Political Questions

Editor’s note: Our official Mayo-Hating correspondent had obtained exclusive access to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s latest diary entries. . . I’m exhausted and spitting mad. Today sat for what seemed like fifteen hours in a chair with no lumbar support (definitely INTENTIONAL!), while that vile man Rand Paul and his gang of Republican science deniers spread vicious lies about me.

• Two items of note at the beginning of this week regarding the institutional collapse of important liberal institutions. First, big Democratic donors have closed their wallets to the Democratic National Committee: High-profile donors have given little or no money to the Democrats’ central committee this year. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, wrote steady checks to the DNC for years but during the midterms has yet to give money.

Editor’s note: Our music, culture, and everything else correspondent Lloyd has been on the Anthony Fauci beat for more than 30 years. Here are his two latest dispatches combined into one item. In his appraisal of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Steve cites, Stan Evans’ first law that things are always worse than you might think. That proves true with Dr. Anthony Fauci, beyond the revelations of his diary and Wednesday’s hearing.

The hiatus for the rebooted 3WHH is over! We got the band back together, and to further paraphrase the political philosophy of the Ellwood brothers, it's 70 minutes to the end of this podcast, we've got a full glass of whisky, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Just like Anthony Fauci in his glam cover shot for In Style magazine back in 2021. It’s almost like he’s auditioning for the 3WHH. Gives “the fifth” a whole new meaning. . .

Gang, I am trying to get out of my “bad head space” from looking at the world around me, observing the political climate; the unpunished, yea, celebrated anti-semitism; the galloping stupidity; and also my sorrow at the number of people I love who are unwell or no longer with us. Alas, I am only human and I need a little mental break to heal. Sooo….today’s offering will be pure “narishkeit”, Yiddish for “nonsense” or “triviality”.

This is a true story. My friend told me about it when it happened. It’s only an anecdote, but as my wife Susan has explained to me, the plural of anecdote is data. Or was it the opposite? It was something like that. My friend’s undersized ten-year-old white daughter was hanging with a much larger black girlfriend in their public-school yard. As often happens among kids, a minor dispute interrupted their friendship for an instant, and his daughter uttered the dreaded “b—” word.

He is a truly detestable man and yard sales are an especially detestable ritual. Prove that he’s not responsible. I’ll require sworn, notarized affidavits and exculpatory video. Here’s a personal Kobayashi Maru: Drive the entirety of Route 66 trapped behind a leaking HAZMAT Hellmann’s mayo tanker blocking the left lane. OR Have a yard sale. As you can see, a horrifying and impossible choice. The only proper response would be to bite down on the cyanide capsule hidden in my molar.

• Looks like Anthony Fauci needed that pardon from Joe Biden after all. The most appalling revelation—though completely predictable—was not so much his politicized bureaucratic conformity (that was to be expected), but the extent of his egotism about his soaring fame. I could detect it at the time for a simple reason: anyone who is appearing all the major TV news networks every day is no longer doing serious work back at the office.

Is California doomed? Many of you will likely be saying, “YES! Let’s go home.” And I’m afraid that is the right answer. But for those of you who want the latest reasons for gloom, read on. When it comes to California these days, M. Stanton Evans’s First Law of Insufficient Paranoia comes into play; Stan’s First Law holds that no matter how bad you think things are, a closer look always reveals that things are much worse than you thought.

More than a decade ago Glenn Reynolds predicted the inevitable implosion of higher education in America, from a combination of fiscal recklessness and ideological rot.