What an incredibly moronic take.

I like Paul Klee a lot—wonderful colors, for one—but I wouldn't want anyone to have to pretend they like him. Most of the art from the era you reference is to my taste, and I've spent many hours in museums looking at it, with one major exception being Jackson Pollock, whose paintings look like what ends of on the tarps that painters put down to protect the floor. The "drip technique" doesn't work for me.

The quote that ends the third paragraph is missing the word "makes," but it almost works as you are reading it because "taxes" can be a noun or a verb. Regardless, swell piece.

Three years ago, I wrote about how fast the right was changing in the mid-1990s, when I was writing for City Journal. What's happened to the right, including City Journal, in the last three years is worse than anything that happened three decades ago, and a window into it is City Journal's focus group at https://www.city-journal.org/article/manhattan-institute-focus-group-gen-z-republicans rightly dubbed "the focus group from hell" https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/behold-the-focus-group-from-hell-city-journal-young-republicans?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

My mother used to iron the tinsel (it was heavy strands in those days) every year.

Love this article and love your writing style.

Distraction from the price of eggs that skyrocketed under Biden? Doubtful.

Nice guy but he has TDS.

Tracinski is running for Congress. https://www.tracinskiletter.com/p/tracinski-for-congress

Over on the new Megyn Kelly channel (111) on SiriusXM, her gossip columnist is talking about the RFK Jr./Nuzzi digital affair, which required her to describe and define "felching," since somehow that came up in their love talk.

I wonder if most of the people pushing this idea are childless and have an experience of diapering that is limited to deviant adults.

I really don't think that the point of the film is to discuss or attempt to provide an explanation to current day politics at all? It's simply a portrayal of what can go wrong whenever radical ideas and concepts are introduced to the wider population? She had an idea, she wrote a book about it and first she agreed with what was happening as a result of her having written the book but then it begins to morph into something else completely and evolves into something entirely different? The idea that what you write and out out into the world always has the very dangerous potential to be completely misunderstood/manipulated/misrepresented? That's my opinion anyway!!

Looks like the same distinction that you just elaborated on with the exact number.

The number that was given was that 32 Cuban Officers were killed. That you feel a need to make some dubious distinction about a murderous attack whose details are still not fully grasped is pretty infantile behavior for a journalist.

Many of them were Cuban special forces. The Trump part, unrelated this situation, you can discuss with someone else.

I haven't read anything about who the eighty people were; were they all the equivalent of our Secret Service? If so, then it would be hard to mourn the death of eighty Secret Service agents if a foreign country invaded and kidnapped Trump. I won't argue the question of whether he is yet a dictator, but, as of November, he'd killed 600,000 people (3/4 of them children) who depended on the food and medical care that USAID funds provided until Trump illegally impounded them, and he's murdered 115 people in boats.

Guarding the life of a brutal dictator makes one complicit in his actions. Hard to mourn such people.

Eighty people were killed in the invasion, and their loved ones are suffering. That might be worth mentioning, especially since the fact that there were no American deaths is mentioned.

odd, but seth hurwitz's mom and mine were friends and i knew him as a child. also my dad was a journalist for national geographic. it seems like we must have known each other? i was at 9:30 all the time.

Thank you, Loren. Someone has to defend California, right?

Great article, Chris. My favorite of yours. As someone who still lives in California, I see your analysis as fair, wistful and balanced. Your line, "Rooting for the state’s collapse has become a badge of honor in some political circles" hits hard and true. Not sure why so many people feel a need to demean our state, but it reeks of deep seated projection. Thanks for writing this.

My New Year's resolution is that Todd Seavey continues to only write pieces with which I agree.

Hello. Again, I appreciate your comments but I have to be honest, as you are a self-described non-believer, and someone who has rejected both Christ and the Catholic Church, it seems to me that your have little or no stake in the matter and so I cannot take your thoughts or opinions on the matter too seriously. "Prospering" in the Catholic sense, by the way, doesn't mean having full pews, but rather holding onto the truth with the intention of saving as many souls as possible. Furthermore, if you read Revelations, it is clearly said that the bulk of people will fall off from the Church and if God didn't interfere, it's possible everyone would be lost.

My point was that Catholicism has always been diverse (to the point of quietly accepting us non-believers) and it has obviously always been changing for hundreds of years. So what is it? What will it be? Who knows, but if it doesn't continue to embrace change and diversity, I doubt it will prosper.

On "Coffee with Scott Adams" today (11/11) Scott Adams says, in discussing how to persuade people, you should watch Cheryl Hines on podcasts, and in particular this episode, if you want to know how to be on a podcast.

That and GQ?

I think seeing The Sting as a young teen or pre-teen helped turn me gay. THAT was a hot couple!

Trump has won twice, but neither of these guys have the slightest idea of why that happened. Try harder, Splice Today.

Hard to imagine thinking that Marc Maron has any real insights into the future of American politics. He's a good comedian and decent interviewer, but his talent stops there. And in this clip, he's talking to a fellow insufferably smug progressive, Sam Seder, who hasn't had an original thought in decades. Posting such material is a total waste of time. Thanks for nothing.

Actually the second littlest one was not her son because he was younger than my dad, i unfortunately don’t remember which cousin he was but the tallest boy was my great aunt’s son.

They are not going to school, my grandfather filmed this. It was a leisurely trip to the end of the line by lake Roland. The little blondie in white was my dad and the dark haired second tallest boy in stripes was my uncle. The lady that was on camera before they boarded was my aunt Bea and the two other boys I think were her sons

Such a great song. So sad youngin's don't know our music in the 60's and 70's was SO much better than their music is.

"If you only know a cup this way, you don't know the cup." David Thomas threw off sparks every time he opened his mouth.

A loving/moving biography of Les Baxter: https://lesbaxter.com/pages/biography

This is great. please add a blusky link one of these days.

Just saw it yesterday. She was terrific.