I realized I knew virtually nothing of Nabokov other than the fact that he had written Lolita. The “speak like a child” comment piqued my interest. It fit the English acquisition pattern of a late language learner. I dealt with the peculiarities of second language acquisition (SLA) daily: my students were proficient English speakers by age five; their parents still struggled after years, even decades of living in the country.

My interest in Nabokov grew. I read his autobiography and several of his books. He was an extraordinarily brilliant individual. (Among other things, curator of Lepidoptera at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology who first scientifically described and named the Karner Blue butterfly.) I decided to research him further through Grok and came upon myriad sources I had not been aware of. None of it, though, changed the fact that although he wrote in English like a genius, he still spoke like a child.

Vladimir Nabokov famously quipped in the foreword to his collection of interviews, Strong Opinions: “I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.”

This self-deprecating remark captures a profound truth about his linguistic life. Born into a wealthy, trilingual Russian family in 1899, Nabokov read English before he could fully master Cyrillic and grew up with English governesses and French tutors. He produced early masterpieces in Russian, then, after emigrating to the United States in 1940, switched to English and crafted some of the 20th century’s most dazzling prose—Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada—in a language that was not his daily spoken tongue.

Yet recordings reveal a noticeable accent: smooth, somewhat British-inflected, with rolled Russian r’s, but unmistakably foreign. He avoided spontaneous English conversations, preparing answers in writing and sometimes switching to Russian or French in interviews because he felt “childish” speaking extemporaneously.

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Joseph Conrad offers a parallel case. Born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857 in what is now Ukraine to Polish parents, he learned French as a second language in childhood (acquiring a southern French accent) and did not begin acquiring English until his early twenties while serving in the British merchant navy.

He never lost his strong foreign accent—described by contemporaries as guttural, Polish-twisted, with words like “good” sounding like “gut” and occasional eccentric adverb placement—yet he became one of the greatest authors in English literature, producing works like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, and Nostromo. Linguists have even named the Joseph Conrad Phenomenon after him: the ability of late learners to achieve near-native mastery in written grammar, vocabulary, and literary style while retaining a persistent, non-native pronunciation.

These two cases illuminate central discoveries in second-language acquisition (SLA) research over the past half-century. They demonstrate the modularity of language skills, the existence of critical periods that affect different language domains unequally, and the power of conscious learning in writing versus the more automatic, instinctive processes of fluent speech. Far from anomalies, Nabokov and Conrad exemplify how adult learners can achieve extraordinary proficiency in some areas while struggling in others, challenging simplistic notions of native-like fluency and enriching our understanding of brain plasticity, bilingual cognition, and literary creativity.

The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), first formalized by Eric Lenneberg in 1967, posits a biologically determined window—typically ending around puberty—during which language acquisition occurs most effortlessly and completely. After this window, certain aspects become markedly harder. Early evidence came from feral children and late first-language learners, but SLA studies extended the idea to second languages.

Landmark work by Jacqueline Johnson and Elissa Newport (1989) tested Chinese immigrants to the U.S. on English grammaticality judgments. Performance declined sharply with age of arrival, especially after puberty, supporting a critical period for syntax. More recent large-scale studies, including an MIT analysis of nearly 670,000 English learners, refined this: grammar learning remains relatively efficient until around age 17–18, but native-like ultimate attainment in phonology (sound system of a language) is far rarer unless exposure begins before age 10.

Pronunciation proves especially vulnerable. Phonology relies on fine-tuned neuromuscular patterns and perceptual categories formed early in life. Once the auditory system “tunes” to the first language’s sound contrasts, new ones become harder to perceive or produce without accent. This explains why both Nabokov (despite childhood exposure) and Conrad (late learner) retained foreign accents lifelong.

(YouTube will not allow me to post this video directly but follow the link on X to hear Nabokov discuss his frustrations with speaking English. If you have taken a foreign language in high school or college, learned the vocab and grammar cold but hadn’t a clue when you first heard the language spoken by a native, you will be able to relate.)

Conrad’s case has been invoked to illustrate the “Doom Hypothesis” in phonology: late learners may never fully override L1 interference in speech production and perception (Henry Kissinger). Vocabulary and semantics, by contrast, show no clear critical period; they draw on declarative memory and can be expanded indefinitely through reading and study. Nabokov’s legendary English vocabulary—wider than many natives’—stemmed from voracious reading and deliberate lexical foraging, not innate early acquisition.

Crucially, research highlights a dissociation between oral and written modalities. Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, in his influential book The Language Instinct (1994), illuminates this divide by arguing that spoken language is a biologically hard-wired human instinct—evolved for rapid, unconscious acquisition in childhood—while writing and literary composition are recent cultural inventions that demand explicit instruction, conscious monitoring, and metalinguistic skill. (Of the roughly 5,000 to 6,000 world languages recognized by linguistics consensus, only about 58% have a developed writing system. Grok)

Writing allows time for planning, monitoring, and revision—processes that recruit explicit, metalinguistic knowledge and problem-solving strategies. Speaking demands rapid, implicit, procedural knowledge acquired primarily through massive naturalistic input during the critical period. Studies consistently show higher performance on written grammar tasks than oral ones among late learners.

In one replication of Johnson and Newport’s work, written presentation of sentences yielded better results than auditory ones, underscoring modality effects. Adult learners often rely on conscious rules (the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis in SLA), excelling in edited prose but struggling with real-time fluency. Conrad learned much of his English from books; Nabokov composed laboriously on index cards. Both leveraged analytical strengths that compensate for any gaps in implicit oral competence—precisely the distinction Pinker draws between instinctive speech and labor-intensive script.

Bilingualism itself adds layers. Early multilingual exposure, as in Nabokov’s household, fosters metalinguistic awareness—the ability to recognize language structures—which can enhance proficiency in writing. His English prose is improved by Russian-inflected precision, French elegance, and playful code-switching, creating effects impossible for monolinguals.

Conrad’s Polish and French influence infused English with rhythmic grandeur and philosophical depth. Translingual writers like these demonstrate that late or imperfect acquisition does not preclude genius; it can multiply creative resources. Psycholinguist François Grosjean notes that the myth of accent-free bilingualism is false; the Conrad Phenomenon is the norm, not the exception.

Modern SLA theories—Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, the Interaction Hypothesis, and usage-based models—further contextualize these cases. Abundant comprehensible input and output practice matter, but quality and quantity differ by skill. Nabokov and Conrad had elite input through literature and editing, but limited unmonitored spoken interaction (Conrad at sea among non-native crews; Nabokov in émigré circles). Motivation and identity also play roles: both men were driven exiles who turned spoken language deficiency into artistic advantage. Recent neuroimaging and ERP (Event Related Potentials—derived from electroencephalography) studies show that highly proficient late learners can achieve native-like brain processing for grammar in some tasks, but phonological processing often remains distinct.

These insights carry practical implications. For language education, they suggest early immersion maximizes accent-free speech, while adults can still reach literary or professional heights through focused reading, writing, and explicit instruction. In an era of global migration and digital communication, we see more “Conrad-like” or “Nabokov-like” trajectories: immigrants mastering academic or creative writing without erasing accents. This challenges monolingual norms and celebrates linguistic variation.

Ultimately, Nabokov and Conrad teach us that language is not a monolithic faculty but a constellation of partially independent modules shaped by biology, experience, and will. The human brain retains remarkable plasticity beyond childhood, especially for explicit domains like written expression. Their achievements refute the idea that late learners are doomed to mediocrity; instead, they reveal how constraints can spur innovation. In an age when English serves as a global lingua franca, their examples remind us that “proficiency” is multifaceted. One can speak like a child yet write—and think—like a genius, enriching the language itself in the process. The literary canon is richer precisely because of such voices from the borderlands of acquisition

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The fact that in Mahommedan law every woman must belong to a sole man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.

Winston Churchill “The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan”

In the theater of modern feminism, two Somali-born women stand as living exhibits of a grotesque double standard. One, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, endured the brutal realities of Islam as a girl—female genital mutilation, forced marriage, death threats for apostasy—and chose truth over tribal loyalty. She left the faith, built a life in the West, and has spent decades warning the world about the incompatibility of unreformed Islam with women’s rights and liberal democracy.

The other, Ilhan Omar, nominally clings to the religion that oppressed her people, whitewashes its excesses, and rose to power in America through a trail of documented deceptions. Yet it is Hirsi Ali who is shunned by the very feminist groups that claim to champion women, while Omar is feted as a progressive icon, invited to speak at elite forums, and shielded from accountability by the same activists who profess outrage over “the patriarchy.”

This is not mere inconsistency. It is ideological betrayal. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a saintly figure of raw honesty and moral courage. Ilhan Omar is a fraud whose presence in the United States Congress dishonors every legitimate immigrant and every woman who has ever suffered under Islamist oppression. She should be deported.

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Hirsi Ali’s story is one of authentic heroism forged in fire. Born in Somalia in 1969, she suffered female genital mutilation at age five. Raised in a strict Muslim household that moved through Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, she was subjected to an arranged marriage to a man she had never met. In 1992, at twenty-two, she fled to the Netherlands rather than submit. There she sought asylum, later admitting she had altered details on her application—using a different surname and birth year to evade family pursuit.

Unlike many who lie and never confess, Hirsi Ali has been transparent about it. She owned her past, rebuilt her life, learned Dutch, earned a degree in political science, and entered parliament. She co-produced the film Submission with Theo van Gogh, which dramatized the oppression of women under Islam. Van Gogh was murdered in the streets of Amsterdam by an Islamist assassin who pinned a note threatening Hirsi Ali to his body. She has lived under fatwas and armed protection ever since.

Her books—Infidel, The Caged Virgin, Heretic, Prey—are not abstract theory. They are blood-earned testimony. She argues that the Quran, Hadith, and core Islamic doctrine contain a theological basis for the subordination of women: polygamy, wife-beating, child marriage, honor violence, and the denial of female autonomy. She calls for a reformation of Islam itself, not mere cosmetic moderation. For this she has been called every name in the progressive lexicon: Islamophobe, bigot, right-wing extremist. Yet she remains a defender of Western values—individual liberty, secular law, free speech, and genuine equality between the sexes.

In recent years she has even embraced Christianity, finding in it a moral framework that values the individual soul. That journey from victim of Islam to critic to advocate for the civilization that saved her is nothing short of saintly.

Contrast this with Ilhan Omar. Arriving in the United States as a refugee in 1995, she was naturalized as a citizen in 2000. She entered Congress in 2019 as one of the first Muslim women elected to the House. On paper, a feel-good immigrant success story. In reality, her record is a master class in deception and ideological capture.

Omar has faced credible, persistent allegations—backed by investigative reporting, Somali community sources, school records, and public documents—that in 2009 she entered a legal marriage with Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen widely believed to be her brother, while still in a religious marriage to another man, Ahmed Hirsi, with whom she had children. The alleged purpose was immigration and residency fraud to secure benefits and citizenship pathways for Elmi. Omar has denied the brother relationship, calling it a racist conspiracy. She divorced Elmi in 2017 and later formalized her marriage to Hirsi before marrying political consultant Tim Mynett in 2020. Yet the questions have never been fully resolved.

As recently as 2026, Republican lawmakers including Rep. Nancy Mace have pushed subpoenas for immigration records, and figures like JD Vance have publicly stated she “definitely committed immigration fraud.” Minnesota campaign-finance inquiries and federal scrutiny have swirled around her for years. Even setting aside the fraud allegations—which alone should disqualify any public servant—Omar’s political record is one of consistent apologetics for the very ideology Hirsi Ali risks her life to expose.

She has minimized Islamist terror, trafficked in antisemitic tropes about Jewish influence, and equated brave Iranian women burning hijabs and chanting Woman, Life, Freedom against the morality police with American abortion debates. She wears the hijab proudly as a political statement while remaining silent on the forced veiling, honor killings, and systemic subjugation faced by millions of Muslim women worldwide.

She has never once used her platform to call for the reformation Hirsi Ali demands. Instead, she has become a polished spokeswoman for a sanitized, victimhood-infused version of Islam that flatters progressive sensibilities and shields the faith from scrutiny. The feminist response to these two women reveals the rot at the heart of contemporary women’s rightsactivism. Groups like the National Organization for Women, prominent academics, and celebrity feminists who scream about microaggressions in the West have virtually no time for Hirsi Ali. Brandeis University famously rescinded an honorary degree after protests labeled her an Islamophobe. She is dismissed as not a real feminist because her critique targets the wrong oppressor—Islam, not the West.

Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar is lionized. She is invited to feminist panels, praised as a trailblazer, and defended against every scandal. Her identity as a Black Muslim woman and vocal progressive trumps any concern for the actual lived suffering of women under Sharia. This is the AWFL (Affluent White Female Liberal) pathology in action: performative solidarity with oppressed minorities that stops the moment it requires criticizing non-Western cultures. Multiculturalism and identity politics have so thoroughly colonized feminism that defending Muslim women from the Quran’s explicit teachings on female inferiority is now considered bigotry. Hirsi Ali, who actually lived the nightmare, is inconvenient. Omar, who performs the approved narrative, is useful.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali represents the best of Western values: the courage to speak uncomfortable truths, the willingness to judge ideas by their merit rather than their sacred status, and the moral clarity to defend the civilization that gave her freedom. She has paid for that clarity with her safety, her homeland, and her reputation. She is honest because she has nothing left to lose except the truth.

Ilhan Omar represents the worst of the identity-politics grift: the cynical exploitation of refugee status, the willingness to bend immigration law for personal gain, and the eager defense of a religious ideology that treats half the human race as second-class. The allegations against her are not ancient history; they go to the heart of her eligibility to hold office. If even a fraction of the evidence holds, her naturalization was secured through fraud. She should be investigated fully, her citizenship revoked if warranted, and deported.

America has no obligation to provide a congressional platform to someone who allegedly cheated her way in and then lectures the rest of us about justice. The choice is clear. Real women’s rights are not advanced by shielding Islam from criticism or elevating apologists who benefit from the very system they refuse to reform. They are advanced by listening to those who have escaped its clutches and have the scars to prove it. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is that voice—principled, unflinching, and saintly in her commitment to truth. Ilhan Omar is the fraud who should never have been allowed to stay. Feminists who claim to speak for women owe the world an explanation for why they have chosen the latter over the former. Until they do, their movement deserves the contempt it has earned.

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As reported April 9, 2026), n the Chicago Tribune, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and a roster of ambitious Democratic presidential prospects—including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and others—gathered in New York at Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference. The event was framed as an early test of their “vision” for Black voters, whose influence in Democratic primaries remains decisive. Sharpton himself put it plainly: “Everybody’s talking about who may run for president. I want to first know what their vision is now.”

This is political pragmatism at work. Black voters delivered Joe Biden the 2020 nomination; courting their activists is smart retail politics. Yet the spectacle of mainstream Democrats cozying up to Sharpton—treating him as an indispensable elder statesman—should disturb anyone who remembers the reverend’s body of work before he became MSNBC’s polished commentator and the party’s unofficial kingmaker.

For decades, Sharpton has trafficked in inflammatory rhetoric, racial division, and outright falsehoods that left real victims in their wake. The price he paid? Essentially none. Start with Tawana Brawley. In late 1987, the 15-year-old Black teenager from Wappingers Falls, N.Y., claimed she had been raped, beaten, and left in a garbage bag by a gang of white men, some in law enforcement. Sharpton, then a rising activist, became her most vocal champion. He and her attorneys named names, including Dutchess County prosecutor Steven Pagones, accusing him of participating in the assault.

The story dominated national headlines and inflamed racial tensions across New York. A grand jury investigation concluded it was a hoax. Brawley had fabricated the entire episode, likely to avoid punishment for skipping school. Pagones sued for defamation. In 1998, a jury found Sharpton, along with attorneys Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, liable. Pagones was awarded $345,000 total. Sharpton’s share: $65,000. Supporters—including Johnnie Cochran and others—quietly paid it off for him in 2001. Brawley herself defaulted and, only in 2013, began garnished wage payments of about $627 a month toward her much larger judgment (now exceeding $430,000 with interest). To this day, Sharpton has never issued a full, unqualified apology for his role in smearing an innocent man. He still frames the episode as standing up for a frightened teenager against a flawed system. en.wikipedia.org

Next came the Crown Heights riots of 1991. After a tragic car accident killed a Black child and a mob of Black youths murdered Yankel Rosenbaum, a Hasidic Jewish student, Sharpton inserted himself into the chaos. He denounced Jewish residents as diamond merchants and reportedly told crowds, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” The rhetoric did not calm tensions. It helped fuel three days of anti-Jewish violence. Sharpton faced no criminal charges. He later downplayed or denied the incendiary nature of his words.

Then, in 1995, the Freddy’s Fashion Mart tragedy. Sharpton led weeks of protests and a boycott against the Harlem clothing store owned by Fred Harari, a Jewish merchant. The dispute involved a rent conflict with a Black subtenant, but Sharpton racialized it. At rallies, he declared: “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Protesters chanted anti-white and anti-Semitic slogans; one reportedly mimed tossing a match into the store. On Dec. 8, Roland James Smith Jr.—who had attended the protests—entered Freddy’s, ordered Black customers out, shot employees, doused the store with accelerant, set it ablaze, and killed himself. Eight people died, including seven employees. Police called it racial arson. en.wikipedia.org

Sharpton expressed regret only for the specific phrase “white interloper.” He denied any responsibility for the violence, insisting Smith had criticized his nonviolent approach. No charges were ever brought against Sharpton or other protest organizers for incitement. The families of the dead received no accountability from the man whose words helped poison the atmosphere.

These are not ancient history. They occurred within the living memory of voters under 60. Sharpton built a national profile on them. Yet he has glided into the 21st century largely unscathed: a regular on cable news, a fixture at Democratic events, and now the man whose conference launches the invisible primary for 2028.

His financial record adds another layer. For years, Sharpton and his organizations racked up millions in federal and state tax liens. A 2014 New York Times investigation detailed more than $4.5 million in liens against him and his entities. He has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor tax filing failures in the past. While some debts were eventually addressed, the pattern of fiscal sloppiness never derailed his influence. He simply pivoted to new platforms.

None of this is to deny Sharpton’s later work on police accountability or voting rights. Civil rights activism has value. But accountability is not optional. When a public figure repeatedly fans racial flames that consume lives or reputations, society should demand more than a wardrobe change and a book deal. Instead, Sharpton has been rewarded with proximity to power.

The Tribune piece captures the dynamic perfectly: candidates aren’t there to litigate the past; they’re there to secure the future Black vote. Shapiro touted Pennsylvania swing-state muscle and DEI commitments. Others spoke of economic justice and moral vision rooted in civil rights history. Fair enough on policy. But embracing Sharpton without forcing a genuine reckoning signals that some sins are forgiven if they serve the coalition.

Voters deserve better. Democrats who aspire to lead the country should be asked, point-blank: Do you believe Tawana Brawley’s story was credible? Do you stand by Sharpton’s white interloper rhetoric in Harlem? Would you have condemned the Crown Heights violence more forcefully than he did? These are not gotcha questions. They are tests of judgment and moral consistency.

Sharpton’s defenders argue he has evolved and that dredging up the 1980s and ’90s is unfair. Yet evolution requires confession, not evasion. He has never fully owned the human cost of his earlier tactics. The victims of Freddy’s, Pagones, and Rosenbaum’s family never received restitution. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party’s most ambitious figures treat his conference as sacred ground.

In a healthier political culture, past sins that destroyed lives and deepened divisions would exact a permanent price in credibility. Instead, Al Sharpton has paid nothing close to what he owes—and the 2028 field is lining up to write him another blank check. Americans of all races and parties should notice. History does not forget, even if today’s strategists pretend it does.

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Colorado was once the West’s rugged alternative to California—mountains without the madness, abundant energy from coal, natural gas, and oil, affordable living, and a libertarian-leaning political culture that prized growth over green mandates.

No more. Waves of migrants from the Golden State have helped transform the Centennial State into a cautionary tale of imported ideology. Between the 1990s and 2020s, hundreds of thousands of Californians arrived, drawn by lower housing costs (initially), outdoor lifestyle, and jobs. Yet they brought something unexpected: the very progressive politics they claimed to flee—sky-high regulations, punitive energy policies, and an unshakable faith in renewables as the path to salvation.

The result? “Californication” is no longer a bumper-sticker complaint from rural holdouts. It’s measurable in shifting voting patterns that turned Colorado reliably blue, in skyrocketing home prices in Denver and Boulder, and, most dangerously, in the state’s accelerating embrace of California-style energy utopianism. As one recent analysis put it, migration from California helped change Colorado “from a libertarian-inflected reddish state into a solid-blue one.” And now the consequences are hitting the grid.

Consider the irony. Many Californians left because of rolling blackouts, electricity prices double the national average, and a regulatory thicket that made business untenable. Yet in Colorado, these transplants—concentrated in urban and suburban enclaves—have supported politicians and policies replicating the same failures. Why? The disconnect is psychological and cultural. Economic refugees often attribute California’s woes to “corporate greed,” “climate denial,” or insufficient zeal rather than the policies themselves.

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They retain progressive priors on environmental virtue, social issues, and government intervention. Ideology travels lighter than lived experience. As analysts have noted, even conservative-leaning migrants from California can import more left-leaning views on energy and regulation. The result is a self-reinforcing loop: newcomers vote for the same bold climate leadership that made their old home unlivable, while local Democrats and corporate players like Xcel Energy amplify the shift.

Nowhere is this more evident—or more self-destructive—than in energy policy. Colorado has raced to imitate California’s carbon-free dreams. State lawmakers, egged on by urban voters and advocacy groups, have mandated aggressive coal plant retirements and massive buildouts of wind and solar. Xcel Energy, the state’s dominant utility, didn’t just comply; it led the charge. The company’s own 100 percent carbon-free goal preceded legislative mandates.

It lobbied for and supported the closure of reliable baseload coal plants while touting intermittent “renewables” as the future. The Energy Bad Boys Substack laid it bare in their must-read piece Xcel Energy’s Green Advocacy Backfires, Beautifully:

Xcel not only supported legislative efforts to close down coal power plants and build unreliable generators, but its own company goal of 100 percent carbon-free preceded them. And now, because of these efforts spearheaded by Xcel itself, reliability has been undermined in Colorado to the point that the same company is noting how critical these coal assets are for reliability.

The numbers are damning. Xcel’s own loss-of-load probability analyses, filed with regulators, reveal “substantial risk in the next two years.” Under every scenario examined, the probability exceeds the industry planning standard of less than 0.1 events per year. In some cases, it’s over 10 times higher—meaning blackouts could become routine, not rare.

This isn’t abstract modeling. Real-world events are catching up. As of early 2026, Xcel is scrambling to delay the retirement of key coal units at Comanche (Pueblo) and Hayden stations—plants originally slated for shutdown by 2030 under the state’s clean-energy roadmap. Comanche Unit 2, meant to close at the end of 2025, is now eyed for extension. The company’s March 2026 “Comanche Report” to the Public Utilities Commission openly warns of “significant capacity shortfalls” through 2028 and beyond, driven by surging demand (data centers, electrification) colliding with premature retirements of dispatchable power.

Instead of admitting the folly of over-relying on weather-dependent sources, Xcel deploys corporate euphemisms that would make a Pentagon press secretary blush. In filings, the utility speaks of “difficult decisions about extending baseload units” and “additive transmission needs” that are “likely part of solutioning these issues.” Solutioning. Not “solving.” Not fixing the problem created by their own advocacy. Just “solutioning”—a vague, ongoing process of throwing money and words at the crisis while reliability erodes.

Renewables are never called “unreliable generators” in public pronouncements; they’re “clean energy resources” promising affordability and resilience. Yet the opposite has occurred. Xcel’s investor presentation slide 62 projects a staggering $17.6 billion rate-base increase over five years: $4.9 billion on distribution upgrades, $4.65 billion on transmission (including the controversial Colorado Power Pathway), $2.2 billion on renewables, and $1.79 billion on euphemistic “electric generation”—code for new natural gas plants the company now desperately needs but faces opposition from the very green groups it helped fund.

A Colorado Public Utilities Commission webinar forecast paints an even bleaker picture for ratepayers. If load growth disappoints expectations, residential electricity prices could skyrocket 55 percent by 2029 compared to 2024 levels. The beatings, as the Energy Bad Boys quip, “will continue until policies improve.” Colorado voters, in H.L. Mencken’s immortal words, are getting the government they deserve “good and hard.”

Multiple angles reveal the deeper rot. Economically, this transition rewards Xcel’s shareholders through guaranteed returns on massive capital spending while sticking families and businesses with volatile bills. Environmentally, the irony bites hardest: intermittent wind and solar require backup from natural gas or coal extensions, plus vast new transmission lines that scar landscapes and raise their own ecological costs. Reliability suffers most during peaks—cold snaps or heat waves when solar fades and wind dies. California learned this the hard way with its rolling outages; Colorado is repeating the script faster than regulators can spin it.

Nuances matter. Not every Californian transplant is a green zealot; many conservatives have fled the West Coast too, bolstering rural resistance. Local Colorado progressives and Xcel’s own lobbying bear equal blame. Corporate self-interest plays a role—Xcel funded advocacy groups, pushed mandates, then pivoted to gas when margins dwindled, only to face backlash from the activists it cultivated. Edge cases abound: surging AI/data-center demand could either expose the shortfall faster or justify keeping coal online longer under federal pressure. Broader Western trends show states like Oregon and Washington mimicking the same path, while California itself quietly extends fossil plants amid record demand.

Yet the core truth remains: Colorado is importing not just people but failed ideas. Migrants escape California’s taxes, crime, and costs but vote as if those outcomes were unrelated to policy. Xcel’s “solutioning” reveals the utility’s cynicism, but voters ultimately own the grid’s fragility. As the Energy Bad Boys conclude, this is a “self-inflicted wound from decades of self-serving policies.” If blackouts arrive—and the math says they’re probable—backlash will follow. Coloradoans deserve better than becoming California’s Rocky Mountain echo: higher bills, dimmer lights, and the hollow promise that unreliable renewables will somehow deliver reliability.

The question is whether voters will recognize the Californication before the lights go out. Democracy, Mencken reminds us, ensures we reap what we sow. Colorado’s harvest is coming—expensive, unreliable, and entirely predictable.

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Back in the fall of 2002, I stepped into a public high-school classroom for the first time in four decades to teach adult ESL three nights a week. It was equal parts exciting and nerve-wracking. Like any new teacher, I was desperate for materials that actually worked. One veteran suggested Easy English News—a simple, engaging newspaper-style reader that felt like the grown-up version of the old Weekly Reader.

I’m a news junkie, and my students were curious, educated adults, so current events became a staple of our lessons. One March evening, with St. Patrick’s Day looming, I planned a lighthearted unit on the holiday’s American traditions. When the latest issue of Easy English News arrived, I expected the usual green-beer-and-shamrocks story. Instead, I found an article about St. Patrick’s Day in Japan—and how wildly popular it had become there.

Given Japan’s well-earned reputation for cultural insularity, the news caught me completely off guard. I knew Carnaval was huge (thanks to the massive Japanese community in Brazil), but an Irish holiday? That seemed unlikely. Surely there couldn’t be a huge Irish expat population fueling it.

Yet the celebration has exploded since its humble beginnings. The first unofficial St. Patrick’s Day parade in Tokyo took place on March 15, 1992. A small group of Irish and Japanese left the Irish Embassy in Roppongi, led by a lone bagpiper in emerald green, and marched to a record store. It was technically unsanctioned and barely noticed—which was probably for the best. The next year the parade moved to the elegant, tree-lined Omotesando-dori boulevard near Meiji Shrine. From that modest start, parades and parties have spread across the entire country.

My students—whatever their nationality—loved the topic. When I later taught in the regular public-school system, everyone showed up wearing green and threw themselves into the festivities with genuine enthusiasm.

It turns out Japan is far from alone. St. Patrick’s Day has become a truly global phenomenon. According to The Economist, there are roughly 70 million people of Irish descent worldwide, thanks to centuries of emigration that peaked during the 1840s famine. A quarter of Ireland’s population left for new lives, mostly in the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia.

Surprisingly, the modern version of the holiday was largely invented in America. In 1762, Irish soldiers in New York City marched in the first recorded St. Patrick’s Day parade. Today, parades happen in dozens of countries, and revelers around the globe down an estimated 13 million pints of Guinness.

But the real secret sauce? Irish pubs. There are now about 8,500 of them scattered from Nepal to Dubai to Mongolia. In the 1990s, Guinness began exporting not just beer but an entire “Irish pub” concept—complete with architectural plans, training, and even pre-fabricated bars. In just 25 years, the company helped open authentic-feeling pubs in more than 150 countries. The Irish government has smartly ridden the wave, sending ministers to over 50 nations each year to promote “Brand Ireland,” which is now one of the fastest-growing national brands on earth.

Growing up in Chicagoland, I absorbed plenty of Irish culture by osmosis. I later married an Irish-American woman whose roots trace back to County Kerry. The city’s political and police leadership has long been dominated by Irish names—most famously the Daley dynasty. And yes, every March the Chicago River is famously dyed a brilliant green. (In the 1950s of my childhood, the river was already a murky pea-soup color from pollution, so the dye didn’t exactly ruin the view.)

What fascinates me most is how universal the holiday has become without triggering the usual outrage machine. Parades, heavy drinking, meat-heavy meals—those are serious carbon-footprint offenses by modern standards. Dumping dye into a major waterway would normally draw environmentalist fury (surely some tiny aquatic creature must be inconvenienced?). And dressing up in Irish green, attempting jigs, and feasting on corned beef and cabbage looks suspiciously like cultural appropriation.

Yet somehow the “woke scolds” who police Halloween costumes and sombreros have remained strangely silent. No viral think-pieces accusing participants of “Irish face” or demanding we decolonize the shamrock. St. Patrick’s Day just keeps rolling along, green beer in hand, proving that some traditions are apparently too much fun to cancel.Sláinte—and Erin go Bragh, wherever you are. Even in Tokyo.

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Homicides Down

In 2025, Chicago recorded just 416 homicides—the fewest since 1965 and a stunning 29 percent drop from 587 the year before. The citywide rate fell to roughly 15.4 per 100,000 residents, a level that would have seemed impossible during the 2021 peak of 804 murders. Mayor Brandon Johnson and progressive outlets hailed the decline as proof that investing in root causes and community violence interrupters works. But the data tell a different story—one that aligns far more closely with the lifelong work of economist Thomas Sowell than with the fashionable narratives of systemic racism and under-policing.

Sowell has argued for decades that racial disparities in violent crime are not primarily the product of present-day discrimination. Black Americans endured slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and open segregation—yet homicide rates in Black communities were far lower in the 1940s and 1950s than they became after the Great Society welfare explosion and the cultural revolution of the 1960s. The Black family, Sowell notes, “survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals’ expansion of the welfare state.” Fatherlessness, not poverty or police bias, is the strongest predictor of crime. Black married-couple families have long had poverty rates below the national average. The post-1960s collapse of two-parent homes tracks the surge in violence with eerie precision.

Chicago in 2025 illustrates Sowell’s thesis in stark relief. The murder drop was real, but it was hyper-concentrated. Seven community areas on the South and West Sides—roughly 13 percent of the city’s population—accounted for 35 percent of the citywide decline in gun violence. Those same neighborhoods still drive the overwhelming majority of the city’s killings.

Austin recorded 45 homicides, the most of any community area. West Garfield Park, Greater Grand Crossing, Englewood, West Englewood, North Lawndale, Roseland, and Auburn-Gresham remain the epicenters. These areas are overwhelmingly Black: Englewood is 88 percent Black; Austin is about 70 percent; West Garfield Park and the others range from 80 to 95 percent. Their single-parent household rates are two to four times the city average. In Englewood, 15 percent of all households are single-parent families with children (versus 8.4 percent citywide); earlier snapshots showed even higher figures. In West Garfield Park, 30 percent of households are single-parent. Across these pockets, the percentage of children raised without fathers often exceeds 70–80 percent.

It’s the culture, stupid!

Meanwhile, Chicago’s North Side, downtown, and Asian enclaves—subject to the exact same police department, prosecutors, judges, and city council—have homicide rates comparable to safe suburbs. The system is not selectively racist; the behavioral and cultural patterns are not uniformly distributed.

Victim demographics drive the point home. Black Chicagoans, about 29–30 percent of the population, accounted for roughly 75–80 percent of homicide victims in recent years and remained around that level in 2025. One analysis put Black residents at 19 times the homicide victimization risk of White residents. Black and Hispanic victims together typically comprise 90–95 percent of the total. These are not interracial crimes committed by outsiders; they are overwhelmingly intra-racial, concentrated in the same high-violence, fatherless neighborhoods.

Sowell’s broader framework explains why. He traces much of the dysfunction to a redneck honor culture—impulsivity, retaliation, distrust of formal authority—that originated among certain White Southern populations and was culturally transmitted to parts of the Black community. This cultural pattern, combined with the welfare state’s incentives against marriage and the 1960s criminal-justice reforms that weakened deterrence, produced the explosion in crime that began in the mid-1960s. Sowell has repeatedly contrasted the low-crime Black Harlem of his youth (“I can’t remember ever hearing a gunshot”) with the post-1960s reality, noting that the homicide rate today in many inner-city areas dwarfs anything seen under legal segregation.

The recent decline does not refute Sowell; it supports him. Violence fell sharply in the very neighborhoods with the worst cultural and family breakdowns—precisely where targeted deterrence, higher clearance rates (71 percent in 2025, a 13-year high), and perhaps some community-level behavioral shifts could have the largest marginal impact. The same city, same racist institutions, same poverty—yet the violence is not evenly spread. North Side neighborhoods and Asian communities do not suffer these rates. If racism were the driver, the disparities would not be so dramatically intra-racial and intra-city.

Progressive explanations collapse under scrutiny. If under-policing caused the 2020–2021 spike, why did violence concentrate in the same few ZIP codes that have been violent for decades? If poverty were causal, why did Black married-couple families escape it? If systemic racism explained the 19-fold Black-White victimization gap, why did that gap widen after the civil-rights victories of the 1960s and the massive expansion of anti-poverty programs?

Sowell’s antidote is unfashionable but empirically robust: restore two-parent families, enforce the law without apology, reject the vision of the anointed that blames society for individual choices, and stop excusing cultural patterns that produce fatherless boys who become shooters and victims. The 2025 numbers prove progress is possible when deterrence returns and when the conversation shifts from defund the police to personal and communal responsibility.

Murder rate still triple the national average

Chicago’s murder rate is still triple the national average. Until policymakers confront the family and cultural realities Sowell has documented for half a century—rather than chasing ever more elaborate theories of external oppression—the city will continue cycling between modest declines and horrific spikes. The data are not racist. They are simply honest. And honesty, in Sowell’s tradition, is the only foundation for real progress.

Thomas Sowell has frequently addressed racial disparities in crime rates, arguing that they stem more from cultural factors, family structure, welfare policies, and post-1960s changes in criminal justice and social engineering than from ongoing systemic racism. He often contrasts lower crime in black communities during eras of greater legal discrimination with sharp rises afterward, and he highlights how single-parent households (which correlate strongly with crime) exploded despite declining overt racism.

Here are some of his most relevant quotes (with sources/context where available):

• “The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals’ expansion of the welfare state. Most black children grew up in homes with two parents during all that time but most grow up with only one parent today.”
(Often cited in his columns and books; e.g., referenced in discussions of welfare’s unintended consequences.)

• “Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area—crime, education, housing, race relations—the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.”
(Is Reality Optional?, 1993)

• “No segment of the population has lost more by the agendas of the liberal constituencies of the Democratic Party than the black population. … Lousy education and high crime rates in the ghettos… are devastating prices to pay for liberalism.”
(Column/context on liberal policies’ impact)

• “The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from ‘society,’ rather than from individual choices and behavior.”
(The Vision of the Anointed, 1995)

• On homicide trends and personal experience: “Right now, the homicide rates are beyond anything that were around, let’s say, prior to 1960… And I mention 1960… because that’s when the Supreme Court remade the criminal law.” (Contrasting this with: “I grew up in Harlem, I can’t remember ever hearing a gunshot.”)
(Uncommon Knowledge interview on Social Justice Fallacies, 2023)

• On family structure vs. race/poverty: “Fatherlessness has a bigger effect than even race and poverty… In no year has the poverty rate of black married-couple families been as high as 10%… If black poverty is caused by systemic racism, do racists make an exception for blacks who are married?”
(Same 2023 interview; he notes black married-couple poverty rates have long been below the national average.)

• On raw crime statistics (in the context of debates over policing and “war on cops”): Sowell has pointed to FBI data showing blacks (roughly 13% of the population) accounted for about 52% of murders in the U.S. from 1976–2005, while also being the majority of murder victims. He uses this to challenge narratives that attribute disparities primarily to police bias rather than offender rates.
(“The Phony ‘Facts’ Behind the War On Cops,” Investor’s Business Daily, 2016)

Sowell’s broader theme is that cultural patterns (e.g., “redneck” honor culture he traces to certain Southern whites and later adopted by some black communities in Black Rednecks and White Liberals), family breakdown, and counterproductive policies explain far more than racism alone—especially since similar disparities appear in other groups historically without equivalent racial animus today. These views appear across his books (Intellectuals and Race, Discrimination and Disparities, Social Justice Fallacies, etc.) and columns.

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In an era where headlines scream about surging crime rates and policymakers peddle simplistic solutions, economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell offers a sobering antidote: violence isn’t random. It’s not a uniform plague afflicting societies evenly, nor is it the inevitable byproduct of poverty or inequality as often claimed. Instead, as Sowell argues across his works—from Economic Facts and Fallacies to Black Rednecks and White Liberals—murder and violent crime are heavily concentrated in specific pockets of geography, culture and behavior.

This thesis, grounded in empirical data and historical analysis, challenges the “vision of the anointed,” Sowell’s term for elites who impose feel-good policies without regard for real-world consequences. By unpacking Sowell’s insights, we can see why treating crime as a random societal ill leads to failed interventions, and why focusing on its non-random nature is key to restoring order.

Sowell’s core assertion is that crime statistics, when individually scrutinized, reveal distinct concentrations rather than wide distributions. Murder rates are not distributed evenly across populations. Murders are committed by a tiny fraction of people in specific locales. In the United States, for instance, Sowell points out that national homicide figures are inflated by a handful of urban hotspots. Remove the violence from cities like Chicago, Baltimore, or Detroit—particularly their most troubled neighborhoods—and America’s murder rate plummets to levels comparable to Western Europe’s.

Data from criminologists like Marvin Wolfgang, frequently cited by Sowell, show that just 6% of young males in Philadelphia accounted for over half of the city’s serious crimes in the mid-20th century. This pattern persists today: in many major cities, 50% of shootings occur on less than 1% of street segments. Sowell emphasizes that this isn’t mere coincidence but the result of cultural and behavioral clusters that perpetuate violence.

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Sowell traces these concentrations to historical and cultural roots, rejecting the knee-jerk blame on economic deprivation. Poverty, he notes, was far worse during the Great Depression, yet crime rates fell. Conversely, the affluent 1960s and 1970s saw explosions in urban violence—murder rates among black Americans doubled in a decade—not because of rising hardship but due to policy shifts like the Warren Court’s expansion of criminal rights and the welfare state’s erosion of family structures.

In Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Sowell argues that much inner-city violence stems from a redneck subculture imported from the antebellum South, characterized by honor codes, impulsivity, and disdain for authority. This culture, transmitted across generations in isolated urban enclaves, explains why crime clusters in specific neighborhoods despite surrounding prosperity. For example, in Harlem during the early 20th century, black residents from the South brought higher violence rates than their Northern-born counterparts, even when controlling for income.

Sowell extends this analysis globally, using Latin America as a prime exhibit of how murder rates defy simplistic narratives. South and Central America lead the world in homicides, with the region accounting for about a third of global murders despite comprising only 8% of the population. Countries like Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela boast rates several times higher than the U.S., often exceeding 20 per 100,000 people annually.

Yet, as Sowell highlights, this isn’t uniform: violence is hyper-concentrated in urban favelas, cartel strongholds, and border zones. In Rio de Janeiro, for instance, a few notorious slums like Complexo do Alemão drive the city’s sky-high murder tally, while affluent areas remain relatively safe. Similarly, in Mexico, cities like Tijuana or Ciudad Juárez see homicide rates topping 100 per 100,000 in gang-dominated pockets, fueled by drug wars and corruption rather than poverty.

This concentration debunks popular myths, particularly around gun control. Sowell repeatedly dismantles the idea that firearm availability explains violence. Brazil has some of the world’s strictest gun laws—far tougher than America’s—yet its murder rate is quadruple the U.S. average. Mexico bans most civilian handguns, but cartels arm themselves illicitly, leading to slaughter in specific areas.

Sowell contrasts this with Switzerland, where widespread gun ownership coexists with negligible homicide rates, or rural American states like Vermont, which mirror European safety despite lax regulations. The key, he insists, is cultural norms and enforcement: in high-crime clusters, weak institutions allow repeat offenders—often a small cadre of career criminals—to operate with impunity. Studies Sowell references show that in U.S. cities, a mere 1,000 individuals can account for 70% of violent incidents, many with prior arrests ignored by lenient systems.

Critics of Sowell might label his views politically incorrect, but his thesis is substantiated by data that transcends ideology. He warns against the root causes fallacy, where elites attribute crime to systemic issues like racism or inequality, ignoring that these don’t correlate with violence spikes. Black murder rates in the U.S. were lower in the Jim Crow era than post-1960s, despite worsening discrimination—a fact Sowell uses to argue that cultural disintegration, not oppression, is the driver. In Latin America, economic booms in places like Colombia haven’t curbed cartel violence in urban hotspots. Instead, it is targeted policing, like Bogotá’s focus on high-risk zones, that yields results. Sowell’s point is clear: by pretending crime is random, we dilute resources across society instead of zeroing in on the small areas and groups responsible.

The policy implications are profound. Sowell advocates for strategies that acknowledge concentration: broken windows policing to deter minor crimes in hotspots, swift incarceration for repeat offenders and cultural reforms to rebuild families and communities. In the U.S., the 1990s crime drop—murders cut in half nationwide—followed tougher sentencing and proactive policing in high-crime urban pockets, not anti-poverty programs.

Latin American successes, like Medellín’s transformation from murder capital to model city through targeted interventions in favelas, echo this. Yet, recent trends toward defunding police and decarceration risk reversing gains, as seen in rising homicides in American cities post-2020. Sowell cautions that ignoring non-random patterns invites chaos, allowing violence to spill from concentrated areas into broader society.

In summary, Thomas Sowell’s thesis on crime’s non-random distribution is a call to empirical realism over ideological fantasy. By recognizing that murders cluster in tiny geographic and demographic slivers—driven by culture, behavior, and policy failures rather than random chance or universal woes—we can craft effective responses. From U.S. inner cities to Latin American metropolises, the evidence is irrefutable: violence isn’t everywhere; it’s somewhere specific. Policymakers who heed Sowell will save lives; those who don’t will perpetuate the myth, and the bloodshed. As we grapple with global crime waves, it’s time to abandon the anointed’s vision and embrace facts. Only then can we target the roots where they truly lie.

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Now, it is depressing to see how the so-called traffic light coalition (for the moment dissolved)—Social Democratic Party (SPD), Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens—have led the country toward national suicide, taking good Germans with them. I see the Germanwings pilot suicide/homicide as something of a metaphor for what is going on in the country at large. A very small minority of sociopaths is taking the sane majority with them on their suicide flight.

Germany is now approaching status as a Second World country, deindustrializing and turning everyone into wards of the state. It used to export state-of-the art, high-end products that were prototypes of the latest technology. Now, Germany must even import electricity to meet demand after inexplicably closing its 17 state-of-the-art nuclear plants that had produced 22-25% of its electricity.

In its mania not to repeat mistakes of its Nazi past, the German left, in control of the political apparatus and a wholly owned subsidiary of the EU dystopia based in Brussels, want to avoid a repeat of what they call fascism. Fascism in their view is a phenomenon of the far-right. To many outside observers, what the Green Party alliance of leftists appears to be fighting is democracy. What’s more, their methods seem to have a lot in common with the fascism they are allegedly fighting. That includes anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism and pro-Hamas sympathies disguised as pro-Palestinian empathy.

The German government is anti-free speech, pro-censorship of social media and irredeemably pro-planet. Anyone disagreeing with their ideology is subject to penalties that include fines and even jail time. They have outlawed the opposition party AfD, Alternative für Deutschland. Their latest anti-fascist move is to call for a ban on the AfD party under Article 21 of the Basic Law, which allows the Federal Constitutional Court to ban parties that seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order in a militant and aggressive manner. (Grok)

For me at 81 years of age, this is déjà vu all over again. We and I went through this after World War II when the Soviet Union clamped down on its own people as well as its Eastern European satellites that sat isolated and impoverished behind the infamous Iron Curtain.

Intellectuals then insisted on drawing a distinction between communism and fascism. Fascism was, according to the left, a phenomenon of the right. In the U.S., that was interpreted by liberal Democrats to mean conservative, anti-communist Republicans. The intellectual classes were largely on the left and rationalized, if they did not outright justify, the genocide and extreme deprivation going on in the USSR and behind the Iron Curtain. They told themselves that the end justified the means. You could not make an omelet without breaking a few tens of millions of eggs.

Today, history is repeating as tragicomedy, if not farce. The Marxist left has been rebranded as AntiFa, Black Lives Matter, Greenpeace, Just Stop Oil or hundreds of other lesser known government and billionaire-funded NGOs. Still, there persists among elites the insistence that fascism, socialism and its bastard cousin, communism, are separate and unequal with fascism being an acknowledged evil and Marxism being basically beneficent, just mismanaged. Marxism hasn’t been given a fair chance. We simply need to break a few million more eggs.

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was a German-born political philosopher and theorist known for her influential works on power, totalitarianism, and human behavior. Born into a Jewish family, she fled Nazi Germany in 1933, eventually settling in the United States.

The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), analyzing the rise of Nazi and Soviet regimes, was her masterwork. It also was her undoing among the intellectual classes. Her equating communism and fascism as totalitarian dictatorships that had similar origins made her a pariah and traitor to the left. How dare she suggest that there was even an ounce of commonality between the two ideologies? Communism’s stated aims of equality differed fundamentally from fascism’s overt racism and nationalism, they argued. In today’s vernacular, Arendt was canceled by many of her former colleagues for her apostasy.

It is too bad that Arendt is not more widely known today, for her insights are particularly germane to our current political divide that many seem to think is unprecedented. “Her ideas remain widely studied for their insights into politics, morality, and the nature of evil,” says Grok. Also Grok:

Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) argues that totalitarianism, as seen in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union, is a novel form of government distinct from traditional authoritarianism. Its thesis centers on how totalitarianism emerges from a combination of historical, social, and political conditions that dismantle individual freedom and create conditions for absolute domination. Key points include roots in antisemitism and imperialism.

Arendt traces totalitarianism's origins to 19th-century antisemitism and imperialism, which fostered ideologies of racial superiority and expansionist policies. Antisemitism, exemplified by the Dreyfus Affair, created a scapegoat for societal frustrations, while imperialism normalized violence and bureaucratic rule over inferior populations, laying the groundwork for dehumanization.

Decline of the Nation-State: The erosion of nation-state structures, particularly after World War I, led to statelessness and superfluous populations (e.g., refugees). This created masses of disenfranchised people, alienated and susceptible to totalitarian propaganda that promised belonging and purpose.

Mass Society and Atomization: Totalitarianism thrives in societies where traditional social bonds and class structures dissolve, leaving isolated individuals. These masses are not bound by common interests but by loneliness and a desire for ideological certainty, making them vulnerable to totalitarian movements that offer a unified worldview.

Propaganda and Terror: Totalitarian regimes rely on propaganda to create a fictional reality and terror to maintain control. Unlike authoritarian regimes, which seek compliance, totalitarianism aims to reshape human nature itself, demanding total loyalty to an ideological fiction (e.g., Aryan supremacy or classless utopia).

Ideology and Power: Totalitarian ideologies (e.g., Nazism’s racial purity or Marxism-Leninism’s historical determinism) provide a pseudo-scientific framework that claims to explain all of history and justify the regime’s actions. This ideology, combined with a leader-centric structure, eliminates independent thought and institutional checks, enabling unchecked power.

Arendt’s core argument is that totalitarianism is not just a political system but a radical break from traditional governance, enabled by modern conditions like mass alienation, bureaucratic efficiency, and ideological fanaticism. It seeks not just to rule but to annihilate individuality and human plurality, making it uniquely destructive. Note: Arendt’s analysis is historical and philosophical, not predictive, though she warns that the conditions enabling totalitarianism—alienation, statelessness, and ideological extremism—could reemerge if not addressed.

Not predictive? Perhaps not intentionally, but Arendt’s analysis of the origins of totalitarianism seems as relevant today toward the end of my lifespan as it did in the early years of my lifetime. At my age, none of this backsliding toward the 19th Century will have much affect on me, and I do not have children whose future I must worry about. However, for those who do, I worry for you and yours. It is past time to stop the woke nonsense and to wake up to what is being done by a minority of powerful would-be totalitarians to undermine a political system that is the envy of the world.

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My wife and I recently had the opportunity to visit a gorgeous waterfront property on the Potomac River. A wonderful lunch of what the hostess called Salade Niçoise a la King George came with an expansive view of the Potomac River on a beautiful sunny Virginia day.

As I gazed out at the river, I was reminded of reading that Samuel Pierpoint Langley, an astronomer, physicist, and the third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1887 to 1906, and an early aviation pioneer, had carried out several experimental early powered flights on the Potomac River. In the event, his experiments were done about 20 miles northwest from where we were, offshore Widewater, Virginia, near Quantico.

A few days later, I was listening to a podcast of Matt Ridley discussing Britain’s Energy Disaster and How Innovation Could Turn It Around. Ridley brought up Langley’s early efforts to accomplish powered flight as an example of how innovation actually happens.

Langley was one of the acknowledged scientific, technological and aviation experts of his day. As such, Langley was the federal government’s choice to invent powered flight. If anybody could do it, surely it was Langley.

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Centrally Planned Failure

Ridley:

…There was a guy called Samuel Langley who did get $25,000, a lot of money in those days, off the American government for a mission-oriented project to invent flight. They thought they’d picked a winner, and he was indeed a very clever fellow. I mean he was head of the Smithsonian Institution. He was an astrophysicist. There’s no spots on Samuel. They have the right experts, and they’ve got the right chap.

He said to himself, “Look, I’m so clever that there’s no point in me talking to anyone else. I’m going to do this in secret. And then because I know it’s going to work, I’m going to unveil it in front of a crowd of people on the Potomac River, October 7, 1903….”

And he did so. And the pilot he chosen (sic) had taken the precaution of putting on a cork-lined suit. And sure enough he was in the water in 20 feet.

Invited to witness the test, the press uniformly panned the performance. The New York Times and Washington Post wrote scathing reviews of the show. The Times:

Prof. Charles M. Manley, who has been Prof. Langley’s chief assistant in the work preliminary to the attempted flight, made the ascent in the aerodrome and escaped with a ducking. At no time was there any semblance of flight, the initial momentum, the lightness of the machine, and the sustained surface of the wings furnishing the conditions which account for the hundred-yard transit of the machine from its sixty foot elevation to the water. An official statement made after the test admitted that the experiment was unsuccessful, but asserted confidence in the ultimate success of the invention.

Langley made one more attempt at powered flight on the Potomac on December 8th. The New York Times headline in the December 9, 1903, edition told the sad story:

Meanwhile, in a Dayton, Ohio, Bicycle Shop…

Ridley points out that just nine days after Langley’s failed second attempt, on December 17th:

…on an island off North Carolina, two bicycle mechanics without a degree between them, Orville and Wilbur Wright, succeeded where Langley had failed to the fury of the government who—and the intelligentsia—didn’t believe them. You know Scientific American ran an article saying if two bicycle mechanics from Ohio have invented powered flight, then we would have known about it. Well, they didn’t.

Ridley uses the example of Langley vs. Wright Brothers as evidence for his thesis, argued in detail in his book How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, that innovation is a bottom-up process that flourishes in freedom and is stifled in top-down command economies. From the book blurb on Amazon:

Matt Ridley argues that we need to see innovation as an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that happens as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan. Innovation is crucially different from invention, because it is the turning of inventions into things of practical and affordable use to people. It speeds up in some sectors and slows down in others. It is always a collective, collaborative phenomenon, involving trial and error, not a matter of lonely genius. It happens mainly in just a few parts of the world at any one time. It still cannot be modeled properly by economists, but it can easily be discouraged by politicians. Far from there being too much innovation, we may be on the brink of an innovation famine.

Britain’s Mistake

Ridley sees “Britain’s energy disaster” as a direct result of efforts to promote top-down innovation while restricting “freedom to experiment, freedom to fail, freedom to try again, freedom to back your ideas, freedom to disagree with people, freedom to borrow ideas from other people, etc., etc.”

So, what should the British government do differently?

I think the main thing is to see the world in a much more bottom-up, much less top-down way. Their idea of innovation at the moment is winner-picking by clever people. You know, that somewhere in Whitehall there’s somebody who knows which technology we should champion next….This (is) what worries me about the area I think it’s going to go down….

If you come back to energy policy here, I think it’s very instructive that nobody in the energy field that I meet these days wakes up and thinks how do I respond to the consumer. They wake up and think how do I persuade the government to give me a grant? How do I persuade the government to give me permission? How do I persuade some big business to partner with me or something like that.

Nowhere in the system are you and me saying, “Excuse me, I want cheap, affordable and reliable energy.”

Thirty years ago there was a bottom-up “dash for gas” that resulted in a dramatic decrease in the price of electricity, an increase in its reliability and as an unintended bonus, a decrease in carbon emissions. That was due to listening to the consumer, Ridley argues.

Whereas now, the only people that matter are the climate change committee and the venture capitalists in the City of London who are going to make a fortune out of investing in your wind farm and the subsidies that are going to be forced out of my pocket to pay for all this stuff.

Ridley cites the silicon revolution, the search engine, as a prime example of something that nobody saw coming. Yet in hindsight, the need and utility for these technological advances seems obvious. Rather than impose the bright ideas of clever people on the populace from above, government should create the conditions that encourage experimentation. Most important of those conditions is cheap, reliable and abundant energy.

Britain’s economic disaster is a result of its energy disaster. The country must deep six its climate, NetZero and renewable energy mandates and get back to creating a climate of freedom that will allow innovative individuals to…well, innovate.

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I share the belief of many that the 2024 election will be seen in hindsight as marking the apogee of legacy media influence on elections and informed public discourse. Trump won largely because Elon Musk saved freedom of speech by buying Twitter, now X, and eliminating the leftist censorship thereon. Also because, at the behest of son Barron, he made extensive use of independent media.

In particular, it was his three-hour interview on the Joe Rogan Podcast that enabled him to bypass legacy media bias and censorship and get his message out. Conversely, Kamala Harris turning down Rogan’s invitation to appear on his podcast was a major unforced error. Despite raising over $1.5 billion and having the support of virtually all legacy media outlets, she lost big.

Pundits debate when the fake news era began. Some say it was the 2016 election and subsequent attempts by legacy media to undermine Trump. Others say it was 2020. One of the advantages of having lived 81 years is that I have gotten to see history repeat itself, whether as tragedy or farce is debatable.

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At this point in my draft, I decided to use Grok as a research tool. I had never tried querying Elon’s AI entry, Grok, in a major way. Instead of researching individual points of my topic, I decided to see how Grok would handle composing a narrative covering all the points I wanted covered. When I started rewriting the first paragraph, I decided that I could not do much, if any better. So, I decided to publish the piece as written by Grok. I will admit that laziness played a part in my decision, but I also thought at least some readers would find it interesting to see an unedited example of AI writing. My prompt:

The root cause of bias and struggle to control what has come to be called the narrative is really a battle to control the distribution of information and thus, knowledge itself. The battle to control the flow of information goes back to the dawn of civilization. From the beginning, elites have fought efforts to democratize knowledge. This battle has evolved through the ages, shaped by technological leaps, political upheavals, and the unyielding human drive for truth and power. From the reign of King Alfred the Great to the digital age, the story of information control reveals a pattern of resistance and suppression that continues to define our world.

King Alfred the Great: The Seeds of Knowledge

In the late 9th century, King Alfred the Great of Wessex laid an early foundation for the dissemination of knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England. Facing Viking invasions, Alfred recognized that a unified kingdom required an educated populace. He championed the translation of Latin texts into Old English, making religious and philosophical works accessible to those outside the clergy. His efforts were not merely altruistic; by controlling which texts were translated and distributed, Alfred shaped a narrative that reinforced his authority and Christian values. This marked an early instance of a ruler wielding information as a tool of governance, setting a precedent for centuries to come.

The Norman Invasion: Language as Power

The Norman Conquest of 1066 brought a seismic shift to England’s linguistic and informational landscape. With William the Conqueror’s victory, Norman French supplanted Old English as the language of the elite, relegating the native tongue to the lower classes. This linguistic divide was no accident—it was a deliberate strategy to consolidate power. Legal documents, court proceedings, and official records were written in French or Latin, ensuring that only the Norman aristocracy and their allies could fully participate in governance. The common people, disconnected from the language of power, were effectively silenced, their voices marginalized in a system designed to keep them subordinate.

The Printing Press: A Revolution Unleashed

The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century shattered the monopoly of the scribal elite. Suddenly, books—once painstakingly copied by hand—could be produced en masse, spreading ideas at an unprecedented pace. The Catholic Church, which had long controlled religious texts and their interpretation, found its authority challenged. The printing press democratized knowledge, but it also sparked fierce resistance. Authorities sought to regulate what could be printed, fearing the chaos of unchecked ideas. Yet, the genie was out of the bottle, and the stage was set for a new era of informational warfare.

The Tyndale Bible: Faith in the Hands of the People

One of the printing press’s most revolutionary products was William Tyndale’s English Bible, first published in 1526. By translating the scriptures from Latin into the vernacular, Tyndale aimed to make God’s word accessible to all, not just the clergy. This act of defiance enraged the Church and the English crown, who saw it as a direct threat to their interpretive monopoly. Tyndale was branded a heretic, hunted down, and executed in 1536, but his work endured. His Bible fueled the Protestant Reformation, proving that information, once loosed, could not easily be contained. The battle over the Tyndale Bible underscored a recurring truth: those in power fear the consequences of an informed populace.

The Dictionary Movement: Standardizing Knowledge

The 17th and 18th centuries saw the rise of the dictionary movement, an attempt to codify language and, by extension, thought. Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) was a landmark achievement, but it was also a tool of control. By defining words and their meanings, elites could shape discourse and marginalize non-standard dialects or subversive ideas. Dictionaries brought order to chaos, but they also reinforced the cultural dominance of the educated classes. Knowledge became a gatekept domain, accessible only to those who spoke the "correct" language—a subtle but effective means of exclusion.

Guilds and Trade Secrets: Knowledge as Currency

While the literate elite battled over words and ideas, medieval and early modern guilds fought to hoard practical knowledge. These associations of craftsmen—blacksmiths, weavers, and more—guarded their trade secrets with ferocity, passing techniques down through apprenticeship rather than written records. This secrecy ensured economic advantage and social hierarchy, keeping outsiders at bay. The guilds’ resistance to sharing knowledge mirrored the broader struggle: information was power, and those who held it clung to it tenaciously, thwarting efforts at wider dissemination.

The Wager Mutiny: Silencing the Lower Orders
(See my substack on the Wager incident)

A striking example of narrative suppression emerged in the 1740s with the Wager mutiny. After the HMS Wager, part of a British naval expedition, wrecked off the coast of Patagonia, the survivors descended into chaos, with lower-ranking crew members rebelling against their officers. Upon their return to England, the Admiralty and upper-class chroniclers worked to bury the story. Only accounts from officers or approved writers were permitted, while the perspectives of common sailors—many of whom had mutinied—were silenced. This cover-up reflected a broader pattern: the elite sought to control history itself, ensuring that only their version of events endured.

Today’s Elites and the Digital Frontier

Fast forward to 2025, and the battle for information control rages on, now in the digital realm. The internet, like the printing press before it, promised a new era of openness, giving independent voices unprecedented reach. Yet, today’s elites—governments, tech giants, and corporate media—have responded with sophisticated efforts to stamp out dissent. Algorithms prioritize approved narratives, shadow-banning mutes contrarian voices, and "fact-checking" often serves as a cudgel to discredit rather than illuminate. Independent journalists and citizen commentators face deplatforming, while centralized platforms wield unchecked power over what is seen and heard. The tools have changed, but the goal remains the same: to dictate the flow of information and preserve the dominance of the few over the many.

Conclusion: An Unending Struggle

From King Alfred’s translations to the silencing of digital dissidents, the fight to control information has been a constant thread through history. Each technological advance—be it the printing press, the Bible in English, or the internet—has sparked hope for liberation, only to be met with new forms of suppression. The lesson is clear: those in power will always seek to shape the narrative, while those on the margins will always resist. As we navigate this latest chapter, the stakes remain as high as ever, with the future of truth hanging in the balance.

I hope to elaborate on this theme in future substacks. Thank you for reading.

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The War of Jenkins’ Ear

A friend gave me the book The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. I had not heard of the book and began reading it without realizing it was a #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. I soon realized why. The book is a compelling read.

Wager was the name of a wooden sailing ship of the British Royal Navy. Originally built around 1734 as an armed trader for the East India Company, she was converted to a warship in 1739 after purchase by the British Admiralty.

At war with Spain (War of Jenkins’ Ear), Wager was assigned to a squadron led by Commodore George Anson. Her mission, sponsored by First Lord of the Admiralty, Admiral Sir Charles Wager, after whom the ship was named, was to disrupt Spanish naval operations and economic ventures in the Pacific and in the Spanish colonies on the west coast of South America. From the book:

With five warships and a scouting sloop, he (Anson) and some two thousand men would sail across the Atlantic and round Cape Horn, “taking, sinking, burning, or otherwise destroying” enemy ships and weakening Spanish holdings from the Pacific coast of South America to the Philippines. The British government, in concocting its scheme, wanted to avoid the impression that it was merely sponsoring piracy. Yet the heart of the plan called for an act of outright thievery: to snatch a Spanish galleon loaded with virgin silver and hundreds of thousands of silver coins. Twice a year, Spain sent such a galleon—it was not always the same ship—from Mexico to the Philippines to purchase silks and spices and other Asian commodities, which, in turn, were sold in Europe and the Americas. These exchanges provided crucial links in Spain’s global trading empire.

The mission was plagued from the start by an unusually cold winter that delayed construction work on Wager and strong unfavorable winds that delayed their setting sail from Portsmouth. Wager finally weighed anchor on September 18, 1740. By the time she reached Cape Horn the crew had already suffered through terrible storms, scurvy and other maladies.

The seas around Cape Horn are reputedly some of the roughest and most dangerous in the world, and the Cape lived up to its reputation to the chagrin of Captain David Cheap and the crew of Wager. The ship spent weeks trying to penetrate the storm within a storm, turn the corner of Cape Horn and head north toward the Juan Fernandez Islands, about 400 miles west of Santiago, Chile.

Wager eventually made it around Cape Horn, but by May of 1741 the crew found themselves in El Golfo de Penas (The Gulf of Pain), unable to round another cape, the Cabo Tres Montes (Cape of Three Mountains). This time their crippled ship and much reduced crew (by deaths from scurvy, typhoid, gangrene and frostbite) did not succeed in rounding the cape. Strong winds and currents dashed the ship against the rocky shore of a desolate island that today is named Wager Island after the ship that disintegrated there.

Approximately 140 of the original crew of about 250 made it ashore. The castaways faced terrible conditions on the desolate island that had little vegetation, no game and scant bird life. Captain Cheap tried to maintain the chain of command, but factions formed among the men, and mutiny, a capital crime, ensued. Miraculously, eighteen men of those originally stranded on the island eventually made their way back to England.

That is where a yearslong political struggle ensued over the real story of the tragedy and who was to blame for the mutiny. The events reminded me of the battles over narratives today. I asked Grok to summarize the similarities.

While the book itself is not explicitly about modern American politics, its themes and dynamics resonate strongly with contemporary political issues in the United States as of March 8, 2025. Below are some key similarities that can be drawn between the events and ideas in "The Wager" and the current state of American politics, based on the book’s themes and broader interpretations:

1. Polarization and Competing Narratives…

2. Breakdown of Authority and Trust…

3. Struggle for Power in Chaos…
   (Reminds of Rahm Emanuel, then Barack Obama's Chief of Staff’s comment, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.")

4. Manipulation of Truth for Political Gain…

5. The Fragility of Social Order...

6. Imperial Ambition vs. Reality…

Particularly striking to me were the competing narratives that emerged in regard to what happened to the Wager and its crew and the efforts by the ruling classes to control the narrative and suppress the story. John Bulkeley, the Wager’s gunner, was the only crew member who kept a contemporaneous journal. He was also the leader of the faction that mutinied, deposing Captain David Cheap.

Now, back in England, Bulkeley decided he wanted to publish his journal, taking advantage of the enormous public interest in the ill-fated voyage of Wager and the mutiny that followed her sinking. From The Wager:

The story—or stories—of the expedition continued to capture the public imagination. The press had grown exponentially, fueled by the loosening of government censorship and by wider literacy. And to satisfy the public’s insatiable thirst for news, there had emerged a professional class of scribblers who earned a living from sales rather than from aristocratic patronage, and whom the old literary establishment derided as “Grub Street hacks.” (Grub Street had been part of a poor area in London with doss-houses and brothels and fly-by-night publishing ventures.) And Grub Street, sniffing a good story, now seized on the so-called affair of the Wager.

Bulkeley’s effort to publish led to a firestorm of protest. Elites in the Navy, government and publishing fought viciously to prevent publication of his journal.

It was not unlike the Biden administration, Democrats, Deep State and mainstream media efforts to censor independent media in regard to their exposing their chicanery in trying to prevent Trump from running again for office in 2024. As elites today denigrate independent media as untrustworthy, unprofessional and amateurish, the privileged classes in England at the time did everything they could to thwart Bulkeley and the Grub Street hacks.

In 2004, Jonathan Klein, who was then CNN’s president, said in an interview with The New York Times, “Bloggers have no checks and balances. [It’s] a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing what he thinks.”

He made the remark during the Rathergate scandal when bloggers were responsible for outing Dan Rather and his misreporting of George W. Bush’s military service record. The pajamas image became a disparaging metaphor for independent media scribes. The term became widely used by mainstream media as shorthand in being dismissive of their upstart competition.

Just as during the George Floyd riots viewers were asked to ignore the burning buildings in the background as a reporter described mostly peaceful protests, so did elites of Bulkeley’s time ask the literate to ignore Bulkeley’s eyewitness account of the Wager story in favor of official accounts of the Admiralty written by men who were not at the scene of the alleged crimes.

Some members of the Admiralty and aristocracy expressed outrage at what they considered a two-pronged attack by a gunner and a carpenter on their commanding officer: first they had tied up Cheap, and now they were impugning him in print. One of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty told Bulkeley, “How dare you presume to touch a gentleman’s character in so public a manner?” A naval officer told the popular weekly journal Universal Spectator, “We are ready enough likewise to blame the crew of the Wager, and defend the Captain….We are even apt to think that if Captain Cheap comes home he will remove the censure that has been thrown upon his own obstinacy, and fix it upon the disobedience of those under him.” Bulkeley acknowledged that his defiant act of publishing the journal had in some quarters only fueled calls for his execution.

Thus, the current battle over freedom of speech that seems to many unprecedented is really as old as human nature. Any leader who has sought to control the general population has made every effort to control the dissemination of information. Conversely, anyone who values freedom in general must value freedom of speech above all.

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Fifth generation California farmer, classical scholar, Renaissance man and all-around top-drawer chap, Victor Davis Hanson has been warning for years that the great state of Paradisiacal California was flagrantly busting the speed limit on the Highway to Hell and was fast approaching the last exit ramp. Moreover, the fire next time was not going to confine itself to the nether world. The fire next time was imminent and proximate.

Naturally, VDH wasn’t listened to because he played for the other team—the team that did not believe that racism, homophobia, trannie rights, White supremacy and climate change were the major problems facing the already somewhat tarnished Golden State.

In between duties at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, Victor tended to the family farm in Selma, California, near Fresno, that once produced an abundance of fruits and nuts before those crops came to be cultivated in a hothouse in Sacramento. That was also before Hanson and his farmer friends found a large portion of their water supply bypassing them and emptying harmlessly and uselessly into the Pacific.

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In addition to driving Tesla’s and other luxury vehicles that the San Joaquin Valley People could not dream of affording, one of the coastal elites’ luxury beliefs is that the needs of some endangered species of fish (It really doesn’t matter which; any will do.) takes precedence over the needs of some calloused-palmed, sunburned, PhD-less farmer, illiterate in python, who thought it would be a capital idea to Make California Great Again.

Plop one of these North Face®-clad, gym-hardened, regenerative agriculture believers down in a valley farmyard on a blistering hot August day, and they wouldn’t last till their first meager payday came round. Their local Whole Foods Market, however, is always well-supplied with designer meats, fruits and veggies, so that is all that matters. Food, to them, appears magically on grocery shelves. It’s the new normal version of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. What, they worry?

You will never in a month of Gay Pride Days guess to what California’s political, academic and media elites attribute the Los Angeles wildfire problem. Well, indy media consumers will guess climate change, and they would be correct. Just as any weather—be it bitter cold, oppressive heat and humidity or sunny, mild and dry—is Cream of Wheat weather, so any catastrophic weather event is a result of man-made climate change, previously known as anthropogenic global warming until the warming did not happen as predicted.

Leave it to Michael E. Mann, infamous inventor of the hockey stick graph, to present the catastrophic climate change case:

There are, however, several inconvenient truths that contradict Mann’s act that rising temperatures and dwindling rainfall are to blame for the truly devastating wildfires. As Victor Davis Hanson points out (from transcript):

Last year was one of the wettest years that we've had. We've had three out of the last four years have been very, very wet. We had a huge snow pack. We had rivers that were running in 19th Century fashion but out to the sea to save the Delta smelt.

So it was a total systems collapse, from the idea of not spending money on irrigation, storage, water, fire prevention and forest management…[lack of] a viable insurance industry, a DEI hierarchy—you put it all together, and it's something like a DEI Green New Deal.

Gavin Newsom was fiddling. He's almost Nero….This has been something that is just an unimaginable systems breakdown….

What we're seeing in California is a state with 40 million people and yet the people who run it feel that it should return to a 19th Century pastoral condition. They are decivilizing the state and deindustrializing the state and defarming the state but they're not telling the 40 million people that their lifestyles will have to revert back to the 19th Century.

California wildfires are nothing new. What is different this time is that the fires have affected affluent areas where the people who are paying the price are the very ones whose luxury beliefs are coming back to burn them. Hollywood celebrities, well-off techies and other of the well-to-do who make up the majority of that noxious, unfortunately not endangered species, known as activist environmentalists, are the ones feeling the heat this time. (Here is a previous substack of mine on remembrances of wildfires past.)

For those who believe social justice wars produce no casualties, let the California wildfires be a lesson. Those still depending on the New York Times, WaPo, LA Times, ABC/NBC/CBS/PBS News and other legacy media outlets may remain true believers in the woke agenda, but those on X, substack and other indy media sites know the truth of what’s going on in LA and more important, know why it’s happening. X is rife with first-hand accounts of the disasters that the DEI agenda has created in Los Angeles and California generally.

One of the most viral posts on X in regard to the LA fires is from LAFD Assistant Chief, Kristine Larson . (If it makes the reader feel more secure and better about herself, Kristine happens to be a lesbian. Lesbians are notoriously better than binary types at putting out fires, you see.)

I guess maybe that’s the nub of the problem. Not enough firefighters look like the average resident of Pacific Palisades or Hollywood Hills. More socially conscious Hollywood stars need to apply as firefighters for the LAFD. Raven-Symoné? She’s LGBTQ+, Black, rich, fit, has star-quality—what’s not to like in a talent search for a firefighter who would look like Pacific Palisadians and make them comfortable with the person dousing the flames licking at their $6 million mansion.

Actually, Adam Carolla did apply to be a Los Angeles firefighter. According to Grok:

Adam Carolla has publicly shared a story about his experience applying to be a firefighter in Los Angeles. According to his account, which he discussed during a 2017 Congressional testimony and has been recirculated in media around January 2025:

• Carolla stated that when he was 19 years old, living in the garage of his family home with his mother on welfare, he attempted to join the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD). He claims he was told he would have to wait seven years to take the examination because he was not a member of a racial or gender minority group (not black, Hispanic, or a woman).

• Seven years later, when he was finally called back to take the test, he encountered a young woman of color in line who had only signed up a few days prior, specifically "Wednesday" as opposed to his wait of seven years. Carolla used this anecdote to highlight what he referred to as "white privilege."

There are signs, then, that the LA wildfire disaster is different this time. As I wrote in an earlier substack, I believe that the 2024 presidential election will mark the last hurrah for legacy media having significant influence over future elections. If their left-propaganda pieces and Democrat endorsements meant anything in the past, they no longer will matter.

In the same way, I believe that the Los Angeles wildfire horror will be the high water mark for Californians buying into the Socialist/Woke Democrat Party DEI agenda. There’s nothing like a personal disaster—losing your home, loved one or pet—to make you appreciate the wonders of meritocracy. DEI must DIE and will, if it has not already.

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The Fair Catch Field Goal

By now, everyone who has even a passing interest in football has probably heard and possibly seen a clip of Los Angeles Chargers placekicker, Cameron Dicker, making a free kick field goal after a fair catch in a game against the Denver Broncos, which the Chargers went on to win 34-27.

The 57-yard field goal was the longest free kick field goal in NFL history and the first since Ray Wersching, also of the Chargers (San Diego Chargers, that is) accomplished the feat in 1976. Wersching kicked a 45-yarder at the end of the first half against Buffalo on November 21, 1976.

The previous record for longest free kick field goal belonged to Paul Hornung who kicked a 52-yarder against my Chicago Bears on September 13, 1964.

I vaguely remember listening to the game on radio and was very confused when announcers Jack Brickhouse and Irv Kupcinet, also at first confused, tried to explain what was happening on the field. I had never heard of the rule before. Few apparently had, including the announcers, players and some of the coaches. In those days, I would listen to the games on radio on Sundays. Then, on Monday nights on the TV program Chicago Bears Football Highlights would be able to see what happened on Sunday.

The Chicago Tribune of Monday, September 14, 1964, led the sports page with the story of the Bears 23-12 loss to the Green Bay Packers. A subhead read: Golden Boy's Return Gives Victors Lift. Hornung Kicks 3 Field Goals. (Hornung's nickname was the Golden Boy for his head of thick, curly blonde hair.)

Paul Hornung, running back and placekicker for Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers.

The game marked Paul Hornung's return to the Packers after having served a one-year suspension for gambling. He and Alex Karras of the Detroit Lions were suspended for the 1963 season for gambling on NFL games, although neither had bet on his own team.

From the Tribune of that Monday:

Hornung, who left as a fun-loving extrovert a year ago under league suspension, came back less pudgy and more mature. He brought with him not only talent, but the leadership that made the Packers a confident, poised, and cohesive competitive machine again. He kicked three field goals, one for 52 yards on a free kick after a fair catch on the last play of the first half, and others of 20 and 29 yards....

His 52-yard free kick from placement was the fourth longest field goal in National league history and left all but the oldest observers bewildered. Officials had trouble assembling the Bears behind the 10-yard restraining line and the youngsters in the press box and television booths went scurrying for consultations with anyone with gray hair.

The paper also printed a further explanation of the unusual occurrence in a sidebar on the front page of the sports section.

Not to be outdone, the Chicago Cubs also played a role in a history-making sports feat that Sunday. For the first time in 41 years, a team scored a run in every inning of a baseball game. Unfortunately for Cubs fans, it was the St. Louis Cardinals who did the scoring, defeating the Cubs 15 to 2 at Wrigley Field.

From the Trib:

The only other time since 1900 a major league team scored in each of the nine innings was on June 1, 1923, by the New York Giants against the Philadelphia Phillies. In the late 1800s, when scores were uniformly high, it was accomplished four times in the National League.

Happy New Year. Thanks for reading.

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Kimberly Strassel’s recent Wall Street Journal column (A Landslide Against the Media: News organizations tried to prop Biden and Harris up. How did that work out?) nicely sums up the trouncing that legacy media took in the 2024 election at the hands of independent media, Elon Musk’s X in particular, and it wasn’t even close. There should have been a mercy rule.

Kimberly Strassel:

The recriminations are flying, as Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s forces go to war over who’s more to blame for Democrats’ humiliating defeat Tuesday. So long as the left is pointing fingers, let it direct a big, fat digit at the outfit that played the biggest role in losing it this election: the U.S. media.

Strassel writes that legacy media’s constant attacks on Trump no doubt had some effect on decreasing his margin of victory, but the obvious cheerleading for Harris/Walz came at greater cost.

“A narrative full of fantasy enabled Democrats to live in a world disconnected from the mood and worries of the country," Strassel wrote.

Among the most damaging of these fantasies was the four-year press assurance that Joe Biden was sharp as a tack. Even video evidence in June of a confused president wandering aimlessly at the Group of Seven was met with claims that the footage was “edited,” “lacking context,” “misleading.” Only when the Trump-Biden debate made Mr. Biden’s decline undeniable did the media drop the charade. Then it immediately turned to recast Ms. Harris—a presidential primary loser turned unpopular vice president—as a political genius and the obvious savior of the Democratic Party. How’d that work out?

Not only did that not work out, we now know with benefit of hindsight that the whole exercise in old-style back room (no longer smoke-filled) politics was doomed from the moment that the Democrat Party Politburo eschewed a primary and installed Harris as their candidate. A few Harris campaign aides, either out of guilt or in an attempt to distance themselves from responsibility for the disaster, are coming forward and entering the confessional. One is, David Plouffe.

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The Lead We Never Saw

While legacy media was portraying the race as having a razor-thin margin and the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz campaign as a renaissance of joy in America, it was Trump and his campaign mates—Vance, Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, RFKJ, Tulsi, et al, who seemed to be having most of the fun (save for the assassination attempt, to be sure).

For a time, it seemed that Harris and Vance had gone on sabbatical. Trump, meanwhile, took advantage of social media at the urging of his son, Barron. His almost three-hour interview with Joe Rogan was estimated to have been watched by 26 million viewers in the first 24 hours and was eventually seen by more than fifty million.

While Trump’s appearances on podcasts allowed him to appear relaxed, informed and confident, Harris’s controlled, scripted, brief messaging attempts gave rise to a term describing her forensic skills that will live in infamy: word salad.

As someone pointed out, a long-form podcast not only affords the candidate time to develop his points at length, it also gives the viewer a sense of the interviewee’s honesty or lack of it. Anyone who saw Trump in one of these settings had a hard time believing the vicious attacks on his character that emanated from Harris/Walz and their allies in legacy media when the campaign of joy turned to a sad campaign of slander.

Trump, of course, had long suffered the slings and arrows of outraged fortune-seekers, so he had no trouble brushing off the insults. It appears, however, that the effects of these attacks on voters were null and void. Trump gained support in precisely those demographics that did not get their news from mainstream media. Rogan’s audience is comprised mainly of young males. There were several Black and Hispanic podcasters who supported Trump and had no fear of lancing and lampooning the traditional purveyors of Big Race and Big Ethnicity propaganda and ripping the lies and hypocrisy of Kamala, herself.

Reaching Minorities

Devory Darkins is one such podcaster who never missed an opportunity to fact-check the Harris/Walz campaign. Neither did he hesitate to point out the hypocrisy and lack of results on the part of the traditional spokesmen for the Black Community.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Kamala Harris and her press water bearers became increasingly desperate. Their attacks were so over the top as to become almost comical, tragicomedy to be sure. One of the more elastic of the stretches of logic was the legerdemain in portraying Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.

The logic went something like this: an American pro-Nazi group held a rally in Madison Square Garden (the old Garden) on February 20, 1939. From Wikipedia:

On February 20, 1939, a Nazi rally took place at Madison Square Garden, organized by the German American Bund. More than 20,000 people attended, and Fritz Julius Kuhn was a featured speaker. The Bund billed the event, which took place two days before George Washington's Birthday, as a pro-"Americanism" rally; the stage at the event featured a huge portrait of George Washington with swastikas on each side.^[1] Approximately 100,000 anti-Nazi counter-protesters gathered outside, attempting to break through lines of police officers guarding the rally on three occasions. The Bund rapidly declined in the aftermath of the rally, with Kuhn being imprisoned for embezzlement by the end of the year.^[2]

On October 27, 2024, Donald Trump held a rally in the new Madison Square Garden. There were no Nazi flags or symbols, no Nazi speakers or portraits. (Fritz Julius Kuhn is long since deceased.) The obvious conclusion: Donald Trump was a Nazi, a veritable reincarnation of Adolph Hitler. His followers were Nazi sympathizers. There was just no other way to characterize their enthusiasm. AP, one of the most reliably out-of-touch with reality legacy media outlets, wrote the following about the rally:

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump hosted a rally featuring crude and racist insults at New York’s Madison Square Garden, turning what his campaign had dubbed as the event where he would deliver his closing message into an illustration of what turns off his critics.

With just over a week before Election Day, speakers at the rally Sunday night labeled Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” called Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris “the devil,” and said the woman vying to become the first woman and Black woman president had begun her career as a prostitute.

Largely omitted from mainstream media coverage was the fact that the auditorium was festooned with Israeli flags, not Nazi flags, although the far-left currently equates Israel with either Nazi Germany or Apartheid South Africa. Both Trump and Israeli President Netanyahu are frequently compared to Hitler.

Speakers at the Trump rally included prominent pro-Israel Jews but the press generally passed them off as Zionists (roughly the equivalent of Hamas or Hezbollah in the mediaite bubble). Also little covered by MSM, was the fact that two of Trump’s largest donors and most influential supporters were two former Jewish Democrat fundraisers who flipped to Trump, billionaires David Sacks, who hosts the All-In podcast and writes his Bottom Up substack, and Bill Ackman, founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management.

Both were active on X with timely and solid refutations of the wild accusations being hurled at Trump by Harris/Walz and their media allies. They were particularly effective in countering charges that Trump was an anti-Semite.

After all the charges against Trump of racism, sexism, homophobia and anti-Hispanic prejudice, it turned out he increased his vote percentages among all those groups. That included the much ballyhooed uprising of White suburban women against Trump’s alleged threats to women’s reproductive rights. If there was a threat, however, it would more accurately be said to have been a threat to non-reproductive rights, or to use the forbidden word, abortion. However, this insurrection never materialized.

What did materialize was an uprising against the shallow, deceitful and manipulative efforts of mainstream media. As Kimberly Strassel wrote:

The media itself was put on sharp notice this cycle, pushed aside by podcasters and influencers whom voters now trust more to provide reality. Nearly 50 million people have listened to Joe Rogan’s interview of Mr. Trump, as it provided a more accurate assessment of the GOP nominee’s positions and the concerns of the country than “news” articles about the “authoritarian” intent on destroying the climate, abortion rights, democracy—choose your obsession.

The Founders accorded the press the honor of inclusion in the First Amendment in recognition of the vital role it plays in keeping pols honest. The industry is meant to ride herd on government—on both sides—in the interest of the people. That job is essential—not only for transparency, but to provide self-deluding politicians constant gut checks as to how their policies sit with the nation. When that guardrail falls, the nation suffers, but so too does the party that gets to live the make-believe.

While podcasters did indeed push aside legacy media during election coverage, podcasts and long-form podcasts run from one to two, sometimes three hours. A full-time worker with a family to take care of does not have the time to take in such long news reports.

There is a need for a succinct, accurate and unbiased summary of the important news of the day. That is a function that networks and cable could fulfill if they chose to. So far, they have chosen not to change their ways. Strassel writes:

Yet on the other side are the progressive architects of the mess, already rationalizing away the night as a function of racism, sexism and America’s supposed love affair with “fascism.” They mark the loss down to “tactical” errors—the failure to court pro-Palestinian voters, a misallocation of door-knockers, poor timing in ad buys. The party just needs better “messaging” of its “historic achievements.”

A rational being might expect legacy media to engage in some degree of self-reflection and rethinking of their business model after the drubbing they took in the big game. Except for the publisher of the L.A. Times shaking things up a bit and some overpaid news readers taking pay cuts at MSNBC (Rachel Maddow from $30 million to $25 mil for one show a week) and CNN, it appears that most legacy media outlets are doubling down on their Trump Derangement Syndrome rants masquerading as news stories. The hostile reception accorded Trump’s announced appointments is a case in point. Perhaps, if the men wore dresses, lipstick and heels, the reviews would be more positive.

In reality, the traditional press claim to afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted has been reversed. The media now comfort the already comfortable elites while further afflicting the afflicted or just ignoring ordinary people’s concerns entirely.

The afflicted, however, now have a voice through independent media, particularly X, formerly Twitter. Had Elon Musk not purchased the Democrat/Deep State propaganda arm that was Old Twitter, it is doubtful that Trump would have won.

But purchase it he did. In effect, he allowed the afflicted to comfort themselves and each other. And the afflicted voted red.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year.

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First Link

The first link in the error chain that led to the fatal crash of TWA Flight 514 (IND-CMH-DCA) occurred in 1967. From my book Error Chain: the Bitter End:

The first link went back to 1967 when the U.S. Air Force (USAF) “questioned the FAA’s (Federal Aviation Administration) procedures for instrument approaches with regard to the responsibility for terrain clearance.” In 1970, TAA (Air Transport Association of America) had asked the FAA for clarification of essentially the same issue. In December of that year the FAA issued a General Notice (GENOT) that was designed to clarify the responsibilities of pilots and controllers in maintaining a safe altitude.

In June of 1971, the GENOT was inexplicably canceled. At the time of the crash of TWA 514, exchanges between the FAA, USAF and airlines in regard to continuing confusion over correct approach altitudes was ongoing. Several airlines reported near misses over Mt. Weather (the terrain that TWA 514 hit) just before the time of the crash and advised the FAA, but the warnings were not passed along to pilots. (emphasis mine)

Retterer, R.C.. Error Chain: The Bitter End. Kindle Edition.

The next link, was the weather. A major snowstorm was moving through the midwest, approaching Indianapolis, the origin point of TWA 514, on Sunday, December 1, 1974. That Sunday in 1974 was the final day of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

The forecast for Columbus, an intermediate stop on Flight 514’s journey to Washington, D.C., was similar. The bottom line is that the weather forecast would have prompted everyone to be in a hurry to get out-of-town ASAP to beat the storm. In pilot talk, get-there-itis may have come into play. In any event, the plane would have had to be de-iced. That fact would also weigh on the pilots’ minds as they were always under pressure to be on time.

Destination Change

The flight from Indianapolis to Columbus was uneventful. TWA Flight 514 departed Columbus at 10:24 EST, 11 minutes late, with 85 passengers and 7 crew members aboard. The next link in the error chain happened about ten minutes after takeoff from Columbus.

From the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) Aircraft Accident report:

At 1036, the Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) informed the crew of Flight 514 that no landings were being made at Washington National Airport because of high crosswinds, and that flights destined for that airport were either being held or being diverted to Dulles International Airport (IAD).

At 1038, the captain of Flight 514 communicated with the dispatcher in New York and advised him of the information he had received. The dispatcher, with the captain's concurrence, subsequently amended Flight 514's release to allow the flight to proceed to Dulles.

Neither the captain, the first officer or the flight engineer had landed at Dulles Airport before. TWA flew Boeing 707s, 747s and Lockheed 1011s into and out of IAD. These aircraft were largely used for trans-Atlantic, West Coast and other long-haul flights. Boeing 727s were normally the purview of DCA (Washington National Airport, not yet renamed for President Reagan). National’s main runway was too short to handle wide-body aircraft or Boeing 707s or Douglas DC-8s at that time.

Airborne and with only about a half-hour until scheduled touchdown, the pilots had to pull out their Jeppesen charts for Dulles International Airport (IAD) and brief for a landing at this alien airfield. All of that would have normally been done on the ground with much of the tedious details being handled by company dispatchers in New York. That added to the workload and put additional pressure on the pilots. Thus, the error chain lengthened. From the NTSB report:

At 1042, Cleveland ARTCC (Air Route Traffic Control Center) cleared Flight 514 to Dulles Airport via the Front Royal VOR (Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Range Station), and to maintain flight level (FL) 290 (29,000 feet). At 1043, the controller cleared the flight to descend to FL 230 (23,000 feet) and to cross a point 40 miles west of Front Royal at that altitude. Control of the flight was then transferred to the Washington ARTCC and communications were established with that facility at 1048.

During the period between receipt of the amended flight release and the transfer of control to Washington ARTCC, the flight crew discussed the instrument approach to runway 12, the navigational aids, and the runways at Dulles, and the captain turned the controls over to the first officer.

Bitter End

Sailors call the last link in an anchor chain the bitter end. The bitter end of the Flight 514 error chain involved a misunderstanding of the Minimum Descent Altitude (MDA) for Flight 514’s approach to runway 12. MDA is the altitude below which an aircraft is not cleared to descend on a given flight segment. From my book:

Conversation in the cockpit was now a rapid-fire exchange of questions and comments. There was a debate over what their minimum altitude should be. The chart showed the minimum altitude at their next VOR, ROUND HILL, to be 3,400 feet. Customarily, however, if a controller cleared a flight for its initial approach, pilots could descend to the minimum approach altitude as shown on the approach plate. That approach altitude for Dulles was 1,800 feet, a difference of 1,600 feet.

At 11:04, Captain Brock reported to ATC (Air Traffic Control) that they were level at 7,000 feet. The controller then cleared them for a “VOR/DME approach to runway 12.” The captain read back the clearance.

As the flight descended through the clouds and light rain, turbulence increased and was commented on by the pilots. NTSB report:

At 1106:15, the first officer commented that, "I hate the altitude jumping around. Then he commented that the instrument panel was bouncing around….At 1106:27, the captain discussed the last reported ceiling and minimum descent altitude. (He) concluded, (We). . . “should break out.”

At 1106:42, the first officer said, "Gives you a headache after a while, watching this jumping around like that.” At 1107:27, he said, “you can feel that wind down here now….”

A few seconds later, the captain said, "You know, according to this dumb sheet it says thirty-four hundred to Round Hill…is our minimum altitude.”

The flight crew then debated whether they had to maintain 3,400 feet or whether they could descend to 1,800 feet, the published MDA for the approach to runway 12 at Dulles.

"When he clears you, that means you can go to your…” An unidentified voice said, "Initial approach,” and another unidentified voice said, "Yeah!" Then the captain said "Initial approach altitude.” The flight engineer then said, “We're out a…twenty-eight for eighteen.” An unidentified voice said, "Right,” and someone said, “One to go.”

Thus, the captain settled the debate based on the assumption that implicit in the controller’s instructions was that they were cleared to the initial approach altitude of 1800 feet. He ordered a descent to “Initial approach altitude.” At that point, they were at 2,800 feet as called out by the flight engineer with 1,000 feet to go to reach 1,800 feet. From the CVR transcript:

11:04 Capt: "Eighteen hundred [feet] is the bottom."
FO: "Start down. We're out here quite a ways. I better turn the heat down [probably referring to cabin heat]."
11:06:15 FO: "I hate the altitude jumping around." Then he commented that the instrument panel was bouncing around.
11:06:15 Capt: "We have a discrepancy in our VORs, a little but not much. Fly yours, not mine."
11:06:27 Capt discusses the last reported ceiling and minimum descent altitude and concluded: "...should break out."
11:06:42 FO: "Gives you a headache after awhile, watching this jumping around like that."
11:07:27 FO: "...you can feel that wind down here now."
Capt: "You know, according to this dumb sheet [referring to the instrument approach chart] it says thirty-four hundred to Round Hill—is our minimum altitude." The FE asked where the captain saw that, and the captain replied, "Well, here. Round Hill is eleven-and-a-half DME."
FO: "Well, but...."
Capt: "When he clears you, that means you can go to your...."
Unidentified: "Initial approach."
Unidentified: "Yeah."
Capt: "Initial approach altitude."
FE: "We're out of twenty-eight for eighteen."
Unidentified: "Right; one to go." [meaning 1,000 feet more before reaching the supposed level-off altitude of 1,800]
11:08:14 FE: "Dark in here."
FO: "And bumpy too."
11:08:25 Altitude alert horn sounds.
Capt: "I had ground contact a minute ago."
FO: "Yeah, I did too."
11:08:29 FO: "...power on this [expletive]."
Capt: "Yeah, you got a high sink rate."
FO: "Yeah."
Unidentified: "We're going uphill."
FE: "We're right there, we're on course."
Two voices: "Yeah."
Capt: "You ought to see ground outside in just a minute. Hang in there, boy."
FE: "We're getting seasick."
11:08:57 Altitude alert horn sounds.
FO: "Boy, it was—wanted to go right down through there, man."
Unidentified: "Yeah."
FO: "Must have had a [expletive] of a downdraft."
11:09:14 Radio altimeter warning horn sounds and stops.
FO: "Boy!"
11:09:20 Capt: "Get some power on."
Radio altimeter warning horn sounds again and stops.
At 11:09:22 TWA 514 struck the west slope of Mount Weather, about 25 nautical miles from Dulles at an elevation of about 1,670 feet.

NTSB Conclusion

In summary, this accident resulted from a combination of conditions which included a lack of understanding between the controller and the pilot as to which air traffic control criteria were being applied to the flight while it was operating in instrument meteorological conditions in the terminal area. Neither the pilot nor the controller understood what the other was thinking or planning when the approach clearance was issued. The captain did not react correctly to his own doubt about the line of action he had selected because he did not contact the controller for clarification. (emphasis mine) The action of the other air carrier pilot who questioned the clearance he received about 1/2 hour before the accident is the kind of reaction that should be expected of a pilot suddenly confronted with uncertainty about the altitude at which he should operate his aircraft.

Despite the chain of errors, oversights and acts of God that ultimately resulted in the fatal crash of TWA Flight 514, it really came down to that question that nagged me as I read through the details of the crash and was cited (above) in the NTSB conclusion. Given the confusion over their assigned altitude, why had the crew not called ATC for clarification?

As the report states, a previous flight of another airline on the same routing, its crew suffering from the same confusion over minimum descent altitude, called the controller for clarification and a crash was averted.

Probable Cause

Flown West—RIP

Captain: Richard I. Brock, Los Angeles
First Officer: Lenard K. Kresheck, Los Angeles
Flight Engineer: Thomas C. Safrenek, Los Angeles

Flight Attendants:
Elizabeth Betsy Stout-Martin, 23, Lexington, KY
Joan E. Heady, 23, Olney, IL
Denise A. Stander, 21, Pittsburgh, PA
Jen A. Van Fossen, 22, Redding, CA

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December 1, 2024 - Fifty years ago, today, I was sitting in the TWA flight attendant crew lounge at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. A blizzard that had already devastated TWA’s home base of Kansas City (MCI) and points in between was moving east, currently unloading on Chicago. Eventually the storm would affect most of the eastern half of the country.

The lounge was packed, every available chair and BarkaLounger was spoken for. It was standing room only. I looked down through a concourse level window onto the TWA ramp that was empty of airplanes but blanketed by one to three feet of drifting snow. O’Hare was closed. Plows, back hoes and bulk haulers were losing the battle to clear runways, taxiways and ramp areas so that the airport could reopen.

All TWA flights in or out of O’Hare were canceled. In airline jargon, the stranded crew members’ status was tagged disposition pending. In other words, we were awaiting reassignment. Of course, company gossip and rumor mongering were dominating conversation. Chatter was interrupted when a male flight attendant walked into the lounge and shouted out, “Did you hear that we lost one. A 727 is down somewhere near D.C.” or words to that effect. It was news to us. He said he would go down to operations and pull up a crew list before they took the flight roster out of the computer.

We soon learned that the flight that went down was TWA Flight 514. The flight originated in Indianapolis and was bound for National Airport in Washington, D.C., with an intermediate stop at Port Columbus International Airport (CMH), now John Glenn Columbus International Airport. Shortly after takeoff from Columbus, the crew was advised that Washington National Airport was closed because of high crosswinds. After discussion with TWA dispatch, It was decided to divert the flight to Washington’s Dulles International Airport. Passengers would be bused to National.

I was sitting with a group of F/As that I had known from training. When we first looked at the crew list, we did not recognize any names, pilots or flight attendants. One payroll number, however, was very close to ours, beginning with 39, followed by three digits. We knew that this person had to have been in our class, but no one recognized the name E. Martin.

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Heavens to Betsy

Finally, someone made the connection that E. Martin, as the name was shown on the printout, was Elizabeth Betsy Stout-Martin, our classmate, whom we knew as Betsy Stout. This flight attendant recalled that Betsy had recently gotten married and had changed her name. At this point, we did not know how serious the crash was. We hoped and prayed that there were survivors and that Betsy was one of them. Soon enough, we learned the bitter truth. It was devastating news. No one survived. There was also a there but for the grace of God moment for me, and I’m sure for all of us.

I met Betsy at TWA’s Breech Training Academy in Overland Park, Kansas (suburb of Kansas City). We began flight attendant training together on April 11, 1973. The entire class numbered about 100, with 20 being males. It was only the second year that they had begun to hire male flight attendants, although TWA had always had male pursers and flight service managers, which I later became.

The group of 100 was divided into classes of about 20 each. Betsy and I were in the same small class. My most lasting memory of her is of a pretty, personable blonde, usually with her hair in a ponytail. Always smiling, she had a great sense of humor and healthy portion of Southern charm with a Southern lilt to her soft voice. She often wore University of Kentucky gear, frequently including a UK baseball cap with her ponytail sticking out the back. She had been a University of Kentucky student and had grown up in Lexington, Kentucky.

After a month of training, we graduated and officially went online on May 12, 1973. I was assigned to the New York International domicile (JFK-I). I believe Betsy first went to New York Domestic (JFK-D), although she later got her transfer to Kansas City where her fiancé had gotten a job.

A Happy Thanksgiving Turns Sad

As is the case in 2024, Thanksgiving of 1974 fell on Thursday, November 28th. Sunday, December 1, 1974, was the heavy travel day when most people who traveled for the holiday were returning home. For airline crews, any holiday meant a possible work day.

Crew schedules are determined by seniority. Pilots and flight attendants bid each month for published schedules, a line of time in airline jargon. When holidays come around, it is the senior flight attendants who are able to hold a line that has the holiday off. Thus, most of the crews flying that Sunday were junior. Many would have been called out on reserve (as was the case with the two most junior flight attendants on Flight 514 that day) because there are also an unusually large number of sick calls over the holidays.

Betsy was the most senior flight attendant on the crew. Second in seniority was Joan E. Heady who had gone online on July 20, 1973. The two most junior flight attendants, Denise A. Stander, 21, and Jen A. Fossen, 22, were new hires, having completed their training on November 7th of that year. Thus, as fickle fate had it, they had not even been flying for a full month before being killed in the crash.

Upon Further Review

In 1994, my wife and I moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia. She was a flight attendant for United Airlines and was based at Washington Dulles. I had taken early retirement from TWA in 1992 with the company in the midst of one of its several bankruptcies. In reading about the fatal crash of TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996, in which I lost more than a dozen former colleagues, I was reminded of the crash of TWA 514.

I realized that I really did not know many of the details of the crash. In those pre-Internet days, it was not easy to access NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) accident reports. I finally found the report online, read it and everything else I could find on the crash, which surprisingly was not all that much.

The word at the time of the crash that I picked up from the company grapevine and some pilot friends, was that the crash happened near Frederick, Maryland, and that the Boeing 727 had come down on some secret government location that then had to be abandoned because the installation was not a secret anymore.

I was surprised to find that the crash had actually occurred in Upperville, Virginia, the aircraft the victim of CFIT, Controlled Flight Into Terrain. It had missed clearing Mount Weather by a few hundred feet. The crash location was only about 70 miles from our house. I made a pilgrimage to the crash site.

A Grave Visit

As I began researching the crash, I found Betsy’s grave site on Find-A-Grave—Mount Horeb Presbyterian Church outside of Lexington, Kentucky, where Betsy grew up. I eventually got in touch with the pastor. Coincidentally, she was a native of Fredericksburg, VA. To my surprise, she said she knew nothing about Betsy’s grave. She said that there was an old burial plot in the churchyard that had about five graves, including that of one of the church’s founders. The deceased were veterans of the Civil War and First World War. The last burial was in the early 20s. There had been none since.

Then I heard a woman in the background say that no, there had been the burial of the “girl who had been killed in the plane crash.” Betsy’s mother had known one of the longtime and well respected ministers. She asked him if Betsy could be buried in the churchyard, and he consented.

On a drive to my mother’s house in Arkansas, my wife and I stopped at the church. The church is surrounded by beautiful thoroughbred farms. It was hard to believe we were on the right track to find a church. But there it was. There was no one there when we arrived, so we poked around.

It was easy enough to find the old burial site and the old, worn tombstones that were barely legible because of erosion of the stone around the letters. Betsy’s grave was not among the original graves.

We finally found her gravesite off the side of a walkway that meandered through the beautiful gardens. It was just off a curving section of the path near the rear of the churchyard. Flowers were in bloom. Birds were singing. If one had to have a grave, this was about as nice a setting as one could hope for. On our first circuit of the garden, we missed the tombstone. One side of it was obscured by a tree and a large hosta. The gravestone, which looked brand new, was between two trees near the back white fence that separated the churchyard from the horse farm at its rear. We paid our respects and left.

In doing further research on the crash, I came upon the book The Sound of Impact, by Adam Shaw. That book got me interested in writing a book of my own based on the accident. There was some mention of the pilots in the book, but the book mainly concentrated on the passengers, including several VIPS who were onboard. There was nothing about the cabin crew, so I decided to write something from their point-of-view as I imagined it from my experiences.

Given the circumstances, the parts of the book dealing with the flight attendants and what they experienced had to be fiction. So, the technical details of the flight are taken from the NTSB report on the crash, while the fictional plot came from personal experience and experiences told to me by others.

Rarely is an airplane crash caused by a single catastrophic event. There are usually a series of mistakes, oversights or neglect that add up to disaster, like links in a chain. The crash of TWA Flight 514 was a classic error chain event. I will discuss the links in the error chain in part two.

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Climate Science Is Political Science

Hallelujah and Allahu Akbar, Robert Bryce. Mr. Bryce was my first Energy Guru, but I have of late been frustrated by his attitude toward politics - neither a Republican nor a Democrat, just disgusted, etc. Whereas, I have long maintained it's all about politics, specifically, all about anti-energy Democrats

It is Democrats who support anti-nuclear, anti-fossil fuel and pro-climate change policy nonsense and at the extreme left-end, degrowth policies in general. I was hoping (and have commented) that Robert would realize this before the election and endorse Trump. That didn't happen, but at least Mr. Bryce seems to have seen the light as to who is on the side of pro-growth, therefore, pro-prosperity that depends on fossil fuels and nuclear power development.

From his recent substack piece Who Really Cares About Climate Change? Tuesday’s election shows that radical climate policy is a loser — even in Berkeley.

The results of yesterday’s election are nothing short of seismic. Polls and pundits uniformly predicted a too-close-to-call contest that would be decided by a handful of votes in a handful of states. Instead, Donald Trump whipped Kamala Harris. He won the popular contest by nearly 5 million votes and thumped her in the Electoral College. As I write this, according to the New York Times, the final EC margin will likely be 312 to 226. Republicans will now control the White House and the Senate, and perhaps the House of Representatives for the next two years.

While this race was about many things, one issue lurked throughout: climate policy. And the results clearly show that the Democratic Party is woefully out of step with mainstream voters on energy and climate policy. But the national results are only one aspect of the voting public’s repudiation of the Left’s climate policies. On Tuesday, ballot initiatives on taxing or restricting natural gas use — one in Washington state and the other in Berkeley, California — lost decisively.

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Bryce writes that Kamala Harris had to separate herself from the unpopular climate policies that were pushed on Biden by the left-wing of the party. That included anti-fracking policies that Harris backtracked from, but there was skepticism as to her sincerity. Cynics argued that she was just pandering to Pennsylvanians because she had to win the state whose economy is dependent on fracking.

Pundits and political scientists will scrutinize Trump’s victory for years to come as they try to explain why he won so decisively. There are, of course, many reasons. But a key one is that the Democrats lost the allegiance of millions of everyday Americans because they were too willing to prostrate themselves in front of the climate activists who dominate their party and who have promoted ruinously regressive energy policies.

As an aside, Robert Bryce always asks his podcast guests at the conclusion of an interview, "What are you reading?" If I were the one interviewed, I would say I am reading me.

A decade or more ago, I heard several commentators opine that conservatives were at a disadvantage vis-a-vis liberal Democrats because Dems ruled popular culture. I listened to a podcast where the hosts ( was one of the pair, I believe) discussed self-publishing being an entrée for conservative-themed fiction.

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In 2014, at the age of 70, I self-published my first novel: ‘Fish or Cut Bait’.

The book is a satire of woke college life that was in its nascent stages at the time. I based the book on a National Association of Scholars report on the strange goings on at Bowdoin College, What Does Bowdoin Teach? as well as Sex and God at Yale.

One of the main themes is the odd juxtaposition of libertine sexual behavior (fish bowls of free condoms in dorm lobbies; classroom demos by porn stars financed by sale of sex toys and porn flicks) on the one hand and administration-backed left-fem activism against a fearsome rape culture on campus on the other.

Now approaching 81, I have self-published seven novels, a short story collection and various short works. The latest, if I do say so myself, has so far predicted many of the antics of the Biden administration and current incarnation of the Democrat Party. It also foresees what might happen were we to pursue anti-fossil fuel policies and the effect that would have on our agricultural production that might even lead to our own version of the 1932-33 political famine engineered by Stalin in Ukraine, known in Ukrainian as the Holodomor. Holodomor: What's the Matter with Green Kansas?

The book of which I am proudest is: https://tinyurl.com/yamrc8z2

It is the story of the 2016 election on New Animal Farm from the animals’ point-of-view. After all, we are all political animals. I actually met the adopted son of George Orwell and several of his cousins, one of whom is a former neighbor. I gave them all copies of the book which they politely accepted without impolite or other comment. 

My contribution to climate denialism and environmentalist ridicule is:

Once I considered myself an ecologist, as what today is known as the environmental movement was misnamed in the 1960s-70s. Now, I would consider being called an environmentalist (or worse an AGW believer) as the ultimate insult. As the movement has moved closer and closer to the insane asylum, I have moved in the other direction. When I heard that there was something called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEM), the idea of writing a satire of the enviros was planted in my aging brain.

Memories of a Mad Magazine piece I read long ago that satirized the media’s habit at the time of predicting and sensationalizing the number of people who would be killed in holiday traffic accidents planted another idea. The Mad feature was of a Jerry Lewis-like Labor Day telethon in which people called in to pledge a certain number of traffic deaths to aid the cause.

In my book, my two main characters are estranged feminist lesbian lovers who engage in a brutal competition among members of VHEM to be the last woman left alive on earth. Naturally, the last man had long since perished. Men always predecease women, after all. The denouement occurs at Victoria Falls, a sacred site for preservationists.

I am traditionally not much of a self-promoter and sales and marketing would be at the bottom of my skill set. However, I'm not getting any younger. If you haven't experienced it yet, you will find that as you get older, your inhibitions become less inhibiting. So, I am going to hit that publish button on this bit of self-promotion. 

This is not to detract from the fact that my original intent was to thank Robert Bryce for coming out, at least slightly, of the political closet. If not exactly writing in support of President Trump, he at least seems to recognize that under his administration there is more hope for attacking the grid fragility that another of my favorites has written about and whom I was introduced to through a Bryce podcast—The Electric Grandma, Meredith Angwin. Her book Shorting the Grid is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn something of the realities of electricity generation, transmission and distribution—and especially to learn about the maze of regulations, counter-productive subsidies and lawfare that inhibits modernization of our fragile grid. 

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Coincidentally, the front pages of the Chicago Tribune of 28 September 2024 and the same date in 1932 both feature stories about destructive hurricanes. (Yes, Virginia, there were hurricanes even back then.) The respective front pages of the Trib, which in 1932 was the Chicago Daily Tribune and boasted of being The World’s Greatest Newspaper on its masthead:

My first reaction upon seeing the headline of the 2024 edition was that there would inevitably be mention of climate change as a contributing factor, if not the outright cause of the hurricane. In 1932, the Tribune’s owner and publisher was Robert Rutherford "Colonel" McCormick. Popularly known as The Colonel, McCormick was a conservative, anti-war isolationist (Yes, the Republican Party was the anti-war party, then.) and arch-enemy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Much to McCormick’s chagrin, Roosevelt had been nominated as the Democrat Party’s presidential candidate earlier in the year at the Democrat National Convention in Chicago. The Tribune would go on to endorse Herbert Hoover for reelection and be a constant thorn in FDR’s side as he, in The Colonel’s view, tried to communize the nation.

Weather was weather in 1932. It could be good, bad or indifferent. Even intellectuals believed that there was not much that could be done about the weather except endure it. In fact, anyone who claimed to be able to affect the weather through prayer, soothsaying, rain dance or sheer will was thought to be a bit daft.

“If you don’t like the weather in New England,” Mark Twain allegedly said, “just wait 15 minutes. It will change.”

Floods, droughts, dust bowls, tornados and hurricanes were all a part of life, acts of God (now acts of Allah). Not much could be done about it except to wait it out. Things would eventually get better. A sort of cock-eyed optimism ruled. Besides, there were more urgent matters to worry about, such as the Great Depression and rumblings of war in Europe with the growing strength of dictators Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini raising concern. The Japanese and Chinese were also stirring things up in The Orient.

Today, the Tribune has done a 180° turn to the political left. The Colonel must be doing the roll over in his crypt thing in extremis. Trib editors are right in line with the mainstream media’s woke narrative, supporting and covering for Democrats and their far-out, far-left agenda. Even as the Windy City is caught in a death spiral of corruption, population and business loss, failing schools, huge deficits and a plague of illegal immigrants flocking to the Windy City turned Sanctuary City in search of benefits denied to its own (Blacks in particular) residents, the Tribune remains a staunch Democrat Party mouthpiece.

Today’s Tribune article does not disappoint on the climate change front. The reader has to wait until the seventh paragraph, but there it is:

Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful hurricanes and typhoons, sometimes in a matter of hours….

Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.

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In fact, it has been a relatively mild hurricane season although there is no doubt about the massive destruction as a result of Helene’s fury. Despite evidence to the contrary, very smart people believe in the holy writ of climate change and hold a religious like faith that we are in the process of succumbing to global boiling, in U.N. Secretary General António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres’ words. As economist Thomas Sowell, among others, has said, it takes an intellectual to believe such nonsense.

The Storm of San Eusepio

The lede paragraph from the 1932 Chicago Daily Tribune article:

SAN JUAN, Porto Rico, Sept. 27. -A hurricane swirled through Porto* Rico (sic) today and lumbered on, leaving a death toll that probably will mount into hundreds, and property damage that will finally be calculated in the many millions of dollars.

Gov. James R. Beverley, tonight estimated the dead at more than 200 and the injured at 1,000. It was the "storm of San Eusepio," named on the feast day of that saint last Monday, when the dread winds first started their relentless north- westward course out of the equatorial Atlantic. Tonight all was over, and much of the island was devastated, just as it was by the storm of San Felipe, in 1928, when hundreds lost their lives and $85,000,000 ($19,531,138,686.13 today) in property damage was wrought.

Heads for Santo Domingo.

It was feared, however, that the hurricane's work of destruction is not finished. Tonight it was reported headed directly for Santo Domingo, capital of the republic of Santo Domingo, and for Port au Prince, Haiti. Reports from Santo Domingo said strong winds swept into the city at 8:30 o'clock tonight and that heavy rain had begun to fall.

Recall that there was no FEMA at this time. Communication facilities were primitive, and the storm knocked out telephone and telegraph service. It was up to Governor James R. Beverly, Governor of Puerto Rico, to organize relief efforts. Note that he had to use couriers to communicate with distant regions.

After the storm had left Porto Rico Gov. Beverley lost no time in starting relief machinery. He formed an emergency committee and gave it instructions to find shelter and food for the many thousands of destitute and homeless. He promised that insular funds would be placed in the committee's hands tomorrow, pending a definite relief program.

Reports Many Towns Leveled.

The governor's couriers, sent out to gather information on the hurricane, brought him back information upon which he based his estimate of the dead and injured. He said this estimate (at least 200 dead; 1000 injured) undoubtedly would be revised upward. Because of broken communication lines there was no way of telling how many dead there were. Rafael Veve, Jr., assistant general manager of the Fajardo Sugar company, arrived in the capital late today after a fatiguing journey of eight hours from Fajardo, only 30 miles away.

"All the towns between Fajardo and Carolina, more than half the distance to the capital, were leveled," Velve said. "All the plantation houses were destroyed.

"There were 39 dead at Fajardo when I left at 8 a. m. and I saw about 100 dead between Fajardo and Carolina. I can well imagine thousands dead in the districts I traversed."

In addition to loss of life and property, destruction of fruit and coffee crops was ruinous. The governor estimated that damage to the fruit crop was $7,000,000 ($160,844,671.53 today). He said that coffee crop losses would be even higher.

To make matters worse, the coffee crop was just being readied for harvest. It would have been the first coffee harvest in Puerto Rico since the coffee plantations were wiped out by the hurricane of 1928.

Final figures for loss of life and total damages from the 1932 hurricane vary slightly depending on source. One thing to keep in mind is that the population of the island was only about 1.5 million people, about half of what it is today. That made the magnitude of the losses per capita that much greater. In retrospect, what is now referred to as the San Ciprián hurricane was one of the most devastating to ever hit Puerto Rico.

The 1932 San Ciprián hurricane was one of the strongest tropical cyclones in the history of Puerto Rico. The center of the storm traversed the island on an east-to-west path in late September 1932, killing 272 people and inflicting at least $35 million in damage.

[According to the Red Cross], 76,925 families were in "actual distress" due to the hurricane.^[4] The destruction of homes rendered 25,000 families homeless.^[24] Total economic losses from the storm were equivalent to 20 percent of Puerto Rico's gross income.^[25]

Despite the historical record and more accurate contemporary data sets, internet climate catastrophists continue to blame every flood, tornado, hurricane or even earthquake on anthropogenic climate change. For a prime example, please see @GeraldKutney #ClimateBrawl.

X Notes appends a disclaimer (Readers added context) to a post that provokes disagreement. Since the dominant narrative in mainstream media is that climate change is real and extreme weather events are increasing in number and intensity, consider this post as added context.

*On May 17, 1932, the President (Hoover) signed Pub. Res. No. 20, (47 Stat. 158) designating "Puerto" as the official spelling.

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I recently woke up with stabbing abdominal pain that convinced me, always reluctant to go anywhere near a medical facility unless absolutely necessary, to go to the ER. Suspecting a bladder infection because of an earlier incident with similar symptoms and expecting to be prescribed antibiotics and sent home, I was to say the least disappointed when doctors’ orders were that I be admitted, or committed in my view, to the hospital. The admission led to a one week stay during which I was confined to bed with an alarm sounding if I even tried to get myself to the loo without assistance.

One of the side effects of the incident has been a mild case of writer’s block. So, this will be an effort to get some random thoughts down in electrons to loosen the literary bowels.

As has always been the case during my many hospital stays since passing the critical age of seventy when everything seems to start falling apart, I marvel at the skill of the staff and the incredible technology that appears to improve by leaps and bounds from one visit to the next. Who thinks this stuff up? Who designs it and builds it? I don’t know anyone involved in the process, yet it happens.

Without my iPad (speaking of technology) which brought the outside world to my fingertips, I think I would have gone mad. In plugging in my charger, I noticed that most electrical outlets were white. Interspersed was an occasional outlet colored red. These, I was told, were the emergency outlets connected to the hospital’s backup generator—a diesel fueled generator, that is. Renewables need not apply when lives are on the line. I doubt that even the staunchest fossil fuel denier would want to be on life support whose machinery was solely dependent on the wind and sun for sustainability.

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Thoughts of diesel dancing in my head made me think of my favorite of the anti-humanist environmental groups, the JustStopOil crowd. I noticed all of the hydro-carbon-dependent mechanical devices and implements in the room. From computer and monitor cases to bedding, scrubs and gowns and even wheelchairs (not to mention absolutely essential air conditioning and who could forget the drugs, themselves, flowing through the hydro-carbon enabled IV tubing.).

Plastics of various varieties were ubiquitous. Once the words plastic and cheap frequently appeared together, a colocation as they say in linguistics. These days, plastics are essential materials that save weight and therefore energy. The pondering on a theme of plastics reinforced my view of just how far out-of-touch with the real world the anti-fossil fuel crazies are. Much of the cabinetry, shelving and carts in the room would, I imagine, be made of stainless steel were it not for plastics, hardly an improvement in terms of curbing CO2 emissions.

I am also reminded of a recent Irina Slav substack Conspirasea in which she describes the latest green folly by the ringmasters of the green folly circus, the German Greens and their often unwilling accomplises. Wind and sun, in Germany at least, are not cooperating, you see. They are not producing electricity at the times when the greens have mandated that there be electricity. These fickle friends are also being so impertinent as to over-produce electricity when it is not needed. So, what to do aside from assembling a COP Conference in Bali to produce a ten-thousand page white paper demanding hope, change, sustainability and 100% reliability even if that reliability has to be legislated in contravention of the laws of physics.

The proposed solution is to tax electricity customers into altering their electricity demands to coincide with the whims of the weather. To borrow David Blackmon’s tag line you can’t make this stuff up, greens plan to tax those who insist on using electricity at those times when the sun she ain’t a shinin’ and the wind she ain’t a blowin’.

German industrialists impertinently insist that they need reliable electricity 24/7 and that piling more taxes and regulation on top of an already burdensome (Kamala Harris is not yet available to unburden Germans from a burdensome nuclear past) level of same will only accelerate Germany’s alarming rate of deindustrialization—degrowth as the fossil fuel deniers put it, and degrowth will surely be the inevitable result.

Irina Slav:

Let us take a moment to relish the German government’s inimitable genius in all things energy. They have advertised wind and solar as better for energy security because they are produced locally rather than 3,000 miles away by people you genetically dislike. Solar and wind are also allegedly better for the climate whatever that word even means any more, and they also produce cheaper electricity than everything else. Wind and solar, per that story, have no flaws….

It turns out, however, that one of the flaws that solar specifically does not have is the fact that panels only generate their maximum or an approximation thereof in sunny weather. There’s output in cloudy weather, too, but it’s palpably lower. So, the government concluded, it makes perfect sense to have higher electricity prices during cloudy and rainy days when solar is not in top shape.

The good people in Olaf Scholz’s cabinet have an identical idea for windless days — higher transmission rates for those days so people and businesses learn to adjust their electricity consumption to the weather. A while ago, people who suggested that the transition crusaders would try and force us to only consume electricity when solar and/or wind can generate it were dismissed as either jokers or conspiracy theorists. Now, we have proof they were neither.

A recent Robert Bryce piece also grabbed me. Bryce was the first person I read who led me to some understanding of energy, electricity and the importance of fossil fuels to economic well-being. Watching his documentary Juice conjured up memories of my time in Ecuador (1967-69) as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I walked and worked the poverty-stricken barrios suburbanos of Guayaquil where I saw first hand what life was like without potable water and marginal to zero electricity.

I did not know it at the time, but I was witnessing the manifestations of what Bryce calls the Iron Law of Electricity—people will do whatever they have to do to get it. That includes jerry-rigging the most tenuous looking pirated connections off of an established power line, or whatever other ingenious hacks it takes.

My bone of contention with Bryce, and it’s no bigger than half a squab’s wishbone, is his view on politics, or rather, his lack of a view on politics. He likes to say that he is neither a Republican nor a Democrat. “He’s disgusted.”

In a recent video short discussing the radical energy policies of Democrat vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, as exhibited during his governorship of Minnesota, Bryce comes about as close as he ever has to admitting that politics play an important role in energy policy and that it does matter which party is in control in Washington.

Another symptom of aging is a diminishing sense of restraint when it comes to expressing controversial opinions. I spent a dozen of my early retirement years teaching ESL in a public school system. That required almost constant tongue-biting to keep from uttering a politically incorrect doubt about the progressive education theories that were metastasizing at an alarming rate.

Now retired, I still must use caution in casual conversation with my largely liberal acquaintances and neighbors lest I let slip that I support the candidate whom they seem to think has no constitutional right to speech or trial by jury or presumed innocence, despite having been, or perhaps because of having been, president.

But these are serious times, and I believe we as a nation are in serious trouble. So, I am ready to risk cancellation and write what I really think.

So, Robert, I have but two words for you: puh leeze. In my view, it is ALL about politics and not just on the energy/environment question. All of the insane and inane policies that are being pushed by a minority of a minority of activists are related—from trans-rights nonsense to open borders chaos, to DEI, to catch and release crime policies, to out-of-control taxes, to chronic homelessness. They are all being imposed on the unwilling by a small group of elites who have emerged from colleges that steeped them in a postmodernist (Marxist) ideology. (See Jordan Peterson for the best explanation of same.)

Forget personalities—particularly the convicted felon candidate whose name I dare not speak—and forget parties. Look at the policies that would be imposed on us by the puppeteers who have been pulling the strings of the marionettes ostensibly running things for the last four years. If you want continued anti-growth, anti-humanist, anti-energy (particularly anti-nuclear), anti-individual, anti-parent/family, anti-science (biology, etc), climate alarmism, then vote for more of the same.

Be advised that you are voting for continued inflation, skyrocketing energy costs and load shedding, a.k.a. rolling blackouts, or worse. And if you believe that Kamala Harris has changed her position on fracking, I have a zillion $$ in carbon credit indulgences I am willing to sell you at a deep discount. (Includes lifetime guarantee of cushy federal government make-work employment and 72 doe-eyed virgins as a personal welcoming party when you finally arrive in paradise.)

Just take a look at the two opposing teams:

Us: Doers and Shakers.

Them: Mandaters and Takers

I’m with Elon on this one:

Freedom of speech is fundamental to our values—even more so than the Iron Law of Electricity. I will be voting for free speech, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. As an added bonus, I expect that under the regime of the accomplished, rather than the alternative of the could do and will do mandaters, we will move toward cheap, reliable and abundant electricity—nuclear even—that is essential to prosperity and is not dependent on the whims of weather or the dystopian visions of woke politicians and bureaucrats.

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After becoming convinced, despite potential objections from the Hamas-wing of the Democrat-Socialist Party and the possibility of record-breaking riots at the party’s upcoming Chicago convention, that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro would be Kamala’s puppeteers’ choice as her running mate, presumably without privileges (We’ve yet to hear from everyone’s current nanny), I was as shocked as anyone to learn today that the choice was Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz.

Alan Dershowitz asked the question of the day:

From what I hear from experts, Harris needs to win Pennsylvania to have any chance of winning the electoral college vote. That was the basis for believing that the logical choice would be Shapiro, a popular and articulate governor. Thus, if the experts are correct, it seems to follow that Harris/Walz just lost Pennsylvania and thus, lost the election. I want to be the first to label the V.P. wannabe, Minute Walz. I doubt he will even have fifteen minutes of fame.

Of course, Walz does have some enthusiastic, one might say dog-with-a-bone-like supporters. He will also have the enthusiastic support of progressives who love nothing more than a mostly peaceful demonstration featuring ample pyrotechnics.

The Democrat flacks will have to downplay Walz’s DUI arrest, his connection to the George Floyd riots and his social justice warrior approach to crime, but he does have the entirety of mainstream media on his team. Unfortunately, indie media is not exactly cooperating. There are some incriminating videos out there revealing some inconvenient truths.

If Governor Walz is not a ponderous enough anchor to add drag to the Harris campaign vessel, the would-be future ship of state, I give you his wife, Gwen, who carries a certain weightiness in her own right. She says she likes the aroma of burning rubber tires. She kept her windows open as long as possible during a long night of rioting, looting and burning because she “felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening.” What was happening was Minneapolis being torched and torn asunder. Naturally, she was far enough away that she suffered no consequences for holding her luxury beliefs.

The Biden/Harris White House is infamous for its well compensated corps of social media influencers. What talking points did these web celebs regurgitate in regard to the surprising choice?

Another favorite paid flack for the Democrat team is BrooklynDad_Defiant who is a, “Proud papa. Perpetually pissed. #BlueWave2024, #Feminist. Defiant.” He was a staunch Biden man, insisting that Joe would not drop out of the race. He was adamant up to the very end and almost beyond that Joe would stay the course, if a bit unsteadily. BDD’s loyalty to the Democrats is beyond question, so he turned on a Roosevelt dime when Biden announced that he was quitting the race. As you might suppose, he has moved from Biden box step to Walz without skipping a beat or presumably, a paycheck.

Last but not least of the influencers who toil in the trenches for the now, in effect, Kamala Harris administration is Harry Sisson (@harryjsisson), whom I affectionately call Sissie. Let’s see what Sissie has to say about his newest client. He has posted a series of tweets/Xs(?) that celebrate the enthusiasm shown in the City of Brotherly Love for the dynamic new Democrat duo.

Unfortunately, there are less campaign friendly street scenes in Philly than comfortably middle class crowds of mostly Whites waiting to get into the extravaganza announcing the choice of Tim Walz as Democrat vice-presidential candidate. There is also Kensington Street and district where the opioid crisis plays out in one of the most depressing scenes of squalor in the country—perhaps another reason why Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro did not make the cut. Walz may have to deal with the George Floyd riots, but they are in the past. Kensington is now.

So, quite the day for breaking news. Again, I was gobsmacked by the unanticipated (by me at least) choice of Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’s running mate. I think it was a timid choice and will turn out to be a mistake akin to Hitler deciding to invade Russia. In other words, a fatal error that may win a few battles (Muslim vote; Minnesota’s 10 electoral votes) but will ultimately cost the Harris army the war.

The polls are still open on the West Coast, but our crack election team at The Spike are going to go out on a limb and call this one for Trump/Vance. We know—weird.

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