This conservative is canceling his subscription to the Wall Street Journal

Posted on by
28

I’ve been a moderate conservative for over 40 years. My principal source of news has been the Wall Street Journal. Its investigations, reporting, writing and opinion work have been without parallel. (I’ll admit that my regard for the Journal may have been heightened when they published a piece I wrote on mountaineering.)

But no more. Yes, sometimes they still do very good investigative work. And the opinion pages are still very good and mostly conservative. (And their mountaineering stuff is fabulous, albeit limited.)

I’ll note that those opinion pages often include opinions from the other side. Joe Biden has guest-opined there, as have Elizabeth Warren, Charles Schumer and other leading Democrats. I don’t respect those Dems’ opinions, but I do respect the Journal for publishing them.

Publishing opinions that run contrary to an outlet’s leanings is unusual these days. When Senator Tom Cotton got an opinion piece published in the New York Times, the staff revolted and the NYT editor who approved the piece for publication was forced to resign.

If democracy dies in darkness, credit the mainstream media – the so-called fourth estate of our three-branch system – for turning out the lights.

But aside from good investigative work and the opinion page, the Journal has deteriorated. The writing is increasingly hackneyed and littered with millennial colloquialisms. You can almost see the bosses gathered in a conference room scheming to get more silly slang into the writing in order to attract, they think, the next generation of readers.

Continue reading →

Treat Iranian hostage-takers like Barbary pirates and Palestinian terrorists – kill them

Posted on by
15

The Barbary pirates were a ragtag gang of North African pirates who terrorized Europe for centuries. They pirated commercial shipping, raided as far north as Ireland and Iceland to abduct and enslave Europeans –especially women – for the harems of the Middle East, and exacted tribute in exchange for safe ocean passage.

In two wars, the new United States of America put an end to them. The first was in 1801-1805. The second was ten years later and lasted just a few days, permanently putting the barbarian Barbarians out of business. America and Europe finally stopped paying tribute and ransom and enduring slave raids.

Fast forward to the year 2023. Modern-day Barbary pirates in Iran routinely kidnap Americans and Europeans to hold for ransom. Last week, the Biden administration paid an astonishing $6 billion for the release of six of them – a billion dollars each if my math serves.

Does this not encourage future abductions?

Continue reading →

There’s so much more to Deion than neon

Posted on by
7

The University of Colorado football program over the years often contended for the Big 8 title. It was the home of great athletes like Kordell Stewart, Darian Hagan, Eric Bieniemy, Rashaan Salaam, Dave Logan and Cliff Branch.

But it fell on hard times the last few years. Last year, they finished 1-11, lost their last four games by an average of over 30 points, and fired the coach.

Then they did something crazy. They hired a guy whose coaching experience was limited to several high schools, one of which was plagued by scandal, and then a historically Black college that played second division football.

But this new coach had some things going for him. He was a three-sport athletic star in college baseball, track and football. In high school, he was also a basketball star. He became a solid major league baseball player and a star in the NFL – the only player in history to hit a major league home run and score an NFL touchdown in the same week. After retiring, he was promptly inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame.

He goes by several names. His first was Prime Time, which was given to him by teammates on his high school basketball team. Later in college football, they called him “Neon Deion.”

Yeah, it’s Deion Sanders. His players call him “Coach Prime.”

Continue reading →

I dare the establishment to bring back lockdowns and mask mandates

Posted on by
8

There’s another COVID variant on the loose.

Yawn.

But it’s no yawn to the virtue signalers and the control freaks and the teachers’ unions and the socialist politicians and the “work” from home crowd. They see it as another chance to signal virtue, exercise freakish control, avoid real teaching, redistribute more wealth, and “work” from home forever.

They had a ball last time. Yes, it damaged a generation of children, cost the country trillions of dollars (the repayment of which we’ll bequeath to those damaged children), sparked a lawlessness that still endures, elected a mean, stupid, senile, bribe-taker to the presidency, and spawned inflation that has diminished real earnings and will take years to drain from the system. But who cares about those things?

Well, I do. So do most other Americans.

I care about something else, too. As a matter of principle, I care that these selfish petty tyrants lied and cheated to impose their destructive will on Americans. I care that they owned us and our country for a couple of years and in that time laid great cities to ruins for vagrants, something like the Vandals sacking Rome to inaugurate the Dark Ages.

I care that they humiliated me, my family, and my culture. I care, and I remember.

So . . . we have a score to settle with these little Nazi Nero’s who fiddled, froliced and fornicated while our civilization burned.

Let’s have a rematch. My message to them is: Bring back your totalitarianism, your overreaching diktats, your lockdowns, your vaccine cards and, oh yes, especially your mask mandates.

Just try it. I dare you and I beg you. Make my day.

If you strive for “work-life balance” you’ll fail at both

Posted on by
9

This Labor Day, the new buzz is about balancing work with life.

It comes at a time when fewer people are employed than before the pandemic, and many of those who are employed are gaming the system by “working” from home in their PJs while surfing the internet and doing house work (oops, no, they pay others to clean their house). Productivity figures still lag pre-pandemic times.

Weirdly, they think even their part-time, disengaged, goal-less so-called work, in the absence of any accountability or supervision, is too much. It interferes with what they call life.

I think they protest too much. They’re not really trying to reduce their work – they’ve already done that. What they’re really doing is trying to justify what they’ve done, or, rather, failed to do.

They do this by glorifying laziness. They deem lazy people like themselves morally superior to hard-working people. The hard-working people just have work, but they – they! – have a . . . drum roll . . . LIFE!

Continue reading →

“You loot, we shoot” is Americans’ answer to the left’s plot to enslave them

Posted on by
11

Governor Ron DeSantis is a very good governor. He may or may not out-debate the California pretty boy governor if that debate actually happens, but he sure out-governs him. The guy can run a big state, which historically suggests he could run a big country. See, Reagan, Ronald; but see, Carter, Jimmy.

DeSantis gave a speech the other day about the aftermath of a hurricane that barreled through Florida. Concern had been expressed about looting in the wake of the disaster. DeSantis expressed a similar concern – in the guise of a concern for the looters:

“People have a right to defend their property. This part of Florida, you got a lot of advocates and proponents of the Second Amendment, and I’ve seen signs in different people’s yards in the past after these disasters, and I would say it’s probably here – ‘You loot, we shoot.’”

He all but said “Make my day.”

Continue reading →

Imagine Joe Biden’s grating takes on great tragedies

Posted on by
8

A wildfire on Maui this month burned down an entire town. It was because the local electric company spent far more money pandering to the Greens than on making their power lines safe. And because the local water czar refused to divert water to firefighters because “water equity.” It left over a hundred people dead and hundreds more still missing.

Joe Biden’s comment was “No comment.”

After all, he was on vacation in Delaware – as he is 40% of the time – from the rigors of his usual vacation in the White House. After his vacation from vacation finally ended, they packed his somnolent corpus onto Air Force One to Maui, which is something I’d like them to do with me after my next vacation.

Continue reading →

“Identity politics” is a euphemism for tribalism

Posted on by
20

Most people want to join a tribe. With a tribe, you have a place to go – something like the bar in Cheers where everybody knows your name and they’re always glad you came. (Or is it “they’re always there to blame”?)

This tribal instinct is natural. For the first three million years of our existence, tribes served as cohesive institutions to defend themselves and their interests, to conquer the lands of competing tribes, to enslave the members of those competing tribes, to inseminate their women, and to hunt big game. Later they farmed cooperatively, built cities, undertook public works projects, sailed the seas and flew to the moon.

Some of the most effective tribes today are athletic teams and soldiers. Both rightly emphasize conformity to the tribe at the expense of individual expression. There’s no “I” in “team” or in “squadron.”

Continue reading →

That the money went to family members is not a defense to a bribery charge

Posted on by
10

Imagine that I’m a politician (granted, that will never happen, but play along). As a politician, I like attention and I like money. But much of the attention I’ve gotten over the years has been negative, and the straight salary of a politician is not very good. That’s always bugged me.

Imagine further that you’re someone who wants “access” to me, such as a corrupt foreign government official or corporation. For that access, you’re willing to pretend to respect me and, moreover, you’re willing to pay me that money I’ve always deserved.

Conscious of the appearance of impropriety and the reality of the bribery laws, I tell you not to send that money directly to me. I tell you to send it to my family.

This is a ruse used by mobsters for years. It doesn’t work.

Continue reading →

“I cheated the bribers” is not a sound defense to a bribery charge

Posted on by
18

The walls are closing in around the Bidens. Sworn testimony and bank records show that they accepted at least $20 million from foreign entities during the time Joe was Vice President. These foreign entities are notoriously corrupt ones such as China, Russia, Romania and Ukraine.

Joe’s son was the ringleader, but it was Joe that he was selling. Joe was the “brand” according to sworn testimony. Who else could have been? There’s no conceivable reason for these foreigners to send millions to the Biden family other than to influence the “brand.”

Continue reading →