New York City, which has not had a competent mayor since Michael Bloomberg, is about to punch itself in the face and elect Communist, anti-Semitic, charismatic demagogue Zohran Mamdani as its latest fiasco. One aspect of the perfect storm that is about to allow the City That Never Sleeps to fall into an abyss of its own making is that Mamdani is running in a three-way race, which often helps elects a candidate who would lose in a two-person race. Another is that the only viable alternative to Mamdani is disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, who in addition to killing hundreds of rest home residents by stashing Wuhan virus victims in close proximity to them, whereupon they sickened and died, was a serial sexual harasser. I wouldn’t vote for the guy to be dog-catcher. There is at least a chance, however, that as mayor of New York Cuomo will make a good faith effort to redeem himself and not leave the Big Apple a smoldering pile of broken dreams. With Mamdani’s proposed policies, disaster is a near certainty.

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Normally this kind of item would be in a potpourri post, but I’m being pulled hither and yon today, so I may be putting up some minor matters piecemeal.

Dodger pitching icon Sandy Koufax was a spectator at all three of the 2025 World Series games at Dodger Stadium last week, including the epic 18 inning Game 3. However, his seating in Game 5 was the object of some controversy. The Dodgers were called out by Mets announcer Howie Rose, among others.

“How does Sandy end up in the second row?” Rose asked on social media. “Maybe those are his permanent, personal seats but Sandy Koufax takes a back seat to no one. Especially at Dodger Stadium.” Others were infuriated that Koufax would rank supposedly lesser seats than celebrity hucksters Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who were also at Game 5 in the seats in front of Sandy.

I like to see American taking the opportunity to denigrate the Renegade Royals: it seemed especially timely given the stupid “No Kings” rallies and L.A.’s position as Trump Derangement Central. Yeah, why not sit the Royals in the bleachers? Behind a pole, maybe! (There are no obstructions in Dodger Stadium.) But the complaint made no sense for many reasons.

• As even Rose noted, those are Sandy’s regular seats.
• I speak from experience: at the field box level, the front row is inferior to a few rows higher. Harry and Meghan’s seats were inferior to Sandy’s
• Magic Johnson, like Koufax an LA sports icon, was in the same row as Koufax—and he’s a part owner of the team.

Still, bashing the Royal Family still feels a lot more American to me than when everyone was salivating over the late Princess Diana. This is progress.

Apparently! Which is a mass insult to everyone since it is, you know, obviously nonsense.

That recent interview with an Australian journalist was just the easiest one for me to find: she has said this over and over. Biden may have babbled like an idiot in his debate with Trump, but it just indicated weariness and lack of stamina that made it mandatory to replace him at the top of the ticket. Otherwise, and Kamala’s fellow DEI beneficiary Karine Jean-Pierre has been claiming one her book tour for a ghost-written hack job nobody in their right mind should want to read, Biden was “sharp as a tack.” Never mind that nobody believes Biden was “sharp as a tack” in 2024 (he has never been sharp as a tack in his life), who could possibly believe that campaigning competently is tougher than leading the nation competently?

I guess this fantasy is comforting to Harris, who was one of the most inept campaigners for the White House ever in a tough field that includes Hillary Clinton, Mike Dukakis, John Kerry, John McCain, Al Gore, George H.W. Bush, Walter Mondale and more. But isn’t it sufficiently ridiculous on its face that nobody is so gullible as to believe it? Being President, if one intends to do the job, requires astounding stamina: look at President Trump. It’s a killing job, for most of our history, literally. If being tired robs a POTUS of the ability to think with more clarity than your average dementia patient (“We beat Medicare…”), how can such an overwhelmed leader be trusted to answer the proverbial “3 AM phone call”?

Harris’s repeated assertion, apparently market tested by one of the same consultants whom she relied on during her disastrous campaign, is “It isn’t what it is” on crack. She really thinks the public is stupid.

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The House Oversight Committee has released a damning (but hardly surprising, given what we already knew) report concluding that senior aides to President Joe Biden exercised his Presidential powers without his knowledge or consent, including his signing of executive actions and deciding and directing national policy.

The 90-page report is titled “The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House.” (Might have tried to be a bit more restrained there, partisan-wise…) The report documents how Biden’s inner circle ran the government when he could not, while concealing his cognitive deterioration, strictly staging his appearances and controlling Biden’s decision-making. Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) said the findings raise “constitutional and criminal concerns” about the validity of executive actions taken between 2021 and the end of his term in office.

Yes, that seems like a fair assessment. As is usual in such matters, the Democrats on the committee released the obligatory “this is a partisan witch hunt” rebuttal, but the evidence throughout the report seems beyond reasonable dispute. The evidence does not prove Biden’s staff acted without authority, the Democrats say, because it is always nearly impossible to prove a negative. Right. That’s the best they have?

To save us both time, read the Washington Examiner’s extensive report on the report, here. My considered, measured analysis: Holy crap!

So the question is, “Now what?” At the bare minimum, the Department of Justice must revise its guidance on the use of the autopen on Presidential Executive Orders. A 2005 DOJ memo held that Presidents can use the autopen for official documents, but it wasn’t until President Barack Obama used it to sign legislation in 2011 while he was abroad that the gates were opened for the Biden team’s abuse.

A lot needs to happen in light of this confirmation of our worst fears. I’ll post about that in a follow-up, but reader suggestions are welcome.

My major concern is the very beginning of the interview, in which Attia, whose specialty is human longevity, says, “At 75, both men and women fall off a cliff…. At the population level, it’s unmistakable what happens at the age of 75.” The statement has special resonance for me, as my birthday is December 1 (known locally as “Jack Finding His Father Dead in a Chair Day”). I don’t look forward to falling off any cliffs.

To frame the discussion with the threshold question to begin most ethics inquiries, “What’s going on here?”

1. The doctor is irresponsible and lying. He doesn’t say that statistically, there is a definite, measurable decline in human health as a result of aging if one is looking at the human population as a whole. He says “At 75, both men and women fall off a cliff,” which will be heard as “At 75, all men and women fall off a cliff.” That is quite simply not true. It certainly isn’t true for my family, as my mother, father, and grandmother all were lively, productive, engaged and active well into their late 80’s. I just got a Facebook post from Pat Boone showing him training in a gym; he also does a weekly radio show on the Sirius ’50s channel in which he is witty, erudite, funny and except for a little hoarseness, immediately recognizable as the same guy who sang “April Love.” Pat’s 91. My next door neighbors are a decade older than me, and as far as I can see and hear, they are as active and lucid as ever, and I’ve known them for almost 45 years.

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