Category: Politics

Did Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams predict Donald Trump would be president?

Scott Adams, cartoonist, entrepreneur and author behind the Dilbert cartoon and a host of books, likes to make predictions on his blog and Periscope. Scott often brags that he predicted the Trump presidency back in 2015 when few people took the billionaire TV-personality’s candidacy seriously. A 2018 Forbes article on Scott even linked the success of […]

5 times Ted Cruz made us laugh

Ted Cruz: To know him is to love him. That glorious dad bod. The greasy side part. His steadfast support of a president who mercilessly mocked him before millions during televised presidential debates. That grating Warren T. Rat voice. But, most of all, we love Ted because he makes us laugh. Over the years, Ted’s […]

Did federal minimum wage laws kill American Samoa?

I regularly tune in to Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams’ political rants on Periscope. During a recent philippic, he mentioned in passing that federal minimum wage laws recently devastated American Samoa’s once-booming economy. He basically painted a picture of a paradise-turned-ghetto with equality-of-outcome economic policies to blame. I, of course, had to look into this claim. […]

Who was at the Boston Free Speech rally?

So, this morning at brunch, my girlfriend and I watched live news coverage of the Boston Free Speech rally and its infinitely larger protest. The narrative seemed to be that the protesters were all liberal bleeding-heart types and that the rally attendees were a bunch of racist, Donald Trump supporting, alt-right white folk. But, a […]

Why would Donald Trump want to fuck his daughter?

During the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, political pundits, comedians and others made sport of implying that Donald Trump either wanted to fuck his daughter, Ivanka Trump, or already had.1 2 3 GIFs of Trump’s daughters spurning his embraces, and video clips of him ogling them and referring to them as sex objects, […]

What is the caselaw regarding cops killing people?

Here in the United States it feels like a week can’t go by without a white cop killing an unarmed black man. It’s a distressing situation made that much more overwhelming by all the complicated and unresolved social problems it brings front and center for all the bobbleheads to poke and prod and jabber about but do […]

Whose input goes into the USDA food pyramid?

A question I’ve had for years is: Whose input goes into the USDA food pyramid/guide? In conversation, a few people have told me that meat, dairy and wheat farmer organizations hire big-money lobbyists to heavily influence these recommendations. As something of a cynic, that’s always seemed quite plausible to me; but I’ve always retained some […]

Which is worse for the environment–wildfires or suppressing them?

I was scrolling through the notes app on my iPhone recently and saw this question I posed to myself but never answered: Which is worse for the environment–wildfires or fighting them? Sitting in a chain coffee shop, quaffing caffein and eating a bagel, I figured, What better time to research that question than right now?

The American Revolution in 7 languages – a wiki study

For a long time, I’ve wanted to do a project where I collect world history books from various nations and compare their portrayal of the same events. Unfortunately, I don’t really have access to history books from around the globe; and, even if i did, I wouldn’t be able to translate them. So, for now, […]

Oppositional narrative, myth-shaping and ideological idiopathy

Definitions Idiopathy is generally a medical term, but its usage here harkens back to its Greek roots. “Idio-” is from the Greek ídios (ἴδιος), meaning something private or entirely one’s own. “-Pathy” is from the Greek pátheia (πάθεια) meaning “feeling” or “suffering” which in turn derives from pathos (πάθος), meaning a condition or state (generally of suffering).