Riding High

 

Happy New Year, friends!!!  2025 was a challenging year for me and my loved ones, for purely personal reasons, but it was a very, very good year for America and for the world, by and large.  The U.S. economy and stock market boomed, despite the best efforts of leftists and "journalists" to tank them both.  Scores of woke policies at the federal, state, local, and private sector levels were abolished, transgenderism went into headlong retreat, the federal workforce shrank by 10%, taxes were lowered, crime went down, inflation remained modest, the border became a downright boring place, 2.5 million illegal immigrants left the country either voluntarily or otherwise, tariffs reordered our trading relations with the rest of the world, the Supreme Court backed up President Trump the vast majority of the time, and, most surprising of all, Democrats staved off complete mental breakdowns by convincing themselves that, despite everything I just mentioned, they are winning!  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!  It just goes to show you that the human spirit is nothing if not resilient, and delusionally so, where absolutely necessary.  May the Year of Our Lord 2026 continue to bless this great nation, and may it bring peace and healing to those parts of the world most in need of it.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c050j896q2do 

 

In other news, it's a popular misconception that, because the Constitution says that state legislatures get to decide on Congressional redistricting, this is how the process actually works.  Not really.  Redistricting is actually more of a dialectic process involving state legislatures, yes, but also state and federal courts, the latter of which get, as per usual, the final say.  Thus, when one "arm" of the process doesn't give you, or your party, what you want, you can always try another.  The Dems, since they're not idiots, are well aware of this, and they've been plying these various levers of power very successfully for a long time.  The recent kerfuffle in Utah is a good example.  It's about time we learned from their example!

 

https://amac.us/newsline/politics/the-judicial-coup-in-utah-is-a-warning-to-the-nation/ 

Battle of the Sexes, Part Deux

 

Friends, what better way to decide the relative merits of men and women than by pitting the world's best female tennis player against a hobbled, aging, washed-up shell of a man on the other side of the court?  Heck, why not give the man a smaller area to hit the ball into as well?  Both in the iconic 1973 matchup between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, and in the recent matchup between Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios, the playing field was anything but level.  In 1973, this gamesmanship had the desired effect, and King defeated Riggs, and women have been crowing about "girl power" ever since.  Now, though, in 2025, Kyrgios easily defeated the decidedly manish "woman" Sabalenka, casting doubt, for the first time ever, on the inherent superiority of women!  My my.  How the tables are turned.  My take, in case you can't decipher all the sarcasm, is that a fixed, unequal contest between a man and a woman proves nothing about anything, and the whole exercise was silly from the start.

 

https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2025/12/28/battle-of-the-sexes-nick-kyrgios-easily-beats-aryna-sabalenka-in-tennis-match/ 

 

https://www.history.com/articles/billie-jean-king-wins-the-battle-of-the-sexes-40-years-ago 

 

In other news, there appears to be progress in negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine War.  As a sweetener, the U.S. is offering Ukraine "security guarantees".  I'm not sure I like the sound of that.  Why can't those he-men in Europe do the heavy lifting???

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36z615y443o 

 

Finally, I forgot to post the last Newsmakers interview featuring moi!  Oops.  It was recorded almost a week ago, but luckily we covered a lot of topics that are still timely.  For instance, Brian and I analyzed the upcoming 1970 midterm elections, which I feel are going to be very exciting!  I also expressed a desire to fly in one of those newfangled 747 "jumbo jets".  That would be a trip.  I just hope the Jackson 5 aren't on board, though.  I feel like the size and heft of their afros might compromise the plane's ability to get off the ground...

 

https://wysl.podbean.com/e/newsmakers-12-27-25/ 

The Reason of Our Discontent

 

Friends, today I share with you two articles about A.I. -- one of them shared with me by the incomparable Jack -- which make similar points: we are becoming overly dependent on the assistance of bots and increasingly incapable of critical thought.  Well, sure.  There's an element of truth to the argument, and most people who use A.I. use it as a crutch, i.e. as a way to get things done with minimum thought and exertion on their own part.  And crutches can be bad, because, if you spend your life hobbling around on them, you may never learn to walk or sprint on your own two feet.  The problem with the argument, however, is that crutches come in many forms.  Not so long ago the main crutch students, and humans in general, were using was internet search engines.  They too can do much of our work for us, and they've become increasingly adept at it.  Before that, intellectual purists lamented the use of word processing programs, spellcheck, and the like, which made the process of writing much easier, and could fix problems of grammar, spelling, syntax, etc. that previously we had to fix ourselves.  Before that, there were libraries, which collected in one place much of the wisdom that we might need to complete an intellectual task, and not uncommonly there were librarians lurking in those libraries who, if you were even a little bit nice to them, would do much of the heavy lifting involved in research, and sometimes writing too.  Of course, students, and humans in general, have often relied on their friends and co-workers, who might have been better writers or thinkers that they were, to complete intellectual tasks for them.  People can be crutches too, lest we forget.  And then there's the biggest obstacle of all to genuine critical thinking: the tendency of almost all of us to idealize the intellectual labors done by those we regard as smarter than ourselves.  Think about the educational process itself, which more often than not involves drinking deep of the intellectual achievements of "great" thinkers, from Aristotle to Zola, who may have been brainy, sure, but none of whom had or have all the answers we seek.  In countless ways, even when we seem to be thinking hard about weighty questions, we're very often soaking up the intellectual habits and prejudices of others and then replicating them in our own work.  Truly creative thinking, in the sense of original thinking, is a very rare thing, and that's precisely why people like schools of thought, or political ideologies, or religious dogmas, to spoon feed them "truth", so that they don't have to go find it themselves.  Is A.I. a "crutch", therefore?  Sure it is, or at least it can be.  But crutches and intellectual laziness are nothing new, and so there's no reason to suppose A.I. is a game changer in that regard.  And, speaking of "reason", it's always a useful exercise to ask: what is it, and do those who claim to have a monopoly on it -- leftists are especially guilty of this conceit -- have any better understanding of it than the man on the street, or even the man in the gutter.  My view, since you asked so nicely, has always been that raw reason is a nice and beautiful thing, but, as Aristotle said, it, i.e. reason, moves nothing.  Reason helps us process information, but it doesn't suggest or validate any values.  It doesn't set priorities.  Indeed, A.I., which is something akin to pure thought or basic computational ability, doesn't have any sense of direction or purpose either.  It does, and refuses to do, whatever we humans tell it to do, or not to do.  It's a tool, and we humans, especially those of us who own Big Tech companies or know how to write sophisticated code, are still in the driver's seat, therefore.  We decide what goals and moral parameters prevail in the world of A.I., or at least that has always been the case up to now.  What I conclude from all this is that human beings have always been fundamentally lazy, in the sense that they invariably prefer to complete any task with minimal effort and maximum assistance from technology.  We've also always been a lot less rational, when you get right down to it, than Enlightenment blowhards liked to claim.  Spend an afternoon with a self-satisfied "progressive", and I defy you NOT to conclude that their supposedly rational worldview is, in fact, just a pastiche of petty hatreds and naive, unexamined assumptions, almost all of which they acquired by brainlessly vacuuming them up from left-leaning luminaries who enjoy telling others what to think.  Now, if that's the pinnacle of human reason, which supposedly A.I. is in the process of undermining, maybe we'll all be better off when our brains turn to mush!  Those are my two cents.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/26/ai-dark-ages-enlightenment 

 

https://thefederalist.com/2025/12/25/artificial-intelligence-in-the-classroom-destroys-actual-intelligence-in-students/ 

 

In other news, according to Senator Jim Banks, the U.S. military has its groove back, because of the leadership of President Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.  That's good to hear.  Certainly, we've got wokeism on the run, and that's something to celebrate.

 

https://americanmind.org/salvo/americas-military-is-back/ 

 

Finally, kudos to Honduras' president-elect, Nasry Asfura, the preferred candidate of one Donald J. Trump, and therefore a good friend to the USA.  Once again, we see the Americas moving in a Trumpward direction, which begs the question: why are we even bothering with those stuffy, socialistic Europeans???

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/26/marco-rubio-congratulates-honduran-president-elect-nasry-asfura 

Joyeux Noel!

 

Friends, Merry Christmas!  May the true spirit of the season, in which presumably President Trump excels BIGLY, be amongst you all.  Lest ye forget, the biggest present you have ever received did not come under the tree...but it's okay to give and receive the occasional capitalistic bauble as well.  It keeps the economy humming along!

Bing Bang Boom!

 

Friends, today there's good news and bad news, much like every day, come to think of it.  Today we learned that the Trump economy is BOOMING, notching 4.3% growth in the third quarter and exceeding all expectations.  That's something to celebrate, no?  And it's sure to filter down to almost all Americans in the long term, since a rising tide lifts all boats, generally speaking.  But there's bad news too.  Consumer confidence, by one measure, actually went down simultaneously, and consumer sentiment was really dragging already.  What do we learn from this strange confluence of data points?  Simple.  We learn that Trump is doing a terrific job as the chief steward of the U.S. economy.  We also learn, however, that the mainstream media and leftists in general are doing a great job of spoiling America's fun and convincing their fellow Americans that, in reality, everything sucks and times have never been so tough.  Trump is pushing back on this false narrative, of course, but he can only do so much.  The Trump haters have plenty of powerful megaphones of their own, and they live, almost literally, in an alternate reality where economic pain totally overshadows economic progress.  And most of them are rich and doing just fine!  Perception is everything, and we need to work harder to get the majority of Americans to realize, before it's too late, how good they have it.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62n9ynzrdpo 

 

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2025/12/23/trump-boom-u-s-economy-grows-4-3-smashing-expectations/ 

 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/consumer-confidence-slides-in-december-as-bad-vibes-about-the-economy-persist-162546840.html 

Battle Ready!

 

Friends, exciting news!  President Trump has ordered the construction of "Trump class" battleships, bristling with high-tech armaments and simply way, way better and Trumpier than anything that has ever graced the murky deep before.  Bravo!  I'm all for a U.S. Navy that is not only powerful but majestic and awe-inspiring.  What's more, we may need Trump's "golden fleet" when we go to war with Denmark in order to conquer Greenland.  Okay, a tugboat would probably suffice to take out the Danes, but better safe than sorry!  Take note that today DJT appointed a special envoy to coordinate our Greenland acquisition strategy, which, I fear, will have to incorporate the use of force at some stage, because those snotty Europeans are not giving up their great big hunk of ice just because we ask them nicely.

 

https://apnews.com/article/trump-navy-golden-fleet-battleship-0940368b39b19f03abe8689ebad08380?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgmd132ge4o 

 

In other news, the Dems may have a competitive presidential primary looming in 2028, but most signs point to a fairly uneventful contest on the GOP side.  J.D. Vance is towering over all other prospects.  At this stage, he has my full support, although it is, lest we forget, a long way to 2028 and much can change.  Maybe Elon will toss his (aluminum foil) hat into the ring?

 

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/12/22/jd-vance-towers-over-potential-2028-gop-primary-field-turning-point-straw-poll/ 

The Empire Strikes Backward

 

Friends, today we got some surprising news for New York State Republicans like Yours Truly.  We were anticipating a battle royal between our sitting Governor Kathy Hochul and GOP Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.  Now it seems Stefanik won't run for Governor, and she won't even run for reelection to the House!  Instead, she plans to "spend more time with her family", which is the sort of thing one says when concealing an ulterior motive, but perhaps in this case it happens to be the truth?  The psychic costs of serving as a public official are shockingly high, so maybe the pressure simply got to Stefanik in the end...  Here's hoping the NYS Republican Party can find a new champion to lead the charge against Hochul, because our state sure could use new leadership.

 

https://apnews.com/article/stefanik-new-york-governor-trump-12fe84b3eb8548c9ce57712022835663?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us 

 

In other news, DJT has waved his magic wand and lowered the price of prescription drugs!  Good for him.  He's also bringing more pharmaceutical manfacturing back to the USA.  Sounds like a win-win to me!

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/19/nine-pharma-companies-ink-deals-with-trump-to-lower-drug-prices.html 

 

We now know who the shooter at Brown University was, and it turns out he was an immigrant admitted under the "diversity visa" program, whereby we pick new Americans by lottery.  Sounds like a terrific idea, right?  Why waste any brain cells on the topic of immigration when we can let the wheel of fate decide for us?  Well, if you can't detect my sarcasm, you're just not trying very hard.  This program was always a terrible idea, and hopefully this tragic incident is the wake-up call we needed in order to end it once and for all.

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/noem-alleged-brown-shooter-diversity-visa-lottery/ 

 

Lastly, the DOJ has begun peppering us with "Epstein files", as per the law that was passed by Congress weeks ago, and I'm sure this avalanche of documentation will put the matter to rest...NOT!  The Dems will keep beating this drum for as long as their core supporters continue to lap up Epstein conspiracy theories, which in my estimation is several more years, at least!

 

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/12/19/doj-begins-releasing-thousands-more-epstein-file-documents/ 

The Trump Effect

 

Friends, kudos to President Trump, who tonight wisely addressed the nation directly, conveying a message of positivity and touting a sterling economic record that few Americans are remotely aware of.  Trump shared numerous statistics documenting wage gains and price declines.  Of course, Trump haters will scoff, but, for at least as long as Trump spoke, he was able to circumvent the talking heads whose soul purpose is to undermine and denigrate him, and thereby to counter lies with truth.  I've often wondered why Trump doesn't make primetime speeches like this more often.  Sure, they don't reach everyone, but if even a sliver of independents and persuadable voters tuned in, the upside could be substantial -- and, more importantly, Trump has literally nothing to lose by making the attempt.  Here's hoping that we'll hear much more from our incomparable Commander-in-Chief in the next three years, and that Trump supporters will pick up where he left off, and spread the word that, on the economy, help is not only on the way -- it's already here!

 

https://nypost.com/2025/12/17/us-news/trump-tells-america-im-fixing-bidens-mess-in-chart-filled-primetime-address/ 

Make the Americas Great Again!

 

Friends, tonight I wish to convey my congratulations and good wishes to the people of Chile, a beautiful and prosperous nation, who have voted to move the country firmly to the right, electing as their next president an ally and admirer of our own Donald J. Trump.  Some say Chile's lurch to the right means a reinstitution of quasi-fascist, Pinochet-style rule.  Well, this ain't 1973, and this time Chile's embrace of "far-right" principles and policies is entirely voluntary, so that's a big difference.  In any case, it's heartening to see so many Latin Americans rejecting Marxism and upholding the values of freedom, capitalist competition, national sovereignty, law and order, and the supremacy of family and God over victimology and secular humanism.  Let's hope that soon we will be able to add Venezuela to the long list of American states, including our own, which have come to their senses!

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kde07lvvro 

The Woke Leviathan

 

Friends, my latest article is hot off the presses (which exist mainly in my mind, and are VERY hot!).  I tackle the issue of Netflix's proposed takeover of Warner Brothers, which I find...appalling.  See what you make of my point of view.

 

A Pox on the House of Netflix!

The recent announcement that Warner Brothers, a Hollywood institution for over a century, will be acquired by Netflix, one of the wokest Big Tech companies around, should set off alarm bells for anyone who cares about the future of America and our popular culture. The Trump Administration simply cannot allow this merger from leftist Hades (much worse than regular Hades) to proceed.

Netflix's catalog of offenses against decency and traditional values is voluminous. Take, for instance, its trumpeting of the trans agenda...to kids, no less! Netflix's constant nods to identity politics, moreover, make much of its programming unwatchable to anyone who didn't ooze “joy” the moment Kamala(!) became the Democratic Party annointee for president... Meanwhile, Netflix's fascination with leftist narratives, from climate change to “undocumented” immigrants, has laid bare its ideological bias. These manifold sins, in combination with the low quality and limited scope of Netflix's offerings, made it an easy decision for me to cut the (digital) cord to Netflix years ago, and I've never looked back.

Warner Brothers, sadly, is proving less discerning. For reasons that beggar belief, it has accepted an inferior offer from Netflix, spurning a much larger bundle of cash from Paramount, the entertainment giant piloted by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, who is, in case you've forgotten, an open and shameless supporter of (gasp!) President Donald Trump. Hmm. Now that seems odd: a mainstream Hollywood studio has chosen to climb into bed with a famously liberal streaming service, and the financial interests of Warner Brothers' shareholders be damned! Nothing fishy there. The fact that Warner Brothers controls CNN, a failed news network that nonetheless manages to irritate Trump and Republicans on a regular basis, might help to explain why the Ellisons and Paramount had to be denied. The last thing some people want is news networks that report the news, as opposed to TDS-inspired fever dreams.

Luckily, there is hope that this freakish union can be thwarted before American popular culture succumbs once and for all to “progressive” degeneracy. For one thing, Pam Bondi's DOJ, and more specifically its antitrust division, will have something to say about whether the proposed Warner Brothers/Netflix merger harms competition in the entertainment industry and/or represents an illegal monopoly. There are ample reasons to think that it does. President Trump has expressed concern on this point.

What's more, Warner Brothers' shareholders, and other interested parties, can pursue legal action to prevent the merger by arguing that it pointedly ignored, or even deliberately violated, the fiduciary obligation of Warner Brothers' executives, if they sell the company, to seek the best possible deal and the highest possible price. Paramount made six separate offers to Warner Brothers, each more generous than the last, but in the end Warner Brothers' CEO, David Zaslav, spurned the Ellisons and inked an agreement with the people who brought us Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp instead. Very logical! Nice stewardship of the Warner Brothers legacy, Dave. And who needs money, anyway? It's highly overrated, from what I hear.

We can only hope that these political, legal, and financial countermeasures to the proposed Warner Brothers/Netflix merger manage to head off this unholy alliance before it's too late. Otherwise, you could find yourself paying more and more for “entertainment” that is worse and worse, and which doesn't even pretend to promote or respect the values you hold dear. As Bugs Bunny (a Warner Brothers property) would say, that's “what's up, Doc”, and the sooner we organize ourselves to avert this calamity, the better!

Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is a history professor at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears on the Newsmakers show on WLEA/WYSL.

 

And here it is at Townhall:

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2025/12/13/a-pox-on-the-house-of-netflix-n2667823 

 

***

 

And don't miss out on this week's Newsmakers show, which features none other than me!  Brian and I cover U.S./EU tensions, the heartening Republican victory in Tennessee's 7th Congressional district, the resilient Trump economy and the phony "affordability" crisis, the seizure of the oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, the tremendous decline in the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S., the Netflix/Warner Brothers boondoggle, and Time Magazine's homage to the "architects of A.I.", as well as A.I.'s potential impact on the job market.

 

Holy moly!  Is there anything we didn't cover?  Hardly seems so! 

 

https://wysl.podbean.com/e/newsmakers-12-13-25/ 

 

In other news, Republican efforts to redistrict their way to an enhanced, or at least stable, majority in the House of Representatives have been dealt a major setback, as Indiana state senators, including a majority of Republicans (!), voted against a plan that would have, or could have, added two more seats to the GOP tally.  Why would Republicans balk?  Apparently they felt "bullied", the poor dears, and they find the idea of mid-cycle redistricting icky and impolite.  Well, Democrats have been gerrymandering their brains out for decades...so much so that they have precious little left to gerrymander, so why can't Republicans see the writing on the wall?  Midwestern pride?  Homespun self-satisfaction?  Maybe even a touch of closet TDS?  I don't know the answer, but I hope cooler heads prevail and Indiana revisits this issue soon.

 

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/12/12/trump-signals-support-for-primary-challenges-after-indiana-gop-rejects-redistricting-bill/