Category: Access

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Transcripts

As Dr. Fleming has noted to you already, there have been some technological mishaps that prevented episode recording while he was in Italy.  We are back to recording this week and will get caught up, but we also wanted you to know about a benefit that is available to Charter Members for free and a la carte to those of other membership levels: transcripts. If you look at the drop down menu for podcasts on the main page you will see “Transcripts.”  Click there to find some selected transcripts to various episodes.  Charter Members receive one new transcript per month...

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Wednesday’s Child: Salem Alaikum

The Salem witch trials of the 1690’s have entered school textbooks as an episode of mass hysteria, an instance of the sort of fundamentalist extremism that today we associate with militant Islam.  The very fact that this episode – culminating as it did in a modest score of hangings – so stands out in the landscape of history as to have become a byword for vengeful ignorance only underscores the abiding tolerance of European civilization and its North American dilation. This does not mean, however, that the civilization in question was ever free from the herd instinct, which in the...

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Why Not Repeat Reagan’s Tax Cuts? (FREE)

Why doesn’t the Trump Administration just repeat Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts? The Gipper proposed a 33% tax cut on practically all taxes. He negotiated with Tip O’Neill, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, and settled for 29%. The top rate dropped to 50% from 70% of income, with lower incomes given similar cuts. Reagan made one mistake: Most of the tax cuts were delayed until 1983, supposedly to grab more from taxpayers for a year to “pay” for the tax cuts. But all that did was delay economic investment for a year, as companies and persons waited...

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Wednesday’s Child: Moral Borderlands

I was under the weather last week, and besides I thought the gentle reader might use a week’s rest from my compulsive ratiocination, so I did not post.  Weather is a big factor the closer one gets to Africa.  The sirocco arrives here bearing a fine sand dust from the Sahara that gets in everywhere, but worse than that, it makes one feel like a lemon squeezed dry, moscio, as the locals say, meaning flaccid, limp, flabby.  After a day or two, one finds oneself yearning for Siberia and the bracing touch of the bora. Sirocco makes people grumpy, irritable,...

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Wednesday’s Child: Chinsoc

“Ingsoc,” as the gentle reader may recall, was Newspeak for “English Socialism,” the ruling ideology in Orwell’s nightmare.  A modern version of that nightmare is already up and running in real time throughout mainland China under the official name of “System of Social Credit.”  Before long all mankind is expected to see the advantages of such a system, with most developed countries following China in implementing their own national versions of digital totalitarianism.  As I have written here on several occasions in the past, Russia, while behind China in this area of technology, is scheduled to launch a homespun analogue...

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End of the McCain Doctrine

Call it the McCain Doctrine. It’s the foreign policy the U.S. government pursued from the 1999 attack on Serbia to pry away Kosovo, until President Trump’s 2017 occupation of the oval office. Through three presidents – Clinton, Bush II and Obama – the McCain Doctrine has meant constant, pointless intervention around the world. In 1999, McCain was the major force in Congress behind the attack on Serbia, which killed 5,000 Christian Serbs to put the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army in charge. The KLA then drove most Serbs out of their ancient homeland in Kosovo, blowing up their churches, and turning...

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Wednesday’s Child: A Man of the Future

Last week a 51-year-old man was briefly in police custody in the northwest of England for passing leaflets to shoppers of the fair sex in a town square. “No offence intended,” read the culprit’s appeal. “You are simply a female that caught my eye, and I don’t have the time to talk right now.” “I am not looking for a girlfriend or relationship,” ran his argument. “I am looking for a possible private arrangement.” This was followed, in case any of his readers might mistake his intentions in some unexpected way – for instance, spitefully misconstruing them as honorable –...

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Leftist Delusions About Trump

One of the delights of the Trump presidency is seeing how he flummoxes the Left. Even less than usual, they have no idea what’s really going on. Most of them live in the D.C.-NYC Bubble and are clueless about the rest of America. A good example is the Washington Post, in particular writer Greg Sargent in his article titled, “Trump is failing, and the White House is covering it up with lies.” Except all he cites as “failure” is Trump not meeting some campaign promises 100%, in particular repealing Obamacare. But what about the actual policies and the real state...

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Leftists Are Delusional About Gun Control

Whenever one of these mass shootings hits, Leftists unanimously begin spluttering about grabbing our guns. But notice they never say how they would do it. The New York Times has run several such articles, including “news” stories and editorials, every day since the killings. Typical was Nicholas Kristof, who fired off his op-ed while the blood still was coagulating on the ground in Vegas: “Preventing Mass Shootings Like the Vegas Strip Attack.” Among his eight planks: “7. Require safe storage, to reduce theft, suicide and accidents by children.” But how could that possibly have prevented the Las Vegas massacre? And...

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Wednesday’s Child: A Byronic Epithalamium

Last month, those in the know were told by the good Dr. Thomas Fleming that “with valid passports and plane reservations, you now only need endure the rigors of international air travel and get to the Grand Hotel del Gianicolo.”  Quite so, but it has occurred to me that what the chosen among Pastor Fleming’s flock may need at the point of departure for Italy is a nice little epithalamium. I have written on a number of occasions in the past that a country is invariably defined by what its climate allows its people to cultivate, so that France or Italy...