From Steve Sailer: Our New Religion of Race Read also this post of his from June 10th, linked in the article above. I won’t even talk about what the Smithsonian’s been up to; it deserves a post of its own, which I haven’t the oomph to write just now.
Opinion editor Bari Weiss has been purged from the New York Times for a lack of ideological purity. Her resignation letter is a window into the intensifying vortex of cryptoreligious madness that now threatens to consume all of Western civilization. Read it here. PS: Remember always that we outnumber these people, and that they have […]
Slipped on a puddle in the kitchen last night, caught my right elbow on the counter as I was falling, and tore my right shoulder to pieces. Back from the ER at Cape Cod Hospital — lovely people there! — but will need MRI and orthopaedic consultation. Judging by the tearing and crunching sounds as […]
Sorry it’s been so slow around here — summer doldrums, mostly, and lack of anything interesting to say. (We also have our son Nick, whom we haven’t seen for months due to the Wuhan Red Death, paying us a brief visit.) Should be back with something soon. Thanks all for coming by, and please feel […]
Happy birthday, America. Never in my lifetime has the fate of the Union seemed more precarious. To begin our 245th year, President Trump gave a rousing defense of the traditional American nation at Mount Rushmore. Unlike the terrible forces arrayed against him, this man truly loves his country, and he understands the awful threat it […]
When football season opens, if it does, we’ll be hearing two national anthems. (Readers of a certain age may remember one of them; it went with the deprecated American nation we all grew up with.) The NFL will be playing the “Black National Anthem” before “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Why would one nation have two national […]
It surprises me that anyone on the Right (or for that matter, anyone of middle years or older who grew up in the former United States, and feels that he or she has had a pretty good life) would have any hesitation at all about supporting Donald Trump — not only in the upcoming election, […]
We hear in the media, and from his political opponents, that Donald Trump considers himself to be “above the law”. Unsurprisingly, such accusations never seemed to be leveled at his predecessor. As this four-part list of two hundred examples shows, though, they might well have been.
My old pal Jimmy Haslip sent me a link to a new version of the old Weather Report song, as conceived by Zawinul protégé Scott Kinsey. The video features Jimmy on bass, Scott Kinsey on keys, the terrific Hungarian drummer Gergo Borlai, saxophonist Katisse Buckingham, and bassist/singer Naina Kundu on vocals. Here it is. Turn […]
Just in (I have bolded the key passage): The Department of Justice today filed a statement of interest in Idaho federal court defending Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act against a challenge under the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. “Allowing biological males to compete in all-female sports is fundamentally unfair to female athletes” said Attorney General […]
Another day, another calamity at the Supreme Court: John Roberts sides with the liberal wing to block the recission of DACA, remanding it to the Department of Homeland Security for another try. The argument in the majority opinion — and along with the dissenting Justices, I think it’s so thin as to be quite transparent […]
With a hat-tip to my e-pal David Duff, here is an open letter written by a black professor at UC Berkeley urging us not to be taken in by the infantilizing Democrat race-hustle known as Black Lives Matter. The writer makes the essential points: that BLM promotes a malignant, paternalistic ideology that “strips black people […]
Here are two black voices that have very little chance of being heard above the din. Both are tenured professors at Ivy League universities: Glenn C. Loury of Brown, and John McWhorter of Columbia. (Given, by the way, that Brown University was founded on slave-trade wealth, and Columbia was named after noted unperson Christopher Columbus, […]
It was a busy day yesterday at the Supreme Court — and from over here on the Right, a disappointing one as well. I haven’t read the opinions, so I should refrain from analysis, but the results — in particular, blows against freedom of association, the Second Amendment, and enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws […]
I wrote a while back about the tidal forces straining the Left as it falls deeper into the gravity well surrounding an all-consuming singularity. In a sharp essay just published, Matt Taibbi looks at the disintegrating American press.
I’ve long supported subsidiarianism – the idea that government should be as local, and locally accountable, as possible. I’ve also been saying for years that the U.S. has become so large, and so diverse, as to be ungovernable by central authority. What’s worse, the power held by that central authority is so pathetically insecure that […]
Well! As I write an ISIS-style warlord, a rapper named Raz Simone, has declared a portion of a major American city — Seattle, Washington — to be an autonomous region no longer part of the United States of America. He is enforcing his rule over the Capitol Hill neighborhood of that city in the usual […]
I’ve said for years that the missionary Progressivism now in control of every aspect of our civilization can only be properly understood as a religion. And just as the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century were attended by great waves of repentance for our sins, and the fear of Hell, exactly so is […]
We hear a lot these days (possibly the understatement of the year) about bias; in particular “implicit bias”. In a recent article about racism, though, a young black writer mentions some other kinds of bias: First, our intuitions about whether trends have increased or decreased are shaped by what we can easily recall—news items, shocking […]
The late Yuri Bezmenov explains. (To bring this fully up to date, we would swap out “Marxism”.)
I’m browsing my old posts, to see how much of our current state of affairs was visible in prospect years ago. Here’s a long excerpt from something I published back in 2012. * * * * * * * … Democracy works well enough for a while, I suppose, while a nation […]
Haven’t looked at the news much for a week or so. Did I miss anything?
Next time you hear someone refer to carbon dioxide as a “pollutant”, mention this: Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds Carbon dioxide is plant food. Plants eat carbon dioxide, make human food, and release oxygen. Humans breathe oxygen, eat plants, and release carbon dioxide. Simple and elegant.
From John Hirschauer at National Review: “More Men Die, But Women Bear The Brunt“.
This Corona-chan crisis has been an excellent experiment in determining just how much we are willing to imprison and fetter ourselves to avoid danger. Our prolonged interval of peace and prosperity since the Second World War — our isolation from the hormesis of what, throughout history, have been regular calamities and stresses — has made […]
Here’s a sharp little item on the miscalculation of risk.
Over at American Greatness yesterday, Mackubin Owens has written a short piece entitled ‘Pandemic Is Shining a Light on the American Character‘. Indeed it has. There have of course been many Americans who have shown great courage in manning their stations, and keeping necessary infrastructure working, despite personal risk. Had it not been for them, […]
Two motives must be kept in mind as we debate public policy regarding this lockdown: First, elected politicians have one universal and overriding priority, which is to preserve their seats, and so to minimize short-term public risk. If they are faced with a choice between, say, liberty and security, they will consistently, and quite naturally, […]
In a press-conference today Governor Andrew Cuomo twice referred to the current pandemic as “the European virus”. I am old and experienced, and expect nothing but lies and deception from politicians generally, and Democrats in particular, but even by contemporary Blue-Team standards this is stunningly audacious. Everybody — everybody! — knows this thing did not […]
We owe a debt of gratitude to a handful of journalists who have worked for years now to keep the true story of the Russiagate scandal (now trending as #Obamagate) in public view: Mollie Hemingway, Andrew McCarthy, Lee Smith, Sharyl Attkisson, John Batchelor, and a few others. Over the last several days new information has […]
The apt metaphor, I think, for what we have done to ourselves in response to this virus is the tourniquet. Leave it on too long and gangrene sets in. You can watch your own body begin to die and rot and stink. “Ah, but it’s just a limb,” you say. “It’s worth losing a limb […]
It’s Mothers’ Day. Here was mine. I miss her.
Longtime readers will have noticed the lack of substantial content here recently – just little odds and ends, mostly. It’s mostly the Groundhog-Day monotony of this new life: the days, and the news they bring, never vary much. There is very little vitality or energy in the air, or on the air — just the […]
Here’s something beautiful, from a visual artist by the name of Tobias Gremmler. Watch in full-screen.
Here’s another item over the transom from our e-pal Bill K. — a software engineer’s look at the modeling software that was relied upon to shut down the West. (As a former C++ developer myself, I can say that it sounds awfully bad.)
The big news today is the vindication of General Flynn, but there was another heartening local item as well: a federal judge has blocked Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker’s executive order keeping gun shops closed. Today, U.S. Judge Douglas P. Woodlock issued a preliminary injunction to prevent Massachusetts from enforcing the unlawful order. “We don’t surrender […]
Wonderful news, just in: the DOJ has dropped the case against Michael Flynn. The prosecution, which had no basis in law and will be judged by history as part of a political scandal without rival in the modern era, began to fall apart last week after recently revealed documents revealed the enormity of the FBI’s […]
Our e-pal Bill K. sent along the following updated parable this morning: * * * * * * * * * * * * * The ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER This one is a little different … Two Different Versions … Two Different Morals OLD VERSION The ant works hard in the withering heat […]
Here are the latest Wuhan Red Death stats from the CDC. The page shows the week-by week numbers since the beginning of the outbreak. As of May 1st, the revised U.S. total is 37,308. Enjoy your new economy.
It’s becoming clearer every day that Michael Flynn’s persecution was a nothing more than a politically motivated frame-up (many of us have known this for ages, but in the past week documents have come to light that make it irrefutable). But why Flynn? Andrew McCarthy gives us the reason: he was a liability to the […]
Here’s the question that interviewers should be putting to governors: “If, in normal times, you were to announce as a matter of executive fiat that people must close their businesses, could not assemble in groups over a certain size, and must stay home except for travel you deem essential, it would seem an absurdity. People […]
In times of crisis, it’s important to do what we can. One of the ways good citizens have responded to our current health emergency has been by sewing their own protective face-masks. Given that many of you, I’m sure, would find it easier to shove a camel through the eye of a needle than to […]
April 27, 2020 – 10:29 pm
Like so many other musicians, during this enforced quarantine I’ve been collaborating online with my pals. In my case it’s the group of talented players and singers I get together with every September for a musical retreat out in the Isles of Shoals. I put up a mix a little while back of one of […]
April 25, 2020 – 12:39 pm
I’ve been a bit neglectful of the blog lately. Life is beginning to feel a bit like Groundhog Day, with few new impressions to think or write about (other than the books I’ve been reading in the evenings the past couple of weeks, which I’m still digesting). I’ve been spending a lot of time down […]
April 19, 2020 – 11:41 pm
Just to take our minds off the Wuhan Red Death for a moment, here’s some music you might enjoy. The piece is called Spirit Moves, and it’s the opening track from Vince Mendoza’s album Instructions Inside, which I recorded and mixed back in March of 1991. We did the sessions at Edison Recording in midtown […]
April 17, 2020 – 12:39 pm
Our reader the indefatigable JK has introduced me to a blogger I’d never heard of: B.J. Campbell, whose posts are collected under the title Handwaving Freakoutery. The post that JK sent me today is about the possible consequences for social order of this ongoing (and, increasingly, arguably unconstitutional) lockdown. It begins with an amusing roundup […]
Former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey published a brief item today about the cost, in human life, of this indiscriminate shutdown of the American economy. A key excerpt: Job losses cause extreme suffering. Every 1% hike in the unemployment rate will likely produce a 3.3% increase in drug overdose deaths and a 0.99% increase […]
The criticism of President Trump’s response to the Wuhan Red Death has been all over the map; in general whatever he does is wrong, regardless of whether Blue politicians have done the same or worse in their own bailiwicks, and whatever he doesn’t do is a crime of omission. He’s been faulted at every step […]