“Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, in her recent USA Today and Newsweek opinion pieces, has worked hard to present herself as a champion of American farmers and a steward of healthier food options. Alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., she spoke of the values these farmers embody (independence, grit, patriotism) and celebrated a $700 million regenerative agriculture initiative as proof that this administration is delivering for rural America. But if you pull back the curtain on Secretary Rollins and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the narrative changes. What looks like a bold vision for ‘regeneration’ quickly reveals itself as a political performance designed to distract from the USDA’s business-as-usual that props up industrial agriculture, not family farmers.” (12/23/25)
“Netflix has learned that Christmas cheer sells even with modest-to-low production value. During their debut weeks this year, Jingle Bell Heist drew 19.3 million views, My Secret Santa reached 18.1 million, and Champagne Problems logged roughly 14.4 million. Those figures aren’t as jaw-dropping as the 59.6 million viewers who tuned in for the premiere of the final season of Stranger Things, but they’re far from insignificant. These ‘slop’ movies have plenty of critics, but they aren’t trying to be Oscar-worthy. And complaining that there are too many of them is akin to complaining that the grocery store has too many deodorants. No one is forcing you to buy the Dove Go Fresh Cucumber & Green Tea spray or Augustinus Bader’s $48 stick. The existence of options you don’t personally enjoy is not a cultural failure; it’s a luxury.” (12/23/25)
“‘Don’t lose hope.’ That’s what Bonnie Miller, president of the League of Women Voters of Arkansas, told her fellow Arkansans after the state’s highest court overturned a 74-year precedent. The justices ruled that constitutional amendments passed by citizens’ initiative can be amended or repealed by legislators with a two-thirds vote of both chambers. Without the issue ever going back to voters. … How long can politicians thwart the will of the people and get away with it? The people of Arkansas are finding out.” (12/23/25)
“When critics suggest potential illnesses President Donald Trump might have, they point to evidence of a possible ailment. They notice bruises on his hands, swollen joints, dozing off during televised meetings, and his rambling, disjointed speeches. However, they never identify the one hallmark of a serious illness that he had shown even before he became president. It is a mental condition officially defined and diagnosed by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).” (12/23/25)
“Antisemitism is on the upswing in the United States and around the world. Although antisemitism has a long tradition on the European right, the communists under Stalin were also very antisemitic. That’s why so many Russian Jews immigrated to Israel. What is surprising is the recent increase in antisemitism on the progressive left – particularly on college campuses. The explanation, I believe, lies in ‘woke’ ideology. By one widely respected measure, America is the most individualistic country in the world. Geert Hofstede, who pioneered the study of the subject, defines individualism as ‘a cultural orientation in which people see themselves primarily as independent individuals rather than as members of tight, cohesive groups.’ They also see others that way. That undoubtedly explains why America is the most successful melting pot in the world.” (12/23/25)
“The US on-line edition of the Mirror recently published an article about the infamous NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) map showing cities and areas that will be inundated in the year 2100. Don’t worry if it is too small to see exactly what areas are covered. Except for a very few areas right on the coast in Northern California and Oregon, and in Maine, they claim it is all gonna be underwater. (Yep, plus much of the Mississippi Valley, not shown.) Unless, of course, we bow down to government and stop driving our cars and trucks, stop flying, stop heating our houses about 55 in winter or below 85 in summer. And always charge our phones and tablets with solar panels. While of course, paying more and more taxes, and otherwise start behaving like the peasants that Pharaoh let Joseph squeeze.” (12/22/25)
“From the moment you saw the speaker lineup at Turning Point USA’s year-end conference, the biggest national event for the organization since the assassination of its founder, Charlie Kirk, you could see the trouble waiting to happen. No, the group did not book podcaster Candace Owens, who has spun a seemingly endless variety of conspiracy theories around Kirk’s murder, insisting that the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, was merely a pawn of larger, more sinister forces. (In early October, Owens claimed that Kirk appeared to her in a dream and told her ‘that he was betrayed.’ It is very difficult to corroborate her sources.) But Turning Point did invite big-name podcasters such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, who have steadfastly refused to utter a critical word about Owens’s unhinged rants and unfounded accusations.” (12/22/25)
“President Trump and his administration have recently lost numerous court cases, raising questions about the qualifications of his legal team. While I am not a lawyer, I believe one civil case involving his Mar-a-Lago estate could have been won if he had a competent economist on his team. President Trump was accused not of violence or theft, but of assigning a higher value to his own property than government officials and expert witnesses deem acceptable. If we scrupulously examine this court case in essence, we can see that it touches upon the main problem that occupied the minds of economists of the past, namely, what value is and how it is determined.” (12/22/25)
“If you’re a little too online, you likely know that Marco Rubio as a teenager made extra cash working for his late brother-in-law Orlando Cicilia. The business imported and sold exotic animals as a front for moving nearly a half million pounds of cocaine and marijuana. It was later said, when kingpin Mario Tabraue became a main character on the monstrously popular documentary series Tiger King, that the cocaine was actually stuffed into the bodies of vipers and boa constrictors, though an 80-page indictment of the enterprise makes no mention of that, and Tabraue has been known to sue those who accuse him of animal cruelty. ‘I dealt to support my animal habit,’ Tabraue humbly told the Netflix documentarians about the drug ring that imported and distributed $79 million worth of drugs between 1976 and 1987. It was Rubio’s job, the current secretary of state wrote in his memoir, to clean the cages.” (12/23/25)
