Joe biden

Joe Biden’s memoir will humiliate him

Just before writing this piece, I saw Gary Oldman in a London production of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. For those unfamiliar, the play revolves around an old man listening to a series of tapes recorded by himself when he was younger, musing pompously on his hopes and dreams for the future. In his present, desiccated state, he can only scoff at his middle-aged self, before being overcome by the pathetic realization that it is all up for him and that he is doomed to a miserable, unhappy future. It is hard to think of ten people who will want to read the book, let alone ten million I suspect that much the same has been going on in Joe Biden’s household of late. If, of course he still knows what day of the week it is, or what his name is.

Biden

The odious attempt to compare Trump’s health to Biden’s

Trump Derangement Syndrome has become horribly over-diagnosed. Now, anyone who expresses doubts about his wondrous abilities – or just fails to repeat the White House’s preferred talking points – risks being branded a "TDS" sufferer. It’s boring. Still, there remains a large faction of elite journalists, social-media influencers and political actors who loathe Donald Trump with a pathological intensity and who feel their mission in life must be to undermine him by whatever means necessary. They have spent the last decade condemning Trump and his supporters as conspiracy loons even as they leap from one dark theory to the next – Trump is a Russian asset! A closet Nazi! An Al Capone-style mobster! A serial rapist and possibly even a pedophile!

trump

Trump’s firehose of MAGA rhetoric

Rumors flew around like great, big beautiful birds ahead of President Trump’s address to the nation tonight. Was he going to declare war on Venezuela? Was he going to finally disclose the truth about the Epstein Files or about aliens living among us? Was he going to give every American citizen $2,000 and a partridge in a pear tree? Or maybe he’d use his national platform time to further desecrate the life and memory of Rob Reiner. It turned out to be none of those things. Trump stood at a White House lectern in front of Christmas decorations and rather angrily listed his accomplishments as President for 20 minutes. It was, essentially, a stump speech. His border accomplishments stood front and center.

Trump

How we cured DEI at the National Institutes of Health

Since the National Institutes of Health was founded as a one room laboratory in 1887 its mission was simple; perform biomedical research to enhance health, lengthen life and reduce illness and disability for Americans. Scientists for more than one hundred years have taken this scientific approach to turn discoveries into better health. This mission unites all Americans of every race, color and creed. Everyone wants science that benefits their health. Over the last decade and a half this mission has been corrupted by a new mission and ideology: diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). This political ideology was reflected in all aspects of the NIH, including hiring practices, promotion and tenure, employee training, performance reviews, communications, management and, yes, even science.

Jay bhattacharya nih dei

Is Trump becoming a lame-duck president?

American presidents face an inescapable dilemma as soon as they are reelected. Because they cannot run again, they find it increasingly difficult to dominate the national agenda. This constitutional limitation makes it increasingly difficult for presidents to “herd the cats” in their own party, filled as it is with prospective successors, and to defeat the opposing party, which sees the golden opportunity of winning the next midterm election. Those upcoming elections almost always go against the party-in-power since it is far easier to mobilize angry, negative voters than satisfied, complacent ones. Donald Trump is fighting tenaciously to postpone the impact of these indelible features of American politics, but he cannot escape them entirely.

The Trump-Kennedy Center?

“I have a good memory, so I can remember things, which is very fortunate,” a tuxedo-clad President Trump said on the red carpet before hosting the Kennedy Center Honors. “But just, I wanted to just be myself. You have to be yourself.” To open the show, Trump stood behind the presidential lectern and invoked the name of Johnny Carson, who, he said, was a master improviser like him. Trump hadn’t prepared much. He didn’t need to. "This is the first time a president of the United States has ever hosted the event. I don't know why.” It’s actually kind of an interesting question. Ronald Reagan, of course, would have made an excellent Kennedy Center honors host. Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama enjoyed a stage and an audience in their primetime years, and George W.

Donald Trump’s affordability blues

So President Donald Trump may have dozed off during his cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Who could blame him? Listening to Secretary of State Marco Rubio drone on about Russia would prompt souls less hardy than Trump to catch some shuteye.  What should be keeping Trump awake, or at least uneasy, is the shaky state of the American economy. The federal government may not be releasing much data about the economy, but the payroll processing company ADP is reporting that private employers cut 32,000 jobs last month. The losses were heavily concentrated among small employers who have been slammed by Trump’s capricious tariff policy.

donald trump affordability
Climate change

Climate doom is not science

The costs of not dealing with climate change are, of course, much higher than the costs of dealing with it. We know this because, as climate campaigners keep telling us, climate change is going to set the world alight and unleash mad tempests which are going to wreak destruction on the global economy. Not a few of them have been trying to prove this by parroting a paper by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research published in the journal Nature in 2024 which concluded that a rise of 8.5 Celsius in global temperatures by 2100 will shrink the economy by 62 percent.

Trump blames Biden for shooting of National Guardsmen

In response to the attack on Thanksgiving eve by a suspected Afghan national upon two West Virginia National Guardsmen, President Trump demanded a renewed effort to expel illegal immigrants. During a brief and uncompromising address from West Palm Beach that bore the rhetorical fingerprints of White House advisor Stephen Miller, Trump ripped into illegal immigration and former president Joe Biden. The President deemed the influx of refugees from Afghanistan and elsewhere the “single greatest national-security threats” facing America. Biden was a “disastrous president.” Trump reserved special scorn for his detractors who he said purport to protect constitutional liberties but are leaving America exposed to rampant criminality.

Is Trump’s $2,000 tariff dividend plan loopy?

It’s becoming increasingly taxing for Donald Trump to defend his tariff policy. His latest gambit is to float the prospect of a $2,000 rebate to Americans from the tens of billions that the federal government has collected in tariffs. But will this prove any more successful than his previous attempts to justify his loopy tariffs?With the Supreme Court apparently poised to strike down his tariffs as a form of revenue collection designed to perform an end-run around Congress, Trump is scrambling. As usual, bravado prevails. On Sunday, he declared, “A dividend of at $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” the president said on Truth Social.” Trump also dismissed his detractors as “FOOLS!

Trump

Don’t take Virginia Giuffre’s memoir at face value

Six months after she took her own life aged 41, Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s “memoir” Nobody’s Girl, written with her professional collaborator Amy Wallace, has been published. It is bound to evoke distinct and intensified feelings in readers because the account of her suffering, coupled with the manner of her death, increases the emotional impact of the narrative.  The writing style and tone of the book feel authentic. Giuffre, who was born in 1983, uses words like “rad,” meaning awesome or cool, and “stoner dude,” to describe someone who smokes a lot of weed plus her constant reliance “on music to make the world make sense” seem very “Xennial” as late Generation Xers or early millennials are sometimes called.

virginia roberts
tron ares

Drowning in the neon swamp of Tron: Ares

Sitting in the nearly empty movie theater at which I saw Tron: Ares, I found myself swamped by neon. Its hues are unappealing in real life – redolent of dive bars, arcades and other unsavory venues – but neon is downright unbearable when experienced in a movie theater, where you have no choice but to stare at the screen unless you want a perfectly good $21.51 to go to waste.

Trump refuses to take 60 Minutes bait

“Have some of these raids gone too far?” Norah O’Donnell asked Donald Trump of ICE immigration arrests as he sat down with 60 Minutes for the first time in five years.Trump refused to take the bait. Instead of ranting or insulting O’Donnell, as she may have hoped, he was calm – and even counterintuitive. “We have to start off with a policy, and the policy has to be, you came into the country illegally, you’re going to go out,” he said. “We’re going to work with you,” he continued, “and you’re going to come back into our country legally.”Pressed on whether he plans to use the military to crack down on anti-ICE protests, Trump declined. “I could,” he said, “but I haven’t chosen to use it. I hope you give me credit for that.

Trump

AOC and Hochul are crazy for Mamdani

New York’s Kathy Hochul isn’t a good governor. But, like a particularly empathetic house pet, she’s finely attuned to any change in the weather. A huge crowd in a Queens stadium rallied last night for Zohran Mamdani and chanted “Tax the rich! Tax the rich!” over and over again. So when Hochul said, “I hear you, I hear you,” you can be sure that she actually heard them, though today she said she thought they were saying “let’s go Bills.” Sure. Either way, she got to where she is by knowing how to back a winner.  The rich, meanwhile, are in the process of moving their family photos to the Palm Beach town home or shopping for McMansions in suburban Dallas.

AOC

From Russia with love

My morning routine is the same. Coffee, feed cats, exercise, walk, read the latest news. Except now I wake up in Moscow. The coffee shop, Skuratov, is Siberian and they roast their own beans. The coffee is strong with a chicory flavor. I meet my colleague from RT International and we discuss all the latest geopolitics and news around town. Later, I take the metro. For less than $5, I am across town. The metro is clean, marble and looks like a museum with beautiful sculptures. Unlike the metro in NYC or Chicago, there are no drunks, no rats and the train is quiet as passengers read their books or phones. No one has to clutch their purse or bag as there is very little petty theft.

tara reade

Why did the FBI spy on Republican Senators?

The United States Senate Judiciary Committee this week revealed that Joe Biden’s FBI spied on eight Republican Senators and a Republican House of Representative Member in 2023. The underlying FBI record reveals the agency sought telephone tolling data as part of the Arctic Frost investigation that Special Counsel Jack Smith used to concoct an election fraud case against President Donald J. Trump. Although the indictment was ultimately dismissed when the President was re-elected in 2024, Smith expended the resources of the federal government for two years investigating the President in search of a federal crime.

Jack Smith

Kamala blames race when it suits her

When Kamala Harris sat across from Joy Behar on The View, the exchange revealed more than just political spin. Behar insisted Harris’ struggles on the campaign trail were largely about racism and sexism – that she “really lost” because of prejudice, not performance. Harris replied, “I’m not naive; race and gender do play a factor... I have never run as a woman or as a person of color. I have run because I believe I am the best to do the job.” That answer might sound polished, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Harris has built her career on identity politics. She was polling below four percent in the Democratic primaries in 2019 – a campaign so weak it collapsed before a single vote was cast.

Kamala Harris

Is the Democratic party over the hill?

Call it a dilemma, quandary, or Catch-22 – just pray the aging Democratic party doesn’t pull a muscle trying to argue that it is in anything other than an unenviable position. Eighty-eight-year-old Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington, D.C.’s longtime representative in Congress, has repeatedly stated that she will seek yet another term in office. The only trouble is that every time she does, her staff scrambles to assure the world that isn’t actually the case. One must sympathize with their impulse. Norton has been absent from her day job even as the district dominates national headlines, and struggled through what few public appearances she’s made.

Eleanor Holmes Norton

How Gen Z gender wars are reshaping America

The colossal divide, long suspected, between men and women of Gen Z – those aged 18 to 29 – has been confirmed by a recent NBC News Decision Desk poll. Beyond just a political split, young men and women have completely different ideas of what makes a successful life. From marriage and having children to prioritizing a lucrative career, they are further apart than ever. And this has enormous implications for the country.A dizzying number of articles and think-pieces have been devoted to the enormous voting gap between young men and women in the 2024 election. Gen Z men overwhelmingly pulled for Donald Trump, women for Kamala Harris.

Ella Emhoff

The bloodthirstiness of the left is not new

The savage assassination of Charlie Kirk at a Turning Point rally at Utah Valley University yesterday prompts me to wonder, as I have often wondered, what is the leading characteristic of the left? There are several candidates. Intolerance is one. A rancid and anchorless do-goodism – think of Dickens’s Mrs. Jelleby and her “telescopic philanthropy” – is another.   But on balance I think that the late Australian philosopher David Stove was right: the leading characteristic of the left it is bloodthirstiness. Behind all the emollient rhetoric about brotherhood and equality, bloodthirstiness is the left’s most reliable calling card.   That is one reason that the nearly instant emission by prominent Democrats of their opposition to violence rings so hollow.

Charlie Kirk