News Every Day | 05:04

Five Quick Things: A Quite Cranky 5QT

This edition of the 5QT is going to continue a theme extant in the two other columns in this space this week.

The regular readers here will recognize it.

I’m irritated. I’ll admit it. I see too much moronic stuff in the world right now, and it’s turning me into something I don’t want to be.

On the other hand, there is a certain glee I can take from this job. Skewering stupidity for fun and profit isn’t a terrible way to rake in a sawbuck or two.

But there are soooo many moles to whack. It’s overwhelming. And this week I’m overwhelmed. So take this 5QT as an attempt to — as Mr. Miyagi advised — find a balance.

Except I don’t know what the balance is to stuff like the below…

1. Ayatollah Zohran’s “Pied-à-Terre” Tax

This isn’t just the Ayatollah’s stupid communist idea. New York Governor Kathy Hochul is flapping her gums about what a bad-ass move it is. But here is the Ayatollah’s special Tax Day message for the rich he wants to eat…

Like I said, the Ayatollah isn’t the only parent of this bastard of governmental abuse; Hochul’s lips are all over it as well…

The question I had, and was utterly unsurprised when an AI search came back with basically nothing useful as an answer, was what the owners of these 13,000 units that the Ayatollah and the governor want to double-tax are currently paying in property tax.

Apparently, nobody has even bothered to find out. Neither Grok nor ChatGPT could find me any such study.

So then I asked what you pay in property tax on a $5 million housing unit in the Big Apple, which isn’t your primary residence. The answer? Thanks to New York’s utterly Byzantine property tax system, is “it depends.” With wide variations among different property classifications, a $5 million crash pad in New York will run you anywhere from $40,000 to $84,000 per year in property taxes.

In property tax.

And at $500 million per year divided by 13,000, they want to heap another $38,000 (on average) on top of that.

Yeah, sure. These guys who have the condos and co-ops that the Ayatollah and his pals are going after generally don’t care about money. That’s not really what’s important, though, is it?

Your initial reaction to this is how stupid and counterproductive it is. I’m here to tell you that’s the wrong reaction.

Because the Ayatollah knows exactly what he’s doing here — and it isn’t about eating the rich. It’s about eating the Americans.

Mamdani gave away the game in his stupid little video when he noted the “Russian oligarchs and Saudi royals,” he said, had these pieds-à-terre. That’s how he’s going to sell it, sure, but the foreigners who have those properties are the ones who couldn’t care less about the tax — they pay that everywhere they have property, whether it’s in taxes, or bribes, or whatever.

The people who are going to see this tax and put their places up for sale? Those will be the American capitalists who actually do care about outrageous taxation. They’ll see that and dump that pied-à-terre, and if they want to visit New York, they’ll just get a room at the Waldorf-Astoria or the Plaza.

Which will leave those 13,000 units to be snapped up by the Russian oligarchs, Chinese slavelords, and Arab sheikhs.

Just like it’s happened in London. Which is no longer much of a British city, given who owns the property there.

And go and look who’s the mayor in London.

They know exactly what they’re doing, and this has nothing at all to do with taxation and city finances. This is invasion and conquest, and it’s easy to spot if you’re willing to look. When all the rich white people, even the dumb ones like Robert DeNiro, are out of the city it will be controlled by the foreigners who’ve bought the place up on the cheap and they will dictate what happens in New York — from the 5 a.m. calls to prayer to the attacks on dog owners to the wanton street terrorism that makes serfs out of ordinary New Yorkers who can’t afford to move to Hilton Head or Palm Beach.

Stop assuming the Democrats are just stupid. Many of them are that, but stupidity isn’t what motivates their politics or policy. Evil does.

2. Virginia’s Murderous Democrat Politicians

And here’s an example. Look what the former lieutenant governor of Virginia just did.

WASHINGTON — Embattled former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax killed his estranged wife and himself inside their million-dollar home outside the nation’s capital early Thursday, cops said.

The 47-year-old Democrat repeatedly shot Cerina Fairfax in the basement of their Annandale residence just after midnight before turning the gun on himself in another part of the abode, according to Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis.

The couple’s two teenage children were inside the home at the time of the murder-suicide, and their son called 911 to report the shootings.

“It is high-profile in nature, it’s tragic in nature. Certainly a fall from grace for a relatively high-profile family that seemingly had had a lot of things going in their favor,” Davis told reporters shortly before the couple’s bodies were removed from the home.

I have a whole lot I could say about this, but most of it I will let Ace of Spades say for me, because he nails it…

The Democrat Party is the party of psychopaths, rapists, and killers. It must be purged, Baath-style.

There’s something conservatives say which I’m sick of: “We think the Democrats are wrong, while they think we’re evil.”

This is supposed to make us sound reasonable and grown-up.

It’s stupid and it’s a lie — they are evil.

And I’m tired of the soft-heads who say otherwise.

They just don’t have bad policies — they have bad brains. They have bad morals, bad psychologies, bad motives, and plenty of bad faith. They’re bad people.

Yes of course there are those who are simply deluded and brainwashed, but the party — especially at its operator levels — is all about malice and greed.

If you read Marx, what you instantly realize is that he has built a “politics” out of his deep character flaw (and possibly mental illness). That psychological problem is malicious envy. He sees something he wants, but cannot achieve, so he invents a philosophy of Gimme Gimme to explain why the power of the state should be used to take the thing he wants from its owner and give it to him.

The entire Democrat Party is based on envy and people who think they “deserve.” They’re generally not smart nor productive, but they “deserve” top-paying jobs and of course enormous respect and social status.

They’re unattractive and unappealing, but they deserve the absolute highest quality mates and free sex on demand. Many, like Eric Swalwell, will resort to rape when the “deserving” they feel about women’s affections goes unfulfilled.

And they construct psychopath-level manipulations to demonstrate to you that they are morally entitled to use state coercion to take what you have — “expropriate” — and appropriate it for themselves.

James Lindsey calls “critical theories” “cynical theories,” because “critical theory” is nothing but a cynical, self-interested, greedy, envious, spiteful attempt to manipulate you into accepting that what you have actually, rightfully belongs to them.

Say that’s a nice house, Madam. But you built on “stolen land” so I should have your house. Yes, I’m 1/1028th Cherokee, my “family lore” says, but even if I weren’t, I have the moral perfection to properly cherish this Stolen Land and do honor to the tribes you stole it from by “living in harmony” with the salon and master bedroom.

It’s just gimme, gimme, gimme all the way down. Low-quality people spamming out ridiculous manipulations to seize all the high-quality jobs and goods.

It is an artificial caste system created to privilege the psychopaths over their marks and victims.

100 percent.

All I would add to this is how we had two days of Democrat blabbermouths warbling in unison about how the takedown of Eric Edgar The Bug Swalwell proves that “Democrats hold their bad people accountable while Repuglicans make theirs president” — as though we didn’t go through four years of these oxygen thieves inflicting Joe Biden on us by excessively dubious means — and then this fresh outrage happens. (RELATED: The Democrats’ Swalwell Follies)

It’s not like Wilcox wasn’t exceptionally well-known for what an abject piece of filth he was while he was in office. And lest you want to pretend that was an isolated incident, they just elected a guy as Virginia’s chief law enforcement officer who openly fantasizes about killing the children of his political enemies.

It ain’t luck if you can do it twice, y’all.

So no — let’s be done with the idea that these aren’t enemies and that they’re good people with whom we just disagree.

3. Katie Hot Potatoes

Speaking of enemies, how would being governed by… this seem any different than suffering under a hostile foreign occupation?

If you couldn’t get very far into that, I can’t blame you. My eyes glazed over at the idea that Trump’s Iran campaign is responsible for California’s highest-in-the-country gas prices but the asinine regulations her state has inflicted on its oil refineries since before Trump even had his TV show don’t need any freshening up, and then I practically seized up at the idea she wanted to gouge private business which is already running out of California with its hair on fire so as to pay for free college for illegal aliens.

And this, after the political demise of Edgar The Bug, is what the California Democrats have. Katie Hot Potatoes.

Either that or Tom Steyer, who might be the most unelectable human being in these United States.

4. The Pope and David Axelrod

A lot has been said about this week’s back-and-forth between Pope Leo XIV and President Donald Trump. This is a subject I do not have much stomach for. I tell people I’m Catholic, but I suck at it — because I keep seeing things from Catholic clergy which I know more reflect the Spirit of the Age than Scripture, and it gives me the spiritual willies, and that conflict makes me uncomfortable in ways it’s painful to discuss.

I don’t think I’m alone in that.

Trump ripping into the Pope made me cringe. On the other hand, everything after that seems like it’s worse, because the Pope is traipsing through the Third World spouting platitudes that reflect none of the history of the last 1400 years. Go and tell the Christians being slaughtered en masse in West Africa about how easy it is for Christians and Muslims to be pals. (RELATED: Fresh Horror in Nigeria: The Return of Boko Haram)

Which he literally did. What is this guy talking about?

I get that Africa is a hotspot for Catholic conversions, and I don’t have a problem with the pope going there to promote the faith. He should. But spending the whole trip promoting harmony between Catholics/Christians and Muslims is a pretty misguided approach.

Why not promote Catholicism as the true path to God and to peace on earth? Catholicism was the first church established by the followers of the Prince of Peace, after all. Why shouldn’t it be elevated above other faiths — by the guy hired to run the Church?

That would seem like a lot more consistent, and far less cringe-inducing, than this…

The Pope cites Lebanon as an example of peaceful “coexistence” between Christians and Muslims.

Fun fact: Lebanon was literally created to be a homeland for persecuted Christians in the Middle East. And it was for a few decades.

The moment Muslim invaders thought they had the… pic.twitter.com/eQIRwTXU3g

— Dr. Maalouf ‏ (@realMaalouf) April 16, 2026

Then I see this X post by Jesus Enrique Rosas, and I gotta say it — I think this is a pretty fair explanation…

So the Pope met with David Axelrod last week. David Axelrod. Obama’s campaign architect. A man who is not Catholic, has never met a pope before, and whose entire career has been engineering political narratives for the American left.

And then, by pure coincidence, the Pope… pic.twitter.com/K1BPqU1I1K

— Jesús Enrique Rosas (@Knesix) April 14, 2026

Rosas also hit a home run with this — the irony is amazing…

The Vatican has walls for a reason. Specifically, because in 846, the Moors sailed up the Tiber and sacked St. Peter’s Basilica.

Can you guess the name of the man who built those walls to ensure it never happened again?

It was Pope Leo IV.

Nope, I’m not kidding. And yes, I… pic.twitter.com/HvlIqGpPdA

— Jesús Enrique Rosas (@Knesix) April 16, 2026

David Axelrod shouldn’t be anywhere near the Catholic Church if it wants to hold moral sway over anyone. David Axelrod is about as satanic a figure as American politics has produced, especially if you take James Carville out of the equation.

These are enemies, and they are not holy. If you want to say Trump has to do better, fine. I agree. Shouldn’t the pope?

5. This Week’s Musical Respite: Billy Strings

Melissa and I (plus Morgan Weiner, who’s a subject-matter expert and who sat in with us) did a segment — it wasn’t my idea, believe me — on Justin Bieber and P. Diddy for The Spectacle Podcast this week. I didn’t have much of anything to say; Bieber is definitely not my bag. What I did note is the destruction the P Diddys of the world did to the record business, and it’s basically dead, along with the FM/music radio business, which has supported it, and how much this reminds me of the fall of the Roman Empire.

In the sense that Rome’s destruction was found — and commentators of the time screamed about it at the tops of their lungs, to no avail — in the degradation and perversion of their ancient culture. By the time Rome fell, it had been hollowed out and corrupted like a collapsing house that the termites had done in.

I don’t know that the record industry in this country has ever been totally wholesome. It’s always had a “deal with the devil” character to it. But it does seem like what that industry did to Justin Bieber and Britney Spears, for example (not to mention Billie Eilish, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, and countless other young kids who paid for their success with the destruction of their souls) is on a different level than, say, Elvis and Colonel Tom Parker.

Not that Elvis’s story was all that fond a reference for the music business.

And I think it’s dead. I don’t think the music is dead. I think the industry is.

Here and there, you’ll find big concert tours that can generate audiences. But, as I noted in the segment, Melissa and I grew up in the 1980s when there was always a giant concert coming through, and you’d go to a stadium or a basketball arena and find 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000 people packed in and going wild for any number of amazing bands whose music was perfectly calibrated for massive crowds in an arena.

The Police. U2. INXS. Genesis. AC/DC. Guns ‘n Roses. Journey. Prince. There were so many others.

Now?

I never listen to Top 40 radio anymore. I couldn’t tell you what the top songs on the Billboard charts are. I find new music all the time, though, and I’ll tell you how — I search for a song that’s in my head (and I’ve always got songs in my head) on YouTube, and I’ll play the video for it while I’m doing stuff like writing this column. And YouTube’s algorithm will crank out a playlist based on that song and other stuff I’ve played.

That was how I found the Red Clay Strays, whose songs I’ve thrown into previous 5QTs, and you people seemed to appreciate them, a bit before they became a big deal. I found the Turnpike Troubadours that way, not to mention Tyler Childers, Stephen Wilson Jr., Whiskey Myers, the Flatland Cavalry, Gregory Alan Isakov, Goose, and a whole bunch of others.

And Billy Strings.

You might have heard of him. He’s won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album three of the last six years. I stopped watching the Grammys a lot longer than six years ago, so… whatever. But you don’t have to be a bluegrass aficionado to get into this guy’s stuff.

And he’s actually played in front of crowds of 15-20,000 people. As a bluegrass picker. He’s good.

This guy’s music is pure Americana, and it isn’t overproduced corporate swill like those Top 40 stations will force down your throat. It’s a breath of fresh air.