John Hayward / Doctor Zero Podcasts

It has long been my practice to write a horror story on Halloween, and share it with my friends. I posted last year’s effort at Hot Air, along with an essay about horror entitled The Very Witching Time of Night. I thought I would share this year’s story as well. Happy Halloween! Click here to […]

The 111th Congress began by dropping a trillion dollars in debt on the American taxpayer. The money disappeared in a wild spending spree, buying $2 million jobs in Los Angeles, and evaporating into nonexistent zip codes. Billions of dollars remain clogged in the filthy pipes of government, producing nothing but more debt through accumulated interest […]

You know what America really needs? More stimulus spending! We’ve got double-digit unemployment and a moribund economy after President Obama’s first trillion-dollar stimulus bill. Obviously we need more. Click here to download / listen to the podcast Click here to read the entire essay

In a radio interview for Latino audiences, President Obama laid bare the ugly reality of statist government: “If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re going to punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don’t see that kind […]

The central idea behind every form of collectivism is the belief that the State is better able to address most social problems than free-willed individuals. The government is morally and intellectually superior to its citizens. It can be trusted to act in their best interests, while greedy private corporations will only try to take advantage […]

It’s almost Halloween, which means it’s time to harvest the fall crop of horror movies. The most memorable scary movies are those which echo the fears of the moment. The Exorcist arrived at a time of tension between science and spirituality, pitting a very modern single mom and her daughter against an ancient terror. Halloween […]

Everyone has their pet theories about National Public Radio’s stunning decision to fire Juan Williams, and most of those theories are probably correct. Williams is reliably liberal in most of his views, but he’s too friendly with conservatives, and his presence smears a bit too much liberal credibility on the dry right-wing toast of Fox […]

In the first decade of the new millennium, a great crisis of confidence shook the United States of America. This crisis has cultural and international dimensions. The election of a supposedly “post-racial” black President was meant to achieve a level of racial harmony the public had wearily concluded it could not reach on its own. […]

Comedian and fake news host Jon Stewart has announced a “Rally to Restore Sanity” on October 30 in Washington, D.C. Nervous at being almost completely eclipsed by Glenn Beck, Stewart decided to stage a rally that would be presented as a satire of Beck’s immense “Restoring Honor” rally in August. Of course, Stewart wants to […]

Back in September, we were astonished by the spectacle of John Kerry lurching before the cameras to call the voters stupid and ignorant. He dismissed the rising tide of resistance to the Democrat agenda by saying, “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced […]

Watching the polls in tight races fluctuate over the last few days conjures an image of frightened people racing around the feet of a blind giant. Blind giants are dangerous. They cause massive amounts of random destruction as they flail around. It’s very hard to convince them to change course, when they plod toward certain […]

A billion people watched the rescue of the trapped Chilean miners begin on Tuesday night. It was a remarkable moment of triumph for life over death. The human race does itself credit by celebrating. Click here to download / listen to the podcast Click here to read the entire essay

Linda McMahon is still behind in the Connecticut Senate race, but she absolutely destroyed her Democrat opponent, Dick Blumenthal, in a recent debate. Blumenthal proved to have a hilariously vague, childlike idea of how jobs are created, stammering something about “creative policies” right before his head exploded, showering the audience with bone fragments. Wait, sorry, […]

It’s been ten years since al-Qaeda terrorists blew a hole in the USS Cole, murdering 17 American sailors and injuring 39 more. Our government is not doing enough to honor their memory today. Uniformed soldiers are civilization’s answer to savagery. On October 12, 2000, the bloody frontier of barbarism rolled past the Cole as she […]

The Democrats have suddenly begun attacking the Chamber of Commerce with bizarre vigor. It’s odd for them to shout so loudly about foreign campaign contributions, when President Obama set records for collecting them through his circus funhouse of a Web site in 2008, and every move this Administration makes showers B-movie villain George Soros with […]

Vampires are drawing big audiences on movie and TV screens these days. The “Twilight” series and HBO’s True Blood have become pop-culture phenomena. For my money, the best vampire tale in recent years was Let the Right One In, a 2008 Swedish film based on a John Ajvide Lindqvist novel. Although it’s only a few […]

There’s really no reason to take elections seriously. I’m not talking about voters. We need to take them very seriously indeed. A large portion of our lives has come under political control. Voting the wrong way can cause the industry you work for to be bankrupted, or nationalized. The damage caused by a poor choice […]

The problem with this government isn’t just its staggering price tag, or continued offenses against liberty. It’s also a complete failure. Americans are preparing to vote against something previously found only in Third World hell holes: a failed state. Click here to download / listen to the podcast Click here to read the entire essay

The tale of Gene Cranick’s house fire provides a fascinating opportunity to study the intersection of market economics and government action. Cranick is a resident of Obion County, Tennessee, a rural area that does not have its own fire department. Instead, residents pay a $75 fee for fire protection from the city of South Fulton. […]

You’ve probably seen the “No Pressure” ad from the global warming scam artists at 10:10 by now. The video is all over the Internet, although the 10:10 organization has been trying to suppress its incredibly stupid mistake… which, as Jim Treacher at the Daily Caller points out, roughly one hundred people made simultaneously. Click here […]

The Tea Party movement is a rising tide of resistance to the all-consuming State. It has captured the attention of independent voters made nervous by the fabulously expensive failure of Obama-style socialism. But what can it say to those who already depend on the State for their provenance, including a growing payroll of government employees, […]

When the subprime mortgage crisis exploded in 2008, and the TARP bailouts were on the verge of passage, I wrote a letter to Jim DeMint. It was the second time I’ve written to a politician, the first being a letter of support to President Bush shortly after 9/11. (I described that letter in “Avenger of […]

Considering how hard Rolling Stone worked to make Barack Obama look good in their recent interview, it’s a pity they couldn’t bring themselves to cut the embarrassing “final thoughts” he insisted on appending: Click here to download / listen to the podcast Click here to read the entire essay

The rise of the Tea Party movement has encouraged a renewed interest in the Constitution, and the original intent of the Founders. The Left has taken to sneering that Constitution-worship is an infantile obsession, a pointless romance with the larval stage of a living document, which has evolved into a four trillion dollar monarch butterfly. […]

The Left was unable to paint the Tea Party as anarchists, violent lunatics, or racists. The feeble attempt to suggest they should really be focusing their ire at George W. Bush or the Republican Party fizzled into embarrassed silence. Like a clumsy kid going deep into the dinnerware department to catch a Nerf football pass […]

If you see yourself as a moderate, independent centrist, there is an image I would ask you to ponder: a great serpent consuming its own tail. It is called the Ouroboros, a symbol of eternity. I’ve written about it before. You can once again see its outline in recent events. Click here to download / […]

The Delaware Senate race is like a game of Texas Hold-em that started slow, with boring cards on the table, and an obvious winner smirking over his hole cards. A few rounds later, everyone is frantically throwing chips onto a huge pile and waiting for the last card to be dealt. The early favorite folded […]

Talk of tax cuts fills the air, which means the Left is getting fidgety. They’ve been forced to change from delirious big spenders who see a billion dollars as a rounding error, into flinty-eyed deficit hawks who insist raising taxes to reduce our massive budget deficit is the only responsible course of action. The speed […]

President Obama kicked off his town hall meeting in Washington D.C. on Monday with the usual dreary whining that has made him such a bore to listen to. “I think we have to go back to what was happening when I was first sworn in… something that took 10 years to create is going to […]

Soaring unemployment rates are one of our greatest concerns. The government is having a lot of trouble coming up with legislation to create more jobs. I’d like to propose a bill that would create or save over half a million jobs over the next ten years, and reduce the tax burden on labor cost to […]

Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic thinks it’s time for the Obama Administration to play the “Palin Card,” setting the former governor of Alaska up as the target for some Alinsky-style frozen personal polarizing. He dismisses fears that such Presidential attention will elevate Palin to greater national prominence: Click here to download / listen to the […]

Even as the Tea Party grows in strength from another round of anti-establishment primaries, the Administration is serving weak tea in Washington. What to do about the moribund economy? Perhaps some more “stimulus” spending? Some more subsidies for politically agreeable businesses? Maybe the Democrats could leave the Bush tax cuts in place for the lower […]

An odd little church in Florida touched off a global controversy by threatening to burn a Koran on September 11. They announced the burning had been postponed, but there have already been riots in Indonesia, and injuries in Afghanistan. Naturally, these riots have been accompanied by the burning of American flags. When rage and hatred […]

Thomas Sowell begins his latest column with an idea that has long fascinated me: When people learn that you are an economist, they often want you to predict which way the economy is going. There seem to be more than the usual number of calls for such predictions lately. But an economist should be more […]

President Obama “unveiled” his new “stimulus” plan in Wisconsin today. It was a lot like watching an alcoholic unveil his new plan to get sober by switching to lite beer . . . Click here to download / listen to the Podcast Click here to read the entire essay

In a Friday night post, Allahpundit followed up a dose of pure rotgut Alan Grayson insanity with a little milk of magnesia from the Atlantic Wire. It seems “many liberals” are “rejecting” the new book from Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas. Click here to download / listen to the Podcast Click here to read the […]

The November elections may well be the most historic reversal of political power in modern history. Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics thinks over 60 seats in the House could go Republican. Click here to download / listen to the Podcast Click here to read the entire essay

Winston Churchill once observed that history is written by the victors. President Obama’s Tuesday night speech on the end of the combat mission in Iraq was an example of history being written by the losers. Click here to download / listen to the Podcast Click here to read the entire essay

Glenn Beck’s enormous weekend rally in Washington has drawn some criticism for its religious character. Howling into the vacuum where CNN’s audience used to be, Bill Press declared the rally to be “a slap at both President Lincoln and Dr. King, not to mention the American people.” Dr. King, you see, gave his timeless “I […]

Three hundred thousand people gathered in the Washington Mall on August 28, at the invitation of radio and TV host Glenn Beck, to discuss restoring the honor of the American people. How did a great people come to lose their honor? Click here to download / listen to the Podcast Click here to read the […]

The Cash for Clunkers program was touted as a huge success by the Obama Administration. The program offered hefty taxpayer subsidies when old, environmentally insensitive cars were traded in for new vehicles. The old cars were then destroyed, ending their menace to our fragile ecosystem. Their metal was recycled to build the Deepwater Horizon oil […]

You hear a lot about the “hatefulness” of conservatives and Tea Party activists these days. Lefty web sites were eager to pin the recent stabbing of a Muslim cab driver in New York on right wingers, since all opposition to the Ground Zero mosque is dismissed as vicious bigotry . . . Click here to […]

The Washington Post brings us news of an Obama Administration report to the United Nations, confessing our “less than perfect” human rights record . . . Click here to download / listen to the Podcast Click here to read the entire essay

After the passage of his massive health-care plan, President Obama promised a “hard pivot” to dealing with our flagging economy. Job creation was said to be his new “top priority.” Politicians make a habit of declaring lots of top priorities. Click here to download / listen to the Podcast Click here to read the entire […]

Saturday brought the bizarre saga of Sweden announcing a rape charge against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, then withdrawing the warrant within a matter of hours, downgrading the international media hurricane to a tropical storm of “molestation” charges. Click here to download / listen to the Podcast Click here to read the entire essay

Sometimes people say there’s no way America can pull out of its death spiral. No matter what polls may say about the national mood turning against those pushing us into submission and bankruptcy . . . no matter what brilliant ideas for national renewal might be advanced . . . our character has become too […]

The strands of the Internet hum with confusion, anger, and message manipulation from an increasingly desperate Left. Their last-ditch strategy involves brewing up a petri dish full of viral memes about the conservative grassroots, in the hope of weakening their resolve, and perhaps frightening a few independents into staying home in November. They hope to […]

The following facts about Islam are objectively true: 1. Islam is the most violent religion in the world. Almost every point of contact between Islam and other religions, or secular government, is damp with blood . . . Click here to download / listen to the Podcast Click here to read the entire essay

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No . . . it’s a plain bird. That’s the best superhero joke I know. Doc Zero once wrote that it was best to begin a composition with an arresting opening paragraph. I always preferred to go for comedy over drama. Get the audience […]

Back in June, Vice President Joe Biden made one of the bizarre statements for which he has become famous, as reported by CBS News: Vice President Joe Biden gave a stark assessment of the economy today, telling an audience of supporters, “there’s no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession.” Click […]

In the comments to The Dominion of Liars, itzWicks asks: The refrain that I hear over and over again at the conclusion of excellent essays such as this (as well as from the well articulated comments that follow on this blog) is sadly the same: “What are we going to do about it? What can […]