Quick, who have benefited from the U.S. more than Taylor Swift?

Tough question, right?

America has delivered endless dreams to hard-working patriots, immigrants seeking a brighter future and those who never stopped reaching for their stars.

And then there’s Swift. She’s the biggest pop star on the planet, a 30-something artist who has taken full advantage of the freedom and opportunity America offers. To her credit, she’s made the most of every chance her country gave her.

Now, it’s time to return the favor, but it won’t be easy.

Swift should agree to join the flailing Freedom 250 concert lineup, the very one that shed the vast majority of its acts in recent days. Artists like Bret Michaels, Martina McBride, Young MC and more broke their promises to appear because:

• The event proved more political than they expected (sans proof)
• The event put their lives in jeopardy (potentially true given the Left’s lust for violence)
• Everyone else is quitting, so …

Pick your choice. 

Either way, the fallout is clear. Even C-list stars aren’t willing to face the professional blowback for aligning with a concert that’s pro America and, potentially, Trump adjacent.

President Donald Trump created the Freedom 250 group to honor the nation’s 250th birthday next month. Toward that end, it designed a massive, state fair-like gathering to celebrate the milestone.

And, once progressive pressure came down on the acts in question, they bailed one by one.

Vanilla Ice may be the last act standing.

“It’s all about enjoying the great times of 250 years. From George Washington to now. All the presidents and everybody in between, this is a magical event that’s gonna happen,” he said in the video. “It’s very rare. I’m honored, man. This is gonna be epic. And that’s it. We don’t take anything too seriously, and we’re gonna bring the ‘90s, that’s how it works.”

Not all heroes wear capes. And it’s well past time for Swift to either try one on or channel her inner Ice.

Why? 

The nation’s birthday shouldn’t be a partisan slugfest. We all know if President Kamala Harris sparked the Freedom 250 group, the concert would be wall-to-wall superstars. Springsteen. Beyonce. Roan. Bunny.

Except Harris couldn’t topple Trump at the ballot box. That means artists would rather do anything except perform for the nation’s big birthday. Their patriotism ends when Democrats don’t hold the levers of power.

See how this works?

If Swift ignored the corrupt Legacy Media and her fellow progressives to anchor the ceremony, she would singlehandedly resurrect the concert.

And it would start with a soul-searching Instagram post.

Y’all know I didn’t pull the lever for Donald Trump. And I disagree with many of his philosophies. But the country’s 250th birthday is bigger than one president. It’s about the American experiment, an evolving dream that has given the world so much.

That’s why I’m putting politics aside to honor my home’s 250th birthday. And I hope you’ll join me in D.C.!

Now, the chances of that happening are even slimmer than Lloyd Christmas landing a date with his dream girl.

Still, Swift is perfectly positioned to do just that and give America the patriotic present it deserves. She’d be crucified in the media, of course. MS NOW-style outlets would burn endless calories attacking her choice.

The op-eds would be legendary, as would the snark from her fellow stars.

Remember how the press turned on her for not immediately backing Hillary Clinton for president? If you don’t, just know that some media outlets suggested she was a White Supremacist.

Really.

Swift is literally too big to cancel. If she stood her ground and sang for her country out of pure gratitude, she’d survive the “scandal.”

She survived that faux controversy. And, chances are, she’d survived this one, too.

And, here’s betting, other musicians would follow her lead. America deserves nothing less.

The post How Taylor Swift Could Save Freedom 250 Concert appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

"Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending, because that’s the true tax.

    “If you’re not paying for it in the form of explicit taxes, you’re paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or borrowing. The thing you should keep you eye on is government spending ...”

~ Milton Friedman on Money and Inflation, Q + A [13:44]

SAN BERNARDINO, CA — An attack ad against a Republican candidate reportedly had the opposite effect when it convinced a local man to vote for the Republican.

Most Americans knew the late Scott Adams for Dilbert, his beloved comic strip about an office worker and his dimwitted colleagues. Later in life, Adams became known as a kind of right-wing shock jockey. But the cartoonist caught the FBI's attention for something a little bit different: the sex crimes investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fl.) and a bizarre blackmail scheme that grew out of it.

The FBI released its files on Adams last week, five months after his death, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Reason. The records include the heavily redacted results of a background check and a request to Twitter—the social media network later renamed X—to preserve Adams' account data, including his private messages.

The investigation into Adams seems to have begun in the spring of 2021, when he was entangled in the Gaetz scandal. On March 30, 2021, The New York Times reported that Gaetz was under federal investigation for having sex with an underage teenager. Gaetz claimed that he was actually the victim of blackmail, and the federal investigation focused on the extortionists.

Three days later, The American Conservative published screenshots of a text conversation between Adams and Jake Novak, a former journalist who was then working on the media staff of the Israeli consulate in New York. (The Israeli consulate later told Politico that Novak's involvement in the Gaetz case "was not in any way, shape or form a part of his role at the consulate.")

Novak wrote to Adams that the investigation into Gaetz "is screwing up my efforts to free Bob Levinson," a former FBI agent who disappeared in 2013 while conducting an unauthorized mission for the CIA in Iran. "Gaetz's dad was secretly finding [sic] us. So I'm very much wanting this to be untrue. I've got a commando team leader friend of mine nervously waiting for wire transfers to clear," Novak explained. He claimed that Gaetz's extortion claim "burned" Bob Kent, a private investigator involved in the efforts to free Levinson.

Those efforts were unlikely to succeed. The federal government declared in 2020 that Levinson had died in Iranian captivity.

In a CNN interview, Kent acknowledged that he asked Gaetz's father for money to help rescue Levinson, but denied making any "threats" or "demands." A few months later, Florida businessman Stephen Alford—whom prosecutors called Kent's "associate"—pleaded guilty to making "materially false promises" of a pardon for Gaetz in exchange for funding the Levinson mission. Kent and Novak were not charged with crimes.

Years later, a congressional investigation concluded that Gaetz had indeed paid a 17-year-old girl for sex, though the federal government declined to prosecute him.

Adams never quite gave a satisfying explanation for why he was involved in the case. "Jake [Novak] and I shared an interest in the mechanics of persuasion, and in interesting business/political stories in general. Most often the stuff with a persuasion or Israel angle. That was our initial connection…people often tell me their scoops before they hit the news just to build credibility. Might have been that," he told Politico.

The FBI files do little to shed light on that mystery, but they do put some of Adams' old comments in a new light. "Do you think they looked at my personal data because I ever had a conversation with somebody from another country? Probably. And I can't find that out, can I? If I sued the government, could I find out if they looked at my data? I could FOIA the FBI," he said in a 2022 livestream. It turns out that the answer to these questions was yes.

The post Why did the FBI Want <i>Dilbert</i> Creator Scott Adams' Twitter Data? appeared first on Reason.com.