Welcome back! I hope everyone enjoyed their Labor Day weekend. My fiancé and I enjoyed a little getaway down to the Florida Keys, although I very much also mourned the loss of the great (and Florida-centric) music icon Jimmy Buffett, who was taken from us far too soon over the weekend. That margarita I drank Saturday evening in the Keys was to you, Jimmy. Rest in peace.

Here are some highlights from the last week.

My most recent column pulled no punches in my scorn for the segments of the Right that seem to now accept losing and loserdom and which are content to fundraise and grift off of those ever-accumulating losses. Being a permanent victim and self-righteous martyr is, to an extent, a decision—and something that far, far too many on the Right have made peace with. Former President Donald Trump and former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake are but two prominent examples of self-defeating victimology on the Right, but many other examples abound. None of this is to deny that the Right does, in so many crucial ways, now face a patently unfair and tilted playing field. The issue, instead, is whether we are interested in actually doing anything about it—which requires winning the election and the necessarily complicated work of hands-on governance. As I wrote in the column: "Losing, it turns out, is easy—and profitable. Winning, by contrast, is difficult—and often thankless." In short, does our side actually want to win anymore?

My most recent podcast episode discussed former President Trump's ceaseless legal drama and how the continued unfolding of that drama was juxtaposed last week with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's sterling crisis management demonstrated during Hurricane Idalia, explained the clear choice the Right faces between a mentality/attitude of affirmatively acting and doing versus a mentality/attitude of perpetual victimhood and martyrdom, and lamented the terrible state of gerontocracy in America (with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) second podium freeze-up, last week, as but the latest debilitating example). I ended the show with our signature "Hammertime" closing segment, which includes a brief tribute to the late Jimmy Buffett. You can listen to that episode on Apple, Spotify or here.

In terms of other media hits and appearances since our last newsletter, I joined "Bo Snerdley's Rush Hour" on 77 WABC (New York City) to discuss the Left's unprecedented weaponization of the rule of law in America; guest-hosted "The Jason Rantz Show" on AM 770 KTTH (Seattle) last Thursday (you can listen here to hour 1, hour 2, and hour 3 of the program); and joined "National Report" on Newsmax to discuss President Joe Biden's attempt to gaslight the American people by painting so-called "Bidenomics" as a success.

Our additional highlighted right-leaning Newsweek op-eds from the past two weeks include selections from Sam Nunberg, former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Alex Castellanos, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.), Julio Gonzalez, and Jennifer Stefano.

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