Hollywood Spinners

Prepare for a diatribe: I’ve about had enough of Hollywood. My malaise started not long ago with the tiresome Elizabeth Banks’ vacuous diatribe about her disappointment in the 53% of white women who voted for Donald Trump instead of Kamala Harris. Her criticism of the Trump Administration is of course based on her astounding lack of foreign policy acumen and a world view from inside the bubble of privilege.  After all, she is a white woman from Massachusetts, campaigned for Hillary and Kamala, and attended the University of Pennsylvania where she graduated with honors.  Ahem, as a Communications major.  So, obviously she must know what’s best for you.  And she did appear in a Kia commercial.  You may recall, Liz is a member of the second-tier character actor club, best known for her portrayal of Effie in the Hunger Games franchise where her make-up and wardrobe budget alone exceeded the GDP of most third world nations.  Of course, she used her Effie character as a springboard to suggest that the afore mentioned white women should be “revolutionary” like Effie, who rose from a government automaton to join the resistance to fight fascism.  And there it is. Ironic that in the same manner as another Hunger Games alum, the late progressive Donald Sutherland, she interprets the series theme as a rebuke of a fascist regime, naturally drawing a comparison, as misplaced as it may be, to the Trump Administration. Upon analysis of the literature such as it is, the franchise theme appears to be more applicable as a critique of socialism, ever expanding government control and democrat policy where the elite are government officials and the populace serves their masters in the Capitol.  Far be it for me to suggest I’m some sort of an expert on interpreting adolescent film drama, but seriously this should be pretty obvious even to a Communications Major.  

 But even more alarming is the HBO series The Pitt, a reasonably accurate medical drama about an emergency department in a Pittsburgh hospital.  Their subject matter has become progressively and disproportionately woke with a diverse cast. And by diverse, I mean checks all the boxes: White, Black, male, female, Hispanic, Filipino, Muslim, Indian, LGBTQ, disabled, autistic, check, check, check and check. Not that diversity in this case is an issue and it likely may actually reflect an inner-city hospital staff but, wow, it’s like they actually had a checklist.  And what makes that so amusing is that after the second season, like any large cast television series, some cast members were either written out or chose to move on, again as would tend to happen in a teaching hospital, but in this case two of the cast members were “persons of color.”  Uh-oh. Cue the outrage as perhaps the most woke series on television is being criticized for being racist.  Hilarious. Two cast members recently gushed on Instagram that they had their “Obama moment” when they met one of his daughters. Seriously these people need to get a life. Outside the liberal bubble.

 But I digress.  The cast of doctors are painted with a broad dramatic brush.  They are a compassionate, super-dedicated, selfless, self-righteous lot, possessing encyclopedic knowledge in all facets of medicine even beyond their specialties.  Seen a physician lately? If only life reflected art. But in one particularly offen episodes they introduce ICE officers into the ED, and they’re typecast exactly as the leftist media portrays them: imposing, armed, masked, jackbooted thugs brutalizing a poor helpless Hispanic woman.  The busy holiday weekend waiting room immediately empties out and some of the hospital staff vanishes, implying that the majority of the hospital ED patients and some of the hospital employees are illegal immigrants.  This of course is intolerable to the super-human righteous and indignant doctors and nurses, and one male nurse who intervenes is brought to the ground, cuffed and arrested for obstruction.  Oh, the horror. But wait a minute. The left leaning writers in their haste, also weave into the story references to another local hospital having to close their emergency departmentdue to lack of funds, thus contributing to The Pitt’s overcrowded conditions.  Another parallel storyline features a friend of the ED chief who ends up waiting hours for a CT scan despite having the chief in his corner.  Yet another storyline follows an ED resident’s extracurricular passion using hospital supplies to treat the homeless, or “unhoused substance abusers” in Pittspeak, outside the hospital.  So, once you get beyond the immediate and intended sympathetic response to the plight of the less fortunate, the next question that should pass through the mind of the thoughtful viewer is: who exactly is paying for all these services? Well, you are! A hospital is, after all is said and done, a business.  Hospitals receive government grants to treat those who cannot afford care and are enrolled in a government healthcare program through yet another government program called “disproportionate share hospital” (DSH) payments. And these government grants come from taxpayers. Similarly, Medicaid recipients, the government sponsored medical program for the poor, receive “free” healthcare.  But that too is paid for with taxpayer funds. And the remaining shortfall, and a shortfall it will be with the draconian reimbursement schedule Medicaid imposes on participating healthcare providers, must be absorbed by the hospital whose remaining revenue comes from private pay patients and those who are privately insured. But even insurance reimbursements are a fraction of what is actually charged for services, although that charge is artificially inflated to compensate for the reduced reimbursement and to help pay for those who cannot afford treatment.  If you were wondering why your insurance premiums are so high, there you have it.  You, my friend, are subsidizing the insurance coverage of the less fortunate and your inflated payments are subsidizing the hospital’s ability to treat those who cannot pay at all.Thank you, Obamacare. For those that abhor the thought of socialized medicine, I have news for you: medicine in this country is already one big, socialized redistribution of wealth.

So, one affront at a time please:  

ICE agents in the ED? They are law enforcement officers doing the job they were hired to do.  In this case removing illegal aliens from this country let in by the Biden Administration cynically hoping that one day they will attain citizenship through some democrat sponsored amnesty program after which there is an 85% chance they will vote democrat. Sure, this woman may be providing service as a domestic, a farm laborer, doing a job Americans are too lazy to do.  But she is artificially suppressing the wage for American workers and statistically, although she may be working, she is likely using government services far in excess of what she contributes.  And although this first wave of immigrants is likely to seek work, it has been shown that their children are more likely to be dependent on government services. And the male nurse that intervened in an apprehension?  Since when do citizens obstruct law enforcement officers from applying the law? Whether or not you think the law is fair, you do not lay hands on a law enforcement officer.  See how that works out for you.  Wasn’t it the democrats who were preaching “no one is above the law.” Only the laws they agree with and when they’re applied to the opposition, apparently.  Hypocrites. And why exactly do you suspect the other emergency department was forced to close?  Could it be that they were flooded with patients who can’t pay for their services? Or perhaps they reached that tipping point where the percentage of Medicaid and indigent patients far exceeded the numbers of private pay patients and those with insurance who actually keep the lights on.  And what happens when all those indigent, uninsured patients descend on The Pitt? Or perhaps next season they can preach the “Medicare for all” narrative and put a spin on that.  Medicare reimburses on the same schedule as Medicaid and if all the hospitals are subjected to that fee schedule, the rural community hospitals will close first followed by the underperforming hospitals, followed by the larger institutions when they too are overrun. The lesser educated and higher risk patients will continue to use the ED as their primary care physician, only this time those numbers will increase astronomically when everyone has access to government sponsored care.  Wait times will increase, resources will be rationed, physicians will retire in droves when renumeration falls precipitously, medicine will cease to be a chosen profession of the best and brightest, hospital facilities will decay, outcomes will suffer. Our healthcare system, the envy of the world, will deteriorate into the second rate services offered by Canada, England, and most of Europe.  Canada was once held up as a beacon of healthcare excellence, having the gall to suggest that they had superior outcomes to the US in treating cancer.  In-depth analysis found that most advanced cases weren’t included in the analysis because they died waiting for care, whereas the US was treating the difficult cases that dragged down their survival rates.  And now Canada has MAID, medically assisted suicide, where patients with a poor prognosis are given the option to end their lives rather than be subjected to the crap shoot of government run healthcare. In some cases it has been claimed that patients have been coerced into ending their lives by the government representatives, most likely because it is a cheaper option than treating them. For perspective, there were 11721 reported murders in the United States in 2025 in a country of 340 million people.  In Canada in 2024 there were 16499 deaths by medically assisted suicide accounting for 5.1% of all deaths in a country….with a population of just over 41 million.  Let me repeat that: in 2025 more people were killed by Canada’s national health system than were murdered in the United States.  Is this the utopian healthcare model we are being promised?  Does anyone think that our elected officials will be participating in the program? Of course not. Their thinking: Let them eat cake.  In the end, socialized medicine is the same scam that all socialist programs are: redistribution of wealth to pay for an “equitable” program or product that provides lesser quality services for all…..except the elites that are pulling the levers of government.  So, in summary, the Pitt has managed to do a credible job of portraying the nuts and bolts of medical practice in the ED, but they really need to be schooled on the realities of socialized medicine and the ramifications of their woke agenda.

El-Sayed

America, are you listening to the blather coming out of El-Sayed’s mouth?  This man is dangerous with his slick “my guy” dude-speak and, as Dana Perino said, his “baby GAP” t-shirts and tough guy swagger. These Islamo-socialists have no shame, and beyond the typical politician's ability to exaggerate and misrepresent, they will outright lie to you to achieve their goals. Their allegiances lie elsewhere, and from their radical socialist policies, one has to assume that their secondary mission is to bankrupt this country. Like the Obamacare tactic of installing a healthcare program doomed to fail, hoping single-payer will rise from its ashes, the hope is that by destroying capitalism and Western civilization, a socialist state will supplant it and morph into Islamic-style fascism. There is no future of assimilation, and we only have to look to Europe to see how this is going to unfold. 

Blurring Nationality

World Cup: Many of the European teams- France, Belgium, the Netherlands- field teams that look more representative of Africa due to massive immigration. But that leads to the question:  if all the teams are composed of a majority of Africans, then what exactly is the point of having a tournament between nations?  Sure, the fans in the stands most often represent the ethnic makeup of the countries, and that adds flavor to the tournament: the kilted and often inebriated Scots, the Viking-rowing Norwegians, the Orange-clad Dutch, the English chanting en masse, for example.  But the teams on the field are largely becoming our immigrants against your immigrants.  Where’s the fun in that? And this isn’t some DEI exercise.  No example of meritocracy is more glaring than professional sports. These immigrants, or more likely children of immigrants, are citizens of the country they represent and are qualified to represent that country on the national team based on their excellence in the sport.  Kylian Mbappe is one of the most skilled soccer players in the world and represents France on their national team.  He was born in France to an Algerian mother and a Cameroonian father and is a French citizen.  But he obviously is not ethnically French.  That’s not a bad thing, but it does take something away from a sporting competition between nations.  On the contrary, Erling Haaland is an international soccer star from Norway and plays for his country.  He is a large man by soccer standards, a giant at 6 feet 4 inches, and he sports a long blond mane with shaved sides that would look at home on a Viking ship. Even the official national team photo dressed the team up in Viking garb replete with shields, breastplates, spears, and battle axes.  Their fans support their team by simulating synchronized rowing of a longboat to the beat of a drum. Now that’s embracing a national identity.  And that’s fun. But the French?  How does that joke go?  I went to Paris.  I saw the Eiffel Tower. I went to the Louvre. I saw Notre Dame. I ate a croissant.  And I bought one of those French hats.What do you call them? Oh yeah, a hijab. Ouch. But must progress involve the eradication of the native people and their national identity? I thought we were all critical of the conquest of the indigenous? Don’t we seek to eradicate invasive species? You know, Asian carp, the spotted lanternfly, emerald ash borers, stuff like that. You know, things that breed prolifically, offer no benefit in return, destroy the local habitat, and exhaust resources. Or maybe just a McDonald's franchise on the Champs-Élysées. Does that apply to immigration? Well, apparently, Bo thinks so, and it hasn’t been well received by the left, who opportunistically extrapolate the rantings of a Texas Railroad Commissioner into the platform for the entire Republican Party. 

But why shouldn’t we mourn the loss of national or even regional identity? Especially when it seems to go hand in hand with a myriad of things we should all rally against: corruption, crime, increased social programs, and increased taxation… to name a few.  It may improve the quality of your soccer team, but it doesn’t necessarily improve the quality of life in your cities.  Take the recent uprisings in Paris, for example. And why is it that the left endorses cries from minority groups that they need more people that ‘look like us' in healthcare and in government? As if your physician is somehow more qualified to assess your ailments if they’re of the same ethnicity.  Isn’t that itself a racist premise? And as far as your government representative looking like you…well, that appears to be more advantageous when they seek government assistance for the minority groups they represent.  That is not government competence; that’s electing a lobbyist. With 60% of the US population identifying as “White”, and with that percentage expected to fall below 50% sometime in the early 2040s, why wouldn’t a member of that group… soon to be a minority…be concerned about representation and shifting demographics?  Why is that considered a racist perspective when clearly minority groups that vote strictly along racial lines, or seek out businesses and healthcare providers of the same race, aren’t seen as doing the same thing?  Why is it considered racist to object to California providing upwards of $100,000 a year to immigrant families of five when American citizens who have worked their entire lives paying into the system are potentially facing a 20% reduction in Social Security benefits in 2035 as the program exhausts its resources? Every ethnic group or nationality will naturally seek to protect their own interests.  Unfortunately, when white people in Europe or the United States engage in such protectionism, or what may be called nationalism, it is twisted by the media into representing white supremacy, fascism, and racism.  But what is the end game according to the left? Is it the complete eradication of Western values and culture? Is it some utopian society where all races and ethnicities are represented in equal numbers, with equal pay and access to the same education, healthcare, and housing? Is it Globalism with a Marxist twist, each according to his needs?  Impossible. But it seems we are moving toward a proletariat class ruled by government overlords.  A recent Pew Research Center survey suggested that many Americans believe government should play a larger role than capitalism, providing affordable housing, access to healthcare, and limiting credit card interest, with a nearly equal divide, with Democrats favoring larger government and Republicans preferring less.  This would explain the rise in socialist candidates in the Democratic Party, a development that should concern anyone who has studied history.  And where has this proven to be successful?  Just slapping the word democrat in front of socialist does not make that system of governance any better, comrades. Can a country survive when it is nearly equally divided between one faction that favors increased government intervention, socialist policies like single-payer healthcare, redistribution of wealth, government control of housing and the government control of property and production with porous borders…… and the other side that favors capitalism, closed borders, limited taxation and a smaller government footprint? And when the socialists seem to favor what was once thought to be unthinkable: defunding the police, disbanding immigration enforcement, opening our borders to unfettered immigration, no identification required for voting, condoning corruption, and the confiscation of private property and businesses, does this not make their “affordability” platform an absurd premise?  And into the widening abyss that exists between the parties, you inject immigration and shifting demographics with populations that are not assimilating but coalescing to vote their own representatives into Congress.  Gone is the concept of assimilation. One might have to consider that the plan is to introduce nothing but chaos.

WSJ Betrayal

The Wall Street Journal is really trying my patience.  I don’t expect to be spoon-fed conservative-biased reporting like some Instagram algorithm, but I have come to expect them to offer some degree of support for conservative candidates, especially when one considers the radical alternatives offered by the democrats. But they've steadily skewed left, are distinctly negative when reporting on Trump policies, and don’t even get me started on Peggy Noonan’s weekly demonstrations of end-stage TDS.  Their latest editorial, seemingly ripped from the pages of the New York Times, claims that a segment of the Republican Party has become “hostile to ethnic and religious minorities” and uses the recent comments by Bo French as an example. Who, you ask? Exactly.  The author of this editorial, Mr. Sadanand Dhume, is trying to support his thesis based on the rantings of a candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission? But perhaps you are being a bit sensitive, Sadanand.  Or perhaps biased yourself. The aforementioned Mr. French does indeed have a history of making some racially controversial comments, perhaps the only reason anyone would even know that the TRC exists, let alone the fact that Bo French is a candidate for the office.  But this particular comment pointed out that the University of Texas student body, in a candid photo, appeared more representative of Mumbai's population than Austin's. So what. As an observation, that is a rational conclusion that would be apparent to any objective observer, albeit based on a single photograph.  And in a state that prides itself on football, oil, cowboys, cattle and the American frontier, wouldn’t it be disconcerting to an old Texan like Mr. French that the University that bears the state’s name may be losing its Texas identity? In the name of worshipping at the altar of diversity, must everywhere look the same as everywhere else? Now Bo could have left it at that, but he spun it as a negative by simply stating “it’s worse than I thought.” But if by “worse” he means not representative of Texas, he may indeed be correct.  The population of the state of Texas remains majority White at 53.93%, with Hispanics making up the next largest ethnic group at 39.3%. The University of Texas, however, does not reflect those state statistics, with 31.57% of the student body White and 28.28% Hispanic.  Surprisingly, Asians make up 25.37% of the student population, despite accounting for only 5% of the state population.  The University does not break down the racial groups any finer than that, so we might conclude that Indians (as in India) may be included in the group labeled as Asian. Also surprising is that the Black population of Texas accounts for 11.9%, whereas they make up only 4.67% of the student body. And that in itself is interesting.  If DEI policies have been abandoned, then perhaps meritocracy is the reason why high-performing Asian students are overrepresented, a phenomenon that has appeared at most Ivy League and highly selective universities, most notably Harvard, which have been accused of discriminating against Asians in their admissions process. Maybe by “worse than I thought,” Mr. French was actually lamenting the underrepresentation of white and Hispanic students compared to Texas’ population, which would suggest their academic performance is falling behind their Asian counterparts. Depends on how you spin it

The Ithaca Schism

I met a high school teacher yesterday from Ithaca… sanctuary city and home of Cornell University and, even farther to the left, Ithaca College, the bastion of lefty hippies, theater majors, and No Kings protests. Insanity at its finest. She had the day off as Ithaca public schools were closed in observance of Yom Kippur. Ridiculous, she said, and I’m Jewish. She went on to note that they also observe the Chinese New Year, Rosh Hashanah, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, and Diwali in addition to the traditional Christian Holiday of Christmas, Thanksgiving (surprised at that one), MLK Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day and Labor Day. President’s Day gets incorporated into the mid-winter week-long recess, winter recess picks up Kwanza and New Year’s Day, and Spring recess is just there to keep Florida bars in business. If the school is a polling place, it's also closed on Election Day. Notably, they have eliminated the Monday after Easter Sunday as well as Good Friday. So roughly one month worth of days off, not including teacher “resource” days, superintendent days and other teacher benefits in what is already a short school year when you factor in summer vacation as well. No wonder our children are idiots. They’re never in school. And Kathy Hochul, in her infinite wisdom, eliminated New York Regents exams as a requirement to graduate. With underperforming students getting pushed through to graduate on schedule and grade inflation making grades essentially meaningless, the Regents served as the only indicator of student proficiency. Over the years, the Regents have even been dumbed down to compensate for deteriorating student performance and the phenomenon of educators simply teaching to the test to assure the appearance of proficiency in subject matter. The question remains whether the poor pass rate was a reflection on the quality of students or a condemnation of the quality of our educators… and the culpable teachers’ union. If the students aren’t being held to a standard and the educators, along with a top-heavy bureaucracy, are not held accountable, how exactly can we assess and improve what appears to be a failing education system in America?

Labor Day Lament

Why do we allow people who do not pay taxes, and thus have “no skin in the game,” to vote for candidates who promise them more “freebies” at the expense of people who go to work every day? The argument will be that all Americans pay taxes, be it sales tax, payroll tax, or state and local taxes, but that pales in comparison to the federal tax burden. Like virtually everything in the Constitution, the original intent has been watered down. The Founders originally proposed that only landowners should have the right to vote, and we once had a “poll tax” that was eliminated as well. And if you listen to the democrats, their platform continues to support expanding voting “rights” to include non-citizens and the incarcerated. In a country with the most progressive tax structure in the world, and socialist candidates in the Democrat party screaming for more punitive taxation on success, perhaps it’s time we revisited the issue. But alas, it would require Congress to get onboard and with 37.4 percent of Americans effectively paying no federal income tax…..yes, that’s nearly forty percent that pay no federal income tax or worse yet, receive more money in return than they paid…it would appear that we are well past the tipping point where there are more takers than makers. 

Big Brother Is Watching

Mike Skater on Breitbart was interviewing a tech specialist this morning, discussing the pros and cons of technology, with the cons mostly related to privacy issues. The proliferation of Flock cameras, small automated license plate readers (ALPS), is troubling, as they are widely employed by law enforcement to scan passing vehicles and upload that information to a database. So at any given time, they can access where your vehicle has been and, in real time, where it’s going. Granted, a useful tool if your vehicle has been stolen, or a crime has been committed, and the perpetrator escaped in a vehicle. Unfortunately, the data is also being used to track movement across state lines to buy fireworks or marijuana that is illegal in the state of origin, allowing law enforcement to lie in wait for when the vehicle returns home. Kinda petty.  Unscrupulous law enforcement officers have also used it for personal use, such as tracking ex-spouses or girlfriends. Not cool. The other concern, particularly in anti-Second Amendment states, is that the data can be used to track vehicles that frequent gun stores or gun ranges, essentially providing de facto gun registration in states where it is illegal to keep a database of gun purchases and ownership. Also not cool, as the net is cast so wide that it ensnares significantly more law-abiding folks than the criminal element.  And down the rabbit hole we go: Vehicles present at a Trump rally, vehicles that go back and forth to Republican Party headquarters, vehicles at a Turning Point USA event, vehicles coming and going from a politician’s home or even the politician’s personal vehicle. You get the drift. And who exactly has access to this database? Then there’s human error. In one state, a murder was committed, and the getaway car’s license plate was incorrectly entered into the system. The mistake resulted in an innocent woman being aggressively pursued and stopped on the highway, removed from her vehicle, and arrested at gunpoint. The error was discovered, and she was sent on her way. Oops, sorry about that. But the original error was not corrected in the system, resulting in her being subjected to yet another traumatic traffic stop a week later. Yikes. Orwellian stuff. What could possibly go wrong? For any of you concerned that big brother is coming, fear not. He’s already here.