October 4, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

A Fond Farwell to Benny Golson

Featured image Saxophonist and composer Benny Golson, who passed away last month at 95, was one of the jazz musicians in the famous Art Kane photograph for Esquire in 1958 (below). Golson is up near the top, a place he surely deserved. “He had it all,” explained vibraphonist Terry Gibbs. “Very good arranger, very good tenor player.” Golson came up through big bands and formed influential combos such as the Jazztet. The »
October 4, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Public Sector Booms

Featured imageThe stock market was boosted today by a “blockbuster” jobs report. “The economy” added 254,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1% This was good news for the Kamala Harris campaign, which probably was the intended effect. Anyone who has followed the shenanigans at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in recent years will greet these numbers with skepticism. There have been two obvious trends: First, new jobs have overwhelmingly »
October 4, 2024 — John Hinderaker

The Scandal-Plagued Walz Administration

Featured imageThis long CNN article is headlined, “As fraud scandals erupt in Minnesota on Gov. Tim Walz’s watch, accountability is in short supply.” That sums up the article very well. What seems most remarkable about the piece is that CNN published it. The best-known Walz scandal is Feeding Our Future, which we have written about a number of times. More than $250 million in taxpayer money was stolen by thieves who »
October 4, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

When Tim Met Mohamed

Featured imageBack in 2017 in Minneapolis, Justine Ruszczyk Damond, a dual citizen of Australia and the United States, heard a woman being assaulted and called 911. When police arrived, Damond approached their car and Somali-born officer Mohamed Noor shot her dead. Expert witnesses testified that Noor’s use of force was objectionable, unreasonable and violated police policies and training. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) drew criticism for its investigation of »
October 4, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: CA vs FL Power and Prices

Featured imageLet’s have some additional fun with everyone’s favorite federalism parlor game—contrasting California and (the free state of) Florida. Florida’s electricity prices are far below California’s and have remained steady for quite a while, while California’s electricity rates have doubled. Maybe the differing sources of power each state has decided to use explains most of this: »
October 4, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Fire Next Week

Featured imageThe anti-Semitic left is promising major pro-Hamas demonstrations on Monday, October 7, to mark one year of the “resistance” against the so-called “settler colonialism” of Israel. Expect a mob to try to block intersections in New York, and many of our elite campuses will see considerable disruptive protests. I’ll be pre-occupied most of Monday doing a methodology workshop for graduate students down at Pepperdine, which, I like to note, puts »
October 4, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Fact-check this

Featured imageAmong the corporate media “fact-checks” of the great debate between Senator Vance and our overmatched Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, I have yet to find one that homes in on the fundamental question of free speech. When Vance brought it up, Walz vomited up his ignorant take on the law of free speech: “You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater. That’s the test. That’s the Supreme court test.” That’s what »
October 4, 2024 — Scott Johnson

High and Low

Featured imageAt the moment TCM is playing Akira Kurosawa’s film High and Low (1963). You may want to seek it out online. It is a drama starring Toshiro Mifune as a wealthy executive who is told that his son has been kidnapped and being held for ransom. The executive faces a moral dilemma after he realizes that his chauffeur’s son was taken by mistake. Kurosawa’s films are entertaining in a profound »
October 3, 2024 — John Hinderaker

The Border Fiasco, Northern Edition [Updated]

Featured imageWhen I was a kid, it was a proud boast that the US-Canada border is the longest unguarded border in the world. That is still true, but we may need to start guarding it. Our northern border is not as much of a disaster as the southern border, only because it is so far from Mexico. But things are getting much worse: The number of migrants caught crossing a stretch »
October 3, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Grotesque Mismanagement By the Kamala Harris Administration

Featured imageHomeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced today that FEMA is running out of money for hurricane relief: The Federal Emergency Management Agency can meet immediate needs but does not have enough funding to make it through the hurricane season, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters Wednesday. *** “We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said. “FEMA does »
October 3, 2024 — John Hinderaker

The Ultimate Evil

Featured imageThis horrifying story comes from Gaza: A young hostage kidnapped by ISIS terrorists at age 11 and then held by Hamas for a decade has been rescued by Israeli forces in Gaza after a months-long operation led by the US, officials said Thursday. Fawzia Amin Sido, 21, was freed earlier this week, with footage showing her being embraced tightly by her emotional family soon after touching back down in her »
October 4, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Disproportionately stupid

Featured imageThe Iran regime struck Israel with some 180 ballistic missiles fired from Iran. The Iranian regime meant to inflict death and destruction on Israel. As it is, Israel’s most sophisticated missile defense system approached perfection under an assault that was intended to overwhelm it. In the event, the strike did damage but killed only one Gazan Arab who had relocated to the West Bank. Watching the strike in real time »
October 4, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Cao vs. Kaine

Featured imageRepublican former Navy captain Hung Cao is running to unseat incumbent Senator Tim Kaine in Virginia. Cao’s site is here. The polls don’t give Cao much of a chance. Yet he is a most impressive American, while Kaine is a zero to the left (in the Spanish expression my wife has taught me). He must have a future somewhere in the world of Republican politics. Cao faced off against Kaine »
October 4, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured imageAmmo Grrrll is not going down that yellow brick road in KITTIES AND PUPPIES AND GEESE, Oh My! She writes: When I was a teenager, somebody, probably a guy, showed me this humorous little aphorism. It’s an example of word play, so it has to be shown rather than told. I got quite a kick out of it, having heard the “original” – “You can lead a horse to water, »
October 3, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Seth Leibsohn and I on the Debate

Featured imageLast night I was on the Seth Leibsohn radio show in Phoenix. We mostly talked about Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, but that led us into a few other topics, like immigration, legal and illegal. It is a good conversation, and it goes on for several segments: I think the vice presidential debate will continue to reverberate. For the first day or two, Democratic Party sources have been spinning Tim Walz’s »
October 3, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Victory Over Communism (and California)!

Featured imageYou may have followed the news that California’s Governor Gavin Gruesome sought and achieved a statute, AB 2329, outlawing AI-generated “deep fake” political communications ahead of elections. This statute is a blatant violation of the First Amendment, and wouldn’t survive the first five minutes of a Supreme Court oral argument.  But it takes time (and a lot of money) to get a case all the way up to the Supreme »
October 3, 2024 — John Hinderaker

For Your Viewing Pleasure

Featured imageOr you can just listen to it. This edition of the American Experiment podcast, recorded on Tuesday, features a half hour of irreverent conversation on the news of the day by American Experiment’s three youngest staffers. It is followed by me, interviewing Justin Folk, the producer and director of Am I Racist?, as well as other films including What Is a Woman? Justin and I began by reminiscing about the »