The Way It Iz

Last week, a story about Keanu Reeves made the rounds on social media. Some fans of the actor started noticing that while posing for pictures with fans, or even fellow celebrities, Reeves does not touch women. Reeves maintains a hands-off approach with women in order to remove any potential awkwardness from unwanted touching during an encounter. This approach is in stark contrast to the first “meeting” between pop star Ke$ha, and comedian Jerry Seinfeld back in 2017. During that encounter, Ke$ha (and I can’t tell you how annoying that name is to type) tried to kiss Seinfeld three different times, each time being politely denied. Ke$ha, not having the misfortune of being male, never received any negative press for this. Reeves’ method eliminates such awkwardness.

Over the past three months, Georgia, Ohio, Mississippi, Kentucky, and, most controversially, Alabama, have all begun their attack on the legality of abortions. Each state has passed a law that restricts abortion in their states, with Alabama being the most stringent: criminalizing all abortions with no exceptions made for rape and incest. These laws have steered the national conversation away from the environment, which had been the previous hot topic of the day thanks to the Green New Deal. Now all political conversations from the mainstream media to social media revolve around the future of Roe v. Wade.

Individual biases exist. I have them. You have them. Even scientists conducting fact-based experiments have them. The old thinking in behavioral economics was that people tended to analyze data, and based on their analysis they make their decisions. However, more recent studies suggest that this is not the case. Political economist at Stanford University Francis Fukuyama explains that people tend to “start out with an emotional commitment to a certain idea, and then they use their formidable cognitive powers to organize facts to support what they want to believe anyhow. So the partisan affiliation comes first, and the reasoning process by which you justify it comes second.” In other words, people believe what they want to believe, and when faced with facts, they either accept them as proving their beliefs, try to make them fit their world view, or discard them as inaccurate.

Earlier this month, in an attempt to out-progressive all of her Democratic presidential candidates, Senator Elizabeth Warren rolled out her tuition forgiveness plan, which can eliminate up to $50,000 of student loan debt per person. I promise. I’m only going to spend a short time explaining why this is a dumb idea, and then get into actual good ideas that Republicans can use to combat this.

April 26, 1974. The Baltimore Orioles defeated the Oakland Athletics 6-5 in 15 innings. The game pitted the two teams that would meet later in the season for a chance to go to the World Series, and featured future Hall-of-Famers Reggie Jackson, Jim Palmer, Rollie Fingers, and Brooks Robinson. It also featured one of the greatest anomalies in baseball history. But I am getting ahead of myself.

It’s growing increasingly difficult to take the Left seriously. No, it’s not because their ideas and proposals are getting more extreme and outlandish. That is to be expected. It’s because the Left is consistently telling us how we should all think, how we should all behave, and how disagreeing with them means that we’re evil. The Left claims that those on the Right side of the aisle don’t care about the poor because they won’t support raised taxes to pay for nationalized programs. The Left claims that those on the Right don’t care about the environment because they won’t support massive overhauls to the environment and economy. And of course, the Left claims that those on the Right don’t care about transparency because we don’t argue for President Trump to release his tax returns. Luckily for us, in recent months, the Left has shown us just how much it cares about these things, as well.