Mardi Gras was February 17^th, and Lent began on February 18^th. Easter will be on April 5^th. The Eastern Orthodox churches have a slightly different calendar. For them, Lent begins on Monday, February 23rd, and Pascha, their Easter, is on April 12^th.

Jesus gives Christians a command on how to act during any period of fasting. These rules apply at any time of difficulty or effort.

Matthew 6: 16-18 - Christian Standard Bible
¹⁶ “Whenever you fast, don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites. For they disfigure their faces so that their fasting is obvious to people. Truly, I tell you, they have their reward. ¹⁷ But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, ¹⁸ so that your fasting isn’t obvious to others but to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Members of the Roman Catholic Church mark the start of Lent with Ash Wednesday. I am not criticizing that symbolism. It is a one-day action. Smiling and joy are allowed. His guidance here is for fasting in general.

The fasting guidelines apply to any difficulty, including matters unrelated to religion. We all have commitments, causes, and concerns. Short-term issues include Lent, a cold, or studying for an entrance or professional exam. Long-term concerns include child-rearing, chronic health issues, family concerns, and commitments to social or political causes. Some issues in our lives are involuntary. The offers we make for Lent are voluntary. In either case, we can view them as a burden or as an offering to God.

What am I thinking and feeling about this issue? How am I acting toward others? What do I want them to know and what do I want them to do? Do you know someone who raises the same issue every time you see them and talk about nothing else? On the other hand, do you know someone who has serious difficulties but rarely mentions them?

The time we give to these matters in our minds and our speech is important. If we dwell on them, we magnify them. We are also tempted to judge others if we think they should be as diligent about an action or issue as we are.

Lewis’s Screwtape urges his nephew to get his target to judge other church members on their piety during the service. Lent is a time when many are tempted to determine whether others are observing the season as faithfully as they should. In the secular world, there are many ways to judge others as mean, selfish, or otherwise cruel. The epithets are endless: racist, bigot, sexist, deniers, and a basket of “phobes.” People who label others with these tags consider themselves morally pure because others aren’t as resolute.

H. L. Mencken was a famous Baltimore newspaperman of mixed moral values. But he devised very pointed comments. He described Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” That is the choice we have when we are dealing with any issue or concern. Do we want to insist that the rest of the world join us in our misery? Or do we “put oil on our heads and wash our faces” and let the world deal with its own joys and sorrows?

We can let the appropriate people know about the problem. If you know a professional or specialist, ask for advice. Ask friends for prayers. Someone who will lend you an ear or shoulder for a time gives you a wonderful gift. But bleeding over everybody you meet is different. Sharing good news is great. Sharing troubles is different.

I saw this in my family. We had relatives who were hypochondriacs and spoke of almost nothing but their ailments. We joked that their headstones would read, “See! I told you I was sick!”

On the other hand, my mother had a combination of serious and excruciatingly painful problems that the doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital were having trouble diagnosing. They were calling it hypochondria, and it infuriated her. She talked about the visits but didn’t dwell on them. We could see the pain on her face, but she didn’t talk about it. Sometimes she would comment that she was having a “bad day,” but that was all. The doctors finally diagnosed it as an actual problem. She was suffering massive pain in her neck area, which drove up her blood pressure. They planned surgery, but she died of a stroke first.’

My father could easily have spent his life talking about his problems to everyone. Every so often, he would briefly mention some incident in his childhood and how difficult it had been for his family. It was a statement. He didn’t dwell on it.

Dad used humor to deal with life. He made everyone laugh instead of talking about his problems. When he was in his mid-seventies, he developed cancer. Dad always had a great head of hair. He said he was going to be the best-looking corpse in the cemetery.

There is a simple point to remember when you are around others. They have their own lives and priorities. They don’t want to spend their days listening to your complaints when they can’t do anything about them. A straightforward request is fine. That is something they can agree to, decline, or offer an alternative. The Yiddish word kvetch describes a permanent, industrial-strength complainer. No one wants to be around someone like that.

Besides, if you listen rather than complain, you might find out that your troubles aren’t as bad as the other person’s.

For at least sixty years, the Democratic Party leadership has tried to understand the difficult life of the criminal rather than the harm suffered by the victims. They have looked out for the outcast and don’t care about the burdens imposed on the typical diligent, self-disciplined American serfs. The self-anointed saviors of the world care for those who can’t care for themselves.

There has been no limit to this scheme, and it is not without a political payoff. Large numbers of foreigners who have only allegiance to the Democratic Party are added to the population. All the social workers and organizations that received funding to care for these individuals know which party should get their money and votes.

Churches benefit. In some cases, they recruit new members to offset losses among prior members. They also collect funds and provide social services for new arrivals. That money comes from the taxes of the existing citizens.

We never stop hearing about the deaths of self-appointed guardians of illegal aliens who interfere with law enforcement. But let me remind you about two cases in North Carolina where the failure of state and local government to protect the public led to the death of innocents. I am doing this because the same media and Democrats (I repeat myself) who want you to cry rivers over those who interfered in Minneapolis didn’t stop talking about these cases fast enough.

Ironically, the first case involved the death of a legal immigrant. Iryna Zarutska was a Ukrainian immigrant riding on mass transit in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was murdered in a random attack. Her assailant was someone who court records show:

had a lengthy criminal history spanning nearly two decades, including repeated failures to appear in court and multiple charges that were ultimately dismissed …

The current Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate is former Attorney General and Governor Roy Cooper, who held those positions while the assailant was racking up this record. He and his successor as Governor, Josh Stein, are more concerned with addressing the “root causes” of crime than with protecting the public.

In another North Carolina case, an illegal immigrant was driving drunk, crossed over into oncoming traffic, and caused the death of two young people.

The young man, Fletcher Harris, was a junior at Catawba College, where he was double-majoring in environmental sustainability and biology, and made the dean’s list every semester while also serving as a goalkeeper for the school’s soccer team. The young lady, Skylar Provenza, was about to start her career at Datre Hair Co., her family said. She had been on the softball and cheer teams in high school.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noam noted that ICE has lodged a detainer against the drunk driver, seeking custody of him should he be released from Rowan County Jail at any time. Democratic leaders in the state have boasted that they will not cooperate with those detainers. Will Rowan County officials honor the detainer? I wonder how the parents and friends of the two young people feel about state law enforcement protecting someone whose illegal actions contributed to the death of a loved one or friend.

Some Democrats and members of the media try to argue that they are acting in response to unusually harsh actions by President Trump. The reverse is true. Trump is a reaction to a “soft on crime” approach by leadership not only in the United States but throughout the West. It has been going on for a long time.

In 1988, the older George Bush was running against Michael Dukakis and arguing that, as governor of Massachusetts, Dukakis had been soft on crime and released a dangerous criminal from jail. In a debate, Dukakis was asked what he would do if his wife were threatened or harmed. His response was meek, confused, and ambiguous. It cemented in the voters’ minds the idea that he would not be serious about protecting women from violent criminals.

Trump talks about “angel” parents who have lost children to violent deaths due to the presence of people here illegally. When media and politicians ignore the suffering of those people, another layer of pain is added.

The same thing is happening in Europe and causing an intense reaction. When the current British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, was the lead prosecutor, many British girls were kidnapped, raped, and groomed as prostitutes by recent immigrants, and officials did nothing to stop it.

European and American women have extraordinarily little protection. This will not continue. A day will come when relatives will have had enough, and those in charge will pay a price. It will forever be remembered and marked on calendars like Bastille Day or July 4^th. But it is coming.

Have you ever been in an argument with someone who’s completely wrong, but absolutely certain they’re right?

This is known as

the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The idea that stupid people don’t know they’re stupid. That incompetence prevents people from recognizing their own incompetence. But what most people don’t know is this. Arthur Schopenhauer figured this out two hundred years before Dunning and Krueger ever proved it scientifically.

The video runs for 25 minutes and is worth every minute. The narrator focuses on Schopenhauer’s writings on the subject, and the video is full of delightful, quotable phrases.

On the positive side, this effect gives us a way of finding the right people to evaluate certain skills. Only those who are skilled or knowledgeable in an area can truly evaluate the skills of others in that field. “Monday morning quarterbacks” fund football and other sports, but most of them have no real idea of the demands of the game.

Dunning-Kruger shows that only someone skilled or informed in an activity can evaluate the performance of others in that field. Sport scouts are often former athletes who reached elevated levels in their game. They got to see and understand the difference between their skills and those of the more successful players. As scouts, they look for that kind of difference.

You have seen it in your own life. People at work or in your community range from the barely competent to the truly skilled. You have lists in your head of who to talk to on different subjects. The “blowhards” are the ones who know nothing and think they’re experts.

On the other end are the real experts. I’ve had a variety of medical problems in my life, and I’ve been fortunate to be treated by some of the most renowned doctors in their fields. They’ve always talked about trade-offs, “might be,” and “probably.” They know about risks and uncertainties. As it turns out, some of the treatments they used in the 1950s and 60s are no longer used and are now considered dangerous. It was the best they knew at the time.

I started my career in the computer field in 1968. I’ve worked with some truly brilliant people. I’ve also studied some elegant technology implemented in the early days, which is still essential today. I am furious when I hear politicians say we can take all kinds of displaced workers and make them programmers. Coal mining and farming are distinct kinds of work, but those skills have no connection to computer work. Politicians who don’t know which end of a bull to milk or a punch card from a USB cable think the jobs are interchangeable. They’re not. I know you don’t milk a bull, but that’s not enough to make me a farmer.

But there is a downside to the correlation between low information and high certainty. If political leaders can create many of these people, they have a political force they can manipulate and, if useful, turn into a violent force. They become convinced of their moral purity and the need to protect society from opposition. They stop acting like members of a democracy. A democracy is a contest between moral equals. When you fight evil, you must win by any means necessary.

The solution to this would be to have them hear other ideas. George Orwell addressed this in 1984. The party created Newspeak. A language designed to make it impossible to have an unapproved idea. Today, there is a concept called the Overton Window.

The “Overton Window” describes or delimits the range of ideas that can be considered. In one sense, it is used to provide the politicians with a framework of the ideas the public is currently dealing with. For those looking to understand the anger and tension in a society, it would be useful to examine the extent to which simple, narrow-mindedness, and a lack of understanding of the other side of the issue are fanning the anger and venom.

“Hate speech” and “misinformation” are terms being used to block attempts to provide alternate views on certain subjects. European governments are using restrictions on social media and “hate speech” to block opposition. Konstantin Kisin was born in the Soviet Union and is now a British citizen. He noted that in a recent year, there were 400 arrests in Russia for social media posts and 3,300 in Britain. The Trump administration has intervened on behalf of American internet providers facing European countries that are trying to limit the speech of American customers.

Blocking any information that would give people reason to doubt a one-sided view of events creates Dunning-Kruger fanatics willing to support extreme actions. It will lead to the end of civility and a democratic society.

Again, the video is –

In the Ten Commandments movie, the Pharaoh repeatedly says, “So let it be written, so let it be done!” California’s government thinks it can make the world perfect by writing a law, and there will never be any negative consequences. They are also certain that, being the moral center of the universe, they can set themselves up as a “sanctuary state” and ignore any federal law that doesn’t meet their higher moral guidelines.

California has taken many recent steps that have put the trucking industry in turmoil. If the harm were limited to that state, it would be bad enough. It isn’t. A YouTube producer called Inspector James produced a video on the subject and noted that, in Los Angeles,

the San Pedro Bay Port Complex stands as the largest gateway for trade in North America. Each year, more than $500 billion in goods pass through these docks, feeding supply chains that reach every corner of the country. One out of every three containerized imports to the United States arrives here, supporting three million jobs across warehousing, retail, and manufacturing. The sheer scale of this operation means even small disruptions can ripple far beyond state lines.

There are three levels of movement to consider: drayage, in-state, and interstate. Drayage is the term for moving a container from the docks to either local storage or to a location outside the harbor area. If there aren’t enough drayage vehicles, the ships back up in port because they can’t be unloaded. The difference between in-state and interstate is clear, but it creates different issues in certain respects.

There are three immediate issues causing trouble.

On January 1, 2026, AB 692 took effect, blocking “stay or pay” provisions. Employers felt it was reasonable to protect themselves when they paid to train a new employee. They included a provision in the contract that required repayment of some of the training costs if the employee quits before a certain date. I don’t know if the provisions were abusive. I know the U.S. service academies have this arrangement for students once they stay into their third year.

I read a discussion of AB692 that mentioned a 2-year window with pro rata charges. I’m not sure if that applies to training or when the clock starts. The trucking companies need to figure out how to get trained drivers, or they’ll end up training people who walk away as soon as they get their license.

The biggest problem, and the one with the most potential nationwide impact, was signed in 2019 and tied up in the courts. AB5 is designed to prevent companies from treating people as contractors when, in practice, they are employees. Yet there are professions where this is common, and those fields have been given an exemption. Trucking has many owner-operators who want to choose assignments. They may always work with one company, but they have more control.

The bill was passed in 2019, and the court action ended in 2022. No fines were imposed for a while. In his video, Inspector James notes:

On October 30th, 2025, a citation from the California Labor Commissioner landed like a shockwave across the state’s freight corridors. Three companies, Mega Nice Trucking, Rider Last Mile, and Costco, received a combined penalty of $868,128.00 for misclassifying fifty-eight delivery drivers in San Diego.

An excellent internet article discusses the history and impact of AB5. It is too complicated to repeat here. It will be the end of the owner-operator model for interstate freight from California ports. The distance from San Pedro to Nevada is more than 240 miles or almost five hundred miles round-trip. Moving goods from California ports to the eastern edge of the state will have to be done by trucks that meet the new rules. It will increase the cost of those goods for everyone everywhere in the country.

Another problem stems from California’s Sanctuary State status. They were sloppy or indifferent about the licensing of non-citizens.

In late 2025, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration launched a nationwide audit targeting commercial driver’s licenses held by non-citizens.
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Immigrant drivers make up about 20% of California’s trucking workforce, many playing vital roles in port drayage and regional freight.

These issues will raise the cost of imported items in California and wherever they go. Perfection is a wonderful idea. If you’re rich enough, it is a fine way to live. The rest of us always balance priorities.

In a recent City Journal article, Charles Fain Lehman described the most prominent sociologist of the last 100 years as follows:

Lehman discusses Wilson’s 1975 book Thinking About Crime, but the ideas apply to all forms of behavior. The prevailing theories of crime, then and now, sought reasons or excuses to place responsibility on society rather than on the individual who committed the act.

Note that this makes the community responsible yet unable to act. Criticizing offenders or imposing harsh punishment is seen as insensitive. It isn’t their fault. These problems have “root causes” that cannot be solved.

An opposing view is that of the “social control” theorists, who saw crime not as something caused but as something to be prevented. Our social bonds, or systems of “social control,” constrain us.

Here is the key definition of community and social organization as Lehmen describes it:

This explains two significant issues. Heather MacDonald, in her book The War on Cops, talks about how the Black people in poor neighborhoods want more police so they can have a peaceful, even dull, lifestyle. Additionally, one of the major disruptions caused by massive immigration is the change in the community’s character within a neighborhood.

In 1982, Wilson and George Kelling published a seminal article in The Atlantic Magazine proposing the “Broken Windows” theory.

Kelling had shadowed a foot patrol officer and sought to understand the officer’s perspective on his job.

Here is the problem with American law and society in the last sixty years. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is inadequate to the government of any other.” This assumes a group in which the vast majority is law-abiding and exercises self-control. They are also expected to and allowed to exert social pressure on those who are not.

Once politicians and lawyers began catering to offenders and explaining away their transgressions, healthy social constraints were not expected; they became taboo. Suddenly, transgressors and those who “cared for” them were more important than the healthy contributors to society.

Lehmen deals with another of Wilson’s concepts – “civil peace.” He notes that this dates to Roman times and is reflected in Western Law. There are terms such as “Disturbing the Peace” and “Disorderly Conduct.” Various governments, or “The People” are often the plaintiffs in criminal cases: The United States vs., The State of ... vs.”

Crimes are not victimless. Homeless people make cities unlivable. When business property values collapse, real people lose real money. When subways aren’t safe, many city entities are affected. Judges and politicians who think they are showing concern are destroying the kind of community needed to hold a society together.

Much of this article is drawn from Charles Fain Lehman’s excellent article; I would be guilty of plagiarism if I didn’t acknowledge that this is an “article review.” His article is about twice as long, and I urge you to take the time to review it.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/james-q-wilson-thinking-about-crime-50

He concludes with this important idea from Wilson. This point demonstrates the harm the courts have inflicted not only in criminal law but across the entire spectrum of morality and law.

Socialism is gaining favor again. About five years ago, I wrote a column describing the connection between ingratitude and socialism. Socialism is a political system for complainers. Intellectuals believe they will finally be appreciated because their wisdom will be applied to improve various aspects of life.

For ordinary people, the world seems unfair, and a system that evens things out seems to be an answer. Eastern religions emphasize acceptance, and the Ten Commandments caution against covetousness. This is clearly the way to mental and social peace.

But that kind of peace doesn’t serve the needs of politicians. Turmoil and division raise passions, prompting people to make calls, knock on doors, spend money, and vote. It also makes them unhappy and harms them spiritually, but that is not a problem for the politician.

I just heard a delightful, quick definition of a socialist as someone who wants everything you have except your job. Envy is particularly vicious because it says even if I have everything I’ve been promised, I will resent the fact that someone else has something I don’t have.

There is a parable about that in the Bible.

Here is the issue. Those who worked the entire day were promised, and received, a denarius. That was the standard daily wage. When they saw others get a higher hourly payment, they thought they would and should get more. When they didn’t, they felt it wasn’t fair. They received what they had agreed to and were promised, but when others received a higher hourly payment, they were envious.

There was another case in this century that was very unfair. Northern Virginia is home to many Federal workers and retirees. There are also Virginia State workers and retirees. During their working years, federal pay scales are higher than those of Virginia. That differential continues in the pension amounts. To give its employees a benefit, the Commonwealth did not tax Virginia pension income.

Everybody else’s pension income was taxed. Forty-nine states, corporations, and yes, even federal retirees, were taxed. But that last group thought it was unfair that one group didn’t have to pay taxes. Tax law does that all the time for first responders, teachers, the military, and other groups. But this wasn’t fair!

These people had the power to make their case. The Washington Post took the Federal retiree’s side. They obviously sued in federal court. All the federal judges are federal employees who might someday retire in Virginia, but there were no mass recusals.

Federal courts ruled that federal pensions must be treated the same as Virginia pensions under state tax law. Virginia had to pay back money to federal retirees who hadn’t been allowed to exempt their federal pensions. Then the question arose about what to do going forward. They could exempt both or neither. The state decided to tax both.

Let’s review this. Federal employees had it better than Virginia employees in all but one area. A small percentage of Federal employees retired to Virginia and were impacted by the issue. Yet the enrobed federal employees insisted that Virginia couldn’t give its retired employees a slight benefit without also giving it to a small group of envious federal retirees.

This is envy in action. It doesn’t matter what I have. If you have something I don’t have, life’s not fair! If a politician can take that from you, even if I don’t get it, the world is a more equitable place!

Briefly, crudely, yet strikingly, Malthus argued that infinite human hopes for social happiness must be vain, for population will always tend to outrun the growth of production. The increase of population will take place, if unchecked, in a geometric progression, while the means of subsistence will increase in only an arithmetic progression. Population will always expand to the limit of subsistence.

Malthus published his theory in 1798. Malthusianism soon influenced decisions on laws regarding poorhouses and other public issues. In Dickens’ Christmas Carol (1843), the mean version of Scrooge talks about poorhouses and “surplus population.” As the twentieth century approached, overpopulation was obviously going to have to be managed.

Society’s leaders believed that population growth would have to be constrained and began exploring a subfield of genetics known as Eugenics. What kind of people are more worthy of living than others? I.E., If there aren’t enough resources for everyone, who is unworthy of life?

Theories were put forward about the desirability of letting the sick and weak die. It was also essential to prevent the entry and mixing of inferior stock. One U.S. Supreme Court ruling was emphatic in its approval of the sterilization of a woman when it said, “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.”

Various groups were targeted as “unworthy” at various times by different governments. Black people, Jews, Southern Europeans, and Non-Aryans were all targets. Things changed briefly right after World War II. The revelation of the Nazi concentration camps created a revulsion against anything remotely related to eugenics and choosing fit and unfit groups of people.

A significant breakthrough in food production occurred in the early twentieth century. Fixated nitrogen fertilizer dramatically increased the world’s food supply and reduced concerns about food supply.

In the late 1940s, there was a surge in births, especially in the United States. During the Great Depression in the 1930s and the early 1940s, family growth was delayed. Couples made up for that vigorously. America’s “Baby Boom” exploded!

The pessimists returned. Britannica describes The Limits to Growth, a 1972 report commissioned by the Club of Rome:

This report focused on hypotheses derived from a computer model …it projected a Malthusian vision in which the collapse of world order would result if population growth, industrial expansion, and increased pollution, combined with insufficient food production and the depletion of natural resources, were to continue at current rates. To offset these trends, the report called …[for evaluating] the belief in endless growth and the tacit acceptance of wastefulness.
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Besides zero population growth and a leveling-off of industrial production, the report also recommended increased pollution control, the recycling of materials, the manufacture of more durable and repairable goods, and a shift from consumer goods to a more service-oriented economy.

We can see that our leaders have implemented many of these policies. There is a problem. Once a policy is in place, its need is never reviewed. Organizations and people are committed to it. They need to keep doing their work even if their task needs to be stopped or, worse, reversed. In one area — population control — it is time to check the results.

Nicholas Eberstadt is a political economist and demographer. He has been studying population trends and their impacts on governments and government programs. In the November/December 2024 issue of Foreign Affairs, he has an article titled “The Age of Depopulation: Surviving a World Gone Gray.”

Leaders didn’t realize the public’s incentives for having children were changing. An Issues and Insights editorial explained:

… in the past, children were considered a form of wealth, not a burden. Living on a farm, for instance, required workers – often children. And for much of the 20th century, parents were cared for in old age by their children, a kind family-based Social Security.
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Indeed, attitudes in developed nations toward children have altered. No longer needed for economic support, they are now seen as a burden, not a blessing.

Peter Zeihan also has a YouTube video discussing this demographic issue.

Almost every society in the world is not producing enough children to replace itself at the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman of childbearing age. Some societies are 30 percent or more below that level.

Social welfare systems were designed, assuming more young people than old, more healthy people than sick. An aging society with more pensioners than workers is not workable. You can’t have a system in which most of the workforce provides goods and services to meet the needs of the elderly or infirm. Most of the workforce must be engaged in making everyday goods and services for domestic use and export.

France is drowning in pension-related chaos. Their government pension starts at age sixty‑two. To make it fiscally responsible, government leaders keep trying to raise it to sixty‑four. Every attempt to do so is met with massive strikes, riots, street chaos, and no-confidence votes to oust the government. Sixty‑two is the lowest age anywhere in the world, but it is what they have, and they won’t budge.

Now imagine a society where the elderly are the majority, but an ever-shrinking younger generation produces services and products. How does that work, and how long?

Eberstadt notes:

A depopulating world will be an aging one. Across the globe, the march to low fertility, and now to super-low birthrates, is creating top-heavy population pyramids, in which the old begin to outnumber the young. Over the coming generation, aged societies will become the norm.
Policymakers are not ready for the coming demographic order.

When the church prays for these people, we use a different term than when we pray for church members and leaders. These individuals have a distinct role and a unique set of responsibilities.

British historian David Starkey discussed a major misconception in a recent YouTube video.

Christ very deliberately says, “My kingdom is not of this world.” The moral values of Christianity are not those of any possible Christian state. The notion that Christianity could sustain a state is absurd.

What, then, does that mean for the authorities? What does the public expect from them or demand? We can simply refer to the Constitution’s Preamble. They are to “ensure domestic tranquility [and] provide for the common defence.” Many local police department logos contain the word “protect.” That is their primary function.

What follows will seem unbelievably primitive and uncivilized to many people. Still, it explains why the failure of our recent Western Civilization leaders to protect their citizens is causing such a visceral reaction.

Human beings are mammals. We like to think we are sophisticated creatures controlled by our minds, but in many ways, the facts of our physical nature still have a significant role in our reactions. Successful groups have strong “Alpha Males” who protect the group from outside attack and make sure, more than anything else, that the group’s females are safe from molestation by any male outside the group. The group and its resources, such as hunting areas or food, are also protected.

As groups expanded, the “Alpha Male” concept broadened to encompass a ruler and an army, among others. Throughout history, certain groups have been stronger than others. Members of weaker groups could be ritually sacrificed, eaten, or enslaved. Endless histories and dramas have been written about the toppling of a leader by a new “Alpha.” There are, of course, the famous female Alphas: Cleopatra, the English Elizabeths, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher.

Today, Western women are not being protected. Various crimes are increasing. Housing and energy costs are rising far faster than personal incomes. Trust in everything from government to media and the courts is collapsing. Starkey described the problem:

… what we’ve done is confuse the intensely personal morality of Christianity (the morality of the good Samaritan) and try to pretend you can run a state on that basis
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We’ve got this absolutely terrifying pseudo-religious nexus of the belief in a universal humanity, which again is heavily grounded in a particular form of Christianity.
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We’ve tried to bring down the kingdom of heaven onto earth with the infinitely catastrophic consequences of all utopianism.

In the United States, this has been extended with horrific consequences for law enforcement. In the name of “Social Justice.” Punishment has been disconnected from crime in the United States. “No Cash Bail” laws spread rapidly on the assumption that bail was unfair to poor people. That made sense for people with no offenses other than a minor parking or traffic problem. It is insane for a violent or armed crime by a repeat offender. We are seeing random murders or other violent attacks by people with double-digit incarcerations.

To add to the public’s confusion and anger, some of the offenders were never here legally and were often deported and returned. When local mayors and governors take pride in resisting ICE, a family with a victim of someone in that category is confused.

To protect the group, a leader must sometimes be harsh. Some criticize President Truman for using nuclear weapons during World War II. I don’t. There would have been far more deaths on both sides if he hadn’t acted. Even so, it was an unbelievably difficult moral call. That is the burden of a leader.

Police officers, prosecutors, judges, and political leaders make decisions constantly about public safety. I admit I couldn’t do any of these jobs any more than I could deal with blood in an operating room. Of these, only the police officer decides in a split second, while at personal risk.

Everyone in law enforcement who can calmly sit and decide what they want to do has agreed that the time has come to be gentle with criminals. The fact that someone commits a crime, no matter how violent or how often, is not a permanent mark against them. We are supposed to forgive them “seventy times seven.” The irony is striking. These people reject every attempt to sneak religion into law yet misuse a religious idea to avoid doing their duty and thereby endanger the public. English courts won’t punish men who groom English young women but will jail someone who posts an unfavorable comment.

A dangerous time is coming in multiple European countries. The current leaders are deficient. The people, especially the women, don’t feel safe. Energy prices are climbing; blackouts are becoming more common. Companies are closing and relocating their production overseas due to the excessive cost of energy. Governments are losing “no-confidence” votes. Likely winners are being barred from running due to court prosecutions. Censorship is rampant.

I realize that the following statement may sound unusual, but I was careful in seeking credible sources. Serious writers and historians, people I trust, are warning that a civil war is imminent in Britain and other Western European countries. The European Union (EU), led by Ursula von der Leyen, has functioned as a dictatorial bureaucracy implementing policies of the World Economic Forum (WEF) despite the wishes of the voters of the member countries. Those policies have harmed the public, and they’re fed up and have had enough.

Lacking capable leadership, the EU, NATO, and European nations are all on the edge of chaos.

A “right” was a restriction or legal procedure imposed on the government to protect the life and property of a citizen. It was a constraint on the government. If it must act, it had to follow a prescribed procedure to ensure that the citizen was being treated fairly in a legal process.

When the United Nations was being created, Eleanor Roosevelt was part of a group that developed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This declaration included the kind of legal rights in the American Bill of Rights but went much further.

It contains thirty articles, five of which are requirements for services.

· Article 22 refers to social security ... “for his dignity and the development of his personality”.

· Article 23 is about employment and sounds like labor leaders wrote it. The phrase “equal pay for equal work” has often been quoted.

· Article 24 specifies” the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.”

· Article 25 has two parts. The first sentence specifies “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family.” We’ll come back to this. It is a “kitchen sink” of items. The second section refers to motherhood and children, regardless of their “legitimacy.”

· Article 26 calls for free and compulsory elementary education.

For those of us in modern America, Article 22 seems reasonable, but in the early twentieth century, this was unheard of. No one assumed life promised any security. That the government would arrange to take money, even in the form of insurance, to guarantee a secure income at any point in one's life was unthinkable. That someone else’s money would go to your benefit was absurd.

Articles 23 and 24 refer to working conditions, working hours, and compensation. These are suitable items for negotiation, but not rights. The employer bears the costs of these benefits. Economist Thomas Sowell has noted that governments are free to set any employment costs and benefits they choose, but the actual minimum wage is zero. If the legal burdens are too high, no companies are started, and no employees are hired.

We’ll come back to Article 25.

Article 26 addresses education. This is personal, because my father had to leave school at age eleven when his father died. Protestant America was concerned that children learn to read since every Christian had to be able to read the bible. Schools for all were common. You had to be free to attend. If you were working to earn money for the family, that was unfortunate.

There are three arguments for supporting mandatory education for every child.

· Find and promote the best skills of all the people in society. This is a wartime or “Space Race approach.” When there is a need for talent, we look everywhere.

· Find talent to avoid a locked-in caste system. Allow new talent to rise.

· Since there is a rising cluster of older people, we need trained people to care for them.

Interestingly, the third paragraph of Article 26 says,” parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. That is contrary to German law and would seem to require school choice.

The first paragraph of Article 25 is unbelievably expansive and sounds like the chart for a United States Department of Benevolence:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

All these things are wonderful, but they don’t just happen. Someone must provide the materials and services. It is one thing for the government to take taxes for everyday government tasks. Providing all these services requires far greater resources.

Let’s be clear. Charity is a voluntary act. A government official never practices charity. When I pay taxes, I am not charitable. Taxes are extracted through the threat of force. They are the equivalent of a thief taking my money and giving it to someone else.

If I give money, I control each payment. I can stop giving if the recipient is no longer worthy or needful. I provide money to people who are careful with donations. Government agencies and services don’t meet either of these requirements. Rules and procedures dominate.

Canada, the United States, and the European countries committed themselves to this list of programs and are now in financial difficulties. They tried to give away something they didn’t have. The cost of everything on the list has risen faster than inflation. Education, housing, medical care, retirement payments, and disability care are all stretching government and personal budgets.

They have all become examples of utopian wishes meeting reality. It would be nice if everyone could have all these things. The real world is about making trade-offs and dealing with scarcity. When politicians and governments ignore this fact, the piper stands by, waiting to be paid.

Rindsberg did the research in the Times archives and confirmed it. That's precisely what the Times reported. His confidence in the accuracy of the Times was shaken, and he researched it, which resulted in a book, The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions, and Fabrications Radically Alter History.

He describes multiple cases where the Times emphasized, downplayed, or made up information to create what we now call a narrative to fit the purpose of the day.

Their coverage of the moral disasters of the 1930s was despicable. The Sulzberger family, which owned the Times, was Jewish but did not want to emphasize that fact or have the Times seen as a Jewish newspaper. They also knew that President Roosevelt didn't want to make the battle against the Nazis a "war to save the Jews." The Times regularly downplayed the horrendous news out of Germany. It did not take up the cause of Jews who had fled and sought asylum in the U.S. Their Holocaust coverage was inadequate because it was downplayed.

There was another mass death in the 1930's which is not as well-known. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and ruled by Josef Stalin. He decided to collectivize all the farms and take all the food to the cities. The result was massive starvation. Ukrainians call it the Holodomor, and estimates range from four to six million deaths.

Rhea Clyman, Gareth Jones, and Malcolm Muggeridge were trying to report on it despite international efforts to wink at it and ignore it. But the Times had a master liar and ignorer. He even accepted a Pulitzer Prize for the lie. As far as I know, that prize has never been reversed, and the liar's portrait still has a place of honor on a wall in the Times offices. His name was Walter Duranty, and he was the Times Moscow Correspondent.

In an infamous article, "Russians Hungry But Not Starving," Duranty lied about what was happening, minimized the amount of suffering, and justified what suffering there was. He coined the shocking phrase, "You can't make an omelette{sp} without breaking eggs." He specifically addressed Gareth Jones' comments and downplayed claims of famine and death.

The lies served a purpose, so they were acceptable. What purpose did they serve? The Western powers did not recognize the Soviet government. Any bad news about it would delay or prevent that recognition. Rindsberg explains that the Times arranged meetings between the famous Duranty and Franklin Roosevelt before FDR became president, which helped shape FDR's attitude toward recognizing the Soviet government.

Many other foreign policy cases are described in the book, but I want to focus on a different lie: the last example cited because it is the most egregious. It is not only a lie but also a slander, inflammatory, divisive, and serves no positive purpose.

I'm talking about the 1619 project. The Times spent millions of dollars lying, adding bitterness to the civic conversation. They wrote:

The goal of the 1619 Project is to…reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation's birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.

But that's not who we are. Slavery was universal in 1619. The indigenous peoples of the Americas practiced it. Thomas Sowell, in Intellectuals and Society, describes misunderstandings about slavery.

… two crucial facts have been filtered out of this picture: (1) the institution of slavery was not based on race, and (2) whites as well as blacks were enslaved. … For most of the history of slavery, which covers most of the history of the human race, most slaves were not racially different from those who enslaved them

… white slaves were still being bought and sold in the Islamic world, decades after blacks had been freed in the United States.

To add to the insult, the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wanted to grant a tenured position to the author of this screed. As you can imagine, that was not a very popular idea.

Rindsberg's book shows case after case where the Times decides that it is smarter than the public or government officials. Information was shaded to tilt public opinion to create a desired result because the average public or government member wasn't as wise as the people in the Times offices.

But the 1619 Project was the epitome of hubris. Even those who aren't scholars of Dr. Sowell's quality could smell a rat. There was a general sense that slavery was common in the world before the start of America and that our founders came here for other kinds of freedom. We knew 1619 was a lie. We couldn't understand why people who called themselves smart thought they could get away with such a blatant lie.

They insulted us by thinking we were historically ignorant. They slandered our country. They tried to turn the most noble experiment in human history into one of the most despicable efforts in history. They lied to increase bitterness and anger between different groups in society. Then they wonder why we consider them a negative, poisonous, lying, detrimental part of "fake news."

It seems that removal and reinstatement are becoming a habit for the Defense Department as part of moving its focus away from DEI and Critical Race Theory. In a previous column, I covered the case where a website about Jackie Robinson had been temporarily unreachable. The service academies are returning some books that have been removed from their libraries for the same reason.

Recruiting difficulties were severe under the previous administration partly because the focus changed from getting the best people to having the “correct mix” of people in group photographs. Young people knew it was dangerous to go into battle with that mix of people.

I don’t know if Bailey’s book has been returned to the shelves, but I’d like to consider his use of the word “banned.” There are, of course, legitimate concerns about banning.

Middle and high school libraries become embroiled in controversy over books involving words now considered inappropriate or concepts considered too sensitive or upsetting. This is a book ban, and it is harmful.

As a child, I portrayed Huck Finn on stage. On other occasions, I played Jewish and French children dealing with discrimination. I am convinced we need to see and know the past as it was to understand the progress we’ve made. We also need to know the past to recognize what our ancestors had to accomplish for us to be here. We can’t have stomachs too weak to view the past. This kind of book ban is unfortunate.

From ages eight to fourteen, I spent a lot of time in the central Enoch Pratt Library building in downtown Baltimore. It was massive, with many rooms. I assume some places had the kind of books I would call X-rated later in my life. I never encountered those books back then.

I would enter the main entrance and turn to the right to the Young Adult section. There was a massive collection of sports, science fiction, humor, and other things. It kept me busy. I don’t know if they were in that section, but I also found serious histories of World War II and Nazi Germany. I did not feel deprived.

The librarians managed to allot various kinds of materials to the different places in the building for multiple audiences. No one complained of banning. You could pick the material you wanted by walking to the appropriate room.

“Ban” has become a popular word in the fights over appropriate content for elementary school libraries. It is being used to try to keep certain materials in elementary school libraries. But this is very different. Parents expect these libraries to be safe for their children. Frankly, they expect them to contain information about standard age-appropriate information. That includes many fields, including the hard sciences and the social sciences.

They don’t expect to have any material that can’t be read aloud at a school board meeting. If the material is too raunchy for adults, it is inappropriate for an elementary school library. The job of the school librarian is to inform, not to indoctrinate. If parents can’t check the contents of their child’s school library, something is very wrong.

If this material is aimed at children, its purpose is questionable. If it is aimed at adults, put it in an adult part of another library. Those who insist on keeping this material in primary school libraries are making the case for school choice, smaller public school budgets, and the end of the U. S. Department of Education.

“We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see.” Charles Péguy

This article will be different because I’d like to take some time to explain why I’m writing these articles and why they may strike some people as annoying, controversial, or just plain wrong. You are certainly free to come to those conclusions. As the preacher man said, “You can disagree with me. You have the right to be wrong!”

As I will detail below, there was a time when I was young, naïve, and willing to go along with what the general crowd accepted. My high school yearbook photo shows me as a conventional young man.

I will describe my history and the change in my views over time below. I saw the Péguy quote above, and it struck me. It is easier and safer to pretend we don’t see what’s in front of us. To act as if it doesn’t matter when policy choices hurt large groups of people or lies of commission or omission cause damage.

For various reasons, I have always felt like an outsider. I had multiple illnesses and surgeries as a child. Then, I was a child actor, often in plays where I was the only juvenile in the cast. I feel myself an observer in life more than “one of the guys.”

Let me be clear. I am not bitter. My articles are not a “call to arms” or a manifesto. Instead, they are written in sadness and with a feeling of spitting into a hurricane.

Thomas Sowell wrote about a self-anointed group ruling over the benighted. They never listen because they never doubt their wisdom or righteousness. They seem determined to continue their actions despite the building anger, frustration, and resistance in the general public.

They won’t listen to an almost octogenarian writing a weekly commentary. But I hope others will listen.

I write to inform, not inflame. Sadly, people who have heard only the other side for years will have trouble hearing this information as anything other than provocative.

I was part of the high school class of 1963. The world and I were very different then. Newspapers were a big deal with morning and evening editions. Many homes had only one black-and-white TV, and we watched the nightly news together. Most of us respected those in authority. It was the last summer of the Kennedy years. Some people wanted to “Impeach Earl Warren,” but they were considered outliers.

With my freshly minted diploma and the arrogance of a teenager, I sent a letter to the editor of the Baltimore Evening Sun, which I knew would solve the Civil Rights problem. The letter was printed. I felt good. It didn’t solve the problem.

During my high school years, the World War II correspondents were writing about the rise of Hitler. I was reading Alan Bullock and William Shirer and others. As an undergraduate, I had a broad education. I majored in Political Science and minored in Mathematics. I had the full menu of “101” classes in almost every hard science and social science.

When Lyndon Johnson was President, I was an editor of my college newspaper and frequently wrote a column. On a few occasions over the years, I have had columns and letters to the editor published. After college, I worked in the computer field. I have followed politics and foreign affairs because of my undergraduate major and as an interested citizen and voter. I’ve also read a lot on various subjects in books and columns.

The last sixty years have been very troubling. Most professional fields have been captured by people with agendas instead of those dedicated to the essential purpose of their professions.

More troubling, the most essential freedom is being challenged – Freedom of Speech. The reason is apparent. If I am going to abuse the powers “appertaining” to my office, I don’t want anyone to be able to complain about it. Their complaint must be “misinformation. Even better if I can claim victim status, I can accuse them of a larger “sin” and avoid the primary discussion altogether.

The New York Times produced a scandalous text claiming that in a world where slavery was universal and religious freedom was rare, the United States was colonized by people searching for a haven for slavery. That is an absurd lie and a slander. Yet the University of North Carolina faculty wanted to have its author join them.

To “save democracy,” courts and politicians are trying to limit or keep the public from voting to express their desire for a policy change. Courts have blocked Marine Le Pen in France and Călin Georgescu in Romania from running for office. The International Criminal Court indicted Bibi Netanyahu. Israeli courts are trying to convict him for various things to get him out of office. I discussed the Trump Lawfare fiasco in a previous column.

Robert Bryce has written about the inverse relationship between energy and poverty. There is a YouTube video of a talk he gave that is embarrassing to anyone who claims to care about the state of women yet insists on limiting the electrification of the poor parts of the world.

These are a few of the things I will be discussing. I also promise to throw in some bad “Dad jokes” occasionally.

Thank you for letting me explain myself.

For years, the Defense Department had sites honoring famous people who had served in the armed forces as a recruiting aid.

If you will pardon an explanation of the obvious, websites have an address known as a URL. Phones have phone numbers that can be reassigned to different phones. New phones can’t be called until they are assigned a number. If a number is taken away from a phone, that phone can no longer be reached. Call forwarding means some phones have multiple numbers.

URL web addresses and websites work the same way. Before DEI, the site honoring Robinson had a URL: https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2490361/sports-heroes-who-served-baseball-great-jackie-robinson-was-wwii-soldier/. That URL has been reassigned, and you can again access the site by using it.

But when DEI became the rage, the URL was changed with a minor difference in the middle: https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2490361/deisports-heroes-who-served-baseball-great-jackie-robinson-was-wwii-soldier/

The letters “dei” caused the problem when the new administration came in. They used an automated technique to disconnect any URL containing “DEI.” They didn’t touch the site; they just disconnected the “phone number.” After the uproar, both URLs point to the site.

But who is responsible for claiming that Jackie Robinson’s honors are in any way related to DEI? Critics of DEI attach a different meaning to the three letters. They call it Didn’t Earn It! Given the times and what he had to put up with, Robinson earned every tiny bit of the rewards and honors he got. Also, baseball is a game of harsh statistics. If it is in the books, you earned it.

In an ideal world, everyone is given a clear shot at the training they need to fully utilize their skills and reach the top of their field. There are several issues contained in that statement. Different people have different skills, interests, and desires. Some people are willing to commit virtually unlimited time to work, while others want family or hobby time. Some cultural groups or people who grew up in different climates or environments have different interests.

We have confused equality of opportunity with equality of results. There are very few 5’ 6” NBA basketball players. Most hockey players come from cold countries and northern states where lakes freeze in the winter. Women outperform men in academia, and more women than men are becoming doctors.

Power-assisted equipment has made more jobs available to those not particularly muscular. Power steering and electronic aircraft controls are examples. However, some jobs, such as firefighting, still require physical lifting.

The “Disparate Impact” notion says that if the ratio of people in a particular group doesn’t match the ratio of assumed candidates, we can assume bigotry. It has been used to cause chaos in employment litigation and justifies DEI. If a specific mix is needed, people are hired at that mix, even if those from certain groups are less qualified than people from the currently “overrepresented” groups.

I need to be clear here. I am opposed to any hiring that isn’t merit-based. Professional sports hires are close to that. I want the best players on the teams I root for. I live in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Many people I rely on for all kinds of services up to and including medical care are Black. I only care that they do a good job.

There was a time in the South when only Whites were hired, even if Blacks were better. Alabama head football coach “Bear” Bryant” arranged to have his all-White team embarrassed by a team with Black players to convince his fans to let him use Black players.

DEI is a lazy way to head toward the numbers you want, and it discredits the people who get the slots. DEI is a quota world. Anyone from a favored category is assumed to have gotten their position solely because of it. It takes a little more time to trust a “DEI hire” even if the person is the best person for the job.

One example is the headline: United Airlines Targets Women, People Of Color In New Pilot Recruitment Campaign. The worth of Black pilots has been well-known since the Tuskegee Airmen, and I have no doubts about women pilots. The question is simple. Is the pilot flying my plane the best pilot they could have put on that plane, or is this a DEI hire?

DEI takes attention away from what’s needed. The real problem is the notion that we can’t teach some people enough for them to be competitive. Worse, there is the absurd notion that much of the standard curriculum is somehow part of the white patriarchy.

That a Math professor claims equation 2+2=4 ‘reeks of white supremacist patriarchy’ is ridiculous. Those who look for excuses to fail to teach Black students to excel are a significant problem in terms of equal results. Students need to learn society’s conventions in elementary schools. Green means Go. Red means Stop. We drive and walk on the right. This is how we read. Here are the math tables.

Any child who leaves those years without learning those conventions is a social cripple who will need more help than DEI can provide.

Anyone who has used a fireplace or started a picnic fire understands the role of kindling. Small pieces of dried wood flame faster than the larger wood pile pieces. Most grocery and lumber stores sell packages of kindling in the fall and winter.

It would seem wise for areas where dangerous fires are a risk to do everything possible to remove anything remotely resembling kindling before the dry season starts to keep it from adding to the risk and damage of a fire. You would think so, but you are wrong in a world where anything that makes money is evil, nature is always pure, and government experts are better than untrained individuals.

Trees drop branches and leaves to the forest floor. This material no longer draws water through the tree roots and becomes underbrush. Record rains followed by a drought can make the problem particularly bad.

A Wall Street Journal article entitled How L.A. Bureaucracy Made It Harder to Clear Flammable Brush describes the chaos and confusion in the Los Angeles area that left massive areas with no underbrush removal. I am tempted to cheat and copy the whole article, but I will hit the highlights. The Journal has its material behind a paywall. I am a subscriber. The link above should let non-subscribers read the article.

Environmentalists trust nature more than humans.

At a 2023 meeting, a representative from the California State Parks agency said that, for environmental conservation reasons, the state doesn't typically remove brush. But any concerned citize

n, he said, could remove dry vegetation close to their own property after obtaining a permit.

The permit application requires property owners to schedule a visit by a state parks representative, takes up to eight weeks to be processed and costs $150.

Then there is the difference between when the responsible party is known and when it is not.

David Barrett…executive director of MySafe: L.A…said there are defined rules, inspection processes and fines to compel residents to clear brush off their land, but the process is less predictable on government property. In some cases, it is tough to determine who owns the land because there aren't clearly marked boundaries

"What ends up happening is nothing, and I don't mean that nobody cares. It's just that it's hard to know whose dirt it is and so there's ongoing issues,"

You will note that the quotes above include, "for environmental conservation reasons, the state doesn't typically remove brush." Some environmentalists have made it a law that Gaia must be allowed to leave the underbrush to burn, and no one should profit from nature's forests.

You make sure somebody knows who is responsible by having somebody lose money. That's where logging and farming come in. When bureaucracies make a mistake about responsibility, it is a rarity to see anyone suffer financially. If a company or farmer loses, a family, employee, or manager is the direct loser in a way that hurts. It gives them a reason to pay attention before the damage happens.

Forests contain trees, and the lumber industry knows how to cut them down, clear all the underbrush, and replant young, fresh, healthy green trees. That area produces very little dangerous underbrush. The company then moves to the oldest section it controls and does the same thing. Rotating areas of healthy trees are far safer, even in a dry season with Santa Ana winds.

Another way to reduce the extent of the fire is to reduce or eliminate dry grassland. Farmers want to lease land or retain farmland their families have used for generations. However, this land is often combined into state or national forest land. It is no longer used for grazing and becomes more dangerous in fire season.

It is time to demand rationality in forest management. We insist that people wear seatbelts in cars and helmets on motorcycles to reduce society's costs when there are accidents. We expect states to have building codes in hurricane and earthquake areas.

There is no reason the federal government should continue to subsidize insane forestry management policies that allow the production of vast amounts of kindling in an area with too little water and too much wind.

Some thoughts on various things:

Anger and Humor

The Republicans keep reacting to every Democratic hyperbole with anger. That is the wrong approach. Humor is more effective than anger. I suggest the Republican side produce a commercial with the tag line, “Really?”

Harry Reid said Romney has paid no taxes for the last ten years. Really? Joe Biden said Romney wants to put (Black) Americans in chains. Really??? Making women pay for their own contraceptives ($9.00 a month) instead of making Catholic organizations pay for it is a war on women. Really?????

Rather than get angry, produce an ad showing these statements with an increasing amount of laughter accompanying the “Really?” at each step. If the Republicans can get the public laughing at these claims it will backfire on the Democrats.

Biden/Ryan Debate

The assumption of many Democrats that they are obviously smarter than Republicans constantly amazes me.  One of the most breath-taking things I kept hearing after the Ryan announcement was Democrats looking forward to the Biden-Ryan debate.

Biden has been in office for many years which apparently some people think is a sign of intelligence. In reality it seems like every time Biden opens his mouth, he makes a gaffe. In fact, Sarah Palin did far better against Joe Biden than she did “against” Katie Couric. By many measures, Palin-Biden was a draw.

Paul Ryan is a disciplined knowledgeable Washington insider. I don’t think the debate will be close. But the Republicans should let the media and the Democrats run with this idea. Since we all play the expectations game let them keep lowering the expectations for Ryan.

Israel and the U.S. Election

Israel is very concerned about the Iranian nuclear program. I think they are right to be concerned. The animosity between President Obama and Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu is well known. I think it is more than personal.

Netanyahu does not believe that Obama would lift a finger to protect Israel unless there is a political necessity for it. Israel’s government may well believe that if Obama is reelected and never has to face another election, Obama would either not help Israel in a life-and-death conflict or would actively work against Israel.

If it starts to look likely that Obama will win the election, the Israelis may well strike Iran in October. They would do so in the belief that Obama will not walk away from the Jewish vote. If it starts to look like Romney will clearly win, the Israelis will feel safer about the future and be more willing to delay action.

In a close, uncertain, election, I would guess the Israelis will hold off less they be charged with trying to affect the election. But a continuing close election puts them at greater risk of spending the next four years with the possibility of no U.S. support. If you really believe your country faces that risk, what would you do?

Media Bias

I offer the following exercise to anyone who wants to determine if the media is being fair during the election.

Look at the visuals (Newspaper photos, TV shots). If a candidate is shown smiling or surrounded by supporters, count that as a positive. If the candidate is standing alone, count that as a negative (If he can’t draw people to him, how popular can he be?) A really good way to make someone look bad is to catch them in a still shot with their mouth open. If their finger is pointing, it adds to the negative impression.

Count “flag” words. These are supposed to make you doubt what is being said. The favorite flag word is “controversial.” This word means that some people, probably those “whose opinions should count,” think the view is wrong. Also look for quotation marks. You can see them in print and hear them in the speaker’s tone. Quotation marks declare a phrase or idea “controversial.”

Do this for a while and see whether the positives and negatives for the candidates are nearly balanced. If so, you are watching a reasonably fair presentation. If not … well … I leave the conclusion as an exercise for the reader.