Wednesday I was up almost all night with a cruel stomach and intestinal ailment. Your humble servant has been tormented almost all of my life by Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I come by it honestly. My father, Herbert Stein, suffered from it for most of his life. He was saved by a fine medicine called Lomotil. I inherited the sickness and was saved by a super drug called Paregoric. It’s a mixture of kaopectate and a tiny amount of morphine sulfate. It was prescribed by a doctor, Moskovitz. I was living in D.C. and in more or less endless pain until Dr. Moskovitz called in a prescription to an all-night People’s Drugs at about midnight. I took a hearty swig and immediately felt like a new man. I was in heaven. I have been taking it consistently since that night. The medicine got me through Yale Law School, the practice of law at the Federal Trade Commission, a wildly successful three semesters of teaching about the political content of Hollywood movies at American University at Ward Circle in D.C., a year of teaching about film at UC Santa Cruz, and then two years or so of working at the Nixon and Ford White Houses in 1973 and 1974. Then about 50 years of work in Hollywood as a screenwriter, novelist, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, actor, expert witness in incredibly complex securities litigation cases, real estate litigation, and on and on. It also got me through marriage to the world’s finest woman, fatherhood to the best boy on earth, and being sued by some of the craziest people on earth. And coming out smiling. But now I am suffering. “The war on drugs” keeps me in pain constantly. I am miserable. The federal government will not allow me to have the pain meds I desperately need. I am so exhausted thinking about it that I have to sign off for a day. In Red America. I will write more about it tomorrow. Thursday But bear in mind this message: If the “war on drugs” is helping anyone, I see no evidence of it. The sidewalks are still littered with men and women smacked so hard by meth or heroin or some other hellish cocktail. I, a very old man not doing anyone any harm, just writing and reading about the Civil War endlessly, wake up in cruel digestive pain, and have to suffer through my days grimacing and groaning. Unable to focus or do anything productive for hours. Just in endless pain. Why, Mr. and Ms. government? Why make me suffer as you have done? Yes, I am old. But I still have a few thoughts to share. I made a bit of a difference in unraveling some major financial cruelties. Maybe I could do it again. My wonderful father, Herbert Stein, was in the coronary ICU for weeks in 1999. Yet when I brought him news about government plans to buy up long-term bonds and exchange them for short-term debt and asked him how this made any sense at all, since the markets would apply the appropriate discounts to long-term and short-term debt and the whole exercise would be a wash, he wrote down on a lined tablet, “Maybe the Treasury has a different estimate of the likely death terms for long and short term debt than the bond market does.” My father died the next day, after a rookie cardiac man read his chart incorrectly and took him off the potent “bug juice” as they called the super-strong antibiotics he was taking for his heart and lung tragedies. His lungs filled up immediately with crud. He coughed terribly. I still have his lined tablet with his opinion about Treasury estimates. It is heavily stained with the remnants of his bloody coughs from 26 years ago. Maybe someday I could contribute something similar, even in old age. Please, bureaucrats, let me live. READ MORE from Ben Stein’s Diary: Sons and Fathers It’s Hot Outside Inflation: Meet Stein’s Law

Summer makes people drink more than usual. And some folks aren’t used to it, which leads to all sorts of tedious situations. Young people these days only get sociable once their blood alcohol level is about three times higher than their water content. The rest of the time, they just stare at their phones in total silence. But when they finally do get sociable, they go way overboard. If they’ve spiked their drinks with cocaine or some other garbage, they’ll start talking at 300 words per second. Your brain overheats trying to follow the thread, catches fire, and you die of spontaneous cerebral combustion. (RELATED: The Stare That Broke America) There are polite ways to shake off a pest in the middle of a sociability attack at a bar, but they don’t work. That’s why I’ve put together this field guide of liberating techniques that have saved me more than once. The Dropped Drink Drunk twenty-somethings love talking close. Like, inside-your-ear close. If they could, they’d crawl right into your head like a New York Times op-ed columnist. So on top of listening to them, you have to juggle your glass just to keep it from spilling. A good trick to end a suffocating conversation? “Accidentally” dump your drink on the guy. Just splashing a little won’t work — they do that to themselves all the time. You need something epic. Something for the history books. Summon your courage and let it all go. If you manage to pour the whole thing straight down his collar, even better. Nothing chills a brain like cold gin down the neck. Ask About Mom For some mysterious reason, drunk kids can’t handle talking about their moms. Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe trauma. Either way, it works. Introduce Him to a Blonde If you’ve got a blonde friend nearby, hand her off like a human decoy and make your escape. Any drunk who’s been lecturing you about Marx’s Capital will immediately abandon his soapbox when the call of the wild blonde kicks in. Pro tip: after four drinks, they can’t tell age from beauty. After six, you can even send over your long-haired blond male friend. At that stage, they don’t mind either — unless things end up in bed, which is your friend’s problem. Out-Annoy Him I’ve tried this, and it’s hilarious. The other night, I got cornered by one of those over-intoxicated buddies who’d latched onto me like a virus. He would not shut up, not even underwater. Finally, I decided to go louder and more annoying. I launched into a monologue about the Spanish Golden Age of theater, then broke down the translation problems in The Iliad, and wrapped it all up with a crash course in advanced social research methods. He left. Victory. The Finger Poke Slap a drunk and you start a fight. But poke him in the eye? He freezes instantly, like a deer caught in headlights. The Switcheroo I’ve got a friend who used to love swapping out his drunk friends’ beers with non-alcoholic ones. He had real sleight-of-hand skills, could do it mid-conversation without anyone noticing. I’ve never seen a drunk figure it out. It won’t end the conversation, but it waters down the bloodstream and cuts their words-per-second ratio in half. The Neck Turn Sure, this isn’t very polite. But you know what’s less polite? Standing half an inch from your face for hours without letting you get a word in. The trick is to slowly rotate while they talk, like the earth and the moon, so they end up addressing the back of your neck. Drunks wobble so badly that it takes them forever to follow the turn. They’ll spend a solid 15 minutes lecturing your hairline before realizing they’ve been ditched. Unless they’re not just drunk but also stupid. Match Their Drunk Level The ultimate move, my personal favorite: match their level of intoxication. Drunks come equipped with a built-in radar that detects the sobriety of their victims. They always hunt for someone sober — those are the only people who can endure them. But if they sense you’re just as wasted, they back off muttering, “Ugh, that guy’s drunk.” It’s basically like when politicians rage about the disasters caused by their own policies — only this time it’s 2 a.m., there’s whiskey everywhere, and you’re the unlucky voter stuck at the bar. READ MORE from Itxu Díaz: ‘Permanent Things’ Must Remain Permanent A Case of Happy Inefficiency: Accidental 911 Calls Professional Protesters Don’t Even Know What They’re Protesting

WASHINGTON — In the wake of the public shootings of strangers, especially when innocent children are the victims, there are lies that we tell ourselves and true things some dare not say. Two children were killed, and 18 other people were injured in the Wednesday mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. A Minnesota Star Tribune headline got it right: “This is evil.” (RELATED: Transgender Mass Murderers: The Drugs and Demons That Drive Them) I’ll tell you the phrase that no longer works: “We have to do something so that this never happens again.” It is the chant most often heard after these senseless slaughters. It does not and cannot ward off the evil in this world. It only serves to showcase how helpless adults feel in the aftermath. We have to do something — the phrase often used as a prelude to calls for tougher gun laws. Minnesota ranks 14th in the country for the state’s strict gun laws, which include background check requirements for all gun sales, an extreme risk law, and laws blocking access for domestic abusers under restraining orders, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. The state has relatively low firearm violence, according to Everytown, with a gun death rate below the national average. But laws can only do so much against evil. The church reportedly had locked its front doors, and that might well have helped to protect some of the children. When police and TV talking heads say that they, we, do not understand the motive, I want to scream. I know the answer. The shooter was evil. Robin Westman, 23, nee Robert Westman, was a pusbag of hate. At age 17, Robert changed his name to Robin. Because he was transgender, and so politics intrude. CNN did repeated segments about what police knew about the shooter, while tiptoeing around his gender identity. Or should I say her gender identity? I am sticking with “him” because becoming Robin didn’t do much for Robert or the children of Minnesota. (RELATED: Acknowledging the Relationship Between Transgender Identity and Violence_ Westman’s identity practically paralyzed CNN. Among Thursday night segments looking at “What we know about the shooter,” anchors and reporters repeatedly left out the fact that Westman was transgender — though the New York Post and Fox News had reported that news. It was a sorry spectacle, watching veteran journalists speak as though it was their job to not inform the public about a child killer. Eventually CNN talent and experts started calling Westman “he.” Good call, except calling Westman “he” goes against The Associated Press Stylebook. Westman changed his name to Robin, so in big media world, Westman has to be a “she.” In almost any other circumstance, that could be the pronoun of choice with big media. Or, CNN could follow The Associated Press Stylebook, which advises, “As much as possible, AP uses they/them/their as a way of accurately describing and representing a person who uses those pronouns for themself.” (Themself is not a typo.) To use the term “they” for a single person is inaccurate. It’s the pretzel logic that transgender politics and good intentions concocted at times to help people fool themselves as to who they really are. And it has consequences. READ MORE from Debra J. Saunders: What Did President Biden Know, and How Long Did He Remember It? How Did a Migrant Who Can’t Speak English Get a License to Drive a Big Rig? Leaking From Anti-Trumpers, It’s as Shocking as Gambling in Casablanca Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM

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by Mish Shedlock, Mish Talk: The most arrogant administration in history accuses India of arrogance over Russian oil imports. “Modi’s War” The BBC reports Trump adviser calls Ukraine conflict ‘Modi’s war’ as US tariffs on India rise A White House official has described Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine as Indian Prime Minister Narendra “Modi’s war”, stepping […]

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Conservationists have successfully hatched 8chicks in a bid to save an ultra-rare species of dove which has been extinct in the wild for over half a century. Socorro doves are only cared for in zoo conservation-breeding programs across Europe and North America after they became extinct in 1972. Experts at the Chester Zoo are now […] The post Zoo Experts Hatch Eight Rare Dove Chicks in Bid to Save Extinct Species appeared first on Good News Network.