Plans to build a skatepark in Brooklyn offer a laudable public works improvement to the city but are still not my style. The freewheeling street surfing possible on a Carver skateboard, however, is as American as it gets.
Category: Web
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Abolishing Diversity Statements Is an Empty Gesture at MIT
Until all aspects of DEI are abolished from universities, public gestures like eliminating this or that aspect of the ideology are mostly empty publicity stunts designed to relieve pressure from embattled administrators.
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Michael Cohen Cannot Save Alvin Bragg’s Absurd Case
Bragg’s case against Donald Trump is a two-legged stool, unable to stand on its own merits. His attempt to shoehorn in testimony from Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen is absurd and a sign of desperation.
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What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
Trump’s VP contest isn’t really about the contestants; it’s about investing the audience in the drama of choosing and the man making the choice. Burgum is just plausible enough to extend that drama.
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American Women Don’t Need a ‘Momala’s Day’
The cringeworthy appearance of Kamala Harris on “The Drew Barrymore Show,” highlights the low regard in which the Biden administration holds both women and motherhood.
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The Making of a Banana Republic
Now that the Rubicon has been crossed and we have entered a world in which politicians attempt to not merely defeat their opposition at the ballot box but also prosecute and incarcerate them, there is no going back.
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The Imperfect Nostalgia of ‘Unfrosted’
Jerry Seinfeld’s otherwise genius combination of childhood nostalgia and comedy is marred by a lack of political temperance that deflates the experience for at least half the audience.
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Packers QB Aaron Rodgers vs. the White Coat Supremacy of Dr. Anthony Fauci
As the football standout has learned in his confrontation with the medical establishment, the struggle against white coat supremacy is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
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The Loud, Shameful Haitian Migrant-Whipping Hoax Dies Quietly
After five border patrol agents had their lives turned upside down in a sickening, agenda-fueled hoax, with their bosses were leading the charge, the government now quietly seeks to memory-hole the incident by giving one of them an award.
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MSNBC Host: Donald Trump, Like Richard Nixon, Is Racist
Trump and Nixon promoted policies that disproportionately benefitted blacks, but this doesn’t stop Democrats from promulgating the fiction that Republicans are racists.
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Press Cowards’ Hypocritical Lament Over Media’s Lack of ‘Balls’ and ‘Swagger’
Mainstream press critics whine about the demise of journalism’s good ole days, while carefully avoiding writing anything that would offend their paymasters.
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Suicide Permitted
In coming to grips with why suicide and suicidal ideation have become so widespread in the West, we tend to overlook one central fact: We no longer consider life sacred.
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Colleges Side With Radicals, Their Students Be Damned
The public knows what they are seeing on campuses is not freedom of expression—a sacred American right—but lawlessness and dangerous disorder.
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Biden, Trump, and the False God of Democracy
Conservatives would do well to remember that a political system of democratic leveling will always find new depths of evil, and fresh bodies to swell its ranks.
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FBI Bungling May Collapse Mar-a-Lago Case Against Trump
The government’s evidence about what it found during its raid on Mar-a-Lago may be contaminated and the case seems ready to implode.
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The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden’s Party
The Democratic party only has papered over its contradictions ever since 1968. Today’s campus protests have ripped off the wrapper, and they’re forcing on Biden a choice he can’t, or won’t, make.
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Columbia University’s Commencement Cowardice
Columbia’s decision to cancel its 2024 general commencement is a capitulation to all the worst elements of campus and global radicalism.
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Delusion Is Killing the American Republic
More Americans are mentally ill than ever before. It’s no wonder we are seeing signs of it in our politics.
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Recognizing the Enemy Within
John Frankenheimer’s “The Manchurian Candidate” illuminates timeless and timely truths about the relationship between freedom and authoritarianism, as well as the that between illusion and reality. It’s a perfect film for our times.
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Confused Ivy League Presidents Should Look to the Sunshine State
America’s vaunted Ivy League has proven totally incapable of dealing with pro-Hamas protestors. They should learn from the balanced approach to free speech taken by Florida’s thriving universities.
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How a U.S. Federal Government Default Might Play Out
The recent tax rebellion by the Canadian province of Saskatchewan may provide a model for how U.S. states could push back against a federal government that has spent far beyond its means.
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The Case for Ben Carson and the Return of American Goodness
As the vice-presidential nominee, Dr. Ben Carson would benefit Donald Trump enormously—both personally and politically.
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Bragg’s Prosecution Makes Trump a Martyr
It is difficult to imagine that Trump’s alleged dalliance with Stormy Daniels will be his undoing. If anything, this show trial may have been the thing he needed to remind America of his peculiar virtues.
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‘Remember Us’: How to Fight Media Bombholing
A victim of media “bombholing” explains how the media drive their ratings and profits by publishing an unending series of wild, unsubstantiated stories, never stopping to correct the ones that came before.
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Every State Is a Border State Now
The death of Jacques Price serves as a reminder of just how thoroughly our institutions have been turned against Americans at every level.
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Trusting China in Inviting Another Pandemic
The U.S. should not be funding or collaborating to make the next China-created killer.
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The Fearful Cinematic Symmetry of Our Time
Several late 20th-century films presaged some of the worst events and developments of our times. And the horror show is now playing nationwide.
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Wokedom Westernizes Russia to Malign Her
By describing Russia as an heir to the habits of Western imperialism, the current woke psychosis, combined with crisis escalation in Ukraine, has the potential to destroy the remnant of our common European civilization.
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Nationalists of the World, Unite?
If there's going to be any democracy in the 21st century—in America, Europe, Israel or anywhere—there must be nations and nationalists willing to stand for them.
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Why They Want Us to Eat Bugs
The push for the eating of bugs is the epitome of rationalist thinking and the destruction of the sacred.
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Hemingway, McCarthy, and Our ‘Used Up’ Words
People do not want to read words that do not correspond with anything real. They want to feel. Ernest Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy understood and delivered.
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The New College of Florida Experiment Must Succeed
If New College succeeds, it will stiffen the spines of other governors to do what needed to be done a generation ago. But if it fails, it’s hard to see any hope of regaining higher education.
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Stop Importing Ungrateful, Spoiled Criminals
If one valid criticism of American society is that our high standard of living had made our population lazy, entitled, and unappreciative, then why are we importing so many new people with the same qualities?
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‘Risky Business’ As Conservative Morality Tale?
“Risky Business” wasn’t supposed to be a sly indictment of capitalism. A coming re-release from the Criterion Collection restores the director’s original intention as a warning about crazy women and the power of sex to destroy men.
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MTG’s Admirable Pugnacity Needs a Reality Check
Republicans should hammer the border issue but otherwise keep a low profile right now and wait to see if they can pull out a November win.
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There’s No Right to Sleep Outdoors
Supreme Court arguments on Monday suggest the Court will rule 6-3 or 5-4 that municipalities can ban sleeping on public property. The ruling will affect the entire nation.
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Speaker Johnson Gets Swamped Over Ukraine
The return of GOP’s minority-party mindset is very likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy come November.
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Foreign Policy Splits the Parties
When it comes to foreign policy America’s two political parties are split—not so much against each other—but against themselves.
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Biden Pins His Hopes on Abortion
Democrats are desperate to make the election a referendum on Dobbs. Trump is right to refuse to resist that.
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The Logic of ‘Laci and Conner’s Law’ is Undeniable
A society that treats the death of the unborn son of Scott Peterson at the hands of his father as an unspeakable crime but would have licensed his death at the hands of his mother will eventually be forced to confront its own incoherence.
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Aaron Wolf, Memory Eternal
Remembering the significant contributions of former Chronicles executive editor Aaron Wolf on the fifth anniversary of his passing.
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Biohacking Into Oblivion
A question biohackers ought to ask is: How much time have I lost by attempting to become younger and live longer?
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Cancer and American Films
Hollywood’s decades-long fascination with the 0the struggles of cancer patients may tell us more about the human condition than many people traumatized by the disease want to know.
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A Hallucinogenic and Unrepentant Rant
Christine Blasey Ford, the accuser in the infamous 2018 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has written an unrepentant and incoherent book while showing no remorse for the ordeal she caused others and the nation.
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O.J. Simpson Is Dead—Ron and Nicole Are Unavailable for Comment
What can one say other than this? O.J. Simpson has died. Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson were unavailable for comment.
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Alvin Bragg’s Witch Trial
Bragg’s indictment repeatedly alleges Donald Trump made a false business entry to, “commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof.” But Bragg does not specify what the original crime was.
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Trump and the Pro-Life Dilemma
Pro-lifers upset with Trump mistake their situation. They're not missing an opportunity to declare a universal right to life; they're rather in a pitched battle to stop the other side from reestablishing a universal right to abortion.
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Iran vs. Israel: De-Escalation Likely, for Now
In the fullness of time Israel will probably retaliate in some limited form, but under American pressure it will calibrate its response so that it does not prompt an uncontrollable spiral of escalation.
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An Inept Takedown of William F. Buckley
PBS’s “Incomparable Mr. Buckley” offers a left-wing caricature of a complex man and the conservative way of life he advocated.
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Trump, Abortion, and the 2024 Election
Overall, the pro-life cause must be less concerned with short-term tactical disagreements and more concerned with unanimity as to the long-term goal.