Who's Teaching Them This Stuff?

Majority of 18 to 39 Year-Olds Want Democrat Socialists

53% of this demographic think it would be a step in the right direction to elect a Democrat Socialist as President of the United States in 2028. 76% say we should nationalize energy, healthcare and big tech.

The same poll found that 52% of young voters have a favorable view of Mamdani. His policies were even more popular. Sixty-two percent said they support expanding his proposals for more government housing and rent freezes nationwide, and 58% support expanding his plan for government-owned grocery stores to every town in America.

These findings fit a broader pattern. In the September survey, 62% said the American economy is unfair to young people. Thirty-six percent said they are struggling financially or in crisis. And 55% support a law that would confiscate Americans’ "excess wealth"—including second homes, luxury cars and private boats — to help young people buy their first home.

And you don't think we have a problem with our education system? That's where the seeds are sown. As soon as they graduate (or quit school), leftwing politicians and media take over. They bombard with messages saying life is unfair, the wealthy are greedy, Republicans are evil. All of which echoes precisely the lessons of leftwing universities,where liberal professors outnumber convervative 12 to 1.

Say it often enough and it becomes true.

Semantics? Far from It.

Similarly, these days we constantly hear the carping of the Left that the "rights" of the people are being taken away. Abrogated, denied, robbed. Much of this lament is showered on immigrants and minorities.

But, once again, the Left has it wrong. Rights are those things guaranteed by the Constitution in its first ten amendments called, not coincidentally, "The Bill of Rights". And, of course, the laws that followed therefrom.

• First Amendment – Protects freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly, and petition.

• Second Amendment – Protects the right to keep and bear arms.

• Third Amendment – Prohibits the government from forcing citizens to house soldiers in their homes during peacetime without consent.

• Fourth Amendment – Protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and requires warrants based on probable cause.

• Fifth Amendment – Protects rights in criminal cases, including:

  • Right to remain silent (protection against self-incrimination)

  • Protection against double jeopardy

  • Due process of law

  • Just compensation when private property is taken for public use

• Sixth Amendment – Guarantees the rights of criminal defendants, including:

  • A speedy and public trial

  • An impartial jury

  • A lawyer

  • The ability to confront witnesses

• Seventh Amendment – Preserves the right to a jury trial in certain civil cases.

• Eighth Amendment – Prohibits excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishment

• Ninth Amendment – States that people have rights beyond those specifically listed in the Constitution.

• Tenth Amendment – Reserves powers not delegated to the federal government to the states or the people.

Now, clearly, the Ninth Amendment does allow that other rights are legitimate too. For example - the right to travel between states, the right to marry, certain privacy rights, such as making some personal medical and family decisions, the right to raise and educate one's children, and the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment in some circumstances.

But nowhere in the founding documents nor the laws that derive therefrom does it say citizens have a right to...housing, healthcare, transportation, food, education or tickets to a World Cup match etc. These benefits derive from hard work, marketable skills, and valued output. One has NO RIGHT to a decent home, ample food, a nice car, a quality education or top notch medical care just because of two feet planted within the borders of this country. However you got here.

Jus' sayin'.

Traffic Jams Aren't Caused by the Last Car in Line.

Chuck Schumer has proposed the Family Grocer and Farmer Relief Act to lower the prices of beef. Other activists are complaining loud and long about food prices. The solutions proposed are typical. The liberal playbook is always the same. Complete misdiagnosis of the problem and the intervention of big government to fix.

The target again is big corporations, the domestic food producers. The "grocers" of America whom the liberals would have you believe are price gouging. But food prices, which have come down, are not "high" because the food companies are making a killing. Hell, Tyson Foods lost a billion in its beef division. Food prices are high because of supply chain issues - not the "last car in line."

True, global instability has raised the cost of oil and interrupted the supply of fertilizer; but the biggest problem - long term - is that government regulations and energy supply have made it unattractive to invest in the production of key inputs here at home. As long as the ingredients we need to be self sufficient in vital areas like food, energy, defense must be bought from others, many of whom don't like us at all, we shall remain vulnerable. We will continue to suffer painful supply chain interruptions and, thus, be unable to control our destiny.

This is common sense. Duh, duh and duh. Supply and demand, wasn't it? Eco 101. Guess too many skipped that class in favor of "Commie 101: Karl Marx and The Communist Manifesto". Recent history has provided too many examples, which prove relying on a global supply chain is a lousy idea.

Stop Being Played!

The UN is a clown show...albeit an expensive, dangerous one.

The UN's origin can be traced back to the League of Nations, created in 1920 as the brainstorm of President Woodrow Wilson. In the aftermath of WW1, Wilson thought it a good idea if the world could avoid future wars by depending upon an international body to resolve disputes. You know - like hold hands, sing kumbaya and suggest Hitler not invade Poland or Russia Crimea or...you get the point. The "League" soon recognized the utter futility of the concept and started refusing to even involve itself in warlike disputes. Often hiding behind the notion that if all parties didn't agree in advance to the League's authority it would damage the League's reputation. Which was, of course, none.

Curiously, one of the nations who refused to ratify the LoN covenant and thus sat out was the US. Despite that, the League continued to exist and sat by uselessly harumphing as Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Fascist Italy did their thing.

Despite the League's utter impotency the experiment was re-run. This time with FDR leading the parade. The UN was launched in 1945. In fact, FDR had fancied himself the Secretary General after he finished his umpteenth term as US president.

Well, the UN has turned out to be a fiasco of the first order and a money pit for US taxpayers. Not to mention it squats on a piece of prime Manhattan real estate.

So who's in charge you might ask? Why the Security Council, of course. Members? US, UK, France, Russia and China. The really important decisions (In fact, none are important at all because they are unenforceable.) are made by this august body, which couldn't agree on the difference between day and night.

This arrangement is just plain dumb. It's like having a police department where mob bosses get to sign off.

Today the majority of the UN members are third world nations who can't pay a parking parking ticket (one of the perks of being a UN member is no parking tickets in NYC) and yet get to cast votes. For real. The Sudan gets to vote on whether the US broke "international law" and whether the UN should be sending aid to Hamas and Hezbollah. The net result? The UN is not only a forum but a tool for some of the worst countries on earth.

For example, after Yasser Arafat showed up at the UN wearing six shooters and a holster, the 50 Muslim nations banded together to declare Zionism is racism. One humanitarian intervention after another is a failure and typically enriches terrorists as in Somalia, Rwanda, Serbia and Gaza. In the meantime, well-paid UN peacekeepers watch neither willing nor able to intervene. And yes, the UN has never prevented atrocities.

Since 2015, the UN has passed 140 resolutions chastising Israel. As opposed to only 70 for the REST of the ENTIRE WORLD. Most accused Israel of human rights violations - even genocide. Who sits on, in fact chairs, the human rights bodies issuing these condemnations? China, Russia, Cuba and Pakistan. China leads the panel monitoring free speech. Iran is vice chair of the Women's Rights committee.

The UN is the epitome of liberal utopianism imagined by the likes of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, who lecture us that the keys to world harmony are trust and diplomacy. You know - hold conferences, form committees, pass unenforceable resolutions and try to bureaucratize away wars. All the while giving terrorists a seat at the table. Realists like Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump had none of this.

In short. The UN is a profane clown show. Trivial and ineffectual - for sure. But worse. We need to stop funding this lunacy and let Donald Trump turn UN headquarters into luxury condos. Although there are 200 members, in 2025, American taxpayers paid 22% of the entire UN budget. Say what?

Warmth of Collectivism

Speaking of clown shows...Comrade Mamdani urged New Yorkers to set their thermostats at 78 this weekend and turn off all electronics to combat the current heat wave. Temperatures hit triple digits. Meanwhile, Hizzoner's wife celebrated America's 250th by going to a spa in Spain.

In another AC-related (as opposed to AOC) development, the baguettes are wilting in France because the French eschew air conditioning. Guess whom they blame? Yup, the US. Why? Our irresponsible predisposition to making conditions livable through air conditioners - say the French - is causing disproportionate global warming.

At least NYC is doing its part.

Quote of the Week

Ousted UK PM Keir Starmer, with one foot out the door, observed...

“I’m really proud that we’ve got the gayest parliament, I don’t think just of all time—anywhere in the world. I don’t think there’s any parliament that is gayer than this one.”

Here, here! Way to go, Keir. Ever concerned with keeping priorities straight.

How Bad Can America Really Be?

The US population is 4% of the world's population, yet we have 50% of the world's new millionaires. Yup - land of opportunity. There is a catch - you have to work hard and acquire marketable skills. Then compound what you make.

Don't Look Now - But There's a Disability Crisis.

40% of students at Stanford University have claimed disability.

Why? To get extra time on exams and assignments. Must be a lot healthier in community colleges where disability claims are only 4%. Guess "regular time" is only for students too lazy to claim a disability. Serves 'em right.

The Snake is Being Sliced Again

Squabbles among leaders of the original 13 colonies almost squashed the Republic before it started.  Fact is we almost lost the Republic before it began. Ben Franklin, as clever a man as ever graced our shores, once drew a famous cartoon. It showed a snake cut into 13 pieces, each of which represented one of the 13 colonies. The caption read "Join or Die". It became one of the most powerful mottos of the Revolutionary War.

We almost lost the Republic again during the fracture known as the Civil War. Things were almost as bad in the 60's with Civil Rights and the Vietnam War.

It does not seem hyperbole we face a similar challenge today.

Odds are we can come back from the mess we're in now. But it won't be easy.

Today, we are not divided by a foreign enemy—though they’ve done their fair share to amplify our divisions. This time, we’ve been torn up by ideologues and demagogues right here at home. Democracy is indeed vulnerable to Demagogy.

Across the country there are many who tell us we are not, in fact, a single people, but rather disparate tribes whose identities put us at odds with one another forever. Politicians on both sides divide us, not into colonies or states or physical territories, but into identity groups and political factions vying for power and control.

Many would have us believe that our nation does not belong to all its citizens—whether they arrived on slave ships, on the Mayflower, or as huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Cynics preach that America wasn’t a nation built around an idea—the very nature of our exceptionalism—but just another country based on blood and soil. They fixate on the hypocrisies woven through our history, losing sight of the brilliance of the American idea, and its transcendent recognition of unalienable rights. They argue that America’s promise can never be perfectly fulfilled and so has to be abandoned. That the unique success which freedom brings is evil, thus we must suffocate individual liberty to promote equity.

The effect of these anti-American ideologies is the same: They have sliced up the snake once more. From the one: many. An inverted American revolution. So much for E Pluribus Unum.

Keep your children close and teach them well. Neither the schools nor social media will. Famously, as the story goes, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin, as he was leaving the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, if we had a republic or a monarchy. And he replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

People Aren't in Jail because They're Poor

They are there because they broke the law. Not all poor people break the law. In fact, overwhelmingly, most don't.

Voters need to remember that when leftwing politicians like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan come out and say..."We have to remember that jails and policing in America are like the ‘duct tape’ that people bring out to fix all the other broken systems."

Ultimately, no society can depend on its laws if there are no consequences for breaking them.

Oil Plummets

Brent crude, a benchmark, is now down to $68 per barrel (Monday). That's down much closer to its pre-War low of $55 than its high of $122 in April. Just in case you missed.

Should start showing up in pump prices soon.

This Sounds Cool

A new spray-on powder developed by KAIST can stop life-threatening bleeding in about one second by instantly forming a strong gel over a wound. It works on deep and irregular injuries where conventional hemostatic products often struggle and remains effective even after years of storage in harsh conditions. Originally created for the battlefield, the technology could also transform emergency care in disasters, ambulances, and hospitals.

This could change war movies forever. No more tourniquets.

When Justice is Denied, Instincts Turn to Revenge.