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1 week ago | 
thespectator.com | Charles Lipson |David Kaufman |Michael Evans |Dave Seminara
Last week’s violent anti-Semitic protest at Stanford is yet another sign of a pernicious climate on many campuses. The immediate targets are Jews and Israel. The larger targets are many of the values we prize in the West. At Stanford, students broke into the university president’s office using hammers and crowbars. They proceeded to barricade themselves inside, destroy the furnishings, and scrawl noxious graffiti there and on the building outside. Some estimates say they caused $700,000 in damages.
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2 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Ross Anderson |Michael Evans |Tom Goodenough |Dave Seminara
As the Super Bowl rolled into New Orleans, with Kendrick Lamar and his flared jeans in tow, I was thinking about the many contributions that this small Louisiana city has brought to the cocktail bar. There’s the creamy green Grasshopper, the French Quarter’s whiskey-based Vieux Carré, the tropical rum punch Hurricane and, of course, the comically difficult Ramos Gin Fizz – which blooms up in a tower of egg-white froth.
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3 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Kate Andrews |Ross Clark |John Carney |Dave Seminara
When President Trump held up an easel in the White House Rose Garden illustrating each country’s “tariffs charged to the USA” and the new “USA discounted reciprocal tariffs,” there appeared to be some small print underneath the first column, barely readable. Then printed copies started to circulate the garden.
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3 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Kate Andrews |Michael Evans |John Carney |Dave Seminara
Washington, DC“My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day,” Donald Trump told the audience that had gathered in the White House’s Rose Garden for the official signing of his executive order to put import levies on goods imported to the United States from around the world.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Zoe Strimpel |Freddy Gray |Jonathan Sacerdoti |Dave Seminara
As Israelis around the world face cultural boycotts, it was uplifting to see Gal Gadot, an eighth-generation Israeli on one side and the granddaughter of an Auschwitz survivor on the other, honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday. “I think it’s going to take me time before I even realize that it’s real,” she told Variety.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Craig Raine |Catriona Olding |Alexander Larman |Dave Seminara
Liszt’s compositions tend to have descriptive titles — “Wild Chase;” “Dreams of Love” — whereas Chopin avoided titles. Thomas Wentworth Higginson wished titles on Emily Dickinson’s poems, opposed by his fellow editor Mabel Loomis Todd. They didn’t stick. Maybe this is why Dickinson is acclaimed but unread. “I heard a Fly buzz” is easier to remember than 465. We can express this truth by quoting Dickens on the Bible in Little Dorrit: “such hiccupping reference as 2 Ep. Thess. C. iii, v.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Samuel Gregg |Kate Andrews |Dave Seminara |Jane Stannus
If there is anything that all governments watch carefully, it is GDP growth. Without substantive and ongoing increases in what GDP measures — the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced in the economy over a specific time period — societies are in big trouble. That’s one reason why recessions usually result in electoral death for whoever holds office at the time. To accurately estimate total growth in an economy, everything that contributes to GDP must be measured.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Dave Seminara |Matthew Lynn |Michael Evans |Jacob Heilbrunn
In his inaugural address, Donald Trump promised to safeguard the First Amendment. “After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I also will sign an Executive Order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America,” he said.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Jane Stannus |Samuel Gregg |Kate Andrews |Dave Seminara
There’s such a thing as cutting off your nose to spite your face, and the tariff war between Canada and the US is starting to look like a prime example. On Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced a 25 percent surcharge on electricity exports to the US, affecting an estimated 1.5 million households and businesses in New York, Michigan, and Minnesota.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Amy Everett |Dave Seminara |Lawrence Osborne |Estella Shardlow
“You just missed Chris Hoy. He was here leading cycle rides over the summer,” the Peligoni Club’s receptionist informed me breezily as he lugged my suitcase down the gravel path to my villa. Lively Greek music drifted on the (non-existent) breeze, thick air seeming to press down on us despite the late hour. I’d come to Zakynthos seeking some solo restoration — and sure, even self-improvement.
