As always on the last Saturday of the month, I have the interesting stuff that stuck around in my inbox and bookmarks - anywhere from a few sentences to a handful of paragraphs, but not long enough to stand alone as a post.

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Delaware schools could be even more expensive

What is it about the hold Big Labor has on the Democrat party? Every session I see some bill or other that’s sure to benefit the 10% of contractors who are unionized at the expense of the 90% who are merit shops. So it is with SB272, which, according to its synopsis:

requires that if public works project is for a school district and has an aggregate cost of $1 million or more, a contract relating to that public works project, advertised after December 31, 2026, must include a project labor agreement with the Delaware Building and Construction Trades Council unless there was only 1 bid for the craft under the contract. A project labor agreement is a type of collective bargaining agreement in the construction industry that is generally negotiated before construction begins. Project labor agreements are intended to provide a legally binding and enforceable contract primarily related to labor conditions and labor-management relations.

The House Republican Caucus, however, contends such a bill will significantly drive up costs. Testifying on the bill was state OMB director Brian Maxwell:

“Mandating a PLA introduces additional preconditions that may discourage otherwise qualified contractors and subcontractors from participating,” he said.

Mr. Maxwell also indicated that adding requirements to the state procurement process would pose a significant risk for increasing project costs. “Based on the research that I’ve seen, economic analyses have found the cost per square foot for school construction projects is approximately 30% higher for PLA projects.”

Of course, unions don’t care because it’s the rest of us suckers who pay. But schools and other public building often come with an unnecessary premium because of laws like these as well as so-called “prevailing wage” laws and onerous regulations such as mandating LEED Silver construction or equivalent. While I’m good with energy efficiency and can see the thought behind local sourcing, to me those should be “nice to haves” rather than mandates.

It’s worth noticing to me that SB272 only advanced “on its merits” as even Democrats were afraid to support it. All but one committee vote advanced the bill that way, but it advanced. We’ll see if they find a minute or two to advance it in the House, since it passed the Senate 15-5. You may see it on the Delaware Accountability Project later this summer.

Housing as an issue in Delaware

I almost promoted this one but decided to keep it short because I’ve talked about what I would do.

But a survey commissioned by the state of Delaware and released earlier this month shows two main findings, according to the Delaware Live website:

• 73% say communities have not invested enough in affordable housing

• 66% say helping first-time homebuyers should be a priority

It’s worth pointing out before I continue that the state hasn’t paid a lot of attention to this since its previous report came out in late 2023. In the interim, both the state and national governments have changed leadership, with the federal side recently passing legislation to address some of these housing issues as well.

If they really want to help out, though, perhaps the best way is to create the conditions for younger buyers to get into the market. I will cheerfully admit I wasn’t a younger buyer but had been out of the game long enough to be considered once again a first-time homebuyer - thank you Great Recession and its long-term demise of the building industry.

Unfortunately, government seems to take the myopic view that younger people wish to rent in multi-family complexes when instead they want the same setup their parents craved: a single-family house. (Even the idea of rent-to-own doesn’t seem to resonate with them.) The problem is that right now the market is such that builders are slapping up Hyundai houses and charging a Cadillac price for them. Either that cost has to come down somehow or they need a little help like we had with an FHA loan and modest down-payment requirement. (That includes excellent credit, too - which takes discipline younger buyers need to develop.)

But as Delaware Live opined:

Both conservatives and progressives can agree that Delaware needs more housing supply. Both can agree that young people, seniors and working families are being squeezed. Both can agree that first-time homebuyers need a better path into the market.

The disagreement is likely to come over how much of the solution should come from government spending, how much should come from zoning and regulatory reform, and how much authority state officials should have over local land-use decisions.

I guess I’ll have to ask Greg Layton about that one. But whatever is done it should be limited and local, which is why my December suggestion was conceived with local government in mind.

Proper civics education

Given that the Convention of States is all about using the Constitution to fix the Constitution, this is an event right up their alley: on September 17, which is Constitution Day, their foundation’s goal (along with the 917 Society) is to give every eighth-grader in America a pocket copy of the Constitution, probably not unlike the one which is in the stand beside me as I write this.

It’s a great idea and worth participating in, as September 17 falls on a Thursday this year. Our church school has only six eighth-graders, so we’ll see how it goes.

As the CoS announcement notes on why eighth grade matters:

As you may well remember, eighth grade can be a significant turning point. Students are old enough to ask serious questions, but young enough that their views of the world are still taking shape. Many are starting civics or U.S. history classes. They are forming opinions about fairness, justice, and right and wrong, and they are beginning to notice how government decisions affect their daily lives – what they can say, where they can go, and how their communities work.

Placing a pocket Constitution in their hands at this age sends a powerful message: “This is yours.” Not just the booklet, but the system it describes. It says, “You are not just spectators. You are future stewards of this republic.” Instead of treating the Constitution as something distant and dusty, this project invites young people to hold it, read it, form questions, and see it as a living guide that they can use all their lives.

I seem to remember that was the time I started getting into history, so this is important.

Ditching the uniparty

You likely know by now that I’m in neither the Republican nor Democrat party. Instead, I’ve cast my lot with the Constitution Party which means they want a pox on both their houses. This was a resolution passed at their recent Spring meeting I had to miss.

Resolution to Separate from the Tyranny of the Democratic and
Republican Parties

Whereas the Democratic and Republican parties have manipulated the political systems in the United States and created a UNIPARTY to gain and maintain power and control over the rights of Citizens to further their own agenda.

Whereas the UNIPARTY has pitted Citizens against each other for the purposes of fundraising and political theater, disturbing the domestic tranquility of the nation;

Whereas, the UNIPARTY has consistently put the interests of corporate entities before the rights of the Citizens;

Whereas the UNIPARTY has made claims of owning our votes and has used psyops to indoctrinate the public into believing that voting for someone not approved by the UNIPARTY is wrong and harmful.

Whereas the UNIPARTY no longer represents We the People, nor protects our rights;

Be it Resolved, That we Citizens and Voters are, and have a right to be, free and independent in our voting, that we are absolved from all allegiance to the UNIPARTY, and that all political connection between them and the Citizens and Voters of these united States is, and ought to be, totally dissolved to maintain our constitutional governance.

Therefore, the Constitution Party calls on We the People to declare their
independence by renouncing their loyalty to the UNIPARTY.

I wonder what thinks about that?

It’s been awhile since I told the story about what made me leave the Republican Party, so perhaps I will save it for an upcoming Monday memory since the tenth (!) anniversary of my resignation from party office is about a month away. Having studied the initial grassroots efforts of the TEA Party, though, I think they were taken advantage of by the GOP, who gladly took their money and their votes but only served as loyal opposition instead of overturning tables - that induced chaos seemed to be the department of one Donald Trump, as I found out over time.

Fortunately for the Republicans, they have gamed the system enough (and the Democrats are batshit crazy enough) that they have the upper hand. But they can’t ignore the push from the Left, which is something to be concerned about as it will push the Overton window of the uniparty that way too.

I’m all for slamming the sucker shut on their left hand.

So that’s enough for now. We’ll see what I come up with next month.

Until my next edition of odds and ends, you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.

It’s that time of year. As I write this, voters across the border in Maryland are making their partisan selections (for the most part, since some local elections for school boards are nonpartisan) and by the time you read this tomorrow, we should know 90% or more of the winners who will go on to November. Over here in Delaware, the push is a couple weeks away after the General Assembly session ends next Tuesday - the filing deadline here is July 14 for a primary to be held September 15. We have the latest filing deadline and primaries in the country, and I have zero problem with that. In my opinion, the first should be last because I like the maximum time to consider all candidates, even though I have no role in selecting them as a member of a “minor” party. (But I do have the role in helping to vet them, at least on a local and statewide basis.)

So it’s time for my favorite political term, and that would be “invest.”

Sometime back maybe a dozen years ago, someone must have focus grouped a batch of terms for spending money with the word “invest” receiving the highest score. I say that because no government spends money anymore - nope, the taxpayers “invest” in whatever profligate spending catches the fancy of our elected officials this fiscal year.

We “invest” in schools only to see them get worse, with smaller and smaller prospects for true choice in the matter (i.e. money follows the child.)

We “invest” in green energy but wonder why “free” wind and solar power can be so damn expensive on our electric bills. On the other hand, when it comes to transportation the investment isn’t to speed us up with better roads and more lanes but to slow us down with roundabouts, “road diets,” and bike paths no one uses.

Without fail, in a thousand different ways, what we “invest” in is a bigger, more intrusive government at every level. And in the end, we are the investors because that spending comes at a cost to us: a higher gas tax here, an increased license fee there, more out of the pocket of the entrepreneur with a higher LLC application toll, and soon you’re talking real money. Yet they will turn around and blame a foreign war or a greedy businessman for making us all poorer - just send us back to office and we’ll make it right.

Fat chance.

I’ve said some variation of the following before, but there are two key reasons I could never run for a higher office. One is that I could never ask anyone for money to run my campaign, so I would have none besides what I could put in, and that’s not much. But more importantly, I’m too honest and I’d be the one to tell people that they need to stop having government wipe their bum. Government under me would be limited and Constitutional, but I know nothing would get done because 535 people whose re-election depends on fooling the people just one more time wouldn’t even give my ideas the time of day. Sorry, my communication skills aren’t on a par with those Ronaldus Magnus had.

In a way it’s good that I have two relatively low-key individuals serving me on a local level in Dover - I can say neither Tim Dukes nor Bryant Richardson wavers too far away from representing my interests overall. But the Three Stooges, on the other hand - well, you get it. They never saw a government overreach they didn’t like, unless it came from Orange Man Bad.

With millions and millions of dollars to spend and plenty of commercial time to be had, we’re about 2 months away from what will likely be the dirtiest campaign in history - at least until the 2028 Presidential campaign starts the day after the midterm election. If you thought I got burned out last time, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

And that’s a promise.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.

When I get to between six and eight posts - well, more like ten to twelve these days - I think are worth sharing, you’ll get Monday evening reading. It won’t be every week, but likely more often than not. There’s nothing wrong with link love! Once again, I culled this down from the truckload of posts I get from over 100 Substacks to which I subscribe (and maybe you should too.)

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Go ahead and read these pieces, then come back and see what I have to say.

I’m back on a schedule with MER for the time being, so this one is a more “normal” length - but with the same great content.

And I may as well cut to the chase: according to , we’re wasting our time pining for peace with Iran - at least until the regime is changed.

Justin’s Substack

Peace With Iran's Islamic Regime Is Impossible

photo: Trump and Iranian President Pezeshkian signed the US-Iran MoU: US official…

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10 days ago · 17 likes · 18 comments · Justin Smith

From the high watchtower of a liberty-loving American who has studied both the Good Book and the sword, this deal is doomed from the cradle. Peace will never come while the Ayatollahs and their black-turbaned priests of the Mahdi sit enthroned in Tehran, laboring night and day for Armageddon so their Twelfth Imam might rise from the well in blood and fire. East is East and West is West, as Kipling taught us, and never the twain shall meet on terms of equality when one side worships death and the other clings to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness under Almighty God.

Nor is Iran our only concern. Writing at , a contributor described as “A retired senior CIA officer with long experience in Latin and South America” believes we have issues with China and Cuba as well and suggests dusting off an old law to deal with it.

AND Magazine

Time To Invoke The Ku Klux Klan Act

Author: A retired senior CIA officer with long experience in Latin and South America…

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10 days ago · 8 likes · AND Magazine

The Chinese and Cuban intelligence services have been the main foreign government actors, but the Chavez/Maduro regime in Venezuela, buoyed by oil and narcotics trafficking money, had funded the Cubans. Iran and several leftist European governments have also had a role in financing organizations dedicated to destroying the United States as we know it. This ambition may seem audacious and far-fetched to the average American, but our enemies are delighted at the refusal of most Americans to grasp what is really happening before their eyes. Reasonable men would never embark on such a sordid, evil adventure, but we are not dealing with reasonable men.

It’s sad that we have such pessimism now when it was within the lifespan of most of us that we looked forward to a bright future, as Jeff Quinton details at .

The Quinton Retort

Russia and the Future That Never Came

There was a time when “Wind of Change” by Scorpions and “Right Here, Right Now” by Jesus Jones sounded like the world I thought I was watching come into view…

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9 days ago · 1 like · 1 comment · Jeff Quinton

In 1992, I visited Moscow and other parts of Russia, not long after the Soviet Union collapsed. It was not a neat, movie-version rebirth. Russia was messy and uncertain. People were trying to figure out what had just happened to their country and what was supposed to come next. You could feel the weight of the old system everywhere, but you could also feel that something had opened.

That part matters to me because the optimism was real. It was not something invented later by Americans looking back through a haze of old songs and old news footage. I saw some of it myself. It was mixed with hardship and confusion, but it was there. People who had lived under one system their entire lives were suddenly living in another one, whether they were ready for it or not.

That is the world those songs came out of. The Berlin Wall had fallen. Communist governments across Eastern Europe had collapsed. The Cold War was ending. Moscow no longer looked only like the capital of the country we had been taught to fear. For a little while, it looked like a place where history might take a turn nobody had expected.

Yes, it was a gawdawful Scorpions ballad, but it did ring true for that period back when we were expecting a “peace dividend” because the Soviet Union had a regime change.

There also seems to be a regime change in the Democrat Party, as notes.

Evan Barker

The Democratic Civil War Is Over. The Progressives Won.

A slew of articles came out this week about an important shift in the Democratic Party: Bernie Sanders’ candidates are winning everywhere, not just in deep blue cities, but in swing districts too…

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12 days ago · 85 likes · 62 comments · Evan Barker

For years inside Democratic politics, progressive operatives have been underestimated, sometimes even looked down upon as “unserious” and unable to build real electoral power. They’ve operated mainly on an island, building an entire ecosystem that functions outside of the main DNC apparatus.

But here’s what the establishment Democrats (and maybe even Republicans) do not realize– these progressives building power are not “crazy activists” or Bluesky keyboard warriors; they are highly skilled and competent. They’ve now had a decade to get their shit together, learn from their mistakes, and build infrastructure— and that’s exactly what they’ve done.

The book review I alluded to Saturday is hers, as it will come out in July, as she notes in the piece. (I preordered it back in the spring.) She details how the Democrat Party left her - not to the extent that it did Ronald Reagan or anything like that, but people like her that are more center-left than anything.

Another one who became independent because the Democrats went batshit crazy is , who notes that one area of the coalition is losing its grip on American society as they went too far.

Sey Everything

The Truth Behind the Disappearing Rainbow Logos

Me today in The Daily Wire…

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13 days ago · 150 likes · 21 comments · Jennifer Sey

Though it started in the 2010s, woke capitalism took over in 2020 with the Black Lives Matter explosion and black squares all over Instagram. But since then, consumers have noticed it was all a bunch of bull.

Now people are just exhausted by brands that preach values they don’t practice. Faux-generous brands claim to take the harder right over the easier wrong, when in fact it is the opposite. The minute the numbers shift, they drop the social justice stance.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with chasing profits. Businesses exist to make money. The problem is when campaigns erode trust by promising principles they abandon at the first sign of trouble. It’s the misrepresentation, the lying, that is the problem.

Remember when I said last week about and the first part of his piece on our uniparty? Well, here’s part two but he came up with something even better to achieve a double dip.

Jack’s Substack - One Man's Opinion

The Man in the Mirror

I usually write from the right side of issues. That is not a confession. It is a description. I believe ordered liberty is better than managed equality. I believe private property is not merely an economic arrangement, but a civilizational guardrail. I believe the state that can give everything can also take everything…

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9 days ago · 12 likes · 7 comments · Jack Sotallaro

Behind every “people’s system” stands a very specific set of people.

That is where communist theory collapses into communist practice. It assumes that if you abolish private ownership, you abolish domination. But domination does not come only from ownership. It comes from power. And when economic power, political power, legal power, police power, and cultural power are fused into one system, the ordinary man is not liberated.

I’ve talked on occasion about how reading from the Left helps the arguments of those on the Right - well, Jack did the same thing with capitalism vs. communism with a clear-eyed focus that’s worth reading. Hence the double dip.

But this compare and contrast by is even more unique. On this one the capitalism side is well-represented.

The Zark Files

Tina and Elon

Last week, two momentous things happened. Tina Peters was released from jail, and Elon Musk became a trillionaire. Both aroused intense hatred from the usual suspects, who I’ll refer to globally as “Leftists…

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14 days ago · 29 likes · 9 comments · Andrew Paquette, PhD

My view is that the crimes compounding on the heads of the people who arranged for Peters’s incarceration are still accumulating — just more slowly now. On top of that, there are the legions of leftists who now seem to think it’s their duty to harass and annoy her.

As I wrote in my X post, Peters should get a statue on the National Mall.

Meanwhile, a very different kind of injustice was directed at Elon Musk. At least on paper, Musk became a trillionaire last week with the SpaceX IPO. Naturally, that doesn’t mean he actually has a trillion dollars sitting in a bank account. To get there, he’d have to trade his assets for cash — but doing that would crash their value almost instantly and drop their collective worth well below a trillion dollars. Regardless, leftists think he is a trillionaire and want him to surrender his money.

Elon Musk doesn’t seem like the type who wastes time, but sitting on a trillion dollars in worth seems to me a good time to start - perhaps learning by reading this from , which isn’t wasted time.

Still in the Storm

The Gift of Wasted Time

Welcome to another post on the Still in the Storm Substack…

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10 days ago · 63 likes · 18 comments · Mike Donio

What we often call “wasted time” may actually be an invitation into fellowship with Christ.

(…)

Well that’s essentially what happened to me this past weekend. I took one of my children to an activity that I thought was going to last 2 hours and it end up going for 3 and a half.

At first, I was frustrated by all the time I was wasting. Then I remembered that it’s not my time but the Lord’s and maybe I didn’t have to be occupied with specific tasks at all hours of the day. Sure there were things I needed to get done but was it so bad to have time for essentially nothing?

Turns out that I think the Lord wanted me to slow down a bit. I may have mentioned that I’ve been a little busy lately and the thought of stopping for a few hours was not appealing.

And if you remember my talking about common ground over the last few weeks, you’ll understand why I appreciate this piece at by Greg Layton.

The Delaware Project

The Story of Wheat

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9 days ago · 2 likes · The Delaware Project

So you drove out to the country, and the day is letting go — that deep blue coming down over the fields, the last light gone copper along the treeline. But the great machine is still working, its lamps lit against the dusk, droning low and steady down the rows. Behind it, a cloud of gold lifts and hangs in the headlight beam — dust and chaff, fine as smoke, settling slowly. Roll your window down, and you’ll catch it: cut straw and warm dust and a thread of diesel, the smell of a field giving up its grain. You’re not sure what you’re seeing. Stand here with me a minute, and I’ll tell you the story of it — older and stranger than it looks.

That gold in the air is wheat. And wheat is one of our oldest friends.

Turns out I don’t have any wheat fields close by this growing season, but Greg is right: this is the time they pull wheat, which is sometimes followed quickly by planting a late-season crop of soybeans, particularly in irrigated fields. We’re not far off from the rest of the harvest, though: the melon busses will start rolling later next month, followed around Labor Day by the corn being cut and collected, with soybeans reserved for October and November before the cover crops (sometimes including winter wheat, but featuring a variety of non-producing grasses) are put in before winter hits.

Way, way too long for e-mail once again as I try to include all the goodies. Regardless, all that should keep a good reader going and thinking for awhile. It’s a great way to start the week, right?

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.

I figure in the last year I’ve done about 150 posts, since I run on a schedule of three a week, but skipped a couple and threw some “bonus” content out there. It’s a far cry from what I did back in the day with monoblogue when I posted daily and sometimes twice a day, occasionally cracking 400 posts a year. That peaked a decade ago, though, as I learned that quality beats quantity. And I think I’ve done some quality stuff here, even if the subscriber base didn’t go up as much as I would have liked - I’ve seen some in my peer group (250-500 subscribers) surge by a lot this past year while others have stagnated - those, however, seem to be the ones who don’t post a whole lot. As I write this, my handy-dandy backend says my subscriber numbers have gone up 29.7% in the last year, although in the last couple weeks I’ve had a bit of a mini-surge.

But this next year should be more up my alley, since it’s an election year and I will focus quite a bit on local races. While it’s not a gubernatorial year in Delaware, there are quite a few interesting contests shaping up, so look for more “Super Tuesday” pieces later this summer.

Fortunately or not, though, there’s more than just a horserace going on. I’ve enjoyed going on some of these deeper dives into issues like housing or energy because that’s where I think I can have more impact. Yes, there is a political element to Delaware which needs to be covered but, to be honest, the blunt force approach doesn’t work here for our side until we get more desks in the State Capitol.

I’ll tell you what I have enjoyed doing, though, and that’s MER - why do you think I’m doing this piece two days early instead of on the true anniversary? (And if I did a Monday memory, it would be about my brother since he passed away 16 years ago on that day. Luckily, I covered that last year, a day late.) Sometime today I’ll start compiling this coming week’s MER effort, and I’ll enjoy figuring out the puzzle of making reading about what other people wrote compelling.

By that same token, I’d love to start doing more book reviews, ideally on a monthly or every-other-month basis. I have a tome coming to me next month from one of the Substackers I subscribe to that will likely get a review around mid-August. Out of the books I’ve read over the last year, though, I think I enjoyed the one by the most. If there’s something I need to do, perhaps it’s read less social media and more printed pages.

And speaking of Substackers, there’s an idea I’m keeping close to my vest right now but if it pans out the way I envision it, I’ll make it a monthly feature. But there’s probably going to have to be a dry run or two before I try it - later this fall after the election, perhaps?

Admittedly, though, my time is going to be more limited since I have a backlog of other things to do which I will finally be able to get around to again. I owe you another progress report on my journey, but I think it will be the final one as I’m closing in on my destination.

As I close this yearly chapter on Substack, I’m noticing that I didn’t have a really big viral hit article this year. (I had a cluster of them in August of last year, but nothing has really jumped off the page since.) It could be that I need to take a look at my subscriber base and see just how many bots are on it, because I would think there should be more reaction to my posts. As always, I encourage sharing, because isn’t sharing caring?

One thing I have learned in over 20 years of doing this blogging stuff, though, is that when you think you have things like growing readership and making things more attractive figured out, the rug gets pulled out from under you. I once had a Rushalanche but that momentum died out fairly quickly for reasons I still haven’t figured out - maybe it just wasn’t my time to succeed. I could keep struggling for a lot longer or I could suddenly blow up like a couple sites I subscribe to like or did last year, or or have over the last few months.

But we’ll have to see what happens, and Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise I’ll have a half-decade old Substack this time next year with a lot of interested readers to look back at and another opportunity to assess my progress.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.

I’m of the generation where the family vacation was generally planned out months in advance to spend a week away. One early summer we took a trip to Drummond Island, Michigan, way out on the end of da UP, eh? If you looked across the strait in a certain direction, you’d see a Canadian island. But there are three things I remember: it was chilly (early June isn’t quite the summertime in northern Michigan Kid Rock sings about), the fishing wasn’t very good, and I bought packs of unique baseball cards.

Later on, we’d rent a cottage on a lake in southern Michigan for a couple summers, but we always seemed to pick the week that was hot, humid, and stormy - at least until my dad decided to pack it in and head home a day or two early where the weather was suddenly beautiful.

Where I’m from on the North Coast, tourism was something which happened between Memorial Day and Labor Day, with a lot of it being centered around Cedar Point, Kings Island, Geauga Lake, or Sea World - the latter two of which were neighbors now abandoned. Certainly, there were those who liked the concept of spending a week on the lake - whether the great ones that defined the North Coast (especially Ohio’s popular islands within Lake Erie) or the smaller bodies of water that dot the southern third of Michigan, centered on the Irish Hills region - and you could do worse than just enjoy the many fairs and festivals which occur each summer in that area. But there wasn’t an attraction quite like we have here, with Chesapeake Bay on one side and the Atlantic beaches on the other. Ocean City may have a fishing pier, but most there are fishing for tourist dollars.

Because of that, summer “downy oshun” is centered around keeping the fam entertained for a week; thus, Ocean City has much more than a beach. Drive up and down Coastal Highway and you’ll find mini-golf, go-cart tracks, movie theaters, and lots of other attractions designed to keep the kids amused for a couple hours when they get tired of playing in the water. On the adult side, there are enough restaurants and bars to cater to every taste, with some providing nightly entertainment. A town of 10,000 in the winter can be a metropolis of 200,000 on busy weekends; moreover, their tourism department is expanding the calendar by taking advantage of the “shoulder season,” particularly after Labor Day. While Bike Week and Sunfest have been staple events for awhile, they’ve upped the ante with music festivals over the last couple years.

But what if families are stretched too thin to consider a vacation this year? One complaint about Ocean City is that it’s too expensive, with some claiming they could spend a week on a Caribbean island for the same price as a weekend in Ocean City and not feel ripped off. To be honest, it’s the reason locals like me don’t go anywhere near the place during the summer, taking advantage of the more reasonable off-season prices from places that stay open during the winter. (Ocean City is at its most dormant in January and February, but there are still places that remain open.)

There was a rumor floating around that one longtime stalwart attraction was down nearly 30% this year because “people aren’t drinking.” And this story posted about last weekend’s OC Air Show showed mixed results. Noticeable to me, though, is that I seldom hear about the flush gauge anymore - that used to be a guide to how weekends went. (They can figure out approximate attendance by how much water is used.)

But the worry any area that depends on tourism has: what happens when families no longer have disposable income? While inflation is easing thanks to falling gasoline prices, it may take families all summer to recover and one casualty could be the normal family week away - maybe it gets pared down to a long weekend, but it could also become a staycation.

There’s no doubt that Ocean City (and, to a lesser extent, the Delaware beach resorts) will survive in some form, but perhaps this is the time when we’ll begin seeing a larger share of creative destruction where some old-line attractions fail and new things take their place. Old-timers bemoan the loss of history, but I know that most things in Ocean City have about a 5-10 year lifespan before renovation or renewal. I think there are buildings in town, particularly restaurant spaces, that I’ve worked on three times in my career here.

I think the rumors of their demise are a little premature, but it may be time for people to consider what sort of audience they really want, besides the one that brings money. Give people a nice beach and more bang for their buck and you may see improvement.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.

When I get to between six and eight posts - well, more like ten to twelve these days - I think are worth sharing, you’ll get Monday evening reading. It won’t be every week, but likely more often than not. There’s nothing wrong with link love! Once again, I culled this down from the truckload of posts I get from over 100 Substacks to which I subscribe (and maybe you should too.)

Subscribe now

Go ahead and read these pieces, then come back and see what I have to say.

I’m back on a schedule with MER for the time being, so this one is a more “normal” length - but with the same great content.

I decided to start this time with Greg Layton’s answer to my post on common ground a week or so ago. We may have some, but I think there’s more exploration to do in order to find it.

The Delaware Project

Common Ground, If We Can Keep It

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19 days ago · 1 like · 2 comments · The Delaware Project

Senate Bill 9 isn’t about who runs which blog or what the Governor does and doesn’t post. That’s the inside baseball of our little arena, and it has nothing to do with whether 75,000 acres should sit unprotected.

It isn’t about housing affordability. That’s a real problem, and I’d happily take it up on its own terms another day — but you can build the homes Delaware needs and protect its wetlands, because the two compete for far less of the same ground than the framing suggests. Treating protection as the thing standing between young families and a house is a substitution, not an argument.

Perhaps we talk at cross purposes but I thought one had to do with the other in my mind: wetlands protection does eliminate some possible land for housing, although to me the threat to wetlands is more from agriculture.

Oddly enough I was the first “like” on the post. His passion for wetlands has been supported thus far in the Delaware Senate, which passed his bill 20-0. (With the unanimous vote on a non-budget bill, it doesn’t qualify for the upcoming Delaware Accountability Project.) It now goes to the House, which has until June 30 to pass it.

Last year, Republicans in Delaware tried a little bit of a stunt to gum up the works in protest of a bill that would force Sussex County to grant a conditional use permit to US Wind so they can move the electricity generated offshore through Delaware to Maryland, which basically benefits from the “free” power (that’s far from free.) But as notes, parties in and out of control have a role to play - unfortunately, the end result is often the same regardless of who’s in charge. This is Part 1 of a series, and I’ll bet subsequent parts will be on future editions of MER.

Jack’s Substack - One Man's Opinion

New Boss, Same as the Old Boss Part I

“New boss. Same as the old boss…

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15 days ago · 9 likes · 2 comments · Jack Sotallaro

Republicans promise to rein in spending, restore constitutional limits, dismantle bureaucratic overreach, and rescue the country from permanent government. Democrats promise to defend democracy, protect institutions, uphold transparency, and steward the public good with competence and compassion.

Then power flips.

And almost on cue, so does behavior.

Watch it long enough and the pattern becomes impossible to miss. The minority party always discovers virtue. The majority party always discovers excuses.

This is definitely true on a federal level; however, the power in most states is so ossified that there’s a permanent minority. Case in point: Delaware has had a Democrat General Assembly since 2008, while Maryland’s had a similar situation for over a century (according to Ballotpedia, the Maryland Senate has been Democrat since 1900 and House since 1920.)

And I hope Jack doesn’t mind if I steal his graphics somewhere along the line, for they are top-notch.

Politics is just a symptom of the problem, though, according to my friend . We’re losing our very economic system thanks to “too big to fail" - which, by the way, was put in place under a Republican President who had a Democrat Congress to contend with. So it works with the uniparty idea Jack alludes to.

Justin’s Substack

America's Drift from Free Markets to Economic Fascism

“The barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. We sit by and watch the barbari…

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19 days ago · 12 likes · Justin Smith

In the grand theater of human affairs, where men seek to better their condition through effort and exchange, the economy reveals itself not as a machine to be steered by distant authorities, but as the spontaneous order arising from countless individual choices, each guided by local knowledge and personal incentives. The wise observer looks beyond the immediate spectacle — the flood of liquidity, the towering ledgers of public obligation, the glittering promises of technological deliverance — to the hidden consequences that ripple across generations. What appears as salvation through intervention often masks the quiet erosion of capital, the misdirection of resources, and the subtle theft from the productive by those who wield the coercive power of the state.

Today’s American economy stands at such a juncture, its trajectory shaped by decades of monetary manipulation, fiscal incontinence, and the crony alliances that masquerade as enterprise. Absent a return to the principles of voluntary cooperation, secure property, and restrained governance, the path leads not to abundance but to stagnation, diminished liberty, and the eventual reckoning where illusions collide with arithmetic reality.

To that end, asks what would happen if the AI bubble popped?

BIG by Matt Stoller

What Would It Look Like If the AI Bubble Popped?

One of the consistent themes of this newsletter is how the stock market is increasingly disconnected from underlying economic activity. In the Number Go Up Rule, I traced how we increasingly run everything to ensure that market capitalization continues to increase. From the dot com boom to the subprime housing to crypto to GameStop to sports gambling, t…

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17 days ago · 401 likes · 42 comments · Matt Stoller

I think that an AI bubble popping could be worse than the dot com bubble, for a few reasons. The first is that we are a much more corrupt society, and so there will be less trust when a collapse happens and contagion is widespread. The second is the U.S. economy is less diversified today. We had a much stronger industrial base in 2000. Our financial markets are dependent on a few companies betting on AI data center spending. The counter-argument is that we are better at bailouts, so the Fed could stop contagion more easily. That’s possible too.

I’m going to come back toward the subject in a moment, but if you recall the Book of Joshua, Ai was the town that he subdued after their men ambushed his in the wake of Jericho’s fall. There is always value and meaning in Scripture, as knows.

American Faith & Freedom

Beware of "New Thought" Christianity

American Faith and Freedom reaches over 4,500 combined subscribers and followers across 50 states and 72 countries. If you find these posts helpful, become a paying supporter... and help us reach more people with the truth while gaining access to exclusive posts, podcasts, free books, and our archives…

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15 days ago · 31 likes · 5 comments · Jim McCraigh

Oprah is a proclaimer of what is known as New Thought. It is not to be confused with New Age, a belief system that promotes the idea that an individual’s thoughts and experiences are the primary source of spiritual authority, not God. New Thought is much more deceptive than the New Age because it looks and sounds just like “Christianity”.

Sadly, her influence has led millions to buy into the lie…

I may not be the world’s foremost effort on things spiritual, but I know that God doesn’t just hand out winning lottery tickets. Our reward is not earthly.

Switching gears, ponders how our enemy in Iran is getting some help from another enemy.

The Founders' Signal

The Silent Combatant: How China Armed Iran Against America

American bombs fell on Iranian soil beginning February 28, 2026. Operation Epic Fury targeted Iranian missile forces, naval assets, nuclear infrastructure, and the military command architecture that had threatened the region for decades. The strikes were precise. The strategic logic was sound. The execution by American and Israeli forces was broadly eff…

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20 days ago · 26 likes · 1 comment · Tyler Piekarski

China is not a neutral party in the Iran war. China is not a reluctant bystander. China is a silent combatant that armed Iran’s targeting systems, fed intelligence on American troop positions to the IRGC, transferred semiconductor technology to Iran’s military industrial complex while under active U.S. sanctions, and positioned Chinese satellite constellations to guide Iranian missiles toward American soldiers.

No Chinese soldiers fought in Operation Epic Fury. No People’s Liberation Army aircraft entered Iranian airspace. Beijing issued diplomatic statements calling for restraint and negotiations. Those statements were lies by omission. What China did instead was construct an invisible kill chain, built from commercial cover and plausible deniability, that extended Beijing’s strategic reach into a hot war against the United States without a single Chinese soldier firing a single shot.

But if you were into wars and rumors of wars, you couldn’t do better than what is going on across the pond as we may be on the verge of a modern-day Crusade. It’s so bad that is getting a message out for a friend.

Mindy Esposito

I WILL SPEAK FOR HIM

A message from Britain, delivered by an American, because that is now how it has to work…

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18 days ago · 218 likes · 44 comments · Mindy Esposito

Two days ago I asked him to give me an overview. Write it all out, I said. I will publish it for you.

He cannot publish it himself. Not because he lacks the courage, and not because he lacks the words. He cannot publish it because in modern Britain, saying what he is about to tell you carries a genuine risk of arrest.

A man in the birthplace of English common law, in the country whose Magna Carta and Bill of Rights 1689 are the direct ancestors of your American rights, cannot speak freely about what his own government is doing to his own people.

I can say it. I am in Tennessee. So I will.

But it’s not like we haven’t faced similar restrictions here, as my friend reminds us.

The Whole American Catalog

June 2020. Remember When "Medical Experts" Told Us "Protesting" For George Floyd Was More Important Than Lock downs?

White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19 - Open Letter Advocating for an Anti-Racist Public Health Response to Demonstrations Against Systemic Injustice Occurring During the COVID-19 Pandemic…

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20 days ago · 8 likes · 8 comments · David Wolosik

David reminds us of the priorities back in 2020:

Let me get this straight. White protesters questioning the science, financial and health costs to lockdowns are a problem, but full-blown riots, actually burning down cities, or demonstrations as you call them are warranted? “LETHAL institutional racism”? How long did it take to come up with that word salad?

Gathering to question the onerous lockdowns was a danger to public health, but it was excused if the protest was in the name of anti-racism. Yes, I remember these bad old days - much as I’d love to blot out that part of life.

In the wake of the Karmelo Anthony verdict, doesn’t see the racial situation getting any better.

THE NEW YORK CITIZEN

So Delusional Even Stevie Wonder Can See It

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber or buy me a coffee or two. The amount is entirely up to you. If you are unable to do that, then please restack my work so others can view it. Thank you. -Na…

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17 days ago · 129 likes · 67 comments · Nancy Muldoon

For the Karmelo Anthony’s of the world, you know, the ones who demand respect from everyone but give none in return, being told no is an act of disrespect. They behave like a three-year-old who is told that they can’t have another cookie. This behavior is a standard feature with these types.

For those who have no moral compass like Karmelo, standing your ground is cause for violence because violence is the language of the black community.

Callin’ ‘em like she sees ‘em. This has been mild compared to the O.J. Simpson verdict 31 years ago, though.

In her other work, I’ve seen that Nancy’s answer is that of segregating ourselves from the problem. extends that to liberals in a light-hearted way.

AMERICA FIRST RE-IGNITED

How To Avoid Living Behind Enemy Lines, Tale #102: Keeping Liberal Haters Out Of Your Neighborhood

You have done your research. You have found a Red neighborhood in a Red County in a Red State which has two Republican senators, which has not had a Democrat governor for decades, which has a Republican legislature, which has not voted for a Democrat president since the relatively normal Democrat Bill Clinton. More importantly, the house you are looking…

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17 days ago · 58 likes · 35 comments · Diane L. Gruber

Now, the buyers who bought the house “next door” in 2022 have moved and put the house on the market in April 2025. It has not yet sold. They couldn’t stand the politics in Washington State and they were unhappy with their jobs so they moved back to Idaho. Their realtor knew that my three GOP signs would discourage half of his potential buyers, so he stole the Trump sign that was closest to the for-sale house. It was on OUR property. That spurred me on to buy more yard signs that signaled we are Conservatives and a flag that says “This is MAGA Country.” So, our twenty acres now sports SEVEN Trump or GOP signs on the very road a buyer must drive on to view the house which is on the market.

Last fall the seller asked another neighbor to “talk to Diane” about taking down the yards signs on the road. He told that neighbor that two serious potential buyers said they could not buy because there was a Trump supporter next door. VICTORY!!! We are scaring off haters!

Way, way too long for e-mail once again as I try to include all the goodies. Regardless, all that should keep a good reader going and thinking for awhile. It’s a great way to start the week, right?

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.

I was born in the midst of a technology leap, as satellite broadcasting made it possible to watch live events (such as the Tokyo Olympics) half a world away. But that’s peanuts compared to the state we have moved into today, as I type this missive on a computer wirelessly connected to the World Wide Web. It’s nothing now for me to be read in Tokyo moments after my piece goes live or, for that matter, any other place connected to the internet.

Yet the massive amount of information we have at our fingertips has become both a blessing and a curse. I imagine myself at the age of 10 now with my nose in a screen instead of hanging around at the local park. (Of course, few people hang out at the local park now unless there’s an organized event like a ballgame.) Instead of being skinny as a rail and a nice shade of golden-brown - enough to make me look tow-headed with my light blonde hair back then - I’m probably flabby and overweight as the “garbage pail” of the family who likes those leftovers. Let’s face it: I couldn’t imagine being a child now.

And we may be at the verge of yet another technology leap, yet another such huge jump in my lifetime after the enhanced communications of satellite, the ubiquitous use of computers in everyday life down to a personal level (such as my laptop), the onset of wireless communications such as cellular phones, the rise of the internet, and now artificial intelligence. And it’s far beyond the rudimentary AI I encounter writing that suggests my next word (spelled properly) and allows me to tab it instead of typing it out.

There has been an era in the recent past where we adopted an intellectual specialization, as a person became more and more smart about less and less. I’m a good example of that: my work has allowed me to be an expert at CAD drafting and the various building codes, but I’d be the first to say I was relatively clueless about the process by which the local farmers take care of all the chickens we have. (I see the trucks pull out with the finished product, that’s all.) Someone who does that, though, would likely be clueless about what I do as well as how to work at a nail salon, and so on and so forth. (Although that may not necessarily be true - one local nail salon owner I know also owns a chicken farm.)

On the other hand, our ancestors had to know a little about a lot in order to survive. And it wasn’t that they were illiterate, either: in some areas of the fledgling American nation, literacy was as high as 95%. On the whole, more Americans back then were literate than not, particularly in the New England area and in more urban settings. But even if they weren’t book smart, our ancestors knew enough to grow crops, hunt for food, and often adopt a trade. It was an agrarian lifestyle short on frills and fraught with danger, but obviously our ancestors survived and made life better as they went. They controlled what they could and adapted to the rest.

In that vein, I’ve seen a lot of reaction to AI over the last few months, from people who are convinced it will bring the mark of the beast and be our doom to others who see a future where man and machine merge into a superbeing. Of course, our federal government wants its mitts into it as well - that goes without saying.

To be quite honest, if we’re through, I’m on the back side of life anyway so I have no regrets over how I’ve lived and if it goes the other way, I’m already partway there since my knees are both artificial. Come to think of it, the merger of man and machine would eventually be doomed to fail (at least in a humanoid form) because machines wear out just like bodies do. Even the implants Elon Musk has experimented with won’t last forever.

It seems to me, though, that where we’ve lost the plot in my lifetime is in the realm of interpersonal relationships. (And I’m guilty of it too.) Granted, in every era we have had those who prefer to keep to themselves and not be social, but back in the day most people were forced to deal with others in their daily lives. More often, though, we went out of our way to be social: men joined the bowling league (like my dad) or the local Moose lodge and women gossiped over the backyard fence. My mom was in a bunco group for awhile, so she would go to someone’s house every week to roll those dice (when she wasn’t the hostess.) That was back when my mom was a stay-at-home one, when she went to work, she replaced some of the local neighbor socialization with the plight of her co-workers.

Most recently, though, thanks in part to the COVID scamdemic, where we became a society that was masked up and socially distanced, it became possible to live life without ever seeing a live human. Thanks to government edict, many of us were trapped in our dwellings with Amazon and Doordash leaving things at your door. I remember going to church in our car, watching the stage from the parking lot and tuning our car radio to the frequency our pastor was broadcasting in like you would at a drive-in movie. At the time, though, we were just happy to get out after the enforced separation.

In a way, that induced social distancing has paved the way for the adoption of AI, which we can get at our fingertips without any human interaction. (For some it’s completely taken the place of said interaction.) But is that really a way to live?

Now that I’ve been circling around the airport for a bit, it’s time to land this sucker. Perhaps it’s been this journey I’m on, but it seems to me that AI is going to do what it’s going to do, and I can’t stop it - so why worry about it? It’s no worse than the surveillance we’ve endured from the government since 9/11 or the rise of the administrative state. I’ve not allowed myself to get too hung up in those despite my hardening opposition to same, so why start now?

But I do think it’s time to get back in control of my life, and now that my health is improving, I’m in a better position to do so. It won’t really affect what I do here, but what it will affect is the time suck of social media and endless scrolling - which, given the vast amount of time I’ve been sitting around lately, became more of a part of life than I wanted it to be. (Meanwhile, I’ve had a bit of writer’s block for my book, so it’s been on the shelf because I can’t summon the focus for it.) I may not have power over AI or an overarching government, but I can clean out the disaster my garage has become over the last few months or make my back porch a little nicer to sit in and enjoy watching the corn grow.

For all its benefits, AI can’t do my physical labor or wave at my neighbors as I go by. So, if AI isn’t making my life easier or more enjoyable, what use do I have for it?

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.

My Saturday was a pleasant one, as I worked on some writing. One of the top stories on my social media feed was having the “Big Boy” vintage Union Pacific steam locomotive work its way through God’s country in northwest Ohio on its way eastward for the semiquincentennial celebration in Philadelphia on July 4th, with a number of videos of the train traversing the countryside being shared. It also featured the “bunt heard ‘round the world,” a miracle squeeze play performed by a Montpelier High School player who narrowly missed being hit in the face by laying down the bunt. (Ironically, Montpelier’s teams are called the Locomotives. They used to be in the same league as my high school but switched to a more appropriate smaller-school conference a few years ago.)

All that pleasantry changed when I saw the headline, “12 shot at Ohio festival.” Seconds later, I found the city in question was Toledo and the festival was the long-running Old West End Festival.

The Old West End is a historic and venerable neighborhood in central Toledo, close by the Toledo Museum of Art. It was developed in the late 19th century as an enclave of the city’s movers and shakers, entrepreneurs who had become wealthy in the business world, whether through the glass industry, oil (northwest Ohio was once an oil field), or other manufacturing exploits centered on the rapidly-blossoming city of Toledo. As such, if you believe Copilot, it became “recognized as one of the largest collections of late Victorian, Edwardian, and Arts and Crafts homes in the United States.” Springing up along streets with the eventual tree lining to belie their “-wood” name (such as Robinwood, Parkwood, Scottwood, or Collingwood, which is the street my former place of employment is on), these houses fell into disrepair in the middle of the last century but were rediscovered and redeveloped starting in the 1970s.

It was in that era the Old West End Festival began, this year’s rendition being the 53rd annual. My ex-wife and I went a couple times in the 1990s, enjoying the houses and looking for interesting trinkets since one of its features was a neighborhood yard sale. It’s a LOT of walking since the streets are long blocks. As opposed to a traditional festival with a focal node, the OWE Festival is more of an expanded block party, although I’m sure they had designated locations with food trucks and portable restrooms.

As such, the Old West End is unique for a couple reasons, one of which is being Toledo’s answer to Rehoboth Beach: even in the 1990s, a rainbow flag would not have received a second glance there. Locals know it’s an outpost of the gay community that appreciated the architecture, many of them investing their time and effort to restore the beauty of these houses. But it’s also something of an oasis in an otherwise rundown area of the city, surrounded by neighborhoods with lesser stock that devolved into Section 8 housing as they were subdivided into apartments. My former place of employment was within sight of the local high school, which probably still has an enrollment that is over 90% black (if not, that’s at least the proportion of all people of color.) Crime and gang activity is a significant concern in those neighborhoods, and it appears that may have spilled over into Saturday’s OWE Festival. People who had less fear of the Old West End neighborhood based on its reputation of being more secure than most inner-city areas for a daytime event are now going to question that assumption thanks to this shooting.

Yet the answer doesn’t come from the knee-jerk reaction about grabbing guns. I would bet that at least half those houses in the OWE have one or more guns in them, and I would also wager that most of those guns were still collecting dust even after the events last night. The guns are in these houses for the proper reason of self-defense from intruders.

Instead, what is needed is a sea change in attitude where being “dissed” demands the disproportionate response of grabbing your gat and hunting someone down. The shooting wasn’t targeted at OWE Festival attendees; they just happened to be the unfortunate bystanders who were in the way of the errant bullets. Apparently, this was a case of two people shooting at one another: if one or the other had been a better shot we would have had a gang-related shooting in the middle of the OWE Festival with a hapless single victim bleeding out in the street and the perp running from the scene. Instead, we got a wild melee with a dozen or more people wounded and chaos reigning as the OWE Festival began to wind down (the incident occurred about 5:30 p.m. local time, when people start to take things down for the day.)

Somewhere in the dregs of our culture, it was decided that violence was the answer, regardless of the question. That’s the problem. I’m sure we will find that the shooters came from a disadvantaged background of single parenting and dependence on government as their source of (legal) income, but that’s also the fate of thousands who still grow up to be law-abiding citizens and break the chains of dependence. In the case of these shooters, who whispered the message in their ear that in order to resolve this injury they needed to gun down that person who opposed their interests?

I know in my bones that there are people in these neighborhoods who labor on the side of right, trying to bring people onto the straight but narrow path. But they are up against a tidal wave of messaging which states that to be dishonored and disrespected is a capital offense against one’s self, and turning the other cheek is not an option.

To that, taking away guns is not the answer - it just leaves those who could use it defenseless. The gun is simply a tool and a means to an end - the weapon could have been a blade or a club. It’s the idea that a weapon is needed that needs to change to give that area (as well as hundreds of other benighted regions of our nation and world) a chance for positive growth.

So pray for the victims but also pray for the Old West End neighborhood and that this incident doesn’t begin a downward spiral. Keep hope alive in that area that people can learn a lesson from this and maybe step back, take a breath, and realize that life has its setbacks, but a setback is just another term for opportunity to grow.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.

When I get to between six and eight posts - well, more like ten to twelve these days - I think are worth sharing, you’ll get Monday evening reading. It won’t be every week, but likely more often than not. There’s nothing wrong with link love! Once again, I culled this down from the truckload of posts I get from over 100 Substacks to which I subscribe (and maybe you should too.)

Subscribe now

Go ahead and read these pieces, then come back and see what I have to say.

I’m back on a schedule with MER for the time being, so this one is a more “normal” length - but with the same great content.

In the spirit of our upcoming semiquincentennial celebration, let’s start with . She looks at a little-known military action that may have helped save the Union back before the War Between the States began.

Mindy Esposito

BY THE WAXING CRESCENT MOON

Forty-four men moved through the town in the dark. January 13, 1861. Three days after Florida seceded. The night was balmy, dry, the temperature dropping toward the middle sixties, the kind of night where you leave the windows open and hear the water moving…

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25 days ago · 13 likes · 3 comments · Mindy Esposito

The fort sat at the southwestern tip of Key West, unfinished, surrounded on three sides by the sea, its brick walls rising dark above the harbor. Captain John Milton Brannan of the First United States Artillery led his men inside. Four months of provisions waited. Ammunition waited.

When the sun came up, the guns of Fort Zachary Taylor were pointing out over the harbor.

The ships at anchor were under Federal guns.

No battle. No shot fired. No order from Washington.

One man had looked at what was coming and moved before it arrived.

Without a shot the Union had secured access to the Gulf, and despite the fact the rest of Florida had already seceded from the Union, Key West was a federal stronghold.

It was the kind of decision may have applauded, seeing that he believes our young folks need grit, skill, and self-reliance like John Brannan showed.

Justin’s Substack

Young Americans Need Grit, Skill and Self-Reliance

I have lived long enough to watch America change in ways that would have been unthinkable when I was young. I grew up in a world where children roamed neighborhoods freely, where parents didn’t track their every move, and where falling off your bike or striking out in a baseball game wasn’t a crisis — it was simply part of growing up. As I’ve often stat…

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25 days ago · 17 likes · 5 comments · Justin Smith

I grew up in a world where children roamed neighborhoods freely, where parents didn’t track their every move, and where falling off your bike or striking out in a baseball game wasn’t a crisis — it was simply part of growing up. As I’ve often stated, “Boomers didn’t get participation trophies. They got chores, curfews, and a good reminder that life doesn’t care about your feelings.” That wasn’t cruelty; it was preparation. It was the understanding that life would not bend itself to your emotions, and that the only way to build strength was to encounter resistance.

What they may not need is Islam, but our tentative embrace of it worries .

In This Dimension

Yes, We Can.

Recently I posted an article denying that islam is in any way compatible with civilization. Many have noted that the First Amendment protects it, and that “we cannot, by law, prevent anyone from personally practicing that which they call ‘religion…

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a month ago · 15 likes · 3 comments · In This Dimension

Accepting islam, crediting it as a “religion,” and giving it the protections only found in the civilization islam demands to conquer and destroy, when it fits no definition of that Western word and concept of a theology based on peace – not on killing every human being on the planet not worshiping their death cult savagery... means accepting these barbaric behaviors.

NO!

If it’s not a seventh-century religion that worries you, perhaps it’s the 21st century technology some are concerned about. But tells us not to fuss because there is a certain group trying to spread an anti-AI message.

The Dossier

$7,600 Per Doomer Dispatch: Inside the Billionaire-Backed AI Fear Factory

All too often these days, you reach the end of an article in the corporate media, some piece about the perils of artificial intelligence in a publication you have trusted for years, and find yourself greeted by a curious little line of text: “This story was supported by a grant from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.” Most readers scroll right past i…

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25 days ago · 68 likes · 23 comments · Jordan Schachtel

Strip away the language about supposedly helping society “navigate advanced AI” and what you are left with is pure doomerism. We are left with the conviction that AI is less an engine of prosperity than an existential menace that must be slowed, regulated to death, and consumed by the state.

So don’t worry about AI. Worry, instead, about the price of beef as explains we may be truly screwed by a screwworm.

AND Magazine

Screwworms And The Death Of America’s Beef Industry

Screwworms have been detected in Texas. You probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about screw worms…

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23 days ago · 55 likes · 3 comments · Sam Faddis

But forget the beef. This just sounds gross, like lose your appetite nasty:

There are also cases in which screw worms have infected people. To prevent that, one of the things that has to be done is that any outdoor laundry drying on lines has to be ironed to kill the eggs and avoid human cases. If you are infected, you then have to dig the developing maggots out of your skin.

I was originally going to do this last, but after I thought about it, I decided what better way to follow up on maggots than considering how to rightsize government? That’s where comes in with a well-thought-out piece that’s a blueprint for needed change.

Jack’s Substack - One Man's Opinion

TRANSITIONING AID PROGRAMS FROM FEDERAL TO STATE CONTROL

This is a plan that is as complete as I have the knowledge to create. While I don’t pretend it is functionally complete, I will say it adequately describes all the steps necessary to transition unconstitutional aid programs from federal control to state control, where they are legal and better controlled…

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24 days ago · 6 likes · Jack Sotallaro

As Jack says:

The plan should be built around six principles: no immediate benefit cliff, no blank checks, no federal permanent control, no fraud tolerance, no unfunded state mandate, and no illusion that federal aid is “free money.”

Truly, his may be one of the most important Substacks you’ll run across and it has a whole six likes. The priorities are off here.

But since I still have four articles to go, let’s switch over to sports and leisure. How about the demise of a once-great institution in the sports world that illustrates?

The Honest Broker

How to Destroy a Literary Reputation in One Move

This would typically be behind a paywall. But I’m making it available to everybody. So enjoy…

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a month ago · 784 likes · 134 comments · Ted Gioia

How do you kill a brand as powerful as Sports Illustrated?

It’s easy, you can do it in one just one move. You just need to embrace the most exciting, futuristic technology of the 21st century.

That’s what Sports Illustrated did. The world’s most respected sports magazine gave up on Hemingway and Faulkner, and started publishing AI slop. The editors clearly wanted to hide this—they pretended that the articles were written by actual human beings. They even created fake bios with photos for the non-existent authors.

I remember getting the magazine when I was young (the subscriptions were always sold through my school as a fundraiser and not all that expensive) and it was something I looked forward to as I read about the superstars of the day. But first it was trashing the swimsuit issue and now this.

On another sports front, remembers a member of the Hall of Very Good, Bob Horner. He’s another of those guys I used to have baseball cards of who has now passed on.

Lec’s Substack

Remembering Atlanta Braves star Bob Horner

Before the Atlanta Braves became one of baseball’s powerhouses in the early 1990s, they were ridiculed for hailing themselves as “America’s team” in advertisements. But for a team that generally wasn’t very good, that slogan wasn’t as far fetched as it seemed to be on paper…

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a month ago · 2 likes · Lec Zorn

After Ted Turner bought independent Atlanta TV station WTBS and started getting it on cable systems across the country - making it the first ever superstation - the Braves became the most watched sports team of all time up to that point. For example, when I was growing up in southeastern Indiana, the Cincinnati Reds were by far the closest MLB team to me - yet I estimate that I watched three or four times as many Braves games as Reds games. WTBS broadcast almost every Braves game, while a group of independent stations in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana broadcast only 47 Reds games a year.

One of the highlights of the Braves teams of that era was 1B/3B Bob Horner, who died last Tuesday at the age of 68. Few people under 50 know who he was, but he was one of the biggest potential superstars of his era - a man who had hall of fame potential, but had too many bad breaks.

Horner was one of the few guys who never played a game in the minor leagues, although he spent a season exiled in Japan during the free agent collusion days.

This guy might remember Bob Horner because he has a few years on me. But it’s a simple pleasure that animates .

Saturday Morning Joe

A Bingeworthy Life

Last night, CarolAnn and I were binge-watching a TV series. Can’t remember the name. You know the one: a good-looking guy and a beautiful girl team up to fight crime while their ulcer-ridden boss washes down Tums with scotch and fires off snide wisecracks…

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a month ago · 21 likes · 12 comments · Dave Williams

By now you might be thinking I’m a nutball. That’s fine. You may be right. But I enjoy my life, even when I’m just drinking coffee on the porch and whacking a mental paddle ball.

The only thing I know for sure is that every morning I wake up inside another episode and can’t wait to see what happens next.

Being that they’re close to the same age, I think would agree. She just has a more mobile porch, as she details here.

The Gray Camper Van Writer

$11 and a Handful of Quarters: The Night I Had a City Park All to Myself

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a month ago · 85 likes · 16 comments · Carol Seymour

The setup was as simple as it gets. There’s a little payment box — the kind that runs completely on the trust that people are decent — and I fed it a $10 bill and four quarters. That’s it. No check-in desk. No app. No QR code. Just you, your cash, and your conscience. Moments later I had a spot with electricity and water hookups. For eleven dollars. In 2024. I’m still not over it.

The park was quiet. Actually, quiet is an understatement — I was the only camper there. The whole place was mine. Just me, the Louisiana evening air, and the distant sound of frogs doing what frogs do best.

So if you’re in that out-of-the-way corner of Louisiana, you can expect a little bit of hospitality. I occasionally wonder if she ever moseys up my way to Slower Lower - not that we have cut-rate camping, but it is a nice slice of America.

Way, way too long for e-mail once again as I try to include all the goodies. Regardless, all that should keep a good reader going and thinking for awhile. It’s a great way to start the week, right?

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.

Among many others, in this state I compete in the arena of ideas with a few liberal blogs. Besides the Substack run by the I’m one of the few voices of the Right on this medium, going up against our Governor and others, including a fairly recent entry called . (Not to be confused with my Delaware Accountability Project, a semi-annual look at the voting patterns of the Delaware General Assembly. I’ll be doing the 2025-26 edition next month, once I compile the final votes.)

At least Greg Layton posts at The Delaware Project once in awhile, unlike our Governor and his Substack, and that’s where we’ll pick up the story.

I’ve sparred with Greg from time to time on social media, as he’s a person of the Left who seems passionate about the environment, to the detriment at times of necessary economic progress. In this instance, however, he’s carefully building a case by detailing affected flora and fauna present in our wetlands for their protection. Thus, in this instance - while I don’t agree with every provision of SB9 and would like to know more about just how much private property it would affect - he points out that it’s the work of groups on both sides of the issue, which is what we need. And while he laments that it’s a needed substitute for federal guidance on the issue (because the EPA has properly stepped back from what I considered extreme regulation of surface waterways) I think it’s now being shifted to the more appropriate venue of Dover rather than Washington, D.C. All the feds do is drive along Route 404 to get to the beach, they don’t live here.

While Greg is passionate about the protection of wetlands and preserving them as necessary for maintaining our ecosystem, I have a passion I think he could be helpful on as well with some suggestions for improvement and implementation. Much of the reason for the development he sees as encroaching on areas he deems as important for preservation has come about because, quite frankly, people want to retire to Delaware so they can live close to the beach or in a pastoral venue and enjoy our lack of a sales tax. Now I could have lived in a rural setting in Maryland because there’s still plenty of it around the area in which I work, but I preferred the lower property taxes found here. (And maybe I’m just into the “slower” of Slower Lower Delaware.) Thus, my wife and I reside in a rural area that’s still only 23 minutes from where I work, as I’ve told you about before.

Perhaps it’s simply perception and reputation of his view, but where Greg and I may differ is that I don’t want to pull the ladder up from those who may want to come here and enjoy what we have. However, I can understand the fear some have of losing our agricultural land - my biggest beef in that regard is having 30 acres of good farmland suddenly become an unreliable energy source because of unnecessary state mandates addressing climate change or something. At least 30 acres of residential development provides investment opportunities 3/4 acre or so at a time for people to build or maintain equity as well as gain an ownership stake in the area.

Having said that, though, I understand that we have come into a situation where people who want to invest here can’t afford to. I’ve worked for a local homebuilder so I know just how the market operates, and it’s skewed heavily toward retirees or close to that age. Yet there are only so many out of my Generation Jones out there who haven’t already settled in - after all, I have pretty much what I want now after a decade and a half of trying, in fits and starts with plenty of adversity along the way - and I’m aware enough to know that there are a lot of Gen X, Millennials, and so forth behind me who want that same thing. Who are we to deny it?

Because this beachfront boom has gone on for the last two decades or so, we’re now getting to the point where those who came here first are now enjoying their eternal reward. It seems to me that there will be a lot of good housing stock (perhaps you can call it gently used) coming online in the next few years, and my thought is why not try and find a way to make that more attractive with incentives for reuse as opposed to yet another new development?

I understand the paragraph above contradicts in many respects the article I wrote a few months back, but I look at this as multiple tools in a toolbox. Certainly it’s not my place to deny someone the brand-new home they desire in a new development, but why not promote other options that can address their issues as well? My house is 21 years old, so I know there will be a few things I’ll be dealing with in time, but the price premium for brand new would have been a hurdle for us and we’re happy with our home. (Having said that, though, at one point we had our eye on a nice lot within view of Trussum Pond. But with lot restrictions it would have required more house than we could viably afford, and now it’s making someone else happy.)

Granted, the market plays into this already because building brand new is more expensive than purchasing an older house because of site development costs, but there’s also something to be said about living in an established and mature area. It’s also encouraging to see western Sussex try and get into the game, since not everyone wants beachfront property. I happen to like cornfields and living by farms despite the occasional “smells like Delaware.”

Bottom line: I think we can have things both ways, keeping the wetlands to the maximum extent possible while allowing new folks to enjoy the state, and meet in the middle. Greg and his fellows on the Left may not be happy with everything I say and Lord knows my “barely left of militia” self isn’t too keen on federal government-based solutions, but I know government is appropriate at a certain level. Just keep a light touch and let us breathe free.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.

As I have mentioned from time to time in this venue, I try to read quite a bit from those who inhabit the political space to my left. (Yes, it’s a broad range.) The piece I’m linking below was going to be in MER, but after some thought I decided it was worth promotion to a standalone post because it goes along with other thoughts of mine about the Democrat agenda.

The writer is , who seems to have one of the most terminal cases of TDS I’ve ever witnessed. A sample is below.

jack spirtos

Democrats Focus: Americans Feel Broke!

I just finished my Mid-America Tour with a kicker to Upstate NY and NYC. It was time to go visit my uncles, cousins and friends. I drove a lot of miles throu…

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a month ago · 27 likes · 21 comments · jack spirtos

Those who voted for Donald Trump are angry that he sold them a bill of goods and didn’t do anything that he promised, just to sucker their votes out of them.

Those who didn’t are just plain disgusted with Trump’s vanity, as he builds monuments to himself, hangs posters of himself as Big Brother and tagging everything with his name, as he continues his unauthorized vanity war with Iran.

Proving that HE is the Biggest Loser in American History.

Regular folks abhor his unbridled self-enrichment, his unapproved destruction of the White House to build his Golden Ballroom, his Arc de Trump that hides Arlington National Cemetery, his violation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and his no bid contracts paying out insane profits to his sycophants.

His 1.8 billion dollar slush fund that will pay insurrectionists that attacked, maimed and killed police officers and defiled our Capital is making people sick and feeling hopeless, as his insanity reigns unchecked.

You get the idea. But the piece is really about the old James Carville adage that, “it’s the economy, stupid.”

While he claims to be an independent, Jack is urging his fellow Democrats to focus like a laser beam on the economy this election, dumping all their other pet social and environmental issues for the moment. Grooming kids to be trans, littering the landscape with solar panels and wind turbines, and cranking the border back open can wait.

But let’s put it this way. I live in a state represented by the Three Stooges, and if you spend any time reading their social media you will see it’s an almost nonstop bashing of Donald Trump and his administration. Indeed, once in awhile they may tout a new proposal or two, but in those cases, it’s just about using the federal government to solve a problem that can better be handled at the state or local level. (Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester’s housing proposal from last year is a good example of this, one that I think I handled better.)

I can already see 2027 from my house if the Democrats win one or both houses of Congress, and it will be nonstop subpoenas, hearings, and impeachment proceedings for a variety of officials just to bring the federal government and MAGA agenda to a halt. (Heck, they promised this last year. Ted Cruz is hip to it, too.) And do you remember how the economy slowed down in the second half of Trump’s first term or, even worse, the Great Recession Democrats steered us into in the latter two years of George W. Bush’s second term? Yeah, that’s what happens now when Democrats hold Congress under a Republican president.

I’m going to give you my frank, albeit simply armchair expert observer, assessment of the economy right now: it needs a shot in the arm. We were doing all right until oil prices surged, but that extra $20-30 you have to put in your gas tank on a weekly basis is coming from the muscle and sinew of the average family’s budget, not the fat - because that’s pretty much gone now thanks to post-scamdemic Bidenflation. (Yes, one can quibble about conveniences like DoorDash or seven different streaming services, but for many those have - sadly - become necessities. The Amazon drivers know our house by heart, too.)

Yet what solution would the Democrats have to that oil issue? We already sell the EV, and once the tax incentives that created EV demand were cancelled, the market for those cars dried up to the point where they’ll never meet the market carveouts states like Delaware have tried to put in place. Ethanol isn’t really a solution, either, plus it’s doubtful Democrats would want to help out farm-state Republicans who back those mandates, either. With Iran already having shown they’ll employ the tactic of blocking the Strait of Hormuz, anything short of their capitulation will maintain high oil prices for some time, leaving a significant risk of recession. (Of course, the Democrats don’t mind that as the out-of-power party - like they say, “never let a crisis go to waste.”)

Ironically, the solution I would submit for our economy would involve a significant loss to our GDP, at first. Because government spending is a portion of GDP, losses there would have to be made up somewhere else, and it would take a little bit for consumer spending to catch up. But every dollar the government isn’t taking out of our pockets is a dollar that can be spent on those things we want, filling that budgetary muscle and sinew back out and making the economic patient healthy again. In fact, this has been a lot of the Trump approach insofar as tax cuts and relief has been concerned, but there hasn’t been the federal spending decline we needed; instead, we just pile more debt and interest on our fiscal back and hope that’s not the straw that breaks it.

You know, with all of the artificial intelligence we have around these days, you would think someone could figure out just how to run an economy just like ours, bringing prosperity while maintaining and even maximizing liberty. Unfortunately, when the agenda is one’s power and control over their fellow man, that’s no longer a consideration.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.

When I get to between six and eight posts - well, more like ten to twelve these days - I think are worth sharing, you’ll get Monday evening reading. It won’t be every week, but likely more often than not. There’s nothing wrong with link love! Once again, I culled this down from the truckload of posts I get from over 100 Substacks to which I subscribe (and maybe you should too.)

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Go ahead and read these pieces, then come back and see what I have to say.

Now because I missed last week for a Monday memory, let me warn you: this one is locked and loaded. Unlike last time, though, I’m holding off on Monday memories so the next couple will be smaller, with just a week’s worth of goodies.

You know, I don’t think is one of those who lets moss grow under his feet. But it’s not a bad philosophy to want to live life to the fullest, being reminded that it doesn’t last forever.

Offensive with Dan Hollaway

Memento Mori

There is a particular kind of life that looks, from the outside, like everything is fine…

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a month ago · 9 likes · Dan Hollaway

The story goes that when a Roman general returned from conquest — triumphant, garlanded, riding through the city while the crowds cheered — a slave would ride beside him in the chariot. And that slave’s job was to whisper in his ear, again and again, throughout the triumph: memento mori. Remember that you will die.

The greatest moment of a man’s public life, and beside him stands death, whispering.

That was not cruelty. It was wisdom. It was the recognition that triumph is one of the most dangerous moments in a man’s life — not because it is bad, but because it is intoxicating. Because success has a way of persuading a man that the ordinary rules no longer apply to him. That he has earned exemption from mortality, from duty, from the obligations that govern lesser men.

And because artificial intelligence has the capability to dull our senses like complacency can, this seemed a good time to listen to my friend .

Justin’s Substack

Reject the Anti-Human Impulse and A.I.

Listen, America. The gates were never stormed. No barbarian horde thundered at the walls with torch and spear. Instead, the sentries opened the portals at night, smiling, while smooth-voiced salesmen in tailored suits whispered of progress, security, and the shining future. The Trojan horses rolled in on flatbeds and fiber-optic cables — windowless fort…

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a month ago · 17 likes · 7 comments · Justin Smith

Do not be deceived by the public relations gloss. These centers are not primarily for your cat videos, your banking, or even your medical records — though they will control those too. They are incubators for something far more ambitious: superintelligent AI intended to render human labor, human creativity, and ultimately human decision-making obsolete.

Observe the pattern. Human creators are demonetized and deprioritized on platforms. AI-generated content floods the channels. The physical infrastructure rises in tandem: warehouses of GPUs training models on stolen data, vast neural architectures that learn to mimic, then surpass, then replace.

We have to remember AI can be a useful tool, but no more than that. That point is echoed by , who sees it from the Christian perspective.

JD Rucker

Christians Should Use AI With Caution and Discernment or They Shouldn’t Use It at All

The Barna Group dropped a study last week that should have set off alarms in every pulpit in America, and judging by the silence, it largely hasn’t. Roughly 48 percent of practicing Christians told researchers they trust artificial intelligence’s advice on how to grow spiritually. Among Gen Z and millennials, 40 percent now say s…

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a month ago · 36 likes · 20 comments · JD Rucker

The most damning figure in the entire report is not the percentage of laypeople trusting AI. It is the disconnect among the clergy. Forty-one percent of pastors now use AI for Bible study and sermon preparation. Only 12 percent say they feel equipped to teach their congregations how to handle it.

(…)

Honesty demands an admission and I definitely do not want to be a hypocrite. Artificial intelligence is a remarkable tool for studying the Bible; I use it every day. It can run instant concordance work, pull Greek and Hebrew roots, cross-reference passages across all sixty-six books faster than a Strong’s exhaustive lookup, and surface historical and cultural context that would take a layperson hours to compile. Used rightly, AI is the most accessible Bible study assistant in church history. The danger is not the tool. The danger is what the Christian then does with the tool’s output, and which tool the Christian chooses.

I’m probably not one to talk because my Bible is on my phone, but the best way to know Scripture is to read and study it yourself with proven, time-tested resources.

The same goes for our Constitution - which, by the way, is on a paper copy in the stand next to my chair - and is getting notice with this one.

Jack’s Substack - One Man's Opinion

Good Intentions Do Not Amend the Constitution

“How do you justify your position?” my critics ask…

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a month ago · 14 likes · 2 comments · Jack Sotallaro

My moral duties come from God; my view of federal authority comes from the Constitution.

I find no contradiction in that. I find no confusion in trying, as much as I am able, to live consistently with what God commands while also insisting that civil government operate within the limits placed upon it. Charity is not unconstitutional. Mercy is not unconstitutional. Feeding the hungry is not unconstitutional. Helping the poor is not unconstitutional. But none of those statements answer the actual constitutional question. The question is not whether a thing is kind. The question is not whether a program is popular. The question is not whether some federal agency can produce a glossy report explaining why the program is helpful. The question is whether the federal government has been granted the authority to do it.

That is the question Washington avoids like a subpoena.

They avoid it like a subpoena because they know the answer isn’t one they would like. But this has been an issue ever since our founding, which is a topic right up ’s alley. It doesn’t matter so much as to who “Brutus” was, since AI brought up the question, but how correct he became.

Squandering Our American Inheritance

Will the Real Brutus Please Stand Up

Was Melancton Smith the real author of the Brutus essays…

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a month ago · 7 likes · Liz LaSorte

Whomever the actual author of Brutus was, and it does look like it was Melancton Smith, it does not change the fact that Brutus was Right about Everything!

That question segues into a message about the here and now from - if the GOP wants to hold onto Congress, perhaps they need to address the most important issue of all: the economy, stupid.

AND Magazine

An Open Letter To Every GOP State And County Committee In The Country

The political center in this country is liquifying. People are white-hot angry. America does not work for them anymore. They want change. They demand change. If the GOP does not provide solutions, Americans will look for answers from an increasingly radical Democratic Party…

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a month ago · 108 likes · 20 comments · Sam Faddis

The GOP is doing nothing of consequence to change any of this. It pretends none of this is happening. It fields candidates who talk of “bipartisanship” and compromise. The party lives, it seems, in some alternate universe where all is well, and the future is bright. Americans are holding on for dear life and losing what little faith they have left in the system. Republican senators and representatives pump out newsletters touting changes to state license plates, the next Lincoln Day dinner, and the renaming of a bridge at a county park.

The apparent presumption here is that Americans have nowhere to go politically, that the increasingly radical Democratic alternative is unpalatable and unacceptable. That is a gross and potentially fatal miscalculation.

Once again, it’s time for some bold colors and not pale pastels. Say what you will about the socialism of Zohran Mamdani or the communism of Graham Platner, but there’s an appeal to those on the wrong side of our economy, including many in Generation Z. It’s a bold color of communist red, not a pastel shade of rewarmed bromides the Republicans tried when a Bush was president.

, a man of the Left, asks the obvious question since the electric and natural gas bills are too damn high.

BIG by Matt Stoller

"Where’s all the f&$*#ing money going?" The Waste and Costs of American Utilities

If there’s one obvious thing about this political moment, it’s that voters are furious about paying so much for electricity. In 2023, 70 million adults chose to forego food and medicine so they could afford their utility bills. Powerlines found dozens of significant rate hikes last year, as the price of electricity…

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a month ago · 440 likes · 53 comments · Matt Stoller

Investor-owned utilities, often consolidated into increasingly huge holding companies, have been hiking for years, which presumably should be bringing in a gusher of cash to fix the problems they observe with extreme weather and reliability. Yet we are constantly hearing that the U.S. doesn’t have a good electric grid, that we can’t keep up with demand, that China keeps expanding massively while we are stagnant.

If we’ve been paying so much more for so long, why do we still need more investment? Where’s all the f&$*#ing money going?

You know that I’m far from the biggest fan of solar and wind power, but we still have too many incentives for companies to waste their money on those boondoggles because they know ratepayers will pay the freight.

Maybe government is wasting their money on roads as well, at least according to .

The Freedom Scale

Thanks for the Flat Tire, Rochester

Dinner at Delmonico‘s Steak House was lovely—all the more so because it was paid for with a stack of gift certificates. My wife (unsurprisingly, if you know her) got the filet mignon with a shrimp add-on. I don’t normally get pasta, but I decided to try their lasagna. We split a meatball appetizer, and we each had one well-crafted old-fashioned. We jawe…

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a month ago · 42 likes · 58 comments · Christopher Cook

Government is, for all intents and purposes, a racket: a monopoly of force whose primary incentive is to solidify its dominance and expand its forcible extractions from productive people. It will continue those extractions no matter what the condition of its roads. Because it can.

Case in point number two: just ask about how California not only can’t make the trains run on time but can’t even finish the railroad.

There’s nothing there. There are rail lines, but they run into an empty and unpeopled yard next to a bunch of dirt. There are no construction materials. There are no construction workers. There are no warehouses. They ran a bunch of trains in, posed in front of them, and then returned the site to its normal empty condition. Nothing is happening there.

Someone has those billions, but it’s not us. Maybe knows, but my friend has a beef with how her resignation was covered.

The Whole American Catalog

Never Underestimate How Disgusting The "Free Press" Can Be

“She was pushed out by the White House,” a source familiar with Gabbard’s departure told Reuters. “The White House has been unhappy with ​her for quite some time…

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a month ago · 46 likes · 20 comments · David Wolosik

He ends it the right way, though:

Considering the gravity and seriousness of the situation, not one of the stories I initially referenced offered any best wishes or hope or prayers for a good outcome. I urge you to say a prayer for Abraham’s full and speedy recovery from this ordeal.

Now I have something from someone new who just has a sneaking hunch that chatty stranger approaching him isn’t who he says he is. Welcome to .

Wilds of the Pacific NW

Why I don't respond to communication attempts

It all started with the FBI field team visit two days after Biden’s “We’ve been patient” speech about Covid vaccine deniers, insisting they were going to start making ‘lists’ of said folks…

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a month ago · 20 likes · 2 comments · Ken Smith

So, why am I telling you all this? Who gives a crap about an old dude out in the country, just living his life and never bothering anybody?

Because once I started really using Notes here on substack, I have been ‘pinged’ at least 4 times by women in the Chats page, which I never use.

They’re all attractive, judging by their pictures. Why they would be interested in talking with a 72-year old bald dude who’s happily married is a good question.

So, ladies, not that I don’t like chatting with attractive females, but with my past history in mind, I will not respond to your ‘Hi’ messages. You’re probably a 50-something bald glowie, anyway, and homie aint interested.

I’ve dealt with that for years: it’s amazing how many hot women half or less my age follow me and want to chat. Sorry, ladies, I’m taken.

Way, way too long for e-mail once again as I try to include all the goodies pent up from a couple weeks. Regardless, all that should keep a good reader going and thinking for awhile. It’s a great way to start the week, right?

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.

And say what you will about AI, but it seems to be the trend right now in making promotional posters. I popped this in because it works with the photo caption up top. This is what I need my knee to heal for, except it doesn’t have the date (June 13-14.)

As always on the last Saturday of the month, I have the interesting stuff that stuck around in my inbox and bookmarks - anywhere from a few sentences to a handful of paragraphs, but not long enough to stand alone as a post. Since Memorial Day was Monday, I missed the holiday weekend this time.

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Another festival bites the dust

Back in April I wrapped up the itineraries series on my sister site The Knothole with a lament about how I couldn’t place a stop in my hometown because a longstanding festival there had come to an unexpected close and won’t be held this year.

Well, not a week later I read the news that yet another local festival here in Salisbury, the Maryland Folk Festival, won’t happen this year either “due to funding challenges following a difficult sponsorship and grant cycle.” The city pulled the plug even though many previous sponsors had already committed to 2026, at least according to the MFF’s social media. Given the issues the City of Salisbury is having with their budget, including the successful effort to dissolve the city’s collective bargaining agreement with the police and fire departments, my initial guess was that the Folk Festival was a budgetary frill the city decided it had to do without since they chip in quite a bit for the affair. Turned out I was prescient.

In fact, Salisbury mayor Randy Taylor noted that:

Over its five-year run, before me, the National Folk Festival cost the City of Salisbury approximately $4 million in direct expenses, even after dedicated support from sponsors like Perdue, the Henson Foundation, Chesapeake Utilities, and Tidal Health. Those partnerships mattered and helped offset substantial costs. However, the remaining shortfall was absorbed by the city—meaning taxpayers ultimately carried the burden.

When you break that down, the festival represented a significant annual financial commitment, $250K per event day -- or $750K per weekend. Are we still having fun? For a city our size, that level of spending requires careful scrutiny given a host of competitive uses. The reality is this: the event was launched without a sustainable long term funding model in place to match its scale and was just hemorrhaging cash.

A lot of the local liberals bitched up a storm - they already hate Mayor Taylor, a Republican (although city elections are technically nonpartisan) who won a three-way election in 2023 with a plurality when two liberal Democrats split the remaining vote, for taking away their precious rainbow crosswalks - but passing the bucket as they did at the MFF each year wasn’t enough to save the event. While it will leave yet another hole in the local event calendar, the city vowed to try and come up with some sort of community event for 2027, although it may or may not be the same type of cultural icon.

The guide is out!

If you’re a Republican in Maryland, you are in luck because iVoterGuide is covering the federal races for the state’s upcoming primary June 26. (Reverse engineers: the address is the Government Office Building in Salisbury.)

They won’t tell you who to vote for but have looked through what they can regarding the state’s candidates for Congress and Governor. (Nine candidates are running for the GOP nod for Governor, while Republican nominees for Attorney General and Comptroller are already set.) On the other hand, Congressman Andy Harris drew a primary challenger so that race is covered as well.

As for Delaware, there will eventually be a look at the two federal races, but that will be later this summer. (Disclosure: while I have done work for iVoterGuide in the past - including Maryland - I have not been asked to input on Delaware’s candidates so far this year.) That will be interesting because I already have looked into some of the information - their training for what to look for comes in handy - and we’ll see if I agree with them.

A reminder: weather is not climate

Being originally from the Midwest, I’m perhaps a little more tornado-savvy than most around here, although the natives here have me beat when it comes to hurricanes and nor’easters. Regardless, back in March we had a rough night with a few tornadoes causing heavy damage in isolated areas of the Delmarva, and just a few weeks before that we had a significant snowstorm that blacked out thousands on the peninsula, including us for several hours. (Luckily it was right after my first knee surgery so I didn’t have to go to work.)

Of course, the powers that be claim “this is what climate change looks like in Delaware,” but a more sober analysis by the Caesar Rodney Institute made it clear that it’s more of a natural fluctuation.

NOAA’s records show that Delaware’s annual tornadoes counts have varied since 1950, with some quiet years and some active ones, but no clear increasing trend over time. Looking at the number of days with a recorded tornado tells a similar story: a lot of variability, but no obvious upward pattern.

This does not mean tornadoes are unimportant, only that our long-term records here do not show the steady rise implied by DNREC’s phrase “more frequent tornadoes and extreme storms.”

One thing I will say is that reporting and meteorology has improved a lot over that time, so I daresay that the better technology explains the lack of tornado-free years since about 2010, which is a trend I noticed. (Then again, the 1990s were less than tranquil here as well and there weren’t as many SUVs on the road back then.)

But with that modern technology and training, tornadoes that briefly touched down in some rural area where a spotter may not have been there to see it in person are now caught by their radar signature, and damage assessment afterward can tell the tale. To me, that explains more of the perceived increase than climate change where mankind has little influence except for the hot air government regularly bloviates.

More DExit news

Earlier this month, I was informed by the Delaware House Republicans that:

More than 60 public companies, with a combined market cap of over $3 trillion, have reportedly quit the state in the past two years alone.

Delaware’s legacy as the nation’s preeminent corporate home has reaped huge benefits for the state, providing more than a third of all state revenue through tax collections, fees, and the recovery of escheated (abandoned) property.

However, headline-grabbing corporate disputes, the perceived unpredictability of Delaware’s Chancery Court decisions, and tax measures passed by the General Assembly have led some major corporations, including Tesla, Meta, SpaceX, Coinbase, and Dropbox, to flee the state and incorporate in Texas and Nevada--two states that have aggressively been angling to tap into that profitable revenue stream.

This came on the heels of an effort backed by Elon Musk to get companies to leave Delaware because our courts ruled against his compensation. As I noted back in April of last year, quoting the movement:

The Leave Delaware movement is dedicated to shining a light on what we perceive as corruption, bias, and overreach within the Delaware Court of Chancery. Our movement is driven by a commitment to transparency, justice, and the principle that the legal system should serve all equally, without favor or prejudice.

I also pointed out that the response by then-newly elected Governor Matt Meyer was to increase taxes on the rest of us to make up for that shortcoming yet maintain the bloated state budget. That’s what nearly twenty years of a Democrat trifecta will get you.

And it’s interesting reading the coverage which points out corporations believe they are no longer receiving a fair shake in the state. One would think these judges would pay mind to the golden goose, but they seem to have other interests in mind. The rest of us will pay for it, right?

A note of optimism

To be in a third party as I am, I have to grudgingly accept that victories will be few and far between, particularly when you haven’t even made it to ballot access in your state.

But hope springs eternal: otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this Substack. So, I got a missive from the Constitution Party telling me author feels the same way. Curious, I looked him up on his Substack.

In a somewhat stunning example of life imitating art, Independents are going to win elections of major consequence this year in America. Are you skeptical? I’ll bet you a dollar. With just six months left until the midterms there appear to be one or two Senate races, one or two Gubernatorial races and between two and four races for seats in the House Of Representatives where Independent candidates not affiliated with either of the two current major parties (or owned by corporate donors) have realistic chances to win. That has never happened before in this country. Is it a blip or a harbinger of a major shift in the political landscape?

Now I see the caveat about “or owned by corporate donors” that could be his out, so he may save his dollars. (On the other hand, neither “independent” Senator is on the ballot this year.)

But here’s the hope, as he expresses:

A fictional novel can provide a roadmap for political reform. When Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was published it led to the passage of numerous food safety laws and the creation of the FDA. Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck was the impetus behind several reforms related to workers’ rights. My book, A Real Collusion, is not a cautionary tale. It isn’t a manifesto replete with a list of complaints against the current political system. It is a hopeful and inspiring illustration of what happens when ordinary people do extraordinary things. It explains why change is not impossible; it is inevitable. The tricky thing about change is that it sometimes moves too slowly to observe, and it often happens incrementally, a little bit at a time. It’s still inevitable. The Whigs and the Torries would agree if any still existed. Watch the midterm results in November. You’re gonna owe me a buck.

Now I would peg Stu as a little more left-leaning than I am, but it takes all kinds and the Constitution Party may be looking for any port in a storm. (Honestly, the difference between Left and Right these days isn’t all that large since both sides pretty much ignore the idea of limited government.) Nevertheless, it’s a good way to sell a book, and since I like books maybe I’ll check it out.

You just gotta laugh

Oh, I’m sure those with a stick up their rear end will tut-tut us about the dignity of the Presidential office and all that, but sometimes you just have to laugh and this got a loud guffaw out of me. As far as Stephen Colbert is concerned, it was pegged just about right.

Amazing what advancements AI can provide us, right? All right, just laugh. We deserve it.

So that’s enough for now. We’ll see what I come up with next month.

Until my next edition of odds and ends, you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.

Last Wednesday I talked about how news coverage has devolved into the horserace aspect between the red team and the blue team. But because most sources of mainstream news are left-leaning, they tend to dismiss certain issues that are really important to people or - worse - play up things that folks really don’t care about in their everyday lives. The hype over climate change has been one example - unfortunately, much bad policy has been brought on because those few who do care about the issue also have the wherewithal to make those changes, to our detriment.

On the Republican side of things, the same goes for so-called “electability.” For years, party leaders have correctly stressed that they can’t bring about change if they don’t hold office; however, corollary to that is the notion that, in order to bring about necessary change, you should govern in bold colors rather than pale pastels - the model of Ronald Reagan, who by the way, never worked with a Republican House yet showed leadership and got along well enough with Democrat House Speaker Tip O’Neill to get lasting results. It didn’t hurt that he was the Great Communicator and could get the people behind him to convince the opposition to go along with needed reforms.

But Reagan was a once-a-generation leader. Instead, it’s been my experience that Republicans, who are easily cowed by the media, govern in such a way that they become the pale pastels. My home state of Ohio is littered with those examples to a point where their state government could hardly be called conservative despite long stints with a GOP trifecta.

Knowing this, imagine what it’s like to be in a state which is almost hopelessly Democrat, such as the state in which I work, Maryland. While there are several GOP primary candidates for Governor this year, the state’s Republicans are basically split into two camps: they either support the blend of populist conservatism preached by Dan Cox or the ”electability” of former Democrat Ed Hale. To give you a clue as to the state of the Maryland GOP, without one election being held the Democrats already have 19 seats won in the State Senate and 68 seats won in the State House because no Republican ran in those districts. (Majorities are 24 and 71 in those bodies, respectively - so the R’s would have to practically run the table in contested elections to gain a majority and that’s not happening.)

Unfortunately for Cox, regardless of how good he is on the issues, people would point to the fact that he was absolutely obliterated in the 2022 election, losing by 32 points to current Governor Wes Moore. Moore had over twice as many votes as Cox, who got zero support from former Republican governor Larry Hogan. (Rather than be loyal to his party, Hogan got in a snit and stopped caring about the race when his choice for Governor, Kelly Schulz, lost in the GOP primary. But that was par for the course for Larry.) That’s the contention of the Hale side, who would accept a platform with the depth of a pie tin just to have a Republican back in the governor’s mansion. The obvious question: would he stand up against the excesses of the radical Democrat Maryland General Assembly? Larry Hogan seldom did and sold out Eastern Shore farmers and Western Maryland energy interests, among most of the rest of Maryland, somewhere along the line in the process.

Basically, what a state like Maryland or Delaware needs is a Republican candidate for Governor who comes across as a moderate (so as not to scare off the suburban housewives who aren’t quite hip to the merits of conservatism on social issues) but will also have the stones to say, “If the Democrats in our General Assembly pass x or y, it will be vetoed and I will use my bully pulpit to tell you why I’m vetoing it, for the good of the people.” It would then be up to the people who care to melt the phone lines and line up at the offices of Democrats and say, “you better sustain this veto.”

Not that I will ever run for office again, but if I did, my philosophy would be one of practically every bill I introduce would have the word “repeal” in it: repeal green regulations, repeal excessive taxation, repeal gay “marriage” and unfettered abortion rights, and so on. But realizing I’m over here at the edge of the Bell Curve, what we need are the candidates who will lead the transition to that point. The hard part is finding that sweet spot to kick off the process.

We all know conservative Republican governance works well whereas liberals tend to make places into shitholes - otherwise, Florida and Texas would be backwater states and people would flock to California for its pleasant climate. As we know, the opposite is occurring. Perhaps voting with one’s feet is working too well for places like ours where the conservative population is bailing, but I’m going to stay and fight for at least a little while. Crappy government shouldn’t be a reason one has to move when we can change it.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.

It was one family’s effort to make something good out of tragedy.

In 2005 Delaware native Chad Clifton was KIA in Iraq as part of the Iraqi War. Parents Richard and Terri Clifton memorialized their son in two ways: one, a collection of his writings to fulfill the promise she made to him to tell his story if he didn’t make it home (which turned into a book called A Random Soldier) and, secondly, carrying on his love of local music by putting together an annual benefit concert. (Here’s more of the story.)

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Somewhere in a closet we still have the book, but my memories are more of the concerts, which became a staple of our Memorial Day weekend Sunday. One obvious reason was hearing our friends Jim and Michele Hogsett play, oftentimes as the full band of Semiblind but also as a duo to fill time between acts. (Generally, there were 10 to 12 bands and acoustic players for a show that run from noon to sunset.) The beneficiaries were the Chad Clifton Foundation as well as Guitars for Vets, an organization that teaches veterans to play the instrument as a way of dealing with their PTSD.

The event ran for about a dozen years, with most of that time spent outside at the pavilion belonging to American Legion Post 28 outside Long Neck, Delaware. Somehow an issue came up between the post and the organizers, so the last rendition I’m aware of was performed at a park in Milton, Delaware. This was back in 2019, so I suspect the pandemic claimed another victim. (The last event also added other beneficiaries.)

As shows go, it made for an interesting afternoon between the modest car show in the nearby parking lot, the food, and the music, which ranged from oldies to blues to acoustic, classic, and heavy rock. The only requirement was that some band would play Paint It Black, which was Chad’s favorite song.

But one thing that always amazed me about the local music scene was how willing bands were to give a little bit of their time for a cause. Being a holiday weekend, I know there were years that Semiblind was double-booked for the day but they always came to play.

And because this blogger was always looking for content, I featured the CRS numerous times - generally once as part of a general Memorial Day weekend wrapup in combination with our local Memorial Day ceremony, and once as a Weekend of Local Rock segment. Unfortunately, my photos were lost on some of the years I did this, but it looks like I managed to keep something from 2013 including the WLR piece, the 2014 WLR review, 2015 and the WLR for that year - which I believe was the last time we saw Michele play before her passing - and the 2016 event and WLR. That was the last one held at Post 28, and it got a nice little writeup in the local Cape Gazette.

It’s only been a few years, but the time seems like forever ago because so much has changed in all of our lives. Maybe that change has prevented me from knowing that bands who care still do these sorts of shows, but I’m not so sure that the music business hasn’t changed so much as to discourage them - things are now all about content creation.

I was actually trying to come up with something else to say about this, but then a piece I read yesterday from made more sense than anything I could come up with. By its nature Memorial Day has sort of a somber mood to it, but the Cliftons chose another meaning.

The men and women who gave the last full measure did not do so in the hope that the survivors would walk through life with their heads down, guilty and joyless. They did it so that children could run without fear. So that artists could create without censorship. So that a farmer could tend his field and a teacher could tell the truth and young people could build families. To live fully — to love freely, to work hard at something meaningful, to laugh easily, to raise children who know what it is to be safe — is to honor what was given. Joy is not disrespectful to sacrifice. It was the purpose of their sacrifice.

There was a time when a mother’s love for her son and desire to make something good of his passing worked here in Slower Lower Delaware. It’s still in my memory, and hopefully it reminded you of all those times in yours.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.

2 1/2 weeks ago I wrote the following:

While Delaware is the First State, it is also the only state where citizens generally have no say over their Constitutional amendments.

(…)

Of course, it’s certain that Democrats like the process as currently composed because they run it and don’t have to gain approval from those nasty, icky voters. Therefore, I say it’s time to tell them to grow a pair and become responsible to the people by calling a convention to allow the people a voice on these important changes. (And then it’s on thoughtful people like us to secure a majority vote in the next election.)

This updated idea isn’t for a con-con, but something similar which would at last give the people a voice in changing the state Constitution.

House Bill 440, introduced by Rep. Kerri Evelyn Harris and co-sponsored by Sen. Kyra Hoffner, would speed up the process of adopting Constitutional amendments by placing them on the ballot after first passage instead of waiting for the next General Assembly session.

The revised process per the legislation would be as follows:

1. Secure 2/3 approval in the originating chamber (28 votes in House, 14 in Senate.)

2. Secure 2/3 approval in the opposite chamber.

3. On the next General Election ballot (even-numbered year, such as 2026) secure approval from the voters with a minimum of 55% of the total vote.

4. If approval is not forthcoming from voters, the process can be continued as present law allows, with 2/3 approval in both chambers in the next session.

As explained by Delaware Live, “Delawareans deserve a direct voice when it comes to changes to our Constitution,” Harris said in announcing the legislation.

“Our Constitution is the foundation of our rights and our government, and decisions with that kind of lasting impact should include the people of Delaware," said Harris in WRDE-TV coverage. "This legislation will finally give voters an opportunity to directly weigh in on proposed constitutional changes.”

She’s right, but there are two provisions in HB440 which bother me.

Number one is that 55% of the vote, to me, is too low of a threshold when it requires 2/3 of both chambers to approve a measure. I’m sure it was a number selected because statewide Democrat candidates generally have that much of the vote in any election. (For example, in 2024 Harris/Walz had 56.63% of the vote, Senator LBR had 56.59%, Rep. Timmy Sarah McBride received 57.86%, Gov. Matt Meyer picked up 56.07%, LG Kyle Evans Gay acquired 55.22%, and Insurance Commissioner Trinidad Navarro got 58.6%.)

It’s amazing how all those races ended up just in that narrow band of approval just above the 55% threshold selected, isn’t it? A 2/3 margin would insure the buy-in of Republicans and Independents, and not just more bullying by the thin majority.

Secondly, even if the Democrats can’t get that number at the ballot box, they would still likely be able to muscle through anything they want the old-fashioned way in the next session. Unless that amendment loss is accompanied by a catastrophic meltdown of the majority, they’ll just ram their desires through despite the public rejection. To me, the opportunity of going to the ballot box should come with the risk of the process ending without further proceedings. If Democrats are insistent on messing up the Constitution, they should have to start all over the next cycle if people don’t give 2/3 support.

While my original offer of a Con-Con still stands as the best alternative, I could accept a revised HB440 with the changes as outlined above. As it is, all I see is a little bit of pandering and cynicism from the majority, lip service instead of needed reform.

But I am impressed at the spread of the idea I had, whether accidental or not. I have to believe that someone with more pull than I had read what I have to say about the matter since no one else was talking about this a month ago.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.

Maybe the mistake was embracing CNN back when it was created in 1980.

Since then, it has spawned a number of cable news competitors, with MSNOW occupying the Left, CNN perhaps in the left-center, and FOX News on the right. I suppose you can count fellow righties One America News and Newsmax in the group as they fill up time, too. (It wouldn’t shock me to find out about a couple far-left outlets, but as you’ll see I’m not a connoisseur of cable news.)

I did a quick look at cable news ratings, and among the big three back in April there were an average total of 5 million daily viewers, give or take. (I would guess you could add another half-million aggregate among the lesser sites on the Right and Left.) That means that the other 335 million of us have tuned out of the 24/7 news cycle, although that doesn’t consider the millions of people who get their news from either the internet sites associated with the cable news networks or the old-school network news. They just take it at their convenience, which risks the prospect of receiving outdated news. (That’s really true about those who only read social media.)

As a Delaware-based blogger, I check out some of the state sites, but most of my inspiration for pieces and news comes from various organizations I receive e-mail from - and yes, they are generally on the Right. If I want the Left, I just read the mainstream media. For my other job, I generally read a variety of mostly right-leaning sources, but sometimes I will borrow something from the Left if it occurs to me to use it and it’s appropriate - a blind squirrel and all that.

But it seems that five million or so have an outsized portion of the national conversation. Take the recent protests on the Left where support was drummed up by nonstop news coverage, both locally and nationally. On the other hand, how much support did the March for Life get when it occurred back in January? (That only gets attention when Nick Sandmann is in attendance.)

And the reason I led off with the meme is that these networks seem to cover the stupidest things. Well, maybe stupid is the wrong word, but the coverage has become overly political-centric: we only look at the important issues as far as the horserace between the red team and blue team is concerned. You see the same talking heads recycled between cable and network TV outlets, people mainly based in Washington, D.C. Perhaps that’s why podcasts have become so popular, because they feature other voices we don’t generally hear. Honestly, what makes a Congressman an expert on anything besides getting re-elected?

But I also remember the opposite, which briefly occurred in the early days of the TEA Party, a time where common people turned organizers briefly grabbed the stage. Unfortunately, eventually network news figured out the roster of people they preferred to talk to and dubbed them the so-called spokespeople. Of course, if one said something out of turn or deemed offensive, they became the de facto representative spokesperson - Mark Williams, who contributed to my TEA Party book as an early leader, comes to mind in that aspect because he wrote a satirical letter on his personal blog that offended the NAACP. Oh, was that movement beat over the head for months about that, and pretty much every bit of dirt which could be brought up about those people was.

That media anal exam scared off a lot of good people who otherwise may have been good leaders. As William F. Buckley once said, “I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.” But those 400 people are likely worried more about running their own lives than participating in the process, aside from voting (which only 200-300 do for a Presidential election, far less for municipal or state.)

Back in the day, it used to be a sensation when people got their picture in the paper or (if they were lucky) were interviewed on the local news. Now, even at the local level, they seem to recycle the same people and cover the same old things, such as the No Kings protest. Perhaps that’s because the local news, in many cases, has gone national with conglomerates like Sinclair Broadcasting owning a number of stations.

Before 1980 and cable news, we as a people were informed by the local newspaper, TV station, and 30 minutes of national nightly news which supposedly told us “the way it is.” Yet it’s arguable that people were better informed than they are today despite the fact we have the entire world of information at our fingertips as well as AI to fill in the cracks. As a teenager, I used to read the local paper front to back, saving the important sections for last (comics and sports.) Admittedly, I merely glanced through the national news but paid more attention to local items because they were more interesting to me. Maybe that’s why I like my local sources of news and just overviews of national items instead of the granular coverage of shouting matches and disagreements. (That’s reflected, too, in my Substack preferences where I like my peer group of state-based or topical Substacks over those with a national news scope. My ideal is the one with less than 1,000 subscribers because they are the hidden gems.)

We’re never going to go back to the old ways, but can we at least escape from our information silos? There is an interesting Delaware-based blog I’ll soon subscribe to once I see that he’s serious and not just a social media maven. (It seems like he uses the social media to drive the Substack, which I do the other way around.) Yes, it is a left-leaning one, but his takes are important to read as well - if for nothing else than to find out what the other side feels and their viewpoint. Perhaps it’s a product of our state being a Democrat trifecta and a lot of Republican representatives leaving office, but I have to know what the Left is up to in order to pave the way for sanity.

I’m not going to lie to you: I have a viewpoint that’s “barely left of militia,” honed by my interest in hewing to the originalist viewpoint of the Constitution and the limited government envisioned therein. It’s my opinion that we would be far better off if the states and local governments ran most of the show, with the federal government in the background handling the national issues like defense, the Supreme Court, and other Article 1, Section 8 items. Admittedly, that puts me at the far end of the Bell Curve but I’m okay with that: my judge isn’t the public but someday will be my Lord and I’m striving to hear, “well done, good and faithful servant.” If I can help pave the way for more to join me in hearing that, I’ve done my job.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.

When I get to between six and eight posts - well, more like ten to twelve these days - I think are worth sharing, you’ll get Monday evening reading. It won’t be every week, but likely more often than not. There’s nothing wrong with link love! Once again, I culled this down from the truckload of posts I get from over 100 Substacks to which I subscribe (and maybe you should too.)

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Go ahead and read these pieces, then come back and see what I have to say.

Now because I missed last week for a Monday memory, let me warn you: this one is locked and loaded. Once again, I’ve decided to tee up a Monday memory for next week so the first one in June will be similar.

Let’s start this one with a bang from .

Jack’s Substack

Trump's Coolest, Savviest, Political Move Ever?

Speaking in West Palm Beach Friday, President Trump said something that got me thinking. "Elton John told me when you hit it big, you leave," said Trump. "And here we are.” He was referring specifically to being asked to take questions after a climactic standing ovation, but obviously the John quote had resonated with him…

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2 months ago · 242 likes · 109 comments · Jack Cashill

Presuming a successful denouement in Iran, Trump will have “hit it big” come July when the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary. As disruptive as Trump has been as president, he will be spectacularly more disruptive when he hands the reins over to J.D. Vance months before the November mid-terms.

Think this through, though. Since Trump wouldn’t be allowed to run again, he’s been through umpteen assassination attempts, and he turns 80 next month on Flag Day, would that be an unprecedented move? The only problem I see with that timetable is that it gives J.D. Vance over a half-term when the smarter play would be to resign after January 20, 2027 and allow for an extra term of the Trump/Vance team (a total of 12 years since Vance would be allowed to run in both 2028 and 2032.)

But don’t expect the TDS Left to go away - it would just shift to VDS.

I can always count on to bring us back to sobering reality.

Gingrich 360

The Empire of Liberty Versus the Coalition of Tyranny

We are in a long-term global conflict between the Empire of Liberty and the Coalition of Tyranny…

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2 months ago · 44 likes · 1 comment · Newt Gingrich

It has been impossible for our foreign policy and national security “experts” to explain what is happening because we have not had the right focus and the right language framework.

The natural tendency is to focus narrowly, locally, and on immediate events. This is strengthened by our news media’s need to fill 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with “instant news” and “breaking news”. There is remarkably little long-term analysis and thinking. What does exist tends to have been shaped by the memories of the Cold War and the assumptions of the last 40 years.

The only problem with Newt’s analysis is that he might be too close to the issue. looks at the real state of the GOP.

In This Dimension

Dear GOP establishment,

It is past obvious to anyone with functioning brain cells that you do not want the majority that we voters mistakenly gave you. You prefer being in the minority position. It’s easier, pays the same, same perks, same campaign slogans year after year after decade. No thinking required - which is why it suits you…

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2 months ago · 7 likes · 4 comments · In This Dimension

As an aside, in 1981, excited by Reagan, I dropped by the local GQP HQ in South Pasadena, CA, to express my interest in getting involved, and perhaps one day running for office. I was out of college a couple of years, well-employed by IBM, I’m a smart guy... I figured maybe I could help make a difference.

An older establishment guy took me into a back room and told me something that I have not forgotten in the intervening years: “Once you’re elected, you need to do exactly what we say, not what you think. The party knows best.”

Being an adult, thinking person, I walked out and never went back.

I enjoyed the time I spent in the Maryland GOP, but I can see Scipio’s main point because it reflects in the Delaware GOP, where issues go from being important to mere talking points as elections loom. They never really try to sell a pro-liberty alternative because those people supposedly aren’t electable. Well, neither are a lot of the pale pastels you’re featuring now.

Maybe what we need is and his take. He almost got a double dip this week (I used Alexander’s above post on the GOP instead) but this was probably better anyway: he reminds us that America is a Godly Constitutional republic.

Jack’s Substack - One Man's Opinion

The Law Is Not a Suggestion,

There is a childish kind of politics loose in the country now, and it comes dressed in very serious clothes. It talks about justice. It talks about compassion. It talks about rights, fairness, democracy, progress, reform, resistance, and moral urgency. But beneath all the decoration, too much of it comes down to one ugly little idea: the law counts only…

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2 months ago · 8 likes · 1 comment · Jack Sotallaro

My moral duties come from God; my view of federal authority comes from the Constitution. Those are not the same thing, but they do not have to be enemies. God tells me what is right. The Constitution tells the federal government what it is allowed to do. One governs conscience. The other limits power. One is eternal. The other is our national covenant of ordered liberty. Both restrain arrogance. Both rebuke lawlessness. Both stand against the modern belief that power becomes righteous merely because someone captured enough votes, enough judges, enough agencies, or enough microphones.

That’s not unlike my view, as it turns out.

Let’s shift to the Iranian situation. If you listen to , he says we don’t have time to let Iran rebuild its defenses.

AND Magazine

Time To Stop Talking To Iran - Go For The Jugular

A recent leaked CIA intelligence product says that the Iranians can hold out against our blockade for a minimum of three to four months more. CIA is right. As we have detailed exhaustively, the Iranian regime has employed a whole host of measures to extend the time it can resist. Tehran is betting it can outlast us…

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2 months ago · 117 likes · 7 comments · Sam Faddis

This was written about a week ago so some of this may not be true anymore. Given Donald Trump’s mercurial streak, Tehran may be on fire, and this becomes moot:

The Iranians just responded to our latest peace proposal. They told us to drop dead. They told us to surrender. They won’t even talk about dismantling the nuclear program. They want an end to the war. They want us to lift the blockade. They want an end to sanctions, the release of all their frozen assets, and reparations. They want control over the Straits of Hormuz. They want total victory.

Here’s the thing. Tehran may be right. Unless we increase the pressure and alter the timeline, they may be able to outlast us.

When all you have done is lie over the last several decades and wish death to America, why are we even negotiating? It would be foolish to assume that they are doing anything but stalling. I would love to arm the Iranian civilians to help them overthrow the government, but that’s probably a pipe dream now.

You know, has a really good question that deserves an answer:

Squandering Our American Inheritance

Form 4029: The Application for Exemption from Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Waiver of Benefits

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2 months ago · 8 likes · 20 comments · Liz LaSorte

If we were truly a free society, we would be able to opt out of participating in this Ponzi scheme, like Americans from “a recognized religious group that has existed continuously since December 31, 1950.”

(…)

How is allowing a religious group exclusion from being forced to pay in to Social Security not a violation of the 14^th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act? The obvious real answer would be that the Ponzi scheme would crash if we had the choice to opt out.

Nailed it. She had me at “Ponzi scheme,” which has been my definition of Social Security for years. Regardless, I’ve contended that the entitlement should be sunsetted, and those who reach retirement age should have the option to take the lump sum of the employee’s and employer’s contributions instead of a monthly payment.

Otherwise? The result is the welfare state describes.

THE NEW YORK CITIZEN

The American Mouse Trap

THE NEW YORK CITIZEN is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber…

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2 months ago · 14 likes · 8 comments · Nancy Muldoon

How many success stories do we see when people are given free rental assistance, food stamps and other kinds of assistance?

The only success stories will be from people who briefly on assistance and who got off of it the moment they could and never looked back. But those people probably grew up in households where working and doing for yourself was expected.

Not everyone grows up like that.

Now let me ask a question: why is it that conservative women write such strong articles? One of these days I may be able to do an all-female MER because I subscribe to a significant number of good women writers. This one is from , who’s become an MER frequent flyer and has an upcoming book that piques my interest.

Mindy Esposito

NOTES FROM THE RABBIT HOLE.

Anyone who knows me knows I do not sit still…

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2 months ago · 25 likes · 9 comments · Mindy Esposito

The 1991 NAACP resolution did immeasurable damage. Not just to Confederate heritage communities. To the descendants of the very people it claimed to speak for. It handed an entire generation of Black Americans a counterfeit history and called it justice. It told them their ancestors had no story worth telling except as victims. It stripped from them the complexity and the agency and the full humanity of people who lived real lives in a real and complicated world.

That is not civil rights work. That is the same erasure dressed in different language.

The book itself will also be called 1991. It promises to be an interesting read.

I’ve featured and his photojournalism before, but the hypocrisy of declaring an ICE-free zone but missing the real issue is so Los Angeles circa 2026.

The comedic descent into ideological psychosis: driving past the bodies and the drugs and the obvious drug dealers and the people who are locked on unmistakable paths to near-term death, but then proudly hammering a signpost into the ground to announce, but not at a main entrance, that the one thing you won’t tolerate is the presence of people who enforce immigration laws. Stick to respectable behavior like dying in a pool of your piss and vomit.

I’m sure Spencer Pratt (who I hope makes the top 2 in the Los Angeles election so he keeps his Substack up) would address this problem head-on, because Los Angeles (and other cities like it) deserve better.

Finally, this sage advice from my friend .

Justin’s Substack

Love Like the Sun Is Bleeding Out

In the soft hush of a Tennessee evening, where the hills roll like forgotten promises and the air carries the scent of pine and distant rain, a man stands at the edge of his life wondering when it will finally begin. He waits — for the right time, for permission, for someone to whisper that it is okay to chase the fire in his chest. But the truth, as ra…

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a month ago · 14 likes · 3 comments · Justin Smith

I could have blockquoted about twenty paragraphs on this but settled for this one.

Ultimately, this is the human experience: to refuse mere survival and claim a life well-lived. Liberty is not the absence of hardship but the courage to meet it whole. It is the man who signs his own slip, pursues his woman with fire undimmed, raises children who know they are worth burning worlds for, and leaves behind wolves who wake other wolves. Statues crumble and accounts empty, but awakened hearts echo.

Way, way too long for e-mail once again as I try to include all the goodies because next week will be another Monday memory. Regardless, all that should keep a good reader going and thinking for awhile. It’s a great way to start the week, right?

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.

Writing this on my phone at 6 a.m. and seeing if it will transcribe to my laptop once I grab it, like my photo from yesterday on my recovery bed did. (I can always e-mail it to myself as well.) Because I slept on the couch to keep my "toes above my nose" as I was taught, I'm up with the sun this morning. Hopefully Sunday night I will be back in our bed, since that's how I rolled last time. I just have to be mindful of keeping the leg propped up for awhile.

Anyway, as I alluded to a couple posts back, I indeed had my second knee replacement yesterday. Aside from a brief power failure at the hospital (my bet is that it was thanks to construction outside) it went off without a hitch. I just had to wait awhile - arrival at 8 a.m. but went back at 11:15, probably because there was a patient ahead of me (my first surgery back in February was a 5:45 arrival, so I was the first that day) who had to endure the electrical break and minutes with generator power. As a precaution they don't begin outpatient surgery under the generator, which is understandable.

The worst part was sort of funny but a bit scary. I passed the PT at the hospital (a slow stroll down the corridor with a walker and learning how to climb steps while protecting the surgical knee with a cane to stabilize because my steps here at home have a handrail on the "wrong" side for that knee) with flying colors but I also had to pee, and that was an issue with the spinal block I had. Basically, it was a little TOO good, and our recovery nurse said it was a problem with 80% of the guys she had - the nerves and muscles I needed to "go" had to wake up, and the more water you drink the faster that occurs. (It took a little time for me to dribble a bit into a urinal jar after the first surgery but this was ridiculous.) Three cups of water later, l finally got that done, but by the time I got discharge instructions and freed from the IV it was almost 7:00, so I got home about 7:45. A nice, pleasant 12 hour day spent mostly in bed, eh? But the deed is done, thanks to "Dr. Tony" and the medical staff at TidalHealth. They did a great job despite the smartass patient.

So my home for the next few days will be my trusty reclining couch instead of my rocking chair. But if you ask, my pain (which is more of a nagging discomfort than anything) so far is on a level that can be handled with the same Tylenol arthritis I normally take, just a little more frequently as in 3x a day instead of 2x. And thanks to the new knee and no more arthritis therein, I probably can cut that out entirely once I recover - four fewer pills to take.

Fortunately, I have an angel to help me out who the dog will be waking up shortly. (Sun is already up here on the East Coast, so he'll want to go outside.)

Now my wife and I get the fun part, since she's also my chauffeur for the next few weeks until I can safely drive again (since it's my right knee.) The first PT consult is Monday and hopefully I have no setback there this time. (I had staple issues in round 1 so I lost a week of PT. Instead of 6 weeks I finished in 8 weeks of real time.)

But since I have a "good" knee to work with this time my goal in this is to be independent by Independence Day - no walker or cane, just good old Michael power like it used to be. That would be 7 weeks + 1 day and I believe it's doable.

I was hoping to have all this done over the winter so it would be done in time for baseball season, but the Good Lord's timing wasn't that bad. I only miss this Shorebirds home stand and maybe the next one - although if I feel up to it, I may drag my wife and I to a game for that one. I'll just switch to seats in the back row on the concourse to save me walking and steps since my regular seat is closer to the field right behind the dugout. I did this for a couple games at the end of last season when I was forced to use my walker because my knees were finally shot and a significant fall risk - hence the start of this whole journey, which has me nearly 50 pounds lighter to boot.

That homestead fortuitously comes just before a long 2-week road trip (if you read my sister site, The Knothole, you might know this) so I'm hoping by the one six-game June homestand at mid-month (16th - 21st) that my driving, endurance, and ability to traverse steps (perhaps with the cane for a little assistance) will be in order. That series marks the season's halfway point, so I still have quite a bit of baseball to look forward to.

Finally, if you're wondering, as of recently (because my boss wanted this ability himself) I can do my "real job" from home, although AutoCAD on a laptop is definitely slower as I found in round 1. But I will survive and persevere, and honestly, with a good leg to work as opposed to an arthritic one - I may feel up to returning a few days earlier than expected with healing help from my Lord and Savior. I already am an old hand at coordinating PT with my work schedule.

Therefore, here's hoping my final steps on this journey will be fruitful and I'll be able to report on my regained independence on July 4.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.

It was probably about a year ago that Christian artist Jon Reddick put out a great song called No Fear, which opens up this way:

I got enemies at every side
It ain't lookin' good, I ain't gonna lie
Arrows flyin', devil's tryin'
To make me think I'm goin' down this time
You might think that I'd be afraid
Runnin' scared with a shaken faith
But the God I know says it ain't over
The God I know's gonna make a way

Welcome to the summer of 2026, where we have the arrows of high gas prices in part due to an on-and-off war with Iran, unrest in the nation thanks to left-wing protesters, a President in Donald Trump who can best be described as mercurial, and a government that will be celebrating 250 years of independence by trying to make all of us more dependent on it. Conditional on which side wins in November, we as a collective will either have the opposition even angrier at our “fascist Nazi” leadership or endure two years of constant impeachment drumbeat where nothing good gets done.

At the very end of this summer of the semiquincentennial, I will turn 62 years old. That means unless the Good Lord decides to reinstate in me the lifespans of Old Testament protagonists like Adam, Noah or Methuselah, I’m quite a bit closer to the end than the beginning. Having come to that realization, this is why I say on the homepage that “my job is to turn that rocky, thorny, and trod-upon soil into ground receptive to the missionary's seed, just like in Matthew 13.” While I don’t have a ton of time to do it, I now have an advantage of a medium here on my Substack where I have global reach at my fingertips. And it seems to me an easier task if we return to the principle that John Adams espoused in 1798:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. (My emphasis.)

If you believe, however, that government is supposed to legislate morality, that’s a job it shouldn’t have to do. It only does so (poorly) when the people fail to learn and pass on those lessons themselves, and unfortunately I’m part of a generation that fell down on the job in doing so - thus, I’m trying to make up just a little bit for lost time, considering I came to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior at a comparatively old age.

Therefore, as I render unto Caesar what is his, I have a belief that both our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were divinely inspired in order to make America that shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan described in my relative youth. From his Farewell Address:

The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the “shining city upon a hill.” The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.

Until my generation or perhaps extending up into the Millennials, Americans believed they would pass on a better world to their children. But I’ve seen the cracks that developed in that facade when we lost what the Golden Rule is supposed to mean and replaced it with the modern one which states, “he who has the gold, rules.”

I, on the other hand, pine for an America which existed not that long ago:

• The one where we could get together and have the city close the street for a block party where neighbor met neighbor.

• The one where mothers didn’t have to work full-time just to make ends meet and had the chance to be the nurturers they are supposed to be. (That’s not to say working moms are all that bad, but how many would prefer to exclusively raise the kids rather than worry about motherhood plus a career?)

• The one where people came to America to work hard and improve their lot the legal way, not use taxpayers as a cash cow to benefit from their latest scam.

• The one where Sunday mornings were reserved for church, unless of course you were Jewish and attended synagogue on Saturdays. Regardless, religion was an important part of life.

All of these things are choices we can still make, although some require much more sacrifice than others. (As likes to say, “Remember, going to church on Sunday is a Saturday decision.”) I will grant that we have collectively made it much more difficult for the younger generation to achieve what we did (hence my ideas on housing as a way for them to build their lives, with a little assistance from local government) but we can’t throw up our hands and just give up on the idea.

Each night I pray for several things, starting with my family, my church family, our school, and our small group. I pray for our leaders that they have wisdom, courage, and (recently) safety. (To that end, I also pray for a shield of strength for our military as they carry out their missions.)

But I think most importantly, I pray for revival in our land. We should worship God as much or more as He has blessed us. (And among those blessings, I feel I am truly blessed with being led to my wife, who led me to Him.) I think doing that will set us on a path to that city on a hill as well as becoming the “moral and religious people” for whom our Constitution was intended.

Over the next few months, I will talk a lot about the upcoming election as a means to render the land more receptive to the missionary’s seed. But regardless of who wins, we must remember God is in control and He may instead put us through a period of trial we can’t foresee. Just remember, though: that trial is nothing compared to lands where there is no religious freedom and Christians literally put their lives on the line to worship.

God Bless America.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.