Recently I read how the current campaign between Trump and Harris is divided between the team who is bringing joy to the campaign trail and the one that brings rage. That is a fascinating way to characterize the two campaigns. Let’s take a closer look. We begin with the fact that we have a campaign between the incumbents and the challengers. No matter what Ms. Harris says, she is the incumbent. By definition, the incumbents are going to tell America that things are wonderful, and we need to continue on the path to greatness with just a few tweaks here and there. The challengers must say negative things because they are forced to say what you are getting isn’t good enough and they can do better. Since historically any campaign could be characterized as Joy vs. Rage, we need to dig a bit deeper. Theoretically, most if not all journalists should find the sudden change of candidates interesting. There is a significant interest regarding what Harris and Walz knew about President Biden’s inability to continue on as a candidate. It didn’t just happen the night of June 27th when he showed up for the debate. Ms. Harris tells us she worked intimately with Mr.… Read More

The new cool kids are all into it. They banter the term around all the time. It is either “decolonization” or “post colonization.” They like to tell us it is regarding their favored terrorist group – Hamas — even though the last colonists there were the Brits. With everyone talking about it, I thought I would look at how decolonization is going. It worked well for us, the Americans. Pretty well for the Canadians until Pierre Trudeau unleashed his devil child upon them. The Aussies and Kiwis are doing well. Hong Kong was doing great until the barbaric Chinese took it over. Then matters start going downhill from there. Of course, the rest of the world went through various levels of being ruled by other countries. There were the Romans, the Greeks, the Mongols, the Turks, the Macedonians, the Ottomans, and a slew of others who were set on ruling the world, but they were not known as “colonists.” The Russians took over Eastern Europe for a while, but they called all those countries under their draconian oversight ‘satellites.” Colonization seems to focus on the activities of European countries from the 16th century onward.… Read More

Now that the physical and mental infirmity of Joe Biden has been admitted to by those who tried for years to hide the obvious from Americans, speculation still runs rampant about who is really running the country. Ms. Harris likes to claim she was “shoulder to shoulder” with Mr. Biden except when it would be considered ugly not to be in lockstep. Like with Afghanistan. We may not know exactly who was running the country, but we do know from where the direction came. Mr. Biden made a deal with the Left after securing the 2020 nomination. He really did not need to because he was the candidate of moderation. He promptly then decided to turn to the two most left-wing senators left in the U.S. Senate after selecting the one farthest Left as his V-P. First, Biden-Harris adopted something known as MMT (Modern Monetary Theory). Biden took on Bernie Sanders’ advisor in this area, Stephanie Kelton, an economist at Stony Brook University. Ms. Kelton argues the essence of MMT, which is that because the U.S. dollar is the world reserve currency, our government can borrow limitlessly with no economic risk. Otherwise, our government does not need to worry about… Read More

The King is dead (who knew he was alive); Long live the Queen. She is the dream candidate of the Left. Forget about all those “firsts” about which the Left expresses exultation. They are a cover for her politics. She is the child of two Left-wing college professors who grew up in Berkeley during its heyday as the center of Leftist life. Then she took her skills to San Francisco just when the city was plummeting into the disaster it has now become. She has never had a job in the private sector as an adult. Never. Yet, she says she will be focused on the middle-class. Senator Chris Coons stated she was campaigning to help entrepreneurs. She has no clue what it takes to start and run a business. What she does understand is how to get in the way with more regulations. The last President to not have children was James Buchanan – and we know how his presidency ended. She has no discernible religion. She married a committed Jew, but neither have a commitment to Israel. They are more concerned about the Palestinians (that is Hamas). In fact, her husband’s daughter has not only disavowed being Jewish, but she is raising money… Read More

As the Democrats prepare to hold their convention in Chicago, please read this story of our encounter with someone who knows a lot about Chicago. During a 2022 trip to Italy with our grown children, the Beautiful Wife reminded the kids “Dad talks to everyone.’’ On this past trip, for once, we had someone open a conversation with us and it turned out to be illuminating, very illuminating. We were at the very end of the recent vacation traveling through the Balkans. We traversed seven countries new to us. We found most of them had English as a compulsory subject in their schools, making conversation easy and all were a pleasure to visit. We also found that few Americans visit them, especially on vacation. It was the last night of our extended trip. We were at dinner in a restaurant recommended by a person from the capital city of Skopje, North Macedonia. The locals just consider it to be called “Macedonia” as Greece forced them to add “North” in order to join NATO. The country is also a member of the EU. The restaurant has a great view as we were up in the hills overlooking the entire city of Skopje, which sits in a valley… Read More

For centuries, the Jewish religion has had criteria for one to be considered Jewish. Some people on the Left have used the idea that someone is Jewish as a cudgel to charge right-of-center folks as anti-Semites while they themselves are anti-Semitic in their actions. It is time to deal with the truth — if you can handle the truth. The definitive standard for me is a column I have used for over thirty years. After realizing I did not have a copy, I went to National Review who sent me an electronic copy of the magazine in which the column was published. I am happy to provide to any reader. William F. Buckley, a man of true brilliance in word and his writings, in 1991 addressed the issue regarding then-Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. He did a thorough analysis of Buchanan’s actions and came to the conclusion that anyone who is singularly focused on Israel’s activities while ignoring other country’s activities cannot be anti-Zionist; they are anti-Semitic. When I mentioned this to people on the Left, they had a knee-jerk reaction with revulsion because they cannot accept a concept offered by someone like Buckley. So much for the benefit of… Read More

You may have been hearing about this. It seems to be the most discussed subject amongst members of the left-of-center universe. If you read what they write it is the biggest threat to democracy in our history and a blueprint for Trump to crush our government once in office. Let’s get a little perspective here. Project 2025 (2025) was developed by the Heritage Foundation. In DC speak it is a conservative think tank. I get daily distributions from them, as I do from the NYT, WAPO, Axios, Politico, The Atlantic, etc. If they were pitching 2025, I certainly missed it. My knowledge of it came from the recent daily drumbeat from the left-of-center press. Not a single Republican has asked me “What are your thoughts on Project 2025?” The first Republican I heard comment on it was former President Trump. He stated, “I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump posted on his social media website. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.” To those who doubt… Read More

We just had a big NATO conference in our country. NATO has been a powerful force for peace in the world. As readers of this column might surmise, I am a big supporter of our military. Support for the military is one of the rare things our federal government is constitutionally supposed to be doing. If I see a member of the military in a restaurant, the meal is on me. Yet increasingly I am baffled by the simple question: Where is all that money going? Recently I received a news alert that the House Armed Services Committee had passed an $884 billion defense bill for next year’s budget. There is a lot of good news here. First of all, the House is properly doing its job of passing funding bills (there are supposed to be twelve) in a timely manner so we don’t have these last-minute budget fights. It includes a raise for our military personnel, who are significantly underpaid. It also includes increased funding for military housing. This is a 7.2% increase over the 2024 budget of $825 billion. But recent information caused even someone like me to question where all this money is going. We will ignore the supercilious Leftist arguments that “greedy… Read More