ASM Global already has a substantial presence in the region, operating venues such as Shenzhen World Exhibition and Convention Center, the under-constrution Kai Tak Sports Park, as well as six future arenas that have already secured managemenet deals with ASM Global.

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ASM Global Names Paul Sergeant, OBE, and Ed Sanderson To Lead Their New Regional Office In Singapore - CelebrityAccess - CelebrityAccess ENCORE

Results from golf league play around Polk County through Nov. 22 with format, date, event and winners by flight or class in alphabetical order.

Big Cypress 18-Hole Ladies, 6-6-6, One Best Ball, Two Best Balls, Three Best Balls, Nov. 16: Darlene Wohlers/Betsy Griggs/Gail Hanus/Blind Drawn (Pat Frank) 134, Cathy Kosmicki/Jennifer Renaud/Pat Frank/Blind Draw (Kay Hink), Diana Berube/Nancy Holroyd/Terri Traggio/Carol O'Neil and Joanne Burkemper/Allison Letourneau/Julia Shay/Blind Draw (Lise Stearns) all tied at 135. Closest to pin: Nancy Holroyd and Pat Frank.

Cleveland Heights Tuesday Women's, Ts and Fs, Nov. 16: First Flight - Barbara Kupitz 38.5, Vicki England and Kathey Milligan tied at 40.5, Susan Prevatt 41; Second - Barbara Schucht 37.0, Chris Westlund 40.0, Shirley Kalck 40.5.

Eaglebrooke 2021 Member/Member Championship, Nov. 13/14: Shootout Champions: J.P. Machek/Albert Sagnella; Al Hanif/Dave Conway. First Flight - Al Hanif/Dave Conway 137, Kyle Thomas/Reggie Alford 138; Second Flight - J.P. Machek/Albert Sagnella 141 on a playoff over Dan Girata/Steve Sharp; Third Flight - Sam Morrone/John Siddle 138, Mike Campbell/Bill Thom 140; Fourth Flight - Bob Hartley/Tony Longa 135, Keith Volkmann/Kyle Volkmann 137; Fifth Flight - Dave Daniel/John Laughlin 138, Bobby Palsa/Bill Glynn 140; Sixth Flight - Tom Seagraves/Bobby Kormos 142, Rob Clancey/Gene Hall 152.

Grasslands Women's, Low Gross/Low Net, Nov. 18: Red Division Gross - Danette Hensel 86, Linda Inslee 91, Net - Kitty Kennedy 72, Ann Zavitz 73; Silver Gross - Barb Fuchs 106, Net - Mary Ellen Krakowski 87; Purple Gross - Linda Bosko 106, Irene Bullara 109, Net - Maureen Browne and Rita Selvage both at 80.

Hamptons Couples, Two-Man Best Ball, Nov. 20: Debbie Barner/Scott MacGregor/Pete Wright/Cindy Wright 88, Paul Egan/Lesley Parsley/Margaret Campbell/Mike Frain 90, Melinda Taylor/Wayne Smithson/Ken Zeop/Luise Zeop 92. Closest to pin: No. 5 - Michael Foster; No. 12 - Lesley Parsley. Best Score: Pete Wright and Mike Frain both at 65; Sally Fiske 72.

Hamptons Friday Men's Nine-Hole/Mixed, Stableford, Nov. 19: Dan Koster plus 5, Betty Taylor plus 1, Ed Morris even.

Hamptons Thanksgiving Scramble, Nov. 22: Carson Ciavaradone/Brian Stiles/Chase South/Makayla Dewberry minus 10 on a match of cards over Rob Brooks/Greg Stephens/Don Livingston/Terry Foster, Jeff Snowball/Tim Clark/Dick O'Hora/Gary Stewart minus 9. Closest to pin: No. 7 - Bill Colclaser; No. 11 - Makayla Dewberry.

Hamptons Tuesday Men's, Net Stroke Play, Nov. 16: A Flight - Ron Davis 58, Billy Stalilonis and Dave Trombley both at 61; B - Joe Schultz 50, Bill Mann 55, George Bradley 58. Closest to pin: No. 3 - Ron Davis; No. 7 - Don Livingston; No. 11 - Dave Trombley; No. 13 - Bill Colclaser.

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Hamptons Wednesday Stableford, Nov. 17: Front plus 8, Back plus 10, Overall plus 18 - Ed Caplette/Larry Baker/Chuck Tronvig/Dick Hunnicutt. Closest to pin: Front No. 6 - Greg Stephens; No. 7 - Joe DeBonis; Back No. 13 - Billy Stalilonis; No. 15 - Clarry Sachman. Best Score: Don Livingston 62.

Highland Fairways Women's, Two-Week Eclectic Tournament, Low Gross/Net, Nov. 9/16: First Team Gross - Cee Lawrey 57, Net - Joyce Cruise 48, Robin Slattman 50, Dawn Kling 51; Second Gross - Donna Schnetzka 66, Net - Dori Dong 49, Chari Prunoske 52 on a match of cards over Kathy Puttick; Third Gross - Debbie Bell 68, Net - Dottie Schad 44, Elaine Oblinger 46, Brenda Adams 48. Closest to pin, First Team, first and second week - Vicki Fioravant; Second Team, first week - Jonetta Middleton, second week - Kathy Puttick; Third team, first week - Peg Ostrander, second week - Betty Conner.

Lake Ashton Blue Man Group, Four-Player Teams, Best Net from Executive Tees, Nov. 10: Front 9 - Darrell Saxton/Jim Stauffer/Bob Franzese/Ghost, Dave Hetherington/David Neuner/Bill Bothwell/Jim Jameson and Bob Olesen/Jerry Ryan/Jim Smith.Jim Wagner all tied at 23, Mike Ferraro/Ken Petroff/Leo McCafferty/Charles Lindberg 24. Back 9 - John Ziebell/Don Tuttle/Tom Prindiville/Rick Amirault, Howard Kay/Bill Testa/Clyde Kitts/Larry Oliszewski and Richard Burns/Ed Pan/Tom Hicks/Mike Costello all tied at 24, Dave Hetherington/Davis Neuner/Bill Bothwell/Jim Jameson 24. Closest to the pin: Front Nine No. 8 - Don Tuttle; Back Nine No. 12 - Darrell Saxton. In The Box Plus One Best Net, Nov. 17: Front 9 - Dana Ferrande/Jerry Ryan/Clyde Kitts/Mike Costello 59, Gary Robillard/Bob Yeager/Don Fuller/Larry Oliszewski 61, Bob Garvin/David Neuner/Jim Smith/Bob Franzese 62; Back 9 - Dana Ferrande/Jerry Ryan/Clyde Kitts/Mike Costello 59, Howard Kay/Ralph Ludwick/Don Tuttle/Tom Prindiville 61, George Wilkinson/Art Luke/Tom Hoisington/Dan Papineau 66. Closest to pin: Front 9 No. 8 - Chuck Hunziker; Back 9 No. 13 - George Wilkinson.

Lake Ashton Ladies 18-Holers, Opening Day, Step-A-Side Scramble, Low Gross/Net, Nov. 16: First Flight Gross - Cindy Peck/Jackie Howison/Kim Novak/Cecily Harmon 68, Deb Nettleton/Kathy Ryan/Jackie Tressler 70, Net - Linda Franz/Carole Ferrieri/Dawn Neigh 56.3, Trish Kellar/Karen Lapointe/Nancy Testa/Sandy Alfano and Sue Fitzgerald/Jan Kipp/Sue Kurtz/Sue Buss tied at 57.9; Second Gross - Mafie Walker/Patti Panone/Kim Kutsch/Melissa Marsden 73, Deb Louder/Carol Morse/Joanne McKinley/Sandy Fleischmann 74, Net - Karen Young/Alex Latuk/Kathy Reed/Mary Donaldson 57.1, Char Walter/Mur Bouman/Pam Pagel/Judy Wyckoff 58.8. Closest to pin: No. 3 - Karen Lapointe; No. 12 - Carol Morse; No. 7 - Kathy Cargel; No. 14 - Sue Fitzgerald.

Lake Ashton Ladies Niners, Two Best Nets, Nov. 16: Carolyn Aalvaro/Alina Lindstrom/Missy Presott/Loretta Hieronomous 54, Fran Kramer/Joan Senecal/Dot Bothwell/Pat Chipak 57, Sue Plahuta/Marilyn Lancaster/Carol Gillespie/Janice Serencko 59. Closest to pin: No. 13 East - Mary Lopez.

Lake Ashton Men's, Two Best Nets, Nov. 17: Donn Yasz/Don Larsen/Frank Vasquenza/Blind Draw 120, Tom Fleming/Ted Hall/Dave Kubissa/Pat O'Neill 123, Jim Young/Jim Phillips/Steve Kettels/Mike Lavigna and Rolly Geyer/Tom Murphy/Ed Hansen/Don Abbott. Closest to pin: No. 3 - Gary Bushaw; No. 12 - Ted Hall.

Lake Bess Tuesday Men's Scramble, Random Team Draw, Nov. 6: Jim Woods/Pat Ferrio/Jimbo Stevens/Ollen Melvin minus 7. Closest to pin: No. 3 - Pat Ferrior; No. 7 - John Henderson.

Lake Wales Women's, Points in Flights, Nov. 16: Red Division First Flight - Sue Craib plus 2, Deb Hollowell plu 1; Second - Sue Vokes plus 4, Shirley Weatherford plus 1; Green First Flight - Carol McGuire plus 1, Claire Douglas minus 1; Second - Brigette Fell plus 4, Jean Merchand plus 1.

Lakeland Elks Lodge 1291 Monday League, Sandpiper, Nov. 22: A Flight - Lee Laborde plus 7, Doug Grant plus 3, J.R. Richardson plus 2; B - Ben Allred plus 8, Bob Haskins plus 3, Carol Payne plus 2. Closest to pin: No. 6 - Max Muench (50/50); No. 15 - Ben Allred.

Lakeland Men's Senior, Wedgewood, Nov. 22: Flight A - Mike Parillo plus 7, Greg Holmberg plus 4, Mike Frost plus 2; B - Wayne Clark plus 5, Dave Brown plus 4 on a match of cards over Joe Stevens; C - John Weber plus 2, Duane Gilles plus 1, Henry Bishop minus 1 on a match of cards over Wayne Welsch. Closest to pin: No. 8 and No. 15 - Bob Box. Low Gross: Bob Box 71.

Schalamar Creek Couples', Designated Driver Scramble, Nov. 17: Dan Heinzerling/Sally Heinzerling/Richard Romero/Linda Romero 70, Don Mead/Joyce Mead/Tom Mahar/Barb Mahar 75. Nine-Holers: Rick Johnson/Cynde Johnson/Ted Reid/Ginny Reid 37.

Schalamar Creek Ladies', Individual Low Gross/Low Net, Nov. 16: Green Tee Flight Gross - Joyce Mead 93, Pat Atherton 74; Yellow Gross - Jennifer Keser 92, Net - Gail Swint 68, Barb Mahar 79; Niner's Flight Gross - Jeanne Watters 51, Net - Maryse Capobianco 36.

Schalamar Creek Men's, One Best Ball Gross Plus One Best Ball Net, Nov. 15: Howard Basso/David Peer/Ed Herring/Al Horvath 133, Dan Heinzerling/Pat McGee/Jack Dorsey/Rich Baxter 137 and Don Swint/David Gray/Arlan Atherton/John Russell 141.

BARTOW INDIVIDUAL POINTS, Wednesdays, nine holes, make up your own foursome, $17 ($12 green fee and cart), pays all plus scores, night specials in the lounge. Call 863-533-9183.

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS MENS, tee times available 7:30-8:30 a.m. Wednesday through Monday and Friday, groups or individuals welcome, quota points with skins optional, eight to 10 groups now play. Call Paul Boeh at 863-738-4129.

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS TUESDAY WOMENS, every Tuesday, tee times start at 8:30 a.m. Call Shirley Kalck at 863-853-9566.

HAMPTONS TUESDAY MEN'S LEAGUE, accepting new players. Call 844-882-8157 for more information.

HUNTINGTON HILLS TWO-ASIDE, Saturdays, 18-Hole Points Quota. Check in by 8:15 a.m. Contact Terri White at 863-5594082 or eagle-2par@aol.com.

HUNTINGTON HILLS WHY WORRY WEDNESDAYS, Nine-Hole Quota Points, 5:15 p.m. shotgun start. Contact Terri White at 863-559-4082 or eagle-2par@aol.com.

LAKELAND MENS SENIOR GOLF, 7:30 a.m. shotgun starts, Mondays, play against golfers within your handicap. Call Dave Brown at 419-656-5747.

LPGA AMATEUR GOLF ASSOCIATION is looking for women to play in weekly Wednesday league and every other Saturday at various courses in the Winter Haven/Lakeland/Orlando and other areas. For more information, email Kathy Mannahan at pjacobs21@tampabay.rr.com.

POLO PARK MENS TUESDAY SCRAMBLE, 7:30 a.m. sign in. Random team draw. 18-Hole. For more information, call Polo Park Pro Shop at 863-424-3341.

POLO PARK MENS SATURDAY SCRAMBLE, 7:30 a.m. sign in. Random team draw. 18-Hole. For more information, call Polo Park Pro Shop at 863-424-3341.

WEDGEWOOD THREE-MAN SCRAMBLE, nine holes; Tuesdays at 5 p.m.; call Marcus at 863-858-4451 by 2:30 p.m. to play.

WEDGEWOOD TWO-ASIDE GAME, 9 a.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays; 18-hole points game with skins and blind draw; call Marcus at 863-858-4451.

WEDGEWOOD MIXED CO-ED SCRAMBLE, 2 p.m. Thursdays. Call Marcus at 863-858-4451 by 1 p.m. to play.

E-mail results of local golf tournaments, aces and upcoming tournaments to mquinn@theledger.com; or mail to Golf News, Ledger Sports Department, P.O. Box 408, Lakeland, Fla., 33802. Include complete scores and league names. Deadline is Monday at 5 p.m.

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Scorer's tent: Polk County golf league and tournament scores - The Ledger

On Thursday, Ringer Films will debut the latest installment of its HBO Music Box series, DMX: Dont Try to Understand. Over the next few days, were chronicling the rappers rise and place in hip-hop history. Today, were looking into the lineage of the kings and queens of New York rap, a title DMX held in 1998 and burnished like no one before him or since.

To coincide with the release of DMX: Dont Try to Understand, we set out to give the proper context for where X fits in the annals of New York rap. While record sales are one thingand those videos of him controlling thousands of fans like a marionette are anotherits difficult to quantify just how monstrous his impact was in 1998, the year he dropped two chart-topping albums and knocked hip-hop, and the industry around it, off its axis.

So we looked back and forward from that midpointfrom recorded raps beginnings in the late 1970s all the way through the presentto pinpoint who, at any moment, was the king or queen of New York rap. Some reigns are years long and others last a handful of weeks; all had a creative and cultural impact that helped shape a genre and a city.

This exercise is not perfect and does not provide a holistic view of rap in New York in any given year. It naturally does not document any of the underground movements that, collectively, come to be just as crucial as any single star. Sometimes two deserving artists reach the height of their powers at the same time; sometimes, as with Ghostface (and debatably with Camron), a rappers time on the throne does not align with his or her creative peak. A critical reader might have questions like How could this model be tweaked to reflect the contributions of someone like Kool Keith? Or Where the fuck is Prodigy?! But this project is not aiming for a universal lensinstead its trying to identify those moments when a rappers supremacy becomes unquestionable.

What it does is trace the chain of custody, like a title belt in boxing, of that elusive thing that DMX had in 1998. At times, there is no king or queen of New Yorkother times two, three, or five people might have credible claims on the title. But tracking this speaks directly to one of raps most romantic appeals: the ability to capture, on record and for posterity, the fits of inspiration that once were the ephemeral draws of house parties and park jams.

It was Grandmaster Caz who first rapped and DJed simultaneously, practically serving as a one-man transitional phase for the genre as its focal point moved out from behind the decks. While he and the other Cold Crush Brothers were in demand as performersand the Bronx-bred Caz in particular was widely recognized as one of the premier rappers of the moment, with his metronomic, quickly paced rhymes presaging the more complex internal patterns that rappers like Rakim would later perfectthey were ambivalent about cutting records. So when their manager, Big Bank Hank, passed Cazs lyrics off as his own on the Sugarhill Gangs Rappers Delight, there was as much confusion as outrage about the commercial breakthrough by a group of unknowns. Years later Caz would recall saying, upon hearing the song that cribbed from his notebook: Who the fuck is they?

After studying the proto-rapping of pioneers like DJ Hollywood, Harlems Kurtis Blow fused hip-hops disco roots with street-level reportage. His deal with Mercury made him the first rapper signed to a major label, and The Breaks is recorded raps first masterpiece: tragic and comic, its grievances alternatingly petty and gothic.

On July 13, 1977, New York City went dark. From about 8:30 p.m. through the morning of July 14, virtually the entire city was without electricity. There was naturally a lot of small-time crime under the cover of darkness, some of it vital to hip-hops development: Grandmaster Caz claims to have liberated at least one mixing board from an electronics store, with countless other producers and DJs rumored to have done the same. Whatever the hardware situation, it was that post-blackout morning when a Bronx teenager named Melle Mel officially joined forces with an iconic DJ and handful of other young rappers to form Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

In the late 70s and early 80s, the group performed constantly and cut a handful of records, including the crucial singles Superrappin and Freedom. But in 1982, Melle Mel tweaked the groups approachand expanded the possibilities for rap as a vehicle for sociopolitical commentary. The Message (and its unnerving documentary video) pays off what The Breaks merely suggested. Its view of poverty and social immobility in New York is as panoramic as it is nihilistic: bill collectors terrorizing debtors, dead bodies swinging like pendulums in jail cells. All the buildings was burnt out, Melle Mel would later say, recalling the Bronx of his youth. It looked like a war zone. The Message was an urgent dispatch from the front lines.

The tracksuits and gold ropes might have come from Jam Master Jay, the punishing bass from Larry Smith, and the more-than-capable counterpoints from DMC. But it was the Hollis, Queensborn Joseph Run Simmons who became the fulcrum around which rap pivoted after his groups 1983 debut. Once a DJ for Kurtis Blowand, crucially, the younger brother of Russell, who would go on to found Def JamRuns rhyme style was more urgent, more staccato than that of his predecessors. Perhaps more importantly for this projects purposes, he was the first rapper to make the sucker MCs in his rhymes into abstract, nearly mythic foes rather than some person he might have run into at a club in the Bronx. He made the question Who is the best rapper alive? an existential, rather than clerical one. Run-DMCs commercial peak would come later, with 1986s Raising Hell, which was produced by Rick Rubin and featured the Walk this Way duet with Aerosmith. But by then New York was bending toward younger rappers with ever more intricate styles and slang. Its the early, swaggering, Larry Smithproduced work that cements Runs place in the canon.

If you leaf through history books, youll find some royals who bided their time before taking their thrones by force, and others who were thrust into power when they barely into their teen years. Roxanne Shante is both, a preternatural talent who staged a coup when she was just 14. That was the year the Queens native bumped into Marley Marl and the legendary DJ Mr. Magic; together, they hatched a plan to record a response to U.T.F.O.s Roxanne, Roxanne. Roxannes Revenge not only launched Shantes career, but sparked the Roxanne Wars, an endless string of response records that smuggled raps battle ethos onto wax.

LL Cool J raps like he was dropped in a vat of charisma as a child. Just as importantly, he spent his formative years in Queens studying early hip-hop, a fixation his family encouraged: His mother scrounged money to buy him a drum machine, and his arsenal of hardware was rounded out by his grandfather, a jazz saxophonist. By the time he was in high school, he was cutting his own demo tapes and lobbing them to record companies; he landed at the newly formed Def Jam, and 1984s I Need a Beat was the second rap single the label ever issued. Radio, released late the following year, made him a superstar.

LLs debut was produced almost entirely by Rick Rubin, whose beats are confrontationally spare (his credit on the LPs back cover reads Reduced by Rick Rubin). Their monstrous low ends are balanced by LLs vocals, which brim with personalitythe raps are forceful, but their edges are sanded down just a bit when compared to Runs rawer early work. Radio was merely the first of six platinum albums that LL would release through 1997, and he would continue to be a highly visible rapper and actor into the 2010s. But the commercial breakthrough that his first album represented would spawn rappers who surpassed him, either in terms of sheer celebrity or pointed opposition to it.

In 1985, when LL was finishing his first platinum record and buying his nth gold rope, a teenager named Lawrence Kris Parker was scamming his way into a different kind of metal. A resident of the Franklin Avenue Armory Mens Shelter on 166th St. in the Bronx, Kris would claim phony job interviews to receive free subway tokens from the shelters employment program. One social worker, Scott Sterling, sniffed out the grift and confronted Kris; the two got into a shouting match so heated they had to be separated by building security. Weeks later, the two had become inseparableas KRS-One and DJ Scott La Rock, the founding members of Boogie Down Productions.

BDP cut some demos; early listeners, including Mr. Magic, were indifferent. So when Magics Juice Crew compatriot, MC Shan, released a single called The Bridge, KRS was all too eager to fire back, even if doing so required a willful misunderstanding of the songs lyrics. Shan has always claimed that the story, in The Bridge, of how it all got started way back when is merely him telling the story of how rap in Queensbridge began, rather than making the claim that hip-hop began in Queensbridge. But KRSs responsesSouth Bronx and especially The Bridge Is Overvaulted him to the top of New York; his careening vocals, which flaunted his Jamaican roots, boomed across the boroughs.

KRS would go on to cement himself as one of the greatest rappers ever, with an extensive catalog and unshakable, if sometimes rigid perspective, but Scott La Rock would tragically not live to see this. In 1987, just a few months after the release of BDPs staggering debut, Criminal Minded, he was killed after trying to mediate a feud between the other BDP member, D-Nice, and a pair of men. He was 25.

There is studied cool and then the kind that cant be taught; Rakim excelled in both categories. A naturally charming high school quarterback on his native Long Island, Ra would also pore over the dictionary and pages of notebook paper, which he divided into grids so that the syllables in his raps would land just so. Though hungry for opportunity, he would not pander to an audience, no matter how distinguished it was: When he got a chance, as a high schooler, to record in the already legendary Marley Marls home studio, he sat on a couch to lay his vocals, refusing Marleys urges to rap more animatedlyadvice that was echoed by the similarly revered MC Shan, who dropped by the session and was similarly ignored. That unshakable poise preserved a truly distinctive voice. Paid in Full is the greatest rap album of the 80s. Ras cutthroat perspective, Five Percenter teachings, andmost importantlyhis intricate internal rhymes mutated the form forever.

By 1988, Slick Rick was already something of a legend. La Di Da Di had been a hit for two summers: It was on tapes and mix shows in 85 and on radio in 86. That single earned him a reputation as hip-hops first great longform storyteller; you wouldnt have to look hard to find people who claim that his first LP, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick, is still the apex of narrative writing in the genre.

Ricks own life story reads like a parable. Born in London, blinded in one eye by broken glass as a baby, and ferried to the Bronx just as rap was beginning. He absorbed the culture but retained that lilting accent; he covered the eye first with a utilitarian patch, then ones that were studded with diamonds. Later there would be two stints in prison and marathon battles with immigration services. But at his sharpest, Rick was as inimitable a writer as he was a vocalist, his tales as uproariously funny as they could be unbelievably grave. See Childrens Story, which is at turns sarcastic and shockingly violent, a tidy little bedtime tale that ends with the police murdering a 17-year-old. Rick raps: I still hear him scream. Then he tucks the kids in.

Where many of raps early stars were shockingly youngLL and Rakim got their starts in high school, Run-DMC broke through when that pair had just started universityLong Islands Chuck D was a college graduate and veteran DJ before Rick Rubin came across one of his demos and lured him to the then-upstart Def Jam, and he was about to turn 27 when Public Enemys debut, 1987s Yo! Bum Rush the Show, was released. Though authoritative and frequently engaging, that album might have seemed an immediate relicChucks political discontent rendered in cadences that were rapidly becoming obsolete over early Bomb Squad beats that skewed too often toward the circa-85 Def Jam style that Radio typified.

It was Public Enemys sophomore record, 1988s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, that transformed the group into one of the most vital the genre would ever see, and Chuck into one of its most inimitable voices. While the beats grew stranger and more serrated, Chuck sharpened his writing, taking vicious swings at the press, the lawyers, and the feds. (That final group was the target of the finest Public Enemy song, Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos, which opens, unforgettably: I got a letter from the government the other day / I opened and read it, it said they were suckers.) Backlash to the groups political affiliations rattled Chuck only momentarily; PE returned the following year with Fight the Power, which soundtracked Spike Lees Do the Right Thing and distilled his mission statement into a single song.

On 1990s Fear of a Black Planet, The Bomb Squads ravenous sampling became cacophonous in the best waya way that would become legally impossible in the years to comeand Chucks command of his cannonlike baritone only deepened. (So did his interplay with the other PE members; look no further than the way he and Flavor Flav play their vocal tones off one anothers on the opening line of Fight the Power.) As a songwriter, Chuck showed how to explore each nook and crevice of his psyche without conceding to a political or aesthetic middle. He did not compromisehe doubled down.

While Rakims first two albums vindicate his choice, made on Marleys Marls couch, to preserve the placid voice Marley tried to turn more aggressive, 1990s Let the Rhythm Hit Em belatedly allows some of that agitation to seep in. Rakims deeper vocal tone on Rhythm, 92s Know the Ledge, and the same years Dont Sweat the Technique implies a fury that only he could harness so effectively and use to reclaim the throne hed relinquished.

From The Breaks on, the crime rendered in rap music has been treated as literal truthby white critics unwilling to grant creative license to Black artists, by cops trying to pin charges on rappers, and by voyeuristic fans. Kool G Rap challenged this by writing harrowing crime tales that played like pulp novels or mob pictures, the violence heightened and stylized, the stakes dizzying but ready to reset when the tape turned over. The mafioso bent to New York rap in the mid-90severything from Only Built 4 Cuban Linx to It Was Written, from the suits Jay wore on his album covers to Big taking his nickname from King of New Yorkcan be traced directly to the Queens native. But G Rap is more than just a blueprint. The Juice Crew linchpin was also one of the great technical innovators of his era, his cadences so pliable they would sound fresh if heard for the first time today. With 1992s Live and Let Die, his third album with DJ Polo, G Rap cemented himself as one of the great American crime writers in any medium.

As the 1980s gave way to the 90s, the Native Tongues movement spearheaded by A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and the Jungle Brothers was fast becoming one of the most significant aesthetic and ideological forces in rap. Tribes second album, The Low End Theory, was particularly foundational, stripping away layer after layer from each songs mix until little remained beyond bass and the Queens native Q-Tips slightly biting wit. Their follow-up, Midnight Marauders, was released toward the end of 1993, by which point the Native Tongues were losing collective steam (that was the year a De La song famously stated That Native shit is dead). But Marauders confirmed Tribe as stars big enough as to be undeterred by that sand-shifting, and Q-Tip as the buoyant, increasingly provocative engine behind them, an MC and producer with few peers, the purest representation of raps connection, in sound and spirit, to jazz.

Illmatic was not a surprise. Nasir Jones was a prodigyraised in the Queensbridge Houses and bitter, even as a 13-year-old, that the Juice Crew didnt recruit him for the Bridge Wars. His verse on Main Sources Live at the Barbecue, released when he was still 17, made him a commodity; the following year, in 1992, he signed to Columbia, dropped the Nasty from his stage name, and got to work on that debut album, which would be rushed to avoid bootlegging and immediately dubbed a classic by The Source. And still, the fervor barely captures the achievement. Over a collection of beats by the most in-demand producers in New YorkQ-Tip and Pete Rock, DJ Premier and Large ProfessorNas deepened the grooves that Rakim had first scratched, his labyrinthine verses full of hairpin turns and internal rhymes so complex as to be mathematical. The technique dazzled, but was ultimately beside the point. What elevates Illmatic above even those rare albums that match its precision is the depth of feeling Nas brings to his early childhood memories of Queens, the hints of performance in his nominally reassuring letters to a friend behind bars, the kind of premature weariness only a precocious 20-year-old can channel on his birthday. Just months before, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) had offered a tantalizing new paradigm for how rap songs could sound. Illmatic did something different: It looped back around to raps beginningsNass transparent baby face on its cover, clips from Wild Style in its introand recoded the DNA that mapped the genres most basic elements.

There is no evidence of Christopher Wallace being less than a genius. The few early, amateur recordings that survive betray superhuman timing and a fearsome intelligence; Big was the most observant person in the room and also the funniest, his words tumbling out in perfect time. When the studio sessions for his first album were halted because the guy who signed him got fired from the label, Big shrugged, then moved down to Raleigh so he could sell drugs and keep eating. When he came back to New York the following year, not only had his skills not atrophiedhis voice had grown richer and smoother, his natural charisma translating even more clearly than before. Oh, and he didnt need to write the rhymes on paper anymore. He simply remembered them.

At this point even the most arcane bits of trivia are widely known. (There are a lot of murals.) But the cottage industry actually undersells Bigs sheer brilliancethe breathtaking detail of his story raps, his disarming willingness to say truly ugly things on record, the way that ugliness burnished his myth while undercutting the very notion of rappers as heroes. Ready to Die is like a brilliant short story collection, each song finding a novel way into its narrative action, each character distinct. Not even Rae and Ghosts disapproval could make a meaningful dent. Its follow-up, the double-disc Life After Death, is a two-hour heat check, proof that Big had mastered every style of popular rap before the age of 25.

In his too-brief life, Big was not only the best and most popular rapper in New York, but the one who made that crown seem crucial. See Kick in the Door, the swaggering DJ Premier production from Life After Deaths first disc, a cryptic diss so beloved that Nas would later boast he was one of its targets. On that song, Big mocks the rappers who took home Ready to Die, listened, studied shit and those who were still recouping, perhaps a reference to Nas, who was rumored to have rented clothes for the 1995 Source Awards. Whatever his intentions, Kick in the Door made one thing clear: The mantle was Bigs, and anyone seeking it had better up his game dramatically.

On March 9, 1997, Christopher Wallace was shot and killed at the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. He was 24 years old. The case remains unsolved.

The absence left by the tragedy is not the same as the creative ebbs and flows documented throughout this exercise; Big left a void that would not immediately be filled. This is not to say there were not significant records coming out of New York. Mases Harlem World and Puffs No Way Out kept Bad Boy briefly in the limelight; Busta Rhymes was becoming a genuine solo star after splitting from Leaders of the New School; on a smaller scale, the release of Company Flows Funcrusher Plus presaged the Def Jux takeover that would happen in the first half of the next decade. But the summer belonged to Wu-Tang. From November of 93 on, the group from Staten Island had rap in something just short of a chokehold: Not only was 36 Chambers a landmark achievement, but at least three of the five solo albums released in that span could be considered masterpieces. Their second group effort, Wu-Tang Forever, was maximalist in every sense, a sprawling double disc that features some of the members sharpest, most idiosyncratic writingand likely confirms Ghostface Killah as the best rapper in New York at a moment when there couldnt be one, at least in spirit.

It is strange to consider that there was time before DMX. His 1998, which saw the release of a debut album, Its Dark and Hell Is Hot, and its follow-upFlesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, coaxed out of him by Def Jam, which offered a million-dollar bonus if he could cut another album in 30 dayswas practically apocalyptic. Raised way up in Yonkers, Earl Simmons honed his jagged voice and accumulated three lifetimes worth of stories and spiritual angst before unleashing them in what came to seem like a single, unbroken outburst. Few artists in any genre have had such an unquestionable stranglehold over their fields at a given time. What makes Xs music resonant to this day is his ability to lurch from an urgent, all-id present tense to moments of tortured self-inventory. He would plead with God and snarl at his enemies; sometimes he caught himself mistaking the two.

After Bigs death, Jay-Z made an explicit move for the throne. In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, released less than eight months after the assassination, taps Puff and the Hitmen for production duties and features a number of crossover attempts, including one called The City Is Mine. It sold significantly better than 1996s Reasonable Doubt, but did not quite make him a superstar; he would cross that threshold in 98, with Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life and its quartet of massive singles. But 98 belonged to DMX. It wasnt until the following year, when Jay stabbed Un Rivera dropped his third album, Vol. 3 Life and Times of S. Carter, that he could credibly claim New York as his own.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in the Marcy Houses, Jay apprenticed under Jaz-O, who was known as one of that boroughs best unsigned rappers until he landed with EMI and allowed that label to torch his imagewith a video that featured his young apprentice. Jay took what he learned from Jaz (the cautionary business tales, the hypertechnical fast-rapping that he would perfect, then slow down into something more wieldy) and reassessed. By the time Vol. 3 was released to huge fanfareit went triple-platinum in 14 months despite rampant bootleggingJay was simultaneously the center of the pop-rap universe and one of the genres most daring stylists. This sort of dual-track focus allowed him to hold the crown while he transformed his image: Vol. 3 gave way to 2000s The Dynasty: Roc La Familia and then to The Blueprint, on which Jay sank deep into midtempo raps over warmly rendered soul samples and successfully cemented his legacy among establishment critics.

From its inception, rap had evolved at a breakneck place; those at its center one day might seem obsolete the next. But Jay-Z released albums as if by metronome, one every year, and grew steadily bigger. He was ruthless in boardrooms and had an omnivorous ear that let him subsume bubbling styles into his own. Jay famously wore a Che Guevara shirt when he taped MTVs Unplugged on November 18, 2001, but at that moment he seemed more like Castro: inevitable and here indefinitely.

While Jay was making his way to the top of the food chain, Nas was watching his reputation erode. His excellent second album, It Was Written, was the subject of considerable debate among fans and critics when it came out, some balking at its occasional commercial sheen. A planned third album was decimated by leaks, and each of two LPs he released in 1999 was met with mixed reviews. On The Blueprint, Jay attempted to put Nas out of his supposed misery with Takeover, a diss song that poked at Nass diminishing credibility and implied a relationship with the mother of Nass child. It did not seem to leave a lot of room for spin.

But five days after Jay taped Unplugged, his reign came to an abrupt end. Ether, Nass scorched-earth response to Takeover, was so powerful that it tipped the balance of power back in his favor almost instantly, paving the way for his triumphant, five-mic comeback album, Stillmatic. There is a reasonable case to be made that, in hindsight, Takeover is both a better song and more surgical diss than Ether. But to hand the fight to Jay is to ignore every shred of context. If the King of New York title is like a boxing belt, and each individual feud its own match, then that sports rules apply: It doesnt matter whos ahead on the cards when someone lands a knockout blow.

All the way back when 50 Cent was Fifty Cent, Jam Master Jay was running the Queens native through a very specific type of boot camp. The Run-DMC legend, who signed the rapper to a production deal after a chance meeting outside a Manhattan club, would invite 50 to the studio, put on a beat, and make him write a hookthen another, and another after that. Its the type of rote work that would likely frustrate a young artist; its also the type of experience that would come in handy if that young artist was one day left for dead and expected to claw his way back if he expected anything at all.

The story of 50s ill-fated Columbia deal, near-assassination, and long recovery is, by this point, well known. Even someone unfamiliar with the details would recognize the aftermath: the bulletproof vests as couture, the lisp caused by shrapnel left in his tongue. When the industry was convinced 50 was too toxic to touch, he forced the issue, recording a deluge of bewilderingly charismatic mixtape songs, the funniest and most menacing in rap at that moment. What followedthe deal with Interscope, the XXL cover with Eminem and Dr. Dre, the debut album that was as hyped as any since Doggystylewas a well-deserved coronation.

By the time Get Rich or Die Tryin was out, 50 was teasing the G-Unit album, Beg for Mercy; when that dropped, he was already giving interviews about his sophomore set, originally called St. Valentines Day Massacre. It would later be revealed that during this period he was also writing songs for the Game, whose own debut, The Documentary, was a priority for Interscope. By the end of that run, 50 had simply burned out. But at that point, he was so massive that his falteringhe lost a first-week sales showdown in the fall of 2007 to Kanye Westwas cast as a signal that all of gangsta rap was obsolete. There has not been a superstar like 50 since 50, and the economics of the record industry are such that there likely never will be again. Drake, whose breakthrough at the end of the 2000s marked the beginning of a new era, is bigger by any measure, but his continued supremacy is the product of careful calibration: His syntax is constantly updated to flow with the prevailing winds, as is his Rolodex. In 2002, 50 made himself inevitable through brute force, a villain to his core.

You could argue that Camrons creative or cultural apex came earlierin that post-9/11 fugue when Dipset was gleefully referring to itself as Harlems Al-Qaeda; on 2002s Come Home With Me, which featured his first major hits; on 2000s SDE, simply because he said I aint no rapper, B, I skeet Uzis / And I cant actturned down three movies; or all the way back in high school, when he was allegedly outplaying Stephon Marbury in high school ball. But you seize the opportunity when its presented. With Jay-Zs retirement and 50s burnout rapidly becoming apparent, Cam struck at the very end of 2004 with Purple Haze, a delirious, overly long album that contains some of his most gleefully eccentric writing, some of his most poignant work, and songs that would go on to spawn entire subgenres of rap years later (map Get Em Girls onto the maximalist circa-2010 Lex Luger beats that would define the decade to come). Few rappers from New Yorkor anywherehave had the gift for language that Cam does, or the will and wit to bend it into such Daliesque shapes. One of the two great disses of 50 didnt hurt, either.

By 2006, Ghostface had already released two of the greatest rap records ever by a solo artist, arguably stolen a third, taken his groups sprawling second album on all scorecards, and rattled off so many other staggering verses that some could disappear into the file-sharing abyss without causing him to pause or falter. And still, Fishscale seemed like a rebirth, a mid-career Supporting Actor Oscar that keeps the offers rolling in. At a time when rappers and fans were wringing their hands over hip-hops future (and New Yorks place in it), Ghost returned to his careening, Joycean crime stories, burglars stomachs growling as they smell onions grilling below their break-ins. Speaking of Oscars, his second LP of the year, More Fish, features one of the most charmingly outlandish tales in Ghosts repertoire, a song about how his original script for a Ray Charles biopicand idea to cast Jamie Foxx in the starring rolewere stolen during a meeting at a P.F. Changs.

A half-decade after 50 Cent made a mockery of the A&R process by littering mixtapes with pop hooks catchier than the current Top 40, and just as Lil Wayne was turning the beats for radio hits into canvases for virtuosic freestyles, the Harlem-bred Max B blurred every meaningful line that remained: the ones between harmony and monotone, the avant garde and the middle, man and myth. Despite spending only five years of his adult life free from prison or jail, Biggaveli has an extensive catalog, the best of which was released between January 2007, when he was bailed out of jail, and June 2009, when he was found guilty on murder conspiracy and robbery charges and sentenced to 75 years in prison. (That sentence was shortened by a 2016 plea deal. Many reports suggest a 2021 release date, though at press time Max B remains incarcerated.) His work is comical but full of dread, muddy but with a distinct musicality, and his tapes from this era are DatPiff classics that could just as easily have been best sellers.

By the end of the 2000s, New York rap seemed to be in disarray. The traditional CD sales model had crumbled, throwing the label system into chaos; years of fretting about ringtones, snap music, crunk, and the South generally had reached deafening levels. But 2009 did see three major albums by three New York veterans, each remarkable in its own way: MF DOOMs final studio album, the gruff, muscular Born Like This; Raekwons Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt. II, which smartly splits the difference between nostalgia and the cutting edge; and The Ecstatic, which is secretly Mos Defs best solo LP. Those last two albums reach back even further, making superb use of Slick Rickon OB4CL2s cheeky We Will Rob You and The Ecstatics Auditorium, which is built around one of the finest verses of The Rulers career.

Roc Marciano is like if the Velvet Underground only wore mink: Seemingly everyone who heard the self-produced solo work he started issuing in 2010 launched his or her own underground rap projet, and his influencethe minimal, sometimes drumless beats, the cartoon luxury enjambed against horrific naturalismis widespread in mainstream and underground rap today. Starting with his seminal Marcberg, the Long Island native stripped any sound or narrative structure he found excessive from his songs, while reveling, among what remained, in excess itself. He raps like a Bond villain whose origin story is simply Koch-era New York City.

While a new underground was taking shape, the early 2010s were a more uneven time for the pop-rap side of New York. There were entrancing one-offs212 is almost enough to single-handedly win the crown for Azealia Banksbut few obvious heirs until Halloween 2011, when A$AP Rocky uploaded his breakthrough mixtape, Live.Love.A$AP. The Harlem natives $3 million deal with RCA had made him the subject of considerable speculation, but it was the tape itself that signaled the arrival of a major player. Masterminded by A$AP Yams, the enterprising Dipset-intern-turned-Tumblr genius, Rockys style was a web of interconnected influences: Memphis and Houston, high fashion and street sensibility, flourishes from late-2000s indie music and his birth name, Rakim. Rocky has gone on to be a reliable chart-topper and fixture on the festival circuit; it was at his careers very beginning when he held his hometown in a vise grip.

Karim Kharbouch grew up outside of Casablanca. He became French Montana only after his family moved to the Bronx, where he immersed himself in New York rap culture by producing with a friend a series of DVDs called Cocaine City, Smack knockoffs that became very popular among the sort of people who buy Smack knockoffs. An early alliance with Max B made him a semi-compelling also-ran; circumstance and just enough charm made him, for a brief moment in the early 2010s, the most inescapable New York rapper. The title of his album from 2021, They Got Amnesia, is appropriate: Anyone who denies his ubiquity circa 2013 is only lying to themselves.

Its been well documented that Bobby Shmurdas story is a microcosm for the way rap music is used by police and federal agencies as a pretext for harassing or jailing Black people. But the Brooklyn rappers breakthrough single, Hot N****, is also emblematic of what makes New York hip-hop so regenerative and exciting: Here is a completely unknown teenager who, in three minutes and without the aid of a chorus, not only made himself a star, but made it seem for a second like the city, the world orbited around him and his friends. Hot N**** takes its beat from a Lloyd Banks song released two years prior. That Banks song was inconsequential, which is not to say it was thrown together thoughtlessly. The sound of the crow [in the beat] was because I loved those gothic horror movies, its producer, Jahlil Beats, said recently, but it was also to symbolize that death is always stalking Black people in America. It can strike at any moment.

It is very easy to imagine a course of history in which Nicki Minaj is associated with cities other than her hometown. The Trinidadian rapper, who grew up in Queens, was introduced to many on Lil Waynes 2007 mixtape Da Drought 3; her own breakthrough record, 2009s Beam Me Up Scotty, was recorded mostly in Atlanta, where she became closely associated with Gucci Mane, the greatest talent scout of his generation. But a half-decade after Scotty, Nicki had stepped out of all those shadows. She was cutthroat but wildly animated, with pop hits and menacing mixtape cuts dropping simultaneously. Her album from 2014, The Pinkprint, was a blockbuster, merging her Billboard instincts with her most outre, experimental tics.

After trying and failing to break into the industry in the 90s as a member of the group Natural Elements, Ka retreated for years, returning in the 2010s as one of hip-hops great auteurs. His formally inventive, chillingly cryptic records, which are not only self-produced but packaged and shipped by hand, made waves to the point that he was the target of a 2016 front-page hit piece in the New York Post. In the ecosystem of underground rappers who have scavenged for old styles to repurpose in radical new ways, Ka is the apex predator. Honor Killed the Samurai, his album from the same year as the Post piece, is a master class in economy, not an inessential hi-hat or preposition to be found. While he seldom writes long, linear narratives, he is not dealing in the quick quips of early 50 Cent or in Ghostfaces psychedelic free association. Ka writes instead in short thoughts that often turn to aphorism, as if every bar is something a wise uncle often repeated. But there is little comfort to be gleaned from the advice. Dread suffuses his work, as if hes frozen in the last few seconds before a horror movies first kill.

It is tempting to see transfers of power as paradigm shifts in terms of how music will be discovered and distributed in the futureto say that 50s mixtape run marked a new era of artist agency, or that Max Bs signaled the end of albums as a format all together. Cardi Bs rise dispels that notion. Despite entering the public consciousness through Instagram and reality TV appearances, Cardis musicher breakthrough mixtapes and debut album, 2018s Invasion of Privacyquickly allowed her to take over terrestrial radio, making her a monocultural figure in a time that was thought to be incapable of producing any more.

Though drill, with its roots in dance musics complex drum programming, was a uniquely Chicagoan invention, its Brooklyn permutation runs neck and neck with Ka and Roc Marcis sneering minimalism as the most compelling subgenre in 2010s New Yorkand its breakout figure, Pop Smoke, quickly became the citys most obvious new star in some time. From his debut single, Welcome to the Party, the Canarsie natives voice was unmistakable, a mix of 50 Cents husky baritone and Max Bs playful atonality. His first mixtape, 2019s Meet the Woo, was produced almost entirely by 808Melo, an East Londoner whom Pop Smoke found online and flew out to New York. The unlikely pairing yielded an instant classic. Pop Smoke became so beloved in the city that by the summer of last year, the seemingly apolitical Dior came to soundtrack protests against police violence.

But he did not live to witness this repurposing of his single. On February 19, 2020, Pop Smoke was murdered during a home invasion in Los Angeles. He was only 20 years old.

As was the case after Bigs murder, Pop Smokes death leaves a vacuum. Brooklyn drill is still mutatingits now spread to the Bronxand the postEarl Sweatshirt sound typified by rappers like MIKE and Navy Blue is thriving. But the latter scene seems uninterested in the type of celebrity were noting here; none of Pops drill contemporaries, like Sleepy Hallow or Sheff G, have quite been able to seize the mantle, and while Fivio Foreign was this summers buzziest rapper based on his Donda appearance, hes a ways off from being fitted for the crown. Wiki, once an irreverent upstart as the frontman of Ratking, is now a reliable veteran who excels in the sort of autobiographical writing that is quickly canonized. Ka and Roc Marciano are still refining their visions in careful increments; the Griselda crew is having a moment, though they hail from Buffalo and seem to be making a knowing play for nostalgia. For the moment: a void.

The king or queen of New York as a concept will never be as tantalizing as it was during Bigs reign, and could never be enjoyed with the same unqualified fun after his death. It also seemed to hold less prestige as the 2000s wore on and New York was deemphasized in national rap conversations. But at the beginning of the 2020s, hip-hop is in a fascinating place: While the internet allows for rapid exchange of ideas and aesthetics, the genre is in some ways as regionally siloed as ever, with distinct stylistic movements in Michigan, Baton Rouge, Los Angeles, and exurban Florida to name just a few. Pop Smokes run was a reminder that New York is as likely as any city to produce the genres next great driver or interpreter of soundand that, when a new star does come from New York, he or she can bend the entire genre into their orbit.

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The Complete History of the Kings and Queens of New York Rap - The Ringer

The Casting Society of America has announced its full list of nominations for the 37th Artios Awards.

Deadline reports that since Broadway had been dark throughout the nomination process, the society would instead honor virtual theatre productions that happened throughout the year, naming it the Virtual Theatre Award.

Winners will be announced on March 17, 2022 at an in-person ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Check out the full list of nominations below!

ART - Michael Donovan, Richie FerrisDUCHESS! DUCHESS! DUCHESS! - JC ClementzMANIC MONOLOGUES - Stephanie KlapperSWEAT - Lindsay BrooksTENNESSEE WILLIAMS' THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA - Stephanie Klapper

THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT - John Papsidera, Kim Miscia, Beth BowlingGIRLS5EVA - Cindy Tolan, Anne DavisonHACKS - Jeanne McCarthy, Nicole Abellera Hallman, Anna Mayworm (Associate)LOVE, VICTOR - Josh Einsohn, Tiffany Little Canfield, Conrad Woolfe (Associate)TED LASSO - Theo Park, Olissa Rogers (Associate)

BRIDGERTON - Kelly Valentine HendryGINNY & GEORGIA - Alyssa Weisberg, John Buchan (Location Casting), Jason Knight (Location Casting), Jamie Ember (Associate)LOVECRAFT COUNTRY - Kim Taylor-Coleman, Meagan Lewis (Location Casting), Mickie Paskal (Location Casting), Jennifer Rudnicke (Location Casting) Rebecca Carfagna (Associate), AJ Links (Associate)PERRY MASON - Sherry Thomas, Sharon Bialy, Stacia Kimler (Associate)P-VALLEY - Billy Hopkins, Ashley Ingram, Kim Taylor-Coleman, Tara Feldstein Bennett (Location Casting), Chase Paris (Location Casting)YOUR HONOR - Lauren Grey, Libby Goldstein, Junie Lowry-Johnson, Meagan Lewis (Location Casting)

A BLACK LADY SKETCH SHOW - Victoria Thomas, Leigh Jonte (Associate)CALL MY AGENT - Constance DemontoyTHE KOMINSKY METHOD - Nikki Valko, Ken Miller, Tara TreacyPEN15 - Melissa DeLiziaSHRILL - Collin Daniel, Brett Greenstein, Danny Dunitz (Associate)ZOEY'S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST - Robert J. Ulrich, Eric Dawson, Carol Kritzer, Alex Newman, Sean Cossey (Location Casting), JJ Ogilvy (Location Casting)

THE BOYS - Robert J. Ulrich, Eric Dawson, Carol Kritzer, Alex Newman, Sara Kay (Location Casting), Jenny Lewis (Location Casting)THE HANDMAID'S TALE - Sharon Bialy, Sherry Thomas, Russell Scott, Robin D. Cook (Location Casting), Stacia Kimler (Associate), Jonathan Oliveira (Associate)THE MANDALORIAN - Sarah Halley FinnPOSE - Alexa L. Fogel, Elizabeth Berra (Associate)THIS IS US - Bernard Telsey, Tiffany Little Canfield, Josh Einsohn, Ryan Bernard Tymensky (Associate)

FARGO - Rachel Tenner, Mickie Paskal (Location Casting), Jennifer Rudnicke (Location Casting), Barbara Giordani (Location Casting), Francesco Vedovati (Location Casting), AJ Links (Location Casting), Rick Messina (Associate)I MAY DESTROY YOU - Julie HarkinMARE OF EASTTOWN - Avy Kaufman, Diane Heery (Location Casting), Jason Loftus (Location Casting), Harrison Nesbit (Associate)THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT - Ellen Lewis, Kate Sprance, Olivia Scott-Webb, Tina GerussiWANDAVISION - Sarah Halley Finn, Jason B. Stamey, Tara Feldstein Bennett (Location Casting), Chase Paris (Location Casting), Djinous Rowling (Associate)

COMING 2 AMERICA - Leah Daniels-Butler, George Pierre (Location Casting)OSLO - Leslee FeldmanPLAN B - Jill Anthony Thomas, Kathleen Chopin, Anthony J. Kraus (Associate), Caroline Pommert-Allegrante (Associate)SYLVIE'S LOVE - Kerry Barden, Paul Schnee, Roya Semnanian (Associate), Rachel Goldman (Associate)THE UNITED STATES VS BILLIE HOLIDAY - Leah Daniels-Butler, Billy Hopkins, Ashley Ingram, Kevin Scott, Andrea Kenyon (Location Casting), Randi Wells (Location Casting)

ALL THAT - Nickole Doro, Shayna Sherwood, Devon Brady (Associate)ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? - Sheryl Levine, Tiffany Mak (Location Casting), Morgan Rudner (Associate)BUNK'D - Howard Meltzer, Morgan Rudner (Associate), Biz Urban (Associate)FAMILY REUNION - Kim Taylor-ColemanTHE MIGHTY DUCKS: GAME CHANGERS - Alexis Frank Koczara, Christine Shevchenko, Jackie Lind (Location Casting), Tiffany Mak (Location Casting), Gianna Butler (Associate)PUNKY BREWSTER - Brett Greenstein, Collin Daniel, Jeremy O'Keefe (Associate)YOUNG DYLAN - Kim Taylor-Coleman

BIG MOUTH - Julie AshtonBOB'S BURGERS - Julie AshtonCENTRAL PARK - Julie AshtonFAMILY GUY - Christine Terry*ROBOT CHICKEN - Christine Terry*

THE CIRCLE - Erin Tomasello, Jazzy Collins (Associate), Shannon McCarty (Associate)NAILED IT! - Samantha Hanks, Ron Mare, Heather Allyn, Shannon McCarty, Anna SturgeonQUEER EYE - Danielle Gervais, Pamela Vallarelli, Ally Capriotti GrantTOP CHEF - Samantha Hanks, Ron Mare, Heather AllynWIPEOUT - Katy Wallin

GROWING FANGS - Jessica Munks, Michael MorlaniIN FRANCE, MICHELLE IS A MAN'S NAME - Lana Veenker, Eryn Goodman, Ranielle Gray (Associate)JOSIAH - Jennifer PresserPLEASE HOLD - Amanda Lenker Doyle, Chrissy Fiorilli-EllingtonSEE YOU SOON - Freya KrasnowSTAGIAIRE - Marin Hope

THE BIRCH - Kerry Barden, Paul Schnee, Lana Veenker (Location Casting), Eryn Goodman (Location Casting), Roya Semnanian (Associate), Rachel Goldman (Associate), Ranielle Gray (Associate)EMILY'S WONDER LAB - Megan SleeperLOVE, DEATH & ROBOTS - Ivy Isenberg, Natasha Vincent, Coco Kleppinger (Associate)MAPLEWORTH MURDERS - Jill Anthony Thomas, Anthony J. Kraus (Associate)WIRELESS - Mary Vernieu, Raylin Sabo, Stacey Rice (Associate)

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The Casting Society of America Announces 37th Artios Awards Nominations - Broadway World

It is a big one for both sides.

The Cardinals can basically eliminate the Seahawks from NFC West contention and all but close their already small playoff chances.

Meanwhile, the Seahawks have to find a way to stay alive, that is all they have left right now.

Here is everything you need to know about the game.

Who: Arizona Cardinals (8-2) vs Seattle Seahawks (3-6)

Where: Lumen Field, Seattle, WA

When: November 21, 2021 - 2:25 p.m. Arizona Time

TV: Fox (Channel 10 Locally) - Kenny Albert (play-by-play) Jonathan Vilma (analyst) Sara Walsh (sideline reporter)

Streaming: Fubo TV

Local Radio: Arizona Sports 98.7 FM - Dave Pasch (play-by-play) Ron Wolfley (analyst) and Paul Calvisi (sideline)

Spanish Radio: KHOV 105,1 FM - Luis Hernandez (Play-by-Play) Rolando Cantu (Color Analyst)

National Radio: ESPN Radio - Roxy Bernstein (play-by-play) Kelly Stouffer (analyst) Jessamyn McIntyre (sideline reporter)

Odds: Cardinals -1.5Over/Under: 47.5DraftKings Sportsbook

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Arizona Cardinals at Seattle Seahawks (2021): Game time, TV schedule, and how to watch online - Revenge of the Birds

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Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders work together to block arms sale in Saudi Arabia - Eyewitness News (WEHT/WTVW)