Jan
28
2026

Contains No Actual Snake

[Amazon Link]
(paid link)

One of the previous century's peddler of Big Government Magic Elixir has a new book about him from David Beito: The Dark Side of FDR. The Amazon link at your right goes to the paperback edition, but note that (at least as I type) the Kindle version is a lot cheaper. A review from Marcus M. Witcher at the Daily Economy:

David Beito argues that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a self-serving politician who cared very little for the civil liberties of Americans. In FDR: A New Political Life, Beito challenges historians who explain away Roosevelt’s horrid record on civil rights as politically strategic (in the case of black Americans) or as an exception (in the case of Japanese internment).

Instead, Beito contends that FDR’s glib view of civil liberties was core to his worldview. Additionally, Beito emphasizes that Roosevelt’s economic policies were ineffective and at times counterproductive, and that his reliance on top-down solutions to the Great Depression violated the economic liberties of Americans. In short, FDR was the worst president on individual liberty since Woodrow Wilson, and he might have been even worse.

Beito begins by recounting Roosevelt’s actions as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Wilson. FDR “gave unquestioning support” to Wilson’s attack on free speech and expression during the conflict and demonstrated no “strong ideological commitments to the Bill of Rights.” During the notorious white violence against black Americans during the “Red Summer” of 1919, Roosevelt did nothing as white sailors attacked black streetcar passengers. The violence spread to 26 cities and when the NAACP demanded that the sailors and marines be arrested, FDR and the rest of the Wilson administration initially did nothing. Writing to a Harvard classmate, FDR joked, “With your experience in handling Africans in Arkansas, I think you had better come here and take charge of the police force.” 

Sure to offend your local Democrat!

By the way, Googling "snake oil" reveals an amusing story: apparently the original product from China contained actual Chinese water snake, high in anti-inflammatory omega-3s. Arguably worthwhile! But American fraudsters sold "snake oil" that was just plain old mineral oil with herbs! Hence the bad rap.

Also of note:

  • And (for that matter) ICE isn't the only agency unworthy of your trust. But George Will concentrates his fire there: Americans should not trust ICE. Kristi Noem isn’t the only reason. (archive.today link)

    When Kristi Noem was — what? informed? reminded? — that her meeting with North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un, which she reported in a prepublication manuscript of her memoir, never happened, this did not ruffle her sang-froid. She placidly said that the “anecdote” about the meeting would be “adjusted” before the book was published.

    Today, Noem, a former member of Congress and former governor of South Dakota, is secretary of homeland security, under whose supervision Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates. There are, however, many reasons, beyond Noem’s nature, that multiplying millions of Americans do not and should not trust ICE.

    At this point, I'm not even convinced she shot her dog back on the farm.

  • Fish rotting from the head. Andrew C. McCarthy notes more bad behavior: the Trump Administration Already Undermining Probe of Alex Pretti’s Death. (archive.today link)

    The Trump administration seems to be on a mission to convince Congress, the courts, and the country that it cannot be trusted to conduct a fair investigation into the death of Alex Pretti, who was fatally shot by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis on Saturday morning.

    I confess that making yet another practical suggestion of what this administration could do to ensure a credible probe feels like a waste of time. President Trump and his top aides pervade the air with untruths, and the Justice Department has brazenly doubled down on the Biden DOJ’s pernicious lawfare practices — it is actually indignant about its delusions of moral authority to hound Trump enemies and scapegoats; the Biden DOJ was content to insult our intelligence by pretending it wasn’t doing what it was doing. What’s the point, then, of urging Trump officials to change, to help themselves, when it’s obvious that they won’t do it and when the public perception of corruption they have cultivated is probably beyond undoing?

    But, wait, there's more…

  • They think you're stupid. Jonah Goldberg points out the administration's behavior is Worse Than Lying (archive.today link) After running through the undeniable facts of the killing, and the attempted "justifications" from Trump, Noem, et al…

    The administration is making all of this up. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are lying. They just don’t care what the truth is.

    In his seminal book On Bulls— (the actual title isn’t censored), philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt argues that lying implies a certain respect for, and knowledge of, the truth. “It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bulls— requires no such conviction.” What this administration does is worse than lying because they don’t care whether something is true or false, only whether it will be believed.

    The Trump White House is a bulls— distribution hub, that connects via tubes, canals, and sluices across the media landscape. Like some vast Rube Goldberg contraption, the guy on the giant hamster wheel powering the whole thing is a president who spent his life saying whatever he needed to say at any given moment to make a deal, get out of trouble, whatever. Raised on “the power of positive thinking” and the Prosperity Gospel, Donald J. Trump has always believed he could conjure the reality he wants through sheer will and a relentless repetition of what he wants people to believe. He makes claims about what “they” are “saying” and recounts tales about what people have told him, some of which are surely made up while others are probably true but insincerely told, given that everyone knows the president believes all flattery he hears.

    I confess I don't understand the point in bowdlerizing the word "bullshit". It's not fooling anyone.

  • I latched on to Erick Erickson's substack. He's making a lot of sense these days. For example, his thoughts on Guess-Who's Insane Impulse Control Issues.

    We replaced a President with dementia with a President who has developed some level of insanity over Greenland. One of the most endearing quirks of Donald Trump is also the most bothersome — he has no impulse control.

    Remember the old experiment about the kid confronted with the marshmallow? If he waited, he’d get a second marshmallow. But some kids immediately scarfed down the first marshmallow and could not wait. Donald Trump would be the kid who scarfed down the first marshmallow immediately and then threatened to launch a nuclear missile at you if he didn’t get the second one.

    He simply has no impulse control. It leads him to telling Billy Bush he could grab women, and leads him to being unable to let go of the issue of Greenland. It is some psychological obsession.

    Note that Erick is probably the pundit most sympathetic to Trump that I've quoted recently.

  • Go home, Atomic Scientists, you're drunk. Slashdot has the news: Doomsday Clock Ticks To 85 Seconds Before Midnight, Its Closest Ever.

    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Tuesday set their symbolic Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds before midnight -- the closest the timepiece has ever been to the theoretical point of annihilation since scientists created it during the Cold War in 1947.

    The clock now stands four seconds nearer than last year's setting, and this marks the third time in four years that the Bulletin has moved it closer to midnight. The Chicago-based nonprofit pointed to aggressive behavior by nuclear powers Russia, China and the United States, fraying nuclear arms control frameworks, ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, unregulated AI integration into military systems, and climate change.

    "In terms of nuclear risks, nothing in 2025 trended in the right direction," said Alexandra Bell, the Bulletin's president and CEO. The last remaining nuclear arms pact between the US and Russia, the New START treaty, expires on February 5.

    I haven't written much about the Atomic Scientists over the years, but back in 2020, I quoted Laurence M. Krauss that it was "time to stop the doomsday clock". I said:

    Krauss notes that the clock was at 11:53pm in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, certainly a more nuclear-perilous time. And (as I've noted before) in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War: 11:48pm.

    At best, this means the Clock needs some serious recalibration. Also see my comments in 2022, and my mini-review of Queer Nukes for Peace in 2024.

Recently on the book blog: