Froma Harrop, Queen of Snark, Calls RFK Jr a Crackpot

 Having lost the presidential election, the Democrats have retreated into sneers, profanity, and snarkiness. Jasmine Crockett is the profanity princess, Stephen Colbert is the King of sneers, and Froma Harrop is the Queen of snark.

In a recent column, Harrop set her sights on Robert F. Kennedy. Jr., President Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services. Froma labeled Kennedy a "crackpot" and an intellectual "subdelta."

Harrop said Trump put Kennedy in charge of "a world-renowned medical powerhouse" for two reasons. First, RFK Jr. "was well-suited to tear down another revered American institution." Why would Trump want to do that? Froma didn't say. "Ask a shrink," was her snarky response.

Second, Harrop claimed that Trump had found Secretary Kennedy "entertaining." She then jumped from this vacuous observation to attacking the entire Kennedy family, which, she charged, had wrongly claimed the status of royalty.

The Kennedys can be justly criticized on a number of fronts. Nevertheless, Harrop and the Democrats had nothing bad to say about them when virtually the entire Kennedy clan travelled to Washington to torpedo Bobby Junior's presidential campaign by endorsing Biden for a second presidential term.

Biden. Now there's a real intellectual subdelta!

Nowhere in Harrop's snark attack did she criticize any substantive decision that Secretary Kennedy has made. How could she?

RFK Jr. is attacking America's obesity crisis, calling out Big Pharma, focusing on the alarming rise in autism and diabetes, and pushing the processed food industry to remove harmful additives from the nation's food supply. Does that sound like a crackpot to you? Me neither.

Froma Harrop, like Stephen Colbert, Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, and dozens of other denizens of the legacy media, has become irrelevant. Americans aren't listening to her anymore. She should keep quiet until she has something intelligent to say.

Froma Harrop, Queen of Snark

90-second Book Review: Four Winds by Kristin Hannah is a Fine book About The Dust Bowl Years

 Kristin Hannah's novel, The Four Winds, published in 2021, is a fine book on the Dust Bowl years in America's Heartland.

I like the book for two reasons. First, Hannah's description of what it was like to live on a Dust Bowl farm is harrowingly accurate. I wasn't born until after the Great Depression, but my mother grew up on a farm in northwestern Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl years. Her description of that time confirms the accuracy of Hannah's narrative.

The sky turned black when the dust storms rolled through, and visibility was restricted to just a few feet. Although my mother's family stuffed bits of newspapers around the windows and door sashes to keep the dust out of their farm home, it got in anyway, covering every surface with a layer of fine, gritty sand.

My grandfather had a small herd of cows but no forage. Finally, he was forced to sell them to the government for a pittance. 

To reduce the glut in cattle, government shooters came onto the family farm, gathered up grandfather's cows, and shot them. My mother saw that happen, and she remembers a line of cars filled with scavengers who followed the shooters and harvested the meat.

My mother's family often went to bed hungry. The drought made it impossible to grow a vegetable garden, and their fruit trees died for lack of water.

My grandfather came to Oklahoma from Nebraska in a covered wagon, and he prospered for a few years when the price of wheat was high. He owned three horse-drawn harvesting machines. I remember those old relics rusting away in front of his home.

As a child, I imagined those machines as Christopher Columbus's ships: the Pinta, the Niña,  and the Santa Maria. And I remember walking through one of my grandfather's pastures. No cows; nothing but sagebrush and sand.

The Great Depression broke my grandfather's spirit. He spent his last days sitting in a rocking chair and masticating Swisher Sweet cigars like chewing tobacco. I don't recall ever having a conversation with him.

I also liked Hannah's book for its description of the reception the Dust Bowl refugees got when they migrated to California. My mother's family stuck it out, but over a quarter of a million Oklahomans migrated to California in the 1930s.

Californians tried to keep them out, and when they got in anyway, California's big landowners hired them to pick fruit, vegetables, and cotton for starvation wages. Whole families worked all day just to buy their daily food.

Any review of Four Winds must include a comparison with John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Both books have a feminist theme. Elsa Martinelli, Hannah's protagonist, goes to California as a single mother with two children. By the novel's end, Elsa becomes radicalized and helps organize a farm workers' strike.

In The Grapes of Wrath, Ma Joad assumes the leadership of her extended family after the menfolk break under the strain of their flight to California. When the going gets really tough, Steinbeck implies, you gotta rely on the women to survive,

Every American should read The Grapes of Wrath and The Four Winds to understand rural Americans' desperate lives during the 1930s. They should also see John Ford's epic movie, The Grapes of Wrath, which won two Academy Awards in 1941.

It is fashionable today to view all Americans living in the Heartland as "white Christian Nationalists" who have prospered by exploiting people of color. Of course, that's not true. Most people in  Flyover Country work hard, practice their religion, and lead modest lives.

Moreover, the descendants of the Dust Bowl refugees claim a heritage of suffering, exploitation, and unbearable hardship--as harsh as any American has suffered in the twentieth century--regardless of color. This is my heritage, and I'm proud of it.

90-second food review: Ode to Jim's Barbecue in Waskom, Texas (and a Shout-Out to T.S. Eliot)

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot 

Years ago, I regularly traveled back and forth from Dallas to Baton Rouge. It was a grueling seven-hour drive on Interstate 30 and Interstate 49, with state troopers lurking in the wooded median strips, fiendishly designed to be perfect speed traps.

For years, I searched for a good place to eat on my weary travels, a country diner close by the highway that served comfort food at a reasonable price.

 Unconsciously, however, I  was looking for a 1950s diner like the cafes I knew in rural Oklahoma when I was a kid. I wanted to find a place that smelled like frying onions and hamburgers sizzling on a greasy grill. I wanted a country restaurant with a juke box playing songs sung by Lefty Frizzell.

Unfortunately, I only found fast-food chain restaurants: McDonald's, Burger King, Whataburger, and Dairy Queen.

One day, I stopped for gas in Waskom, Texas, the last Texas town on Interstate 30 before you cross the border into Louisiana. There, partially obscured by a McDonald's, I spied Ed's Barbecue with a sign that advertised barbecue and fried catfish. Could this be the end of all my exploring?

I entered, and a cheery waitress greeted me with an expansive invitation to sit wherever I liked. The joint looked right. A framed image of John Wayne hung on one wall alongside a vintage photo of Hank Williams performing on The Louisiana Hayride, an iconic radio show broadcast out of Shreveport, Louisiana, in the 1930s.

I quickly perused the menu and ordered a cheeseburger and a glass of sweet iced tea. In the long tradition of Texas roadside restaurants, my waitress addressed me with a string of endearments: sweetie, honey, and darlin'.

I remember my cheeseburger came fully dressed with a generous side of fries.

During my visit, I entered the men's room and saw an image of Don Knotts' Barney Fife holding up a single bullet for inspection. Undoubtedly, this pleasing washroom decoration had been curated by a high-end interior design firm in Dallas.

My burger was excellent, and my sweet tea was prepared just as I like: so sweet that I would be a pre-diabetic by the time I finished my meal.

I paid my bill and bought a jar of pickled tomato relish from a stack piled next to the cash register. As my waitress handed back my credit card, she asked the golden question:

Would you like a go cup for your sweet tea, sugar pie?

I realized then that my lifetime of aimless searching had brought me back to where I started, a little Southwestern town. And this was where I belonged--not in the  Harvard Faculty Club or a stuffy university, but in Ed's Barbecue Restaurant, chowing down on a cheeseburger, catsup-drenched French fries, and a large glass of sweet iced tea.

 

 

Downwardly Mobile Millennials Voted for Zohran Mamdani, and That Makes Perfect Sense

 Zohran Mamdani won the recent Democratic primary in New York City's mayoral race,  handily defeating  Andrew Cuomo, the epitome of the Democratic Establishment. Many commentators were surprised by the types of voters who supported Momdani--Jews, for example, and the wealthy elites in Manhattan. After all, Zohran is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and has referred to some Israeli military actions as genocide. He has called for higher taxes on the rich, especially the ones living in "whiter neighborhoods."

Reihan Salam, writing for the Wall Street Journal, theorized why one particular segment of New Yorkers voted for Mamdani: downwardly mobile millennials. Salam defined downwardly mobile millennials as individuals born between 1981 and 1996 who are less well off than their parents or who perceive themselves as less well off.

Roughly 40 percent of millennials, according to research Salam cited, live in "high-cost, hyper-competitive metropolitan areas," where owning a home and paying off student loans can be "distant dreams."

Millennials in NYC and other Democratic strongholds often have college degrees and graduate credentials from prestigious universities, where they were groomed to believe they were preparing for high-paying jobs in glamorous industries and to take their rightful place among the urban elite.

Things haven't worked out so well for urban millennials. Housing costs are astronomical in NYC and other progressive Democratic strongholds. The job market for upscale jobs is fierce, and many millennials can't find jobs that allow them to pay off their student loans and still buy a home. 

Moreover, the crime rates are high in the blue cities, and the renter class bears the brunt.

No wonder so many urban millennials have turned to leftist politicians who promise to soak the rich. I say go for it!

However, Momdani supporters who are angry at the rich should reserve some of their rancor for the elite universities that charge outrageously high tuition for worthless diplomas, especially degrees in liberal arts, humanities, and the social sciences.

A few people who take out loans to get a degree from Swarthmore, Vasser, Columbia, Harvard, etc., can go to the Big Apple or other progressive cities and scramble to the top. Michelle Obama, for example, got her sociology and African American Studies degree from Princeton and is doing just fine.

However, many people who try to make the big time by taking out student loans to get a prestigious degree and going to New York, Chicago, or other expensive, crime-ridden cities, aren't doing as well. And it is these people who are voting for Zohran Mamdani and other leftist wingnuts.

If I were a millennial living in Manhattan on a salary of $90,000 a year, paying $4,000 a month in rent and $1,000 a month on my student loans, who would I vote for to be New York's next mayor?

 I'd vote for Zohran Mamdani.

Image credit Jonah Rosenberg/New York Times

"It's so cold that Bill and Hillary Clinton are sleeping together": CBS Cancels Stephen Colbert and It's the End of the World

For years. I was a big fan of The Late Show and watched it most nights when David Letterman was the host. When Stephen Colbert took over in 2015, I continued watching because I liked Colbert's comedy routines on The Colbert Report.

In time, however, I stopped watching The Late Show because Colbert got less and less funny. His monologues became snarky, and he mostly directed his witty barbs at Republicans.

Now, CBS is canceling Colbert and The Late Show franchise. Colbert makes $20 million a year, but his show was losing $40 million. You do the math.

Nevertheless, the Progressive Left is scandalized by Colbert's firing. The Writers Guild is calling for an investigation, and 200,000 people signed a petition accusing CBS of yielding to political pressure from the Trump administration. 

Senator Elizabeth Warren went so far as to point out that Colbert's termination "just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump[is] a deal that looks like bribery."

Colbert supporters demonstrated in the streets of New York City, chanting "Keep Colbert! Dump Trump!" One demonstrator said protesters were calling out "fascist censorship" against a Trump critic.

Here's my take. The legacy news and entertainment industry has been more liberal than the American public for half a century. Even as a kid watching the evening news on my family's Hallicrafters TV, I knew Walter Cronkite was a Democrat. Nevertheless, like most Americans, I trusted him to report the news fairly and objectively.

Likewise, Saturday Night Live and the late-night talk shows were populated by liberal Democrats, but they made fun of everybody--both Republicans and Democrats. I recall David Letterman observing that it was so cold that Bill and Hillary Clinton were sleeping together. And I remember Chevy Chase mocking President Gerald Ford for his clumsiness on SNL, and Dan Akroyd mimicking President Carter's apology for "flip-flopping on my flip-flop."

Those days of nonpartisan comedy are over. Now, Americans are in the streets demanding that Stephen Colbert, a sanctimonious sexagenarian, be reinstated to his $20 million gig on CBS, and Senator Warren hints darkly of bribery.

I miss the old days when Americans laughed at everyone in power--laughed at their pomposity, their hypocrasy, their venality, and their petty foibles that revealed their humanity. Don't you?

"Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost." The Democrats Hope to Regain Power Through Chaos

I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they're idiots.

Jamie Dimon

 Remember that great line from the Coen Brothers' classic movie The Big Lebowski? "Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost."

So it is with the Democratic Party. The bums lost. Despite all their skullduggery, their Russiagate scam, their malicious lawsuits, and the conspiratorial lapdog media--despite all that--Donald Trump won a second term.

And now the Democrats are in meltdown mode, reduced to spewing F-bombs and singing "We shall overcome" in the halls of Congress.

I agree with Jamie Dimon; the Democrats are idiots. President Trump has labeled AOC as being a person with a low IQ, but how smart are any of the Democratic leaders? How smart can they be if they continue to hang on to their transgender sports agenda after the NCAA and the U.S. Olympic Committee threw in the towel?

The Democrats have given up on regaining political power through the Democratic process. Like the Bolsheviks and the Nazis, the Democrats are counting on violence and chaos to grab the reins of power.

And violence and chaos are coming. We won't see elected Democrats throwing rocks at ICE officers, but they'll give aid and comfort to those who do. We won't see powerful Democrats deliberately destabilizing the economy, but their hysterical opposition to honest efforts to reduce fraud and waste will have the same effect.

The Democrats seem to believe they can drag down the Trump administration under a tide of litigation and bombast and somehow regain the power they had during Joe Biden's administration.

That ain't gonna happen. 

Americans have been bamboozled by the legacy media and sleezy Democratic politicians for almost ten years, but they've finally figured it out. Joe Biden was a corrupt, cognitively impaired president throughout his term of office while shadowy insiders ran the country into the ditch. Russiagate was a treasonous scam based on false documentary evidence and lies promulgated by an unscrupulous and deceitful intelligence committee, which may have been orchestrated by Barack Obama. 

The people of Flyover Country will never submit to be governed by this gang of criminals and caitliffs again. The Dems may think they can regain power through chaos and violence, but they are sorely wrong.

"Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost."

Froma Harrop Says That Debt Driven By Inflation Could Sink the National Economy: Yah Think?

For years, Froma Harrop has been a reliable spear carrier for the progressive Democrats, so when she speaks on a national policy issue, you can assume she is speaking for the Democratic establishment. Thus, it is noteworthy that her recent op ed essay sounded the alarm over rising consumer debt.

People are buying groceries and consumer goods under "Buy Now, Pay Later" programs that allow them to pay off their purchases in four monthly payments. Why don't these folks just charge their purchases on their credit cards? Harrop asked. Probably because their credit cards are maxed out.

Harrop also observed that car loan delinquencies are up, which is especially worrisome because the last thing people want to lose is their cars. 

And a high percentage of student borrowers are behind on their student loans. Harrop noted that 25 percent of the federal government's $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio is in danger of default, and 31 percent of student borrowers are delinquent on their monthly payments by 90 days or more. 

Harrop didn't mention the residential housing market, but there's also trouble in that segment of the economy. Everyone rejoiced when mortgage rates sank below 3 percent, but now they hover around 7 percent. 

In Florida, the bellweather state for residential housing, sales have slowed, and in some Florida markets, sellers have been forced to cut their prices to attract buyers. This trend is showing up in other states.

The federal debt is rising too- currently at $36 trillion, with interest payments absorbing more and more of the federal budget. Like the weather, Congress talks endlessly about the national debt, but lawmakers are not doing much about it.

Harrop believes the Trump administration is only making the nation's debt problem worse, and she may be right. Trump has been filibustering the Federal Reserve, hoping to bully Jerome Powell into lowering interest rates, which might only fuel more inflation.

Harrop's essay surely parrots the Democratic establishment's views, but what did the Democrats say about debt when Joe Biden was in office? Did they complain about all the military equipment the Army abandoned in Afghanistan--equipment that had to be replaced at great expense when the U.S. helped the Ukrainians fight the Russians? Did the Dems express concern about the federally funded NGOs that were transporting illegal immigrants into the United States and then putting them up in expensive hotels? Did Democratic congresspeople make any effort to reduce the cost of federal Medicaid programs, which now insure one-fifth of the American population?

The answer to all these questions is no. Now that the Democrats are out of power, they're complaining about inflation,  consumer borrowing, and the astronomical national debt--problems they are cheerfully blaming on President Trump.