Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
Conservative pundit Ann Coulter says the time to move on from former President Donald Trump is now. She was quoted in a report Sunday evening about growing tensions between Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ahead of a potential 2024 election showdown. “Trump is done,” Coulter told the New York Times in an email. “You … Read more
The bad guy was killed. The good guys were saved. But the reaction to the hostage-taking in Colleyville, Texas, should alarm American Jews. Last week, I met a rabbi in Los Angeles. We talked about surfing where to get the best pizza in the city and her kids and politics. At the end of the … Read more
As far back as 2013, Pakistani Muslim terrorists had plotted to take “foreign Jews” hostage to trade for ‘Lady Al Qaeda’. In 2022, a Pakistani Muslim terrorist actually went out and did it. The hostage crisis at Congregation Beth Israel, a Reform Temple in Texas, ended with Faisal Akram of Blackburn, another post-industrial English town … Read more
We know that all things work together for the good in the end. But in the meantime, it seems like the bad news just keeps on coming. The latest comes courtesy of the FBI, whose data inform us that 2020 saw one of the most dramatic increases in crime our nation has ever witnessed. The … Read more
If President Joe Biden’s disorderly and lethal Afghanistan withdrawal was the moment that fractured voters’ regard for him, then his vicious Atlanta speech last week may be the moment that defines his presidency. Speaking Tuesday at Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University, Biden uttered venomous, brutal accusations lacking factual basis. His shouting-in-the-wind delivery was inexplicable, … Read more
One of the largest hospital systems in the United States gave race more weight than diabetes, obesity, asthma, and hypertension combined in its allocation scheme for COVID treatments, only to reverse the policy after threats of legal action. SSM Health, a Catholic health system that operates 23 hospitals across Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin, began … Read more
Through no fault of my own, I am fully vaccinated against Covid-19. The timing is fortuitous, though: As of today, the city I call home (God willing, not for long) is requiring all of its citizens to prove they got the shot if they want any chance of participating in society. Per order of the … Read more
“The most dangerous pronoun discourse has nothing to do with gender identity. It’s the undefined ‘we’ in public policy debates that’s the problem.” These are the words of Richard Morrison, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Morrison identified “the fallacy of we,” and I’m often guilty of committing it. I frequently say things … Read more
All that’s left of Trumpism are Trump’s grievances and aspirations. On a recent podcast with Conan O’Brien, the comedian Zach Galifianakis said America’s obsession with celebrity culture was a “mental illness” that explained why we ended up with Donald Trump, a celebrity president. Given how tired and ineffective Joe Biden looks right now as president, … Read more
He’s lost the support of everyone except the elites who made him. Jim Gaffigan said on Joe Rogan’s program, “I’d still take Biden’s corpse over Donald Trump.” Congratulations, elites! You’re now being governed by a political corpse. Elites will be fine with a dead president governing a zombified American economy and society. Working and middle-class … Read more
Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew show that power corrupts, whether it’s self-made or hereditary What a pair are Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew — like peanut butter and petroleum jelly, like pepper and road salt. With Epstein conveniently self-strangulated, it’s Andrew’s turn to face the music now, as a US judge ruled on Wednesday that … Read more
“WE ALL QUIT,” blared the letter-board sign at a Burger King in Lincoln, Nebraska, last summer. “SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.” Things have only gotten quittier since then. More than 4.5 million people quit their jobs in November, which is the highest month on record in the United States. It’s also a third higher than the … Read more
Extremism experts don’t get America’s hinterland I moved recently to a remote part of Northern California, where in a couple weeks an election will decide whether or not allies of the local militia take control of the county government. It’s a fraught situation, in a part of the country that’s often described by journalists, myself … Read more
Radical progressives are trying to persuade Americans, especially young Americans, that socialism is the solution to America’s socioeconomic problems. They are banking on millennial ignorance of the repeated failures of socialism and the proven ability of free enterprise to produce opportunity and prosperity for the greatest number. To camouflage their intent, progressives speak of “democratic” … Read more
A joke about education in Soviet Russia: – My wife has been going to cooking school for three years. – She must really cook well by now! – No, they’ve only reached the part about the Twentieth Communist Party Congress so far… Maybe it’s not so much funny as telling; but what it is telling … Read more
More and more it seems that our government and our culture regard the human being as a slab of meat rather than as a creature with a body, mind, and soul. The coronavirus pandemic perfectly illustrates this phenomenon. Using propaganda and fear as their weapons, our government—with the help of the mainstream media—ordered lockdowns, masks, … Read more
They even use “software” to hide that the reviews came from India. The pile of apparently fake 5-star reviews has led me years ago to be leery of them. I just never knew how cheap they were. I was approached via email by an outfit in India whose name I won’t disclose because I don’t … Read more
One of the most aggravating back-and-forths I’ve seen on Twitter, Facebook, cable television, and even in op-eds has been over just who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and what they were doing. The most common false claim is by Trump defenders who say that what happened was a peaceful but silly … Read more
Normalizing family break-up comes at a huge social cost. When the former British health secretary’s extramarital affair came to light last year, the press was much more interested in the fact that he’d breached his own social-distancing rules than that he committed adultery. Perhaps (as one writer friend suggested to me) so few commentators are … Read more
The Capitol riot was just the tip of a very dangerous spear. What happened on January 6 of last year? In one sense, it is simple: Donald Trump refused to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, told many fantastical lies about the election and repeated the fantastical lies of others, and instructed a … Read more
The kook that Keystone State Republicans have been waiting for Dr. Mehmet Oz may be the perfect Republican candidate for our time: a talk-show host and snake-oil peddler with a throbbing persecution complex, a Fox News hanger-on with a couple of weird religious connections and no real political experience. He is seeking to take over … Read more
After the last of the old Senate Democrat Klansmen rode off into the sunset, it’s the turn of the longest serving former official of a racist hate group to throw his own retirement party. Rep. Bobby Rush, the former Deputy Minister of Defense for the Black Panthers, announced that he’s joining his fellow Democrats fleeing … Read more
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The FBI has assured the nation that they will get back to figuring out why that guy shot 411 people in Las Vegas four years ago once they’re finished investigating parent-teacher school board meetings across the country. “Something more pressing than investigating the worst mass shooting in our nation’s history has come up: parents … Read more
Bad policy and unpredictable nature are sending food prices through the roof. Famine is one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse for good reason; hunger was an unwelcome companion for most of human history. The threat it poses declined in recent decades because of innovations in agriculture and increasing prosperity. But the largely policy-inflicted … Read more
I’ve been a member of the American Psychological Association (APA) for years, and a fellow for the past six or seven years. I sat on their Council of Representatives, which theoretically sets policy for the APA, for three years. I am just ending my term as president of the APA’s Society for Media and Technology, … Read more