If you say that something is fake, a false flag, a setup, a hoax, a psyop, or staged before you have gathered any evidence and had a chance to analyze it, youâre radicalized, and that radicalization is impacting your ability to assess reality.
In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author & ask for advice.
KURT VONNEGUT (who left us 19yrs ago today) was the only one to respond.
His reply was a doozy.
To recap, from the standpoint of local time:
Shot down early on Good Friday. Rescued Easter Sunday morning.
If it were a movie plot, we'd roll our eyes at it for being too on the nose but here we are in real life...
If you havenât heard, and even if you have, Jimmy Kimmel said this about Markwayne Mullin, former Senator from Oklahoma, and our newest Secretary of Homeland Security:
âWe have a plumber now protecting us from terrorism.â
Apparently, there has been some backlash. Plumbers were offended, obviously, as were parents of plumbers, spouses of plumbers, children of plumbers, and millions of people who have had a plumber show up when they needed one. Comedians were also offended, (the funny ones, anyway,) along with a surprising number of terrorists - especially those with access to hot and cold running water. However, in spite of the ensuing kerfuffle, @jimmykimmel doubled down.
âIâm not upset that the head of Homeland Security was a plumber,â he said, âIâm upset that he isnât still a plumber." He further elucidated by adding, "I wouldn't put a plumber in charge of Homeland Security for the same reason I wouldn't call a five-star general to pull a rat out of my toilet, OK? We all have our areas of expertise.â
Being offended is always a choice, and I donât choose to be offended by a joke, even one that comes at the expense of the skilled tradespeople my foundation tries to elevate. But I am a tad butt hurt by the suggestion that skilled workers should never evolve into something new, and that competence is somehow limited to one vocation. Obviously, expertise and skill are important. If I need a new kidney, Iâd prefer a doctor do the surgery, not a late-night talk show host. But if the doctor in question used to host a talk show, why would I hold that against him?
Ten years ago, during one of the presidential debates, @MarcoRubio answered a workforce-related question by arguing that America needed to get shop class back into high schools. He concluded by saying, âWhat our country needs are more welders and fewer philosophers.â A lot of people on this page commented that Rubio and I were singing from the same hymnal, but in fact, we werenât. At least not entirely. Because I donât think the current shortage of welders has anything to do with an overabundance of philosophers. In fact, I think itâs a mistake to promote one vocation at the expense of the other. What we really need in this country, are more welders who can talk intelligently about Aristotle, and more philosophers who can run an even bead. More Generals, in other words, who can fix their own toilets, and more plumbers who can hold a powerful government job.
This is what Mullin did. He was a private citizen who mastered an essential skill and then turned that skill into a multi-million-dollar company that employed a lot of people and served a lot of customers. That gave him the freedom to do other things with his life, including a career in public service which got him into Congress, where heâs spent the last eleven years doing whatever Congressmen do. Now, he has a very consequential position in the Cabinet of the current administration.
Is that not the embodiment of the American Dream? I get that Jimmy Kimmel might have a problem with Mullinâs politics, but what possible objection could he have about the trajectory of his career, or his desire to do more than one thing with his life?
The only sensible thing to do in the wake of a moment this tone deaf, is remind America that the skills gap is wide, and getting wider. The shortage of skilled tradespeople is now headline news and closing it is nothing less than a matter of national security. This year, my foundation has set aside $10 million dollars to help train the next generation of plumbers, and lots of other essential workers. I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of AI-proof, six figure jobs that don't require a four-year degree, waiting to be filled. The money is currently available to anyone who wants to master a useful skill at https://t.co/uolhGspFtN. Apply today.
As for those of you genuinely offended by Kimmel's comments, consider expressing your disappointment with a modest donation to mikeroweWORKS. Our work ethic scholarship is making a real difference, and your money will be well spent, I promise. The donate button is big and red and hard to miss, at https://t.co/uolhGspFtN
Iâd love to chat but Iâve gotta pull a rat out of my toiletâŚ
Unrealized gains tax for Gen-Z:
You buy a PokĂŠmon card for $50.
Someone offers you $500 for it. You say no. You love that card. You're keeping it.
The government says: "Cool, but that card is worth $500 now. You owe us $100 in taxes."
You: "âŚI didn't sell it."
Government: "Don't care. Pay up."
You don't have $100 lying around. So you're forced to sell the card you love just to pay a tax on money you never received.
Next month? That card drops back to $50.
Your card is gone. Your money is gone. And the government shrugs.
That's a wealth tax on unrealized gains. They don't pay you back the tax...
Now picture this.
Your mom calls you crying. She has to sell the house she raised you in. Not because she can't afford it. She's lived there 30 years. It's paid off.
But some website says it's worth more now and the government says she owes $15,000 she doesn't have.
So she sells your childhood home. The kitchen where she made you breakfast. The doorframe where she marked your height every birthday.
Gone.
To pay a tax on money that was never real.
Now picture the opposite.
Your dad put everything into his small business. For 20 years he built it from nothing. One year the business is "valued" at $2 million on paper. He owes a massive tax bill. He empties his savings. Sells his truck. Borrows money. Pays it.
Next year the market crashes. His business is worth $200,000.
He lost everything to pay a tax on a number that doesn't exist anymore.
Does the government give him his money back?
No.
Does the government give him his truck back?
No.
Does the government care?
No.
They sold this idea as "taxing billionaires." But billionaires have armies of lawyers, offshore accounts, and trusts. They'll be fine.
You know who won't be fine? Your mom. Your dad. Your neighbor with a small business. The farmer down the road who's had the same land for four generations and now has to sell it because dirt got expensive.
You're not taxing wealth. You're taxing people for owning things.
It's like getting a parking ticket for a car you might drive somewhere someday.
They want you to own nothing and be happy. To fund the fraud, waste and abuse of the welfare state they created.
There is enough money. More tax isn't needed. It's all a lie. But you've been gaslit into believing this is a rich vs poor debate.
I hope you understand what's at stake.
Every Christmas Eve, I think about George Bailey.
He dreamed of escaping Bedford Fallsâof shaking off the dust of a small town, building skyscrapers, exploring the world. Instead, he stayed. He ran the Building & Loan his father left behind. He sacrificed his college money, his honeymoon savings, his chance to see the world, over and over, because people needed him.
By the time the crisis hits, George feels like a failure. His life looks like one long series of missed opportunities, thwarted ambitions, and quiet resentments. He stands on the bridge, convinced the world would be better without him.
Then Clarence shows him the truth: a Bedford Falls without George Bailey is a darker, meaner, hollowed-out place. The people he quietly helped, the small acts of integrity he performed without recognition, the risks he took to protect othersâthose werenât detours. They were the substance of his life.
The filmâs deepest insight isnât just that âno man is a failure who has friends.â Itâs that real impact is almost always invisible in the moment. The lives you steady, the small kindnesses you extend, the responsibilities you shoulder when no one else willâthese things ripple outward in ways you may never see.
A strong sense of purpose doesnât erase pain; it transforms it. It doesnât merely explain why hard things happened. It asks: What are you now responsible for because they happened?
Faith, at its best, does the same. It doesnât promise that everything was âmeant to beâ in order to make suffering palatable. It invites you to look at what has been entrusted to you in light of what youâve endured.
Georgeâs story reminds us that meaning is rarely found in the grand escape, but in the faithful presence. The dreams we surrender donât always vanishâthey often become the raw material for something more enduring than we imagined.
If youâre carrying the weight of roads not taken, of dreams deferred, of a life that feels smaller than you once hopedâwatch Itâs a Wonderful Life again tonight. Not as nostalgia, but as revelation.
You may not see the full difference youâve made yet.
But itâs there.
And it matters more than you know.
Merry Christmas, friends.
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America invented âcoolâ and the least cool thing you can do is cry about bullshit that doesnât matter which is all anyone does anymore because of the internet so America feels totally broken because everyone is a loser now who sounds like a dime store hysterical European.
For a long time in Europe, if your daddy was a shoemaker then you had to be a shoemaker and your kid had to be a shoemaker, but then George Washington kicked King George in the cock and invented a little thing called liberty.
American identity isnât a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry. Itâs binary: either youâre an American, or youâre not. You are an American if you believe in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience & freedom of expression, in colorblind meritocracy, in the U.S. Constitution, in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation. Thatâs the truth & itâs why I wrote this piece.
Kids nowadays love to laugh about â67,â an inscrutable random joke that makes no sense and is objectively less humorous than what my friends and I found funny in elementary school: drawing penises on the faces of the kids who fell asleep first during a sleepover.
Was the more than 20-fold rise in trans identities since 2010 the result of people finally feeling free to express their authentic selves? Or was it a social contagion?
Five years ago, I and others were canceled for suggesting the latter. New evidence shows we were right.
Read my latest for the Wall Street Journal âŹď¸
đhttps://t.co/RkMiKqxCo0
Bangladesh climate 1970-2021:
Top: No trend in hurricanes over half century
Bottom: Strong decline in death risk
What matters are early warning systems, shelters, information, etc.
Disaster risk reduction, not COâ cuts, is what saves lives
Notice every single goddamn Democrat thatâs been screaming about a ceasefire that doesnât congratulate our president for accomplishing one.
Because it was never about moral opposition to violence, but rather a sick fantasy of annihilating the only Jewish state.