By Selwyn Duke

In 2010, a lame-duck Democrat Congress passed Michelle Obama’s brainchild, “Healthy and Hunger Free Kids Act.” Anyone acquainted with government-program “results” won’t be surprised to hear the outcome was the precise opposite of what the law’s name indicated: Starved of calories, many kids actually went hungry in schools.

The garbage pails didn’t, though, with one legislator complaining that the regulations were “filling the trash cans with uneaten food.”

And now, reflecting philosopher Georg Hegel’s observation that the only thing “we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history,” the fed diet Nazis are back — with new school lunch rules to torment the next generation.

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

Anheuser-Busch’s mistake in making ties with “trans influencer” Dylan Mulvaney was not knowing, or at least not respecting, its market. The United States is making the same mistake on the geopolitical stage, pushing the “trans” and other woke agendas on a world either wholly uninterested, or actually disgusted, by what Uncle Sam is selling.

And, quite predictably, America is bleeding world support the way Bud Light is customers, as our allies take their “business” elsewhere — such as to the Chinese.

Anheuser-Busch’s response is to try to deftly walk back its support for the MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status, aka “transgender”) agenda. Our government’s response is different: It’s quadrupling down (it doubled down long ago).

This is all happening at a time, too, in which respect for the American military is cratering. And as history professor Victor Davis Hanson put it Thursday, “Sanctimonious hectoring while appearing weak is a bad combination.”

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

Years ago at a recreational facility, I saw a man wearing a shirt stating, “Everybody lies. Nobody cares.” He didn’t seem like an aspiring politician (or any kind of lawyer!), but could a message about everyone stealing and no one caring be next? There is a connection there, too:

Liars rob their fellow man of the knowledge of Truth — that priceless resource that “will set you free.”

One man who may agree is Mark Corallo, former director of public affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice. Writing recently at RealClearPolitics, Corallo states how he was told early in his career that while “spin” was expected, “lying to reporters was the unforgivable sin.” (Note here that “spin” has a negative connotation because it often refers to propaganda; in such a case, it is a biased interpretation of events that, at best, reflects intellectual dishonesty — aka “lying to oneself.” And the normalization of this kind of deception paves the way for more brazen lies’ acceptance.)

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

There has been a recent deluge of articles claiming, citing studies, that “red” states flow red with blood — the blood of their lax gun policies’ victims. The data, indicating that conservative states have significantly higher homicide rates than liberal ones, have been widely touted by anti-Second Amendment activists as an argument for gun control. Their math is absolutely correct — but, as one observer puts it, their “parameters” are not.

In fact, their analysis reflects a comic-book (mis)understanding of the matter that overlooks relevant factors such as demographics, wealth, climate, and, quite significantly, the states’ actual gun-control policies.

One of the studies in question, presented at Third Way’s website, contrasted Biden-supporting and Trump-supporting states’ homicide rates, analyzing data from 2000 to 2020. The source then writes, “Altogether, the per capita Red State murder rate was 23% higher than the Blue State murder rate when all 21 years were combined.” One problem is already apparent:

Not all states that supported Biden in 2020 voted for Democratic presidential candidates for the entire data period. Georgia, for example, went GOP in every national election from 2000 through 2016.

Put differently, while Third Way essentially lists it as a “Democratic president” state, it was a “Republican president” state for 20 of the 21 years in question.

Yet there’s more.

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

What is a “weapon of war”? Given all the talk about how such things mustn’t be on our streets — the claim that a firearm thus designated mustn’t be available to citizens — it’s an important question.

If by the phrase is meant a weapon designed for or used in warfare present or past, then the muskets and flintlocks the Founding Fathers carried qualify. So do spears, knives, the bow and arrow, and clubs and rocks.

Speaking of which, while agitating against AR-15s’ legality in 2013, then-vice president Joe Biden said that if “you want to keep someone away from your house, just fire the shotgun through the door.” Aside from sounding close to what 84-year-old Kansas City man Andrew Lester did when shooting innocent teen Ralph Yarl on April 13, there’s an irony here….

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By Selwyn Duke

We discussed why the West is the greatest civilization to ever grace this planet, bar none. My appearance begins at 31:09. 

By Selwyn Duke

We discussed Biden family corruption, how pseudo-elites in general are selling us out to China, and our nation's moral decay. My appearance begins at 6:58. 

By Selwyn Duke

Explaining the birds and the bees has always been uncomfortable for some parents — but one day it may get so complicated that someone will have to explain it to the parents.

That is, if new technology that may affect the way they become parents is made reality.

Called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), it could in the not-too-distant future be used to create babies not only without sexual congress, but even without those requirements for in vitro fertilization (IVF): eggs and sperm.

A process with both promise and perils, IVG may someday be used to “provide a cure for many types of infertility, to slow or even turn off biological clocks, and to enable the kind of embryo selection that sends chills up many spines,” 

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

No, this isn't my last appearance because I've been booted, but because my friend Chuck is finally embarking upon a much-deserved retirement. It was an honor, though a bittersweet one, to be the very last guest in his long and storied media career. I'd been on Talkback for more than 15 years, starting with George Putnam and then, when Chuck took over in 2008, with him. And I know that when Friday 1:00 p.m. rolls around this week, I'll think about how I'd always been on with Chuck at that time and feel just a bit of emptiness. That's the way life is. 

I wish all the best for his future. Godspeed, Chuck. 

My appearance begins at 52:20. 

Note: If you want to fast-forward to my segment, you must right-click on the in-line MP3 player below and then click "Open link in new tab."

Talkback-04-28-2023

By Selwyn Duke

You may remember the name Rachel Dolezal. She’s the woman who resigned as an NAACP chapter head in 2015 after her parents revealed that she was not black as she claimed, but white. What you may not know is that far from chastened, Dolezal has doubled down, calling herself “unapologetically black.” In fact, she apparently fancies herself a persecuted pioneer.

What’s more, she has a point — if you accept our time’s fashionable premises (more on this later).

Of course, racial (and ethnic and religious) fakery is common today. There’s Muslim activist Raquel Saraswati, who, her mother says, is actually white and of European descent. There’s Congressman George Santos, who claimed to be Jewish before clarifying that he really meant “Jew-ish” (he gets the George Costanza Award for effort). There are all the “Pretendians,” such as Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), “Sacheen Littlefeather,” author Erika Wurth, disgraced ex-professor Ward Churchill, Queens University professor Robert Lovelace, and the academic Sami Chen. Then there are other black-by-popular-demand types, such as “racial justice activist” Satchuel Cole, University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student CV Vitolo-Haddad, George Washington University history professor Jessica Krug, and (possibly) left-wing activist Shaun King.

As with many or even all of the above, Dolezal advantaged herself via her identity lie.

Read the rest here.