State of the Union 2019: A Review
As has become my norm, I opted out of sitting through the State of the Union address, choosing to read the transcript the morning after. In doing so, I save myself 82 minutes of theater, preening (by everyone there), applause breaks, photo-ops, and the like that won't...
An Open Apology to America
My fellow Americans. It has been two years since I stepped down from the job I coveted, felt I deserved, and felt I executed ably, and passed the Presidency on to a successor from the opposition party. After my initial shock at that Election Day outcome wore off, and...
Eternal Servitude
Those who delight in schadenfreude were in special glee the other day, with the latest example of the Left eating its own. It all started out with former Starbucks CEO sending the Democrats into a shark-chum frenzy over his announcement of a potential independent run...
A Nation of Thieves
The parade of Democrats vying for the 2020 Presidential nomination was always certain to be a long one. It's also proving to be, in validation of my fears and those of many others, a march leftward. Indeed, it's now virtually a given that "Medicare for All," which is...
Tallying Grievance Points
The normalizing of the idea that "some animals are more equal than others" (George Orwell's denouement in Animal Farm) has not only resulted in a grievance hierarchy, but ensured that various identity groups would devote increasing amounts of energy fighting for...
Social Justice and Roko’s Basilisk
A political friend brought my attention to an interesting (and growing) phenomenon in the public sphere: the mining of someone's distant past for transgressions against current social mandates. Or, more sinisterly, as a means of taking down someone with whom someone...
The Sarah Silverman Alibi
Amidst all the fallout of the "reveal" that the initial story about the Covington High School students was grossly misleading is the qualified mea culpa from many who rushed to judgment and condemnation. It takes the form of "well, I got it wrong, but that bastard...
Guns, The Homeless, and Mental Illness
Major cities around the nation have an ever-increasing, and in some cases dire, homeless problem. New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego, DC, San Jose, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Boston, and Philadelphia rank one through ten in homeless populations, and combined...
Evangeline’s Loop
A disclaimer: To preserve confidentiality, this patient's name has been changed, and "she" is a composite of several people,. The incidents affirmed here are otherwise factual as witnessed directly by the author. This article will be followed up at a later date with...
Losing at Checkers
A recent "she's awesome because everyone hates her" hagiography in Rolling Stone about the newly minted Congresswoman and current political it-girl Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, written by leftist screech owl Matt Taibbi, proved the old saw that even a blind squirrel can...
Count To Ten
All around me, people are engaging in all sorts of post-hoc adjustments of their initial public reactions to the Covington High School incident. I'm going to engage in a tiny bit of smug here, because I neither had nor offered any knee-jerk response to the initial...
Were I a Cynic
If you are a regular consumer of political news, or if you are on social media and have some politically minded likes and friends, you've no doubt heard the outrageous story about the MAGA hat wearing Catholic high school student confronting a Native American at a...
Personal Bureaucracies and Grievance Rent-Seekers
In a recent interview with Ben Shapiro, political columnist Heather Mac Donald skewered some college kids' pursuit of ever-more-granularized identity group badges: ... all the various gender identities that are being rapidly crafted by desperate students who are...
Ron Swanson and The Tao of Steve
Way, way back around the turn of the century, I caught a fun little indie film called The Tao of Steve. It relates the tale of Dex, an overweight stoner who, against any rational expectation, has a knack for seducing women, and his encounter with a woman who turns the...
Strictly Business
As we close out the fourth week of the government shut-down, with negotiations seemingly non-existent and replaced by petty, tit-for-tat squabbles between Trump and Pelosi, it seems apt to contemplate the potential loss of a golden opportunity for the Democrats on the...
Racism, Redefined
My continuing exposure to the culture wars and the political skirmishes of present-day prompts occasional "aha!" moments. Today's is the conclusion that progressivism and identity politics are, despite their fixation on creating more and more and more strata in the...
Concentrated Wealth
A social media conversation I had the other day, regarding the estate tax, provided this little gem: Concentrations of wealth are indispensable for the existence of a civilization. My fellow converser is correct. Without concentrations of wealth, that is to say...
De Blasio, Warren, and Cortez Don’t Care About You
There is a central contradiction in the philosophy of socialism that is both essential to its "success" and completely at odds with its purported mission. Briefly stated: Socialism is predicated upon an utter indifference to the life of any particular individual. This...
Electoral Diversity
The two years since Trump's election have done little to abate the bleating about the Electoral College, the Senate, the over-representation of smaller states in Congress, and other such folderol. Indeed, the newly-drunk-with-power House Democrats have introduced a...
Comedy, By Their Leave
Disgraced stand-up comic and comedy auteur Louis C.K. caught some more flak from the social justice scolds, recently, as recordings of some of recent performances were "leaked" (oh, how sinister and socially responsible that term is!). The quoted jokes are indeed...
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