“Isn’t it amazing,” my father used to say, “how just enough news happens every day to fill the newspaper?”
His point, of course, was that a lot more happens every day than we know about, and complete strangers make invisible decisions all the time on news we will never hear about.
Things have changed a lot over the years in my lifelong profession of reporting news, not all for the better. I don’t know about you, but to me, today’s information-delivery system feels overwhelming, more like driving through a snowstorm with the high beams on.
So many sources throwing so much information at your windshield that it’s virtually impossible to keep track of it all, let alone make sense of it. Who do you trust about which topics? Things happen you didn’t even see coming. Many people just opt out.
I think there’s a silent disorientation that comes with all that. And a discomforting anxiety, like the disconcerting feeling when you move into a new place and don’t know where anything is because you haven’t put everything in its new familiar place yet. I thought I was done with that.
For example, take this latest AI system from Anthropic. The company says its new AI model, called Claude Mythos Preview, is so dangerous that it cannot be released to the public.
Which confirms a latent fear many of us have about the hidden super-powers of AI. Makes me wonder why it was invented in the first place.
I know, Money. Silly me.
It seems Claude has already found literally thousands of high-security vulnerabilities “in every major operating system and web browser, that were previously unknown to the software developers.”
In other words, it’s gold bullion for the world’s hackers, scammers, ransomware users, and intelligence services.
As a result of the very serious global dangers of its own invention, the tech firm reassures that it is only sharing the new system with Apple, Amazon World Services, Crowdstrike, Microsoft, and 40 other software developers.
Well, now, limiting access of an apocalyptic AI genie to only four dozen software makers with thousands of software geeks. That certainly sounds Fort Knox-secure.
Reminds me of that highly-paid Biden-era “health” official, Anthony Fauci. He was secretly helping our most serious global adversary, China, research "gain of function."
That means, for example, genetically altering how easily a microorganism like COVID can be transmitted, how severe its symptoms are, what species it can infect, and its ability to evade immune responses.
What could possibly go wrong with that in the hands of an enemy?
We alI heard recently that we were going to bomb Iran back into the Stone Age if it didn’t open the Straits of Hormuz and abandon its nuclear-weapons development. That would feel like the good old days for the feudal maniacal leadership there who’ve been killing Americans and countless others for the past 47 years.
But now we have a two-week pause for talks. Iran’s leaders have proven really good at talking to Western leaders over the years. They even talked Barack Obama into shipping billions in U.S. currency to them in advance in exchange for the 2015 nuclear agreement, which Iran did not adhere to anyway.
Sunday morning, Mideast time, Vice President JD Vance announced the talks had failed with Iran rejecting U.S. demands.
These U.S.-Iranian talks were hosted by Pakistan, which already has its own arsenal of nuclear weapons.
Wait! Wasn’t it Pakistan that also secretly hosted Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man, for 10 years in his private housing complex until SEAL Team 6 visited in 2011?
Speaking of hiding, Democrats hid what was left of Joe Biden in the basement and sent him on weekly vacations for nearly five years, counting on Trump antipathy to plop him into the White House in 2021 and then swore up and down that the oldest president in U.S. history was sharp as a tack.
Washington media, of course, cooperated despite their constitutional responsibilities as government watchdogs.
RedState readers knew the truth about the failing mental and physical conditions of Biden, who still had access to the nuclear-launch codes. Finally, in June of 2024, in the debate with Trump, any American got to see for themselves that whatever had been in Biden’s mind all those years in the Senate was gone, except for his meanness.
On her own, Nancy Pelosi, out of the kindness of her heart, which is even older than Biden's, decided that the man who was no longer qualified to be commander in chief for a second term could still remain commander in chief for the last six months of his first.
As I wrote here, that amazingly failed to bother anyone in a position to do anything about it.
The decrepit Democrat Party then offered voters Kamala Harris as a sign of what could be. Turns out, however, the queen of salad talk was not unburdened by what had been. She lost.
So, the Democrat Party commissioned a wide-ranging, thorough investigation of itself as an overdue self-analysis to get back on political track with normal Americans. The results were dismal. Turns out, however, that leaders like Chuck Schumer and Ken Martin had no intention of altering the course that pleased the party's still-dominant extreme left.
So, that report was sealed and stored, never to be released. So much for self-analysis and changing.
Since then, Democrats simply continue their opposition to anything Trump, like, say, expelling illegal aliens that Biden willfully admitted by the millions. And to show concern for the country and their renewed political leadership, they caused some government shutdowns.
Most recently, that involved refusing to pay airport security officers because Dem leadership wanted money for something else. Liberal leverage was thwarted when the agents, who earn on average $50,000 a year, worked without pay for weeks. Trump ordered them paid in late March. But this Schumer Shutdown continues as the longest in history.
As a puzzling result, media now widely report that the same dysfunctional Democrat Party appears on track to win control at least of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate in November’s midterm elections.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, with more logic that escapes rational people, the left-wing mayor and City Council took the first steps to pay financial reparations to illegal immigrants.
The reason being the harsh seizures the illegals endured from ICE and Border Patrol agents. Wait! Since the illegals remain in Chicago to collect reparations, that means they have yet to endure anything at the hands of ICE and Border Patrol agents.
But strangeness in news is not limited to government. The Obama Presidential Center is preparing to open on Chicago’s South Side in June. The controversial building, which looks like a Klingon Penitentiary, is seeking up to 100 staff members as visitor greeters and guides.
Remember Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s Iranian-born senior aide? She’s now chief executive of the Obama Center. She gets paid $740K a year. She's giving the new staff hires the fancy name of “ambassadors” because they will not be paid.
Speaking of astounding sums of money, the average cost of college for American families has more than doubled just in this century. Since it remains a seller’s market, the schools just keeping raising prices. Annual increases exceed four percent.
According to US News, the average cost of tuition and fees at a four-year private college this year is $45,000, public out-of-state $25,400, pubic in-state $11,400.
However, students continuing at George Washington University this fall will pay nearly $100,000 for a year (a total of $98,165). Actually, that's just for nine months.
But, hey, you get to live in the Swamp.
The bizarre good news, which you probably won’t hear much about in media during this annual tax week, is that under the famous “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed by the Republican Congress and signed by the GOP's President Trump, the size of income-tax refunds has surged to $3,462 so far this year and is increasing.
Seniors get an extra deduction up to $6,000, tipped workers can deduct up to $25,000 in qualifying tips, Deductions for overtime and auto loan interest are up too.
Now that we’re officially a month into Spring, the National Weather Service issued a Severe Winter Weather Warning for the Sierra Nevada this week, threatening to close all major highways, including Interstate 80, with winds up to 80 miles an hour and at least 28 inches of snow.
Finally, the most bizarre news of all so far this year. Indiana, that bland blob of flatland just west of Ohio where Gene Hackman coached basketball, is the reigning NCAA Division I champion in football. Seriously? Indiana? Football?
Other than all that, the news these days seems pretty normal.
P.S. Susie Moore, RedState's Deputy Managing Editor, had me on her April 12 podcast here this week to talk about recent posts. She's a radio pro, always entertaining.
