July 7, 2024

An obvious prediction

At some point in the near future, President Joe Biden will announce he has Parkinson’s disease and, true or not, it will make life much simpler for the Democrats to shuffle him away. Since the debate, the Democrat power brokers and their thu...

March 5, 2024

The Left and Ukraine

Ukraine is still “experiencing invadedness,” as our progressive wordsmiths -- they gave us ‘experiencing homelessness’ for vagrants and ‘involved in the justice system’ for thieves, etc. -- would say. Leaving as...

February 28, 2024

The Chinese fire drill

There was a plan.  In fact, there were many plans, tested and stressed, if and when a catastrophic health emergency emerged. Every government agency that could be even peripherally involved in any such crisis had a plan just in case some...

October 7, 2023

The Politics of Third-Party Validation

In the world of public relations and marketing there is a tactic called “third-party validation.” At its most innocent, third-party validation is akin to word-of-mouth advertising, except organized. If you know that Bob really knows hi...

October 6, 2023

Even the Bidens' dog is above the law

Like Hunter Biden, it appears that Commander, the Biden family dog, is above the law. Commander, it seems, has just been dispatched to Delaware — a safe haven for Bidens, apparently. Was he whisked away to avoid justice? Dogs that bite...

June 26, 2023

The right to be paranoid

Paranoia has a bad reputation, and deservedly so. People are out to get me, why are they talking about me, I think they're planning to do something to me... These were the hallmarks of a psychological issue, in some cases severe to the poin...

June 22, 2023

Dr. Hotez the COVID vaccine promoter chickens out of debate with Joe Rogan

Vaccineaholic Peter Hotez is, in my opinion, a caricature of a parody of a satire who also happens to have a medical degree.  Over the past few years, he has become one of the go-to guys when the media need a prominent panicky pandemicist p...

June 3, 2023

Let's take the whole 'misinformation' con and run with it

"Misinformation" and "disinformation" used to have a concrete meaning.  But lately, they've been reduced only to a convenient way to call someone a liar without addressing any facts.  They have been re-crea...

April 19, 2023

Welcome to the cornfield

Before politics, before debate, before discussion, even before thought, there is language. Language defines how humans think, how they can think, in fact.  If there is no conceivable way to express something, it cannot exist.  Language i...

March 26, 2023

The equitarian church

We do not, today, live in a society infused with traditional religion. There are churches and synagogues and mosques and such dotted through American cities, but with certain exceptions, they do not act as the focal point for everyday li...

March 23, 2023

Why a Flat Tax Will Never Get Off the Ground

Every few years, the idea of a flat income tax — with a tax form you could fill out on a postcard — is floated, either in D.C. or in various state houses (though not in the states that are growing massively now because they have no income...

February 23, 2023

The plague of self-diagnosis

Doctor, I have cancer.  I have this new pain, and I talked to my friends, and I looked on the internet, and it can't be anything other than cancer.  You have to start me on radiation and chemotherapy right now, or I'll die...

February 21, 2023

The classics, edited for the sensitive reader

With the revelation that Roald Dahl's classic children's works like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory have undergone posthumous sensitivity butchering, one can only wonder exactly how the censors will handle other prominent works of art from ...

February 17, 2023

Science fiction predicted wokeness half a century ago

Antwerp! And racism is gone because every single human on the planet is now light gray. That is one of the scenarios posited in Ursula K. LeGuin's now 52-year-old masterpiece, The Lathe of Heaven. The book — set in the early 21st c...

February 13, 2023

The problem with ranked choice voting

Ranked choice voting is the answer to a question only a bureaucrat would even think to ask. To simplify, RCV is a voting method used most recently in the 2022 Alaskan congressional election, which Sarah Palin notoriously lost — that in theor...

January 8, 2023

Middle management in hell

On occasion, one looks back through history — unless one has gone to school over the past decade and, therefore, has no idea what history is — and asks, "How could they have done that?" How could a nation as clearheaded, if p...

November 21, 2022

Outsourcing Robespierre

Lawyer to revolutionary to tyrant to butcher to victim of the forces he himself had unleashed — that was the arc of the life of Maximillian Robespierre. The architect of The Terror that engulfed France from 1792 until 1794, Robespierre may h...

November 6, 2022

Vote angry...and do it proudly

The angry voter is good for politicians but bad for democracy. The angry voter is too stupid to understand the issues and must fall back on blind rage to make a decision. The angry voter is coming from a place of hate, not calm consideration, a...

October 29, 2022

Why did an Arizona TV station say Hobbs won?

On Thursday, shortly after Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake held a news conference excoriating the local press for going heavy with her opponent Katie Hobbs's ludicrous attempt to tie Lake to a break-in at her campaign, the television st...

October 27, 2022

How Fetterman could have avoided Tuesday's debate fiasco

Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman was physically at the debate against his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz. But he was not mentally there, and that sound you heard vaguely in the distance Tuesday night was the simultaneous skin-crawl...

October 17, 2022

The LA City Council Debacle is not just about Racism

When those who publicly espouse woke identity politics are shown to be racists of the first order one can be forgiven a bit of schadenfreude. Of the four involved in the now infamous LA Council meeting, two -- Council President Nury Martinez and l...

October 14, 2022

The Jan. 6 committee: The gift that will keep on giving

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I hate to say it, but I was wrong about when the farcical House's January 6 Committee would call it a day. Previously, I had written that the laughably lauded lefty lumpenausschuss would wrap things u...

September 20, 2022

The pandemic is dead — long live the pandemic

On Sunday, September 18, 2022, President Joe Biden declared the COVID pandemic over. He managed to be — for him — relatively coherent, though making this momentous announcement while walking through an empty car show with a 60 Minutes ...

September 19, 2022

Dogs Bark, Wolves Howl: The Woke Demand to Be Domesticated

Dogs bark; wolves howl. The domestication process that turned wolves into family pets has served the dog well.  For most, it meant guaranteed food, shelter, and comfort while being able to stay in a familiar social structure (humans as p...

September 15, 2022

Eating Healthy is Racist

Anyone who tells you to eat healthier is -- like everything else today -- racist. Blair Imani is a professional intersectionalist who has been written up in the New York Times and produces a video series on YouTube and Instagram called “Smar...

September 12, 2022

Trump 2020 vs. Trump 2024: The Differences to Expect

If Donald Trump does run for re(ish)-election in 2024, some of the obstacles will be the same as in 2020, some will be different, some will depend upon the ever-shifting vagaries of the political landscape, and some will depend wholly upon Trump doin...

September 9, 2022

Maybe This Time, We'll Get Him!

Well, all the odds are, they're in my favor Something's bound to begin It's gotta happen, happen sometime Maybe this time, I'll win While they are lyrics from the famous song from "Cabaret," they may as well be part of...

August 24, 2022

It's not really 'our democracy' at all

Protecting our democracy — it's a term that is being bandied about with growing frequency. But what does it actually mean? "Our democracy," on its face, sounds reasonable, like "our constitution" or "our right...

August 15, 2022

When did being free start being bad?

When did being free start being bad? From the Declaration of Independence to the Declaration of Dependence, from the Constitution to the Confinement, the recent moves to redefine American society as primarily an institutionalized, rather than self...

August 11, 2022

Enough is enough: Time to dismantle the FBI

When in the course of human events... These opening words of the Declaration of Independence set the stage for the American Revolution.  Now they must guide the nation as it grapples with the knowledge that many of our government agencie...

August 8, 2022

The Jan. 6 September surprise

"Trump's Culpability Proven in January 6 Insurrection" "How Democracy Almost Died" "Liz Cheney Puts Nation First" Come late September, when the Jan. 6 Committee releases its final report, these are the headl...

August 6, 2022

Meet the Democrats Who Could Replace Joe Biden

At this moment, in theory, Joe Biden is going to run for re-election. That being said, there is a significant chance he will not.  He could decide on his own not to, Dr. Jill could be charged with elder abuse for allowing him to run agai...

July 29, 2022

The Transgender Dichotomy

What is the difference between sex and gender? Certain cultural activists have spent the last few years blurring the line, conflating the two, and in general muddying the waters to the point that putative grown-ups are now using -- with a straight...

May 23, 2022

Dealing with adolescent transgenderism

So Billy decides, one day, that he is a girl. Billy is 15; therefore, Billy's job is to be different; to push boundaries; to be incredibly self-involved; and, most importantly, to annoy his parents. From this pivotal decisional moment, ther...

May 15, 2022

Put these four letters together, and you get a racist term

So a Tahitian, a Korean, and a Laotian walk into a bar and sit down.  The bartender says, "Hello — what can I get you to brighten your day?" They look at each other and then say, in unison, "Oh nothing right now ...

May 5, 2022

One aspect of the leaked Alito opinion isn't a mystery at all

When it comes to the Alito draft, we're not sure exactly who leaked it, and we're not sure yet what its effect will be on the case and the election.  But one thing we can absolutely be sure of in the wake of the dissemination of the...

May 5, 2022

Tomorrow belongs to Nina

The "January 6 Commission," it appears, is an attempt to replicate the public apprehension surrounding the 1933 Reichstag fire in Nazi Germany, after which a new law was implemented — it was called the "Editor's Law." ...

April 23, 2022

The Equity of the Culture Vulture

Art is subjective. Saying with absolute certainty exactly what is “good” or “bad” is simply not possible. Opinions about art can also change with time. Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” literally caused a riot...

April 17, 2022

The political advantages of nervous exhaustion

The usual processes of weighing options and cost/benefits, taking time to recall what one has worked in the past in similar situations, and ethical considerations can fall by the wayside when trying to decide—in a split second—which way t...

April 7, 2022

The other warning in Eisenhower's farewell address

This we all — if we have a sense of history — remember from Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address three days before John F. Kennedy became president in 1961: [W]e must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whethe...

April 2, 2022

Since when did journalists become such babies?

Taylor Lorenz is a child. The person who calls herself a reporter has – yet again – publicly demanded that people be nice to her.  And, sadly, it seems that some other people are taking her demands seriously, or at least some...

April 1, 2022

Breaking cancel culture

Ah, the cancel culture apology — for the Twitterati who have foisted this nightmare upon the world, the apology is the goal, the dopamine fix they need to get through the day, to prove to themselves that they have a proper place in the world, a...

March 26, 2022

Why there’s so much internet nonsense

What does deer hunting have to do with the persistence of internet idiocy? I’m not a deer hunter. I have no qualms about the practice and have helped others dress and cook deer; like woodworking or stamp collecting it was simply never an ...

March 8, 2022

When Corporate goes Marxist

It is rare when watching golf on television prompts a discussion of historical materialism and the state of socio-economics in modern society, but, well, here it is: Would you hire a Marxist to help you find your company's next CEO? From an...

March 6, 2022

A word association game to understand COVID propaganda

Let's start by playing a word association game. You hear "red," and you say "green," especially if you are a fan of Canadian comedy (and not the Trudeau kind). "Stop" leads to "go," "on" lea...

February 27, 2022

Slow Joe Biden picks the best cucumber he can find

So you need a cucumber, and not just any cucumber.  It must be the best cucumber in town.  The boss is coming over for dinner, and everything — even the salad — has to be perfect. Off to the store you go, and into t...

February 19, 2022

Profiles in Porridge: The Squishy Political Rise of the Beta Male

“Mr. Prime Minister, there are people who disagree with you gathering outside in the streets and I think maybe we should…” “Move me to a secret bunker? Please, please say you were going to say that and, yes, I agree....

February 19, 2022

The new woke war on the very concept of 'freedom'

From the inky print of the Washington Post to the digital pages of Teen Vogue, an astonishing movement is underway.  Simply put, the argument being made is that, because what we know as "freedom" is a historically W...

January 27, 2022

Will the United Kingdom's return to normal force Biden's hand?

Tick, tick, tick...is the end nigh? The prime minister of the United Kingdom was facing an immediate political death sentence, so what did he do?  He declared the pandemic over. The question now on this side of the pond: Will Joe Bide...

January 24, 2022

Always someone left to lie to...

The late lamented Christopher Hitchens wrote a book about Bill (and to a lesser extent Hillary) Clinton entitled No One Left to Lie To.  While Hitchens was a brilliant polemicist whose notorious wit could turn instantaneously from sledgeham...

January 18, 2022

The Political Timing of the End of the Pandemic

At some point in the relatively near future, President Joe Biden will be handed a speech that will read something like this: “My Fellow Americans -- Our long national nightmare is over.  The pandemic is a thing of the past and I am orde...

January 5, 2022

Seven Hours in January Was Not Seven Days in May

As the Congressional Select Committee winds its way to its pre-ordained conclusion that what happened at the Capitol last year was an attempt by former President Trump, every elected Republican, anyone who has ever worn a red hat (MAGA-emblazoned or ...

January 3, 2022

2021: The year that was not my dog

Last year was a lot of things — sadly, though, very, very few of them were good. The nation was promised a new beginning, a restored sense of normalcy, a new unity, a lowering of the temperature of cultural squabbles, a new start. Instead...

December 30, 2021

Plato's Cave 2.0

Plato was a pretty smart guy, but even he could not see the future. If he could, his "Allegory of the Cave" would be rather different, as it would have to take into account the idea that not only would people choose to live in the cave, ...

December 27, 2021

Joe Biden, Marionette

Assuming we can discount the explanation that a sitting United States president publicly acknowledged that, yes, in fact he should go blank himself, Joe Biden’s recent Santa-related mishap may mean far more than we think. Though a peren...

November 27, 2021

Happy Decolonization Weekend!

(Because the news is so crazy that it's sometimes hard to tell nowadays, this post is satire.) It's a given that Thanksgiving is evil.  The history, the annual event, the name — all signify the horrors of our far-from-excep...

November 1, 2021

Expertise blindness has irreparably tainted the COVID response

“If cats could write history, their history would be mostly about cats.” So intoned UCLA Prof. Eugen Weber about midway through his inestimable video lecture series “The Western Tradition.”* The point this particularly prec...

October 27, 2021

The Tik Tok Tic and the Politicization of Medical Care

How far has the influence of “influencers” gone? Very far gone, it seems. Recently a new phenomenon has cropped up, that of people—mostly teen girls—developing various tics akin to Tourette’s Syndrome after watchin...

October 17, 2021

An American apologia

We’re sorry. We’re sorry for causing you discomfort even though we had not intended to and could not have possibly known we would do so. We’re sorry for not listening to what we are told to listen to. We’re sorry we h...

October 5, 2021

We’re walking on eggshells…

Every family, every office, every team, every organization, basically everything that involves more than seven people has one: The person around whom everyone knows to be very careful. It could be a general sense of unease that that person is goin...

October 2, 2021

Give Tease a Chant: The Public Mood Expressed Through Song

One of the more surprising elements of this year’s college football season is the prevalence of a certain crowd chant taking place around the country—you know the one. But why is this happening? Three reasons come to mind: First, consider...

September 24, 2021

The media invented a disease called ‘Trumpism.’

There was a rally in Washington, DC, on September 18 to say/do/whatever something (the point wasn’t terribly clear_ about what happened on January 6, the point of which is still also not terribly clear. Attending were about 400 protestors an...

August 30, 2021

Gavin’s Lament: Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful

The Golden Boy of the Golden State, politically propelled by Getty family gold, could very well come crashing down to earth like a hair gel slathered lead balloon come September 14th. As the impossible has become possible, Newsom still does not seem ...

August 26, 2021

Taking back the language around Critical Race Theory

Don’t think of an elephant. You are probably thinking of one right now. But what if you were told “don’t think of an elephant” and you didn’t think of an elephant because the word elephant had been defined out of e...

August 18, 2021

The Rift Between Science and Religion?

It is often said that science and religion are polar opposites. But this notion may not be true and is, instead, based on popular misconceptions, the ongoing struggle between the two concepts for social dominance, and misunderstandings of both the...

August 2, 2021

They're Coming For You -- And Nobody's Laughing

Trigger Warning – If you are triggered by anything in this article, including this trigger warning, then you are a humorless cretin. There is a saying in humor that if you have to explain a joke that means it wasn’t funny in the first ...

July 31, 2021

The Consistent Inconsistencies Of The Vaccination Discussion

Last year you were a hero if you said, as did Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, and Andrew Cuomo, that you didn’t necessarily trust what the government said about vaccines. Say that today and you are a troglodyte pariah. Now, we all know that red...

July 27, 2021

The Many Guises Of The Totalitarian Impulse

Wouldn’t it be nice and fair and simple if all the voting systems across the country were the same? Wouldn’t it be nice and fair and simple if every school in the nation were equally as good? Wouldn’t it be nice and fair and s...

June 23, 2021

From Self Help to Societal Harm

John McWhorter, the distinguished linguist, has an ecclesiastical term for the members of the current woke/progressive/CRT movement:  The Elect.  He has chosen that term to emphasize the fact that the movement is not just like...

June 16, 2021

The merits of meritocracy, the credulousness of credentialism

Until quite recently — in the context of the entire course of human history, the equivalent of last Thursday, in fact — saying people should be proud of being good at something was rather uncontroversial.  There was an inherent ...

June 11, 2021

Identity Politics' Destructive Influence On The News

While a number of political and media critiques of late have focused on the close-minded, thin-skinned, woke, ideology-driven current nature of the cultural landscape and those who inhabit it, there may be another factor at play: Identity politics is...

May 31, 2021

The lab leak hypothesis and media complicity

Now that the great white shark that is the media — always hunting, always devouring — has moved on, it once again appears to be safe to jump back into the waters of the COVID lab leak hypothesis, as it always should have been.  ...

April 6, 2021

The Cult of Safety

It was the 1970s.  Dry cleaning bags lurked quietly behind couches waiting patiently for the opportunity to pounce on the hapless child who dropped a Lego nearby.  Unguarded five-gallon buckets stood brazenly in the middle of base...