Do We Really Need “Moral Leadership” from the White House?

After the horrors of Charlottesville, and President Trump’s morally ambiguous initial statement, pundits, politicians and citizens complained that we weren’t getting the moral leadership we need. I have one question: Why do we need moral leadership? Moral leadership probably made sense in pre-Internet days. But today we get rapid moral clarity…

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How To Know You’re In a Mass Hysteria Bubble

History is full of examples of Mass Hysterias. They happen fairly often. The cool thing about mass hysterias is that you don’t know when you are in one. But sometimes the people who are not experiencing the mass hysteria can recognize when others are experiencing one, if they know what to look for….

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The People’s Plan to Fix Health Care

We the People of the United States elected a populist president to go to Washington DC and make the changes the people want. Sounds good on paper. Unless the people don’t know what they want. That’s the situation with health care. The public doesn’t have any majority opinion on what a…

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The Turn to “Effective, but we don’t like it.”

Prior to President Trump’s inauguration, I predicted a coming story arc in three acts. Act one involved mass protests in the streets because Hillary Clinton’s campaign had successfully branded Trump as the next Hitler. Sure enough, we saw mass protests by anti-Trumpers who legitimately and honestly believed the country had…

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Another Way to Make Mexico Pay for the Wall?

I saw a news item about border security seizing $500K worth of marijuana at the border. The agent being interviewed said this was not unusual. What do they do with all of that seized marijuana? I assume they destroy it after taking home whatever they can fit in their pockets….

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People Keep Telling Me to Stop Blogging about North Korea

My critics have been extra vocal lately in saying I should stop writing about North Korea because I have no expertise in that area. So I decided to talk about North Korea some more. Today I’ll tell you how to end North Korea’s nuclear ambitions at a reasonable cost. The…

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Health Care is a System, Not a Goal

Last night, Senator McCain cast the deciding vote to kill the “skinny” version of a proposed health care bill. Notice how he explains it as a failure of process, not a problem with the bill itself: “I’ve stated time and time again that one of the major failures of Obamacare was that it…

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I’m Not Your Pope (But Thanks for Asking)

A funny thing happened after my conversation with Sam Harris [no longer available] on the topic of President Trump. An avalanche of anti-Trumpers descended on my Twitter account and insisted I become their moral leader – sort of like their Pope. I have not accepted the job, but I can see the…

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Listen to My Conversation with Sam Harris — About President Trump

By popular demand, I had a two-hour conversation with Sam Harris (a prominent Trump critic) about our different “filters” on our new president. You can listen to it here [no longer available]. The Haters of Imaginary Events are out in force already. They imagine I said objectionable things during my conversation with Sam and…

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People Who Can’t Recognize Humor (literally)

One of the most mind-boggling discoveries I made while becoming a professional humorist is that a large segment of the general public has no sense of humor. I mean that literally, in the same way that some people can’t tell the difference between good wine and bad, and some people…

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North Korea is an Information Problem Disguised as a Military Problem

In the year 2017, most of our national problems are information problems. And by that I mean having the right information would allow us to solve most problems. Consider the nuclear threat from North Korea. That’s an information problem disguised as a military problem.  I hope that statement seems wrong…

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