Glad to see the Trump administration taking my advice.

I don’t know what will happen in the GOP primaries in 2028 - but the talk radio types pushing Rubio because they think he will push foreign wars are underestimating Vance. Vance is quite simply more intelligent than any other potential candidates. And he is able to go into hostile media environments and talk off the cuff and come off well. That is a big deal these days. His debate performance against Tim Walz was masterful. Think about that and compare it to the little speech Rubio memorized about Obama wanting to destroy the USA, and how Chris Christie destroyed his entire campaign just by pointing it out in 2016. I don’t see any evidence that Rubio has gotten better since then.

I used to have this moment of excitement when getting the latest edition of some smart magazine in the mail. I knew there would be quality writing, thought out and edited - and reading it would be a pleasant way to pass a few hours in the evening. This drift toward video, with every ‘new journalist’ just basically putting on a performance, making some statements without any way for people to check their work - this is just not as good. Though to be fair - print journalists dug their own grave by sinking into obvious bias.

California seeking professionals with exceptional gaydar.

Impossibly white! A Great Egret takes off from Central Park's Pool on a brilliant, sunny morning. 🌞🌞🌞#Egret #CentralPark #birdcpp

Thanks to the SPLC I've seen a swastika more times on my timeline in just the last 30 minutes than I did over the last several years.

This is an important news story.

Not a good look MLB. Compelled speech--that's what this is. Would you require Muslim players to smear bacon grease on their hats? How about you play freaking baseball and leave the intolerant bigotry of the hatemongering LGBTQ crowd to Democrat politics?

When Thomas Jefferson was elected Governor of Virginia in 1779 - while the American Revolution was still raging - he received a note of congratulations from Hessian General Riedesel - a POW he had befriended. He responded ‘condolences would be better suited to the occasion.’

Congress has not declared war since 1941, and the Senate has not ratified a treaty ending a conflict since 1952 - when the US and Japan formally ended hostilities and the US ended its occupation. The idea that Trump needs Congress to stop conflict with Iran is absurd.

Not many birders share photos of Blue Jays, but honestly I think they're one of our most beautiful birds! Look at all those shades of blue! 💙💙💙 #BlueJay #CentralPark #birdcpp

Here is what I think happened on the Iran misadventure: 1) the proponents of regime change hoped and prayed that murdering the Ayatollah and IRGC leadership would result in a domestic uprising. But they’re pretty smart - and knew this was at best 50/50; 2) they thought that once the USA was knee deep in this business - they could drive Trump into a full blown war to effect ‘regime change.’ Boots on the ground. And they thought the American population would puppy-dog after them. This was deeply cynical - they thought they could manipulate public opinion into a war of choice, slow-walk them into something that no one wanted; 3) the American people are totally fatigued with Middle East nonsense - they want nothing to do with sandbox feuds over there. The war proponents underestimated the extent of opposition - and really don’t even care what people think, because they are monomaniacal about this; 4) no effort to sell this ‘war’ was even made. That actually shows that someone in the administration was using his brain, because it wasn’t a sale you could close. But that also meant that you couldn’t maintain this for long. The Bush administration sold us the Iraq war for the better part of a year - with lies and misinformation - but they at least thought public opinion mattered. The Trump administration made no effort, probably because they knew it was impossible; 5) for whatever reason Trump decided to proceed with a war that could only succeed if it was over in a couple weeks. It was a mistake, as was withdrawing from the Obama treaty - even if that wasn’t a good treaty. Because if you cannot gain American public opinion for a war, you cannot sustain it for long. And that means you cannot win the war if your enemy is prepared to hunker down and take punishment and wait you out; 6) I think all of this was predictable. You cannot engage in colonial style warfare, as though the USA were the sole superpower, if you cannot generate domestic support. That is the point people in the Trump administration should have known - and almost certainly did know, but rolled the dice anyway; 7) the upshot IMO is that the USA should only project power in its own hemisphere, and even that modestly. It should seek to reform domestically to be a stable republic - and not try so hard to force everyone into its mould. There is a lot to like about the USA - and making this place better, and showing it to the world, is better diplomacy than killing people in sneak attacks.

My latest on substack: Performative Abortion. "A lot can be said about deciding to monetise the diagnosis and abortion of your unborn baby boy. And the internet managed to say most of it with all the empathy of an axe." Link in first reply.

DSA powerbrokers are ecstatic — they believe they've captured the Democratic Party. If they're right, they'll be the only ones laughing. Handing the party to the hard left will destroy the moderate center that made Democrats formidable for generations. I grew up a Democrat in San Francisco — we barely knew there were two parties. In 1972, at 18, I cast my first presidential vote for George McGovern. Nixon's 520-17 electoral landslide — 61% of the popular vote, 49 states — stunned me. I thought something was wrong with the country. There wasn't. The party I was raised with had just moved too far left for America. Half a century later, after San Francisco, New York, and Miami, I'm an independent and I turn my investigative journalism lens on the excesses in each major party. But if the DSA succeeds with its candidate slates and radical platform, Democrats are about to relive that 1972 lesson.

Yeats wrote "Man and the Echo" just a few months before his death. Nemerov said that poetry was "getting something right in language." I tend to ruminate on things, sometimes wake up at night and turn things over in my mind. So this passage from Man and the Echo sticks with me:

The revelations six years later are pouring out so quickly that it is impossible to keep up much less mentally process all this: * The Director of National Intelligence has documented 120 US-funded/owned biolabs in 30 countries many of which are manufacturing and manipulating infectious diseases. * Senator Rand Paul's committee has released the receipts concerning US funding/backing of the manufactured SARS-CoV-2 virus/vaccine as part of this program. * Senator Johnson has produced definitive evidence that US public health agencies knew of the grave dangers of the shot to everyone but said nothing. * Many officials are privately admitting/proving that the whole point of lockdowns was to preserve population immunity for the shot and block other avenues toward wellness. * Hardly any of this makes the national news and one wonders if the public mind has any awareness at all.

Spotted one of my favorites on the Appalachian trail near Cold Spring last weekend--an Indigo Bunting! It was happily singing right next to the path. 💙💙💙 #Bunting #CentralPark #birdcpp

Many leftist agents provocateurs leading these NYC mobs. And it's easy for them to recruit thugs to the chaos when law & order is a joke to leftist leaders like Mamdani. Federal authorities must investigate. Arrest & charge to fullest extent. Lock the saboteurs down for 25 years.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan convincingly won the presidency against Jimmy Carter, and also tipped the Senate. But the democrats maintained control of the House and Tip O’Neill remained speaker. That meant a lot of people voted for Reagan, but then voted democratic down ballot. They could do this knowing bipartisanship was possible - that the country had a coherent population, and differences were not so wide that people would refuse to work together. Reagan was able to push his tax reduction plan through Congress. Tip O’Neill basically said ‘this is what the people voted for, so we will work with you.’ That could not happen today. The US electorate is balkanizing because of too much immigration too fast - which is exploited by unscrupulous politicians. We will probably not see the kind of bipartisanship of the early 1980s again in our lifetimes - if ever. And this is why a 1924 style moratorium on immigration is necessary, coupled with aggressive assimilation policies and deportations of those who don’t really want to be American. And it’s why birthright citizenship is a disaster in present circumstances.

The GOP has a chance to hold Congress - probably will hold the Senate - because the country is so divided, and gerrymandering so effective, that genuine wave elections are improbable. If this were 1980 - the GOP would lose the 2026 midterms in a wipeout - and deserve it.

I’ve had a number of conversations with folks inside and outside government about the current situation with Anthropic, and here is what I believe to be true: — As we know, Anthropic publicly released its Mythos class models earlier this week under the commercial name Fable. — Fable is Mythos with guardrails. But if those guardrails fail, then you’ve exposed Mythos and its advanced cyber capabilities to people who shouldn’t have them. (Keep in mind that Anthropic itself widely promoted the idea that Mythos was a cyberweapon and needed to be regulated as such. They asked for government regulation of Mythos and championed the guardrails on Fable. If there is a vulnerability — big or small — it is Anthropic’s responsibility to patch.) — A highly credible trusted partner of both Anthropic and the USG who was testing Fable came forward with a jailbreak of those guardrails. The Admin asked Dario to fix the jailbreak or de-deploy the model. Dario refused. — In their blog post, Anthropic defended its decision by saying the jailbreak isn’t serious. That is not what the trusted partner and the USG believe; nor is that kind of minimizing language consistent with Anthropic’s brand as the AI safety company. It’s difficult to fathom how they could claim a jailbreak allowing operability of a cyber weapon could be defined as not “serious.” — In the past, Anthropic has always said that safety must be top priority and taken super seriously. In this case, Anthropic prioritized the continued offering of the consumer model over safety. — In reaction, the Admin issued the export control. The Admin did this reluctantly. It’s been very surprised that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to cooperate with a reasonable safety request (ie fixing the jailbreak issue). Anthropic’s reaction is very much at odds with their branding and ethos as a safe AI research community. — The Admin’s hope now is that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted, and Fable goes back into general release. The Admin wants all of this to happen as soon as possible. It is frankly bewildered that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to comply with safety requests that it previously said were its highest priority. — Those trying to misdirect and tie this action to the prior DoW/Anthropic issues are wrong. The Admin values Anthropic’s technical capabilities and feels that this issue, while serious, should be easily resolved. The ball is in Anthropic’s court.