It sometimes seems as if the Dallas Stars are only permitted to have one player get hot at a time. But do you need Mikko Rantanen to score a hat trick every game when Mikael Granlund can go off in his stead? A lot has happened in the past five days, and Wes and Mark want to talk about all of it. In this edition of Stargazing, they examine the advan…

When President Trump declared from the stage of an opulent ballroom in Saudi Arabia that the United States was done nation-building and intervening, that the world’s superpower would no longer be “giving you lectures on how to live,” his audience erupted in applause. Supporters at home also applauded as Trump effectively denounced decades of neocon…

President Donald Trump on Monday signed a sweeping executive order setting a 30-day deadline for drugmakers to electively lower the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. or face new limits down the road over what the government will pay. The order calls on the health department, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to broker new price tags for drugs over…

Reports are emerging that President Donald Trump has cut off communication with Benjamin Netanyahu over concerns that the Israeli Prime Minister is seeking to manipulate Trump into pursuing policies beneficial to Israel but not the United States. Trump has recently been accused even by allies of abandoning his “America First” stance in favor of a m…

The Dallas Stars won a Game 1! This is the best thing to happen since 2020, when they won Game 1 against the Tampa Bay Lightning...hey, wait a minute. We know everyone loves a doomcast, but at this point we're constantly on the lookout for reasons to believe. So Wes and Mark worked through the night to find sustainability in the Stars' current good…

The Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) has historically lost mass, significantly contributing to sea-level rise, with intensified losses in West Antarctica and parts of East Antarctica, particularly from 2011–2020. However, between 2021 and 2023, driven by anomalous precipitation, the AIS experienced a record-breaking mass gain, even reversing trends in cri…

The Dallas Stars are about to begin the fight for another Central Division championship – and to get there, they only have to knock off the team that earned the 2025 President's Trophy. (Oh, is that all?) Brad McDonnell joined Wes and Mark to examine how the Stars match up with their Dirty Central cellmates, the Winnipeg Jets. In this edition, they…

Columbia economics professor Jeffrey Sachs is now saying he is “99% sure” that the University of North Carolina (UNC) conducted extensive gain of function research beginning in 2015 and that this research led to the development of COVID-19. Sachs says he is concerned about unregulated research and the lack of global governance for handling dangerou…

Conservative commentator Candace Owens has publicly criticized Donald Trump for abandoning his “American first” pledge in favor of Israel and against free speech. In a recent episode of her podcast, “Candace,” she voiced concerns over the administration’s actions against universities, particularly regarding free speech issues. Owens stated, “I neve…

The Dallas Stars did it. They won a Round 1 against the Colorado Avalanche that, in a better world, would have been a Western Conference Final. It wasn't easy, or pretty, or predictable – but the Victory Green Gang gave themselves the chance to win a Central Division title with all their elite players healthy and back on the ice. And if Game 7 taug…

Good news! The Dallas Stars can close the Round 1 deal on home ice. Bad news: The Colorado Avalanche can finish them off in their own barn. How do you play those match-ups? Wes and Mark worked After Dark to put their thoughts together, and in this episode they discuss the advantages of shortening the Stars' bench, the dangers of relying on Pete DeB…

At the Jerusalem JNS Policy Summit, former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman proclaimed, "The masters of the universe are Jews,” identifying a list of major tech firm CEOs who are all Jews. In the face of Gen Z’s growing support for Palestine, Coleman urged those CEOs and other powerful Jews to "win the digital battle." Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt M…

The Dallas Stars keep defying the doomcast. After a stunning Game 4 bellyflop, they came back with a dominating performance in Game 5. Now the Round 1 outcome is once again in their hands – but it will proceed on the Colorado Avalanche's home ice. Can they finish the job before the series stretches to seven games? Wes and Mark met up After Dark to …

Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse, has died by suicide, her family said Friday. Giuffre, 41, died in Neergabby, Australia, where she had been living for several years. Giuffre was one of the earliest and loudest voices calling for criminal charges against Epstein and his enablers. Other Epstein …

We did ask what would happen when the Colorado Avalanche got desperate, and it appears the Dallas Stars gave us an answer. A terrible answer, true, but they did provide one. In this episode of Stargazing, Wes and Mark had plenty of dark thoughts about the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs. But, as usual, they also found a couple of reasons to believe this …

President Donald Trump is standing by his embattled Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and brushing off concerns even as new details are emerging about the military information Hegseth shared in a second group chat on Signal that included his family and friends. Hegseth is also dealing with the fallout from a leadership purge at the top of the Pen…

Is this 2025, or 2015? The Dallas Stars won another nail-biter against the Colorado Avalanche, and it was largely thanks to Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin. Yet the team continues to get contributions from up and (mostly) down the lineup. What is possible when everyone is That Guy? In the latest episode of Stargazing, Wes and Mark got together After Da…

After being embarrassed over his lack of an argument and insistence on semantic minutiae during his appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, British political commentator Douglas Murray raced to the New York Post to pen an opinion piece demanding better “standards” for podcasters like Rogan. Except while decrying the lack of “truth” and “honesty” of Ro…

You have to give the Dallas Stars credit: They know how to add extra thrills to their wins. They evened up Round 1 with a victory in overtime. Now they'll take their game on the road and look to grab another W in the Colorado Avalanche's home barn. Wes Lawrence and Mark Zimmerman have gone over the data from the Stars' 4-3 win on Monday, and they'r…

On a recent episode of his podcast, Joe Rogan and his guest Tim Dillon mocked The Spectator’s associate editor Douglas Murray for promoting “war tourism” and the notion that people should be barred from commenting on political issues in countries they’ve never visited Rogan specifically imitated Murray’s British accent to say, “You’ve never beeeeen…

The Trump White House re-launched the govenrment’s official COVID-19 website on Friday. The revamped site blames the origins of the coronavirus on a lab leak in China while criticizing former President Joe Biden, former top U.S. health official Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization. The website is also critical of steps like social distan…

The Dallas Stars are really dependable about losing Game 1. The good news has always been that it isn't necessarily predictive, until it is. Wes and Mark took a few hours to process the good and the bad in the Victory Green Gang's 5-1 loss to the Colorado Avalanche. What they found was some surprisingly good news about structure and puck luck, and …

The Dallas Stars won their position in the 2025 Stanley Cup race relatively early. Then they skidded into the end of the regular season on a seven-game losing streak unprecedented during head coach Pete DeBoer's tenure. So what happens now that this team is supposed to be all in? To survey the first-round ice, Stargazing welcomed back longtime Colo…

The Trump administration’s aggressive deportation practices, whether sending alleged gang members to a notorious El Salvadoran prison or rounding up foreign students for opposing Israel’s war in Gaza, have led many pundits and others to raise the alarm about a Constitutional crisis and the evisceration of due process. But as Jimmy points out, this …

On Friday’s episode of Real Time, host Bill Maher opened up about a surprising meeting he had last week with former President Donald Trump at the White House. Maher said the encounter was far more cordial and humorous than he ever anticipated. “You can hate me for it, but I’m not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured,” Maher said. “And why isn’t …

American comedian Dave Smith and British cultural critic Douglas Murray recently joined Joe Rogan for a much-discussed episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. Murray confronted Rogan and criticised him to his face for platforming non-experts to discuss historical and political subject matter. Murray also claimed criticizing such figures was like “punc…

Donald Trump stunned markets Wednesday with another quick pivot on trade, announcing he would authorize a 90-day pause on his reciprocal tariff plans for all countries except China. "They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid," he said Wednesday, referring to the market unrest that unfolded following his "Liberation Day" tariff annou…

Some of Donald Trump’s most prominent billionaire backers have begun sounding the alarm on the tariffs that have roiled markets. JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned they could have lasting negative consequences and impact America's long-term economic alliances and the global economy. Meanwhile, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who endorsed Donald…

The Dallas Stars are pretty good at winning. They've even gotten good at winning games in which they didn't play as well as their opponents. That's one reason why it's so frustrating to see the Stars' vices become their manners...especially when they drop games that were in their reach. What does it mean for the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs? Wes and M…

Stocks plunged on Thursday and then again on Friday as U.S. trading reacted to President Trump’s announcement of heavy tariffs on nearly every nation exporting products to the United States. Trump announced Wednesday he would impose a 10 percent tariff on all imports, with higher rates for key trading partners in response to what the White House co…

President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced far-reaching new tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners — a 34% tax on imports from China and 20% on the European Union, among others — that threaten to dismantle much of the architecture of the global economy and trigger broader trade wars. Trump, in a Rose Garden announcement, said he was placing…

The European Union did virtually nothing to stop the US and NATO from expanding east toward Russia and then provoking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and now the chickens are coming home to roost in the form of a potential Russian nuclear response. So what is the EU doing now? Sharing videos instructing citizens to stockpile tuna a cell phone charger…

After answering repeated questions from CNN anchor Kaitlin Collins about the Signal group chat breach and security of communications among Trump cabinet members, VA Secretary Doug Collins turned the question around and asked Collins about a $5 million defamation suit her network settled with a veteran who successfully argued he had been libeled abo…

The officially playoffs-bound Dallas Stars always seem to have one player or another going off these days. If it's not Wyatt Johnston racking up points like a veteran elite forward, or Jason Robertson regaining his scoring touch with a vengeance, then it might be Thomas Harley making a late run at the postseason awards with all the offensive-defens…

Washiington DC remains in hyper-buzz mode over the recent security breach effected by top members of Trump’s national security team as they discussed upcoming Yemen attacks over the messaging app Signal, and mistakenly included journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in the group chat. And while most of the media is focusing on the security breach aspect of th…

Investigative reporter and podcast host Nick Sortor reported on his Twitter page that the company "Influenceable" is paying MAGA influencers to support Big Soda. Sortor says he became suspicious when popular Trump-supporting pages like Clown World, Eric Daugherty, Not Jerome Powell and Ian Miles Cheong all posted remarkably similar tweets, each dec…

While many self-styled “patriots” applauded the Trump administration’s mass arrest of alleged “gang members” who were deported for immediate incarceration in El Salvador, as more details of the mass deportation emerge it is becoming increasingly evident that authorities ran roughshod over the Constitutional due process protections to effect the ope…

By the time you listen to this, the Texas Stars will have already punched their ticket to the 2025 Calder Cup playoffs. Turns out Victory Green is a fun color in Austin Metro, too! The Stars in Dallas benefit greatly when the Stars in Cedar Park succeed. So to take the measure of the T-Stars' prospects, Mark once again calls on the expertise of Ste…

Israel has launched a new ground invasion into Gaza, sending troops into areas they retreated from during a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. This follows a day of airstrikes that killed over 400 people, including many children, and wounded hundreds more, effectively shattering the fragile ceasefire that had been in place since January 19. Jimmy disc…

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has vigrously defended the deportation of green card-holding Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil over the activist’s participation in pro-Palestinian protests on campus. The case has raised serious first amendment concerns, with defenders of free speech claiming that Khalil’s deportation is a straightforward vi…

Ben Cohen, legendary co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, has long fought for progressive causes ranging from ending war to saving the environment. In this conversation with Jimmy Dore Cohen talks about seizing the opportunity of a second Donald Trump administration to cut the defense budget and redirect those precious funds to address the pressi…

The book has been written, and quite literally: The Dallas Stars are now co-favorites to win the 2025 Stanley Cup, and it's down to the deal that brought Mikko Rantanen into the fold. How does this team look for a deep playoffs run, especially if Tyler Seguin returns in his early-season form? Is it ridiculous to put so much faith in this lineup so …

President Trump is vowing to “lead the charge” to unseat Republican Represenative Thomas Massie of Kentucky after the congressman declared he will not support the GOP’s short-term government funding bill ahead of Friday’s shutdown deadline. Trump began a Truth Social post late Monday night by thanking the House Freedom Caucus for backing the stopga…

The overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has not led to stability in the war-torn nation. In fact, death squads affiliated with the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that now rules over much of Syria have been blamed for more than 1,000 killings in the past week, most of them civilian members of the Alawite minority of deposed president Ba…

Senate Republicans on Wednesday passed a measure to allow payment apps like Venmo and PayPal to return to ideological debanking—repealing a rule implemented in December by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Repeal of the rule would leave users of the apps in limbo, as the laws protecting consumers would still be in place, but the rule enforc…

In case you haven't checked the NHL.com top page this afternoon, the Dallas Stars made a bit of news today. The deal to bring Mikko Rantanen to Big D, which seemed all but dead last night, came roaring back to life this morning. And less than three hours before the NHL trade deadline, we learned that the Carolina Hurricanes were getting top prospec…

In what can only be described as a stunning reversal on a key political issues, Republicans have now siezed the mantle of supporting free speech away from Democrats — mostly owing to Democrats’ support for efforts to counter what they call “misinformation” and “hate speech” online. But now Donald Trump appears to be willing to crack down on speech …

In 2019 historian and Russia expert Stephen F. Cohen sat down with journalist Aaron Maté to discuss Ukraine’s newly elected President, Volodymyr Zelensky, and the threats he faced from neo-Nazi militants in his own country who were pressing to escalate the civil war in the east of Ukraine despite Zelensky running on a peace platform. Zelensky, of c…

In 2022, shortly after Russian troops rolled across the border into the Donbas region of Ukraine, negotiators for both sides met and hammered out an agreement to end the fighting — a deal that would have maintained the Donbas as a semi-autonomous region of Ukraine and let Ukraine proceed with plans to join the EU. Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zele…

Glenn Greenwald recently responded to an article by Chris Hedges titled “The Purge of the Deep State and the Road to Dictatorship” describing Donald Trump’s dismantling of longstanding government institutions as a portent of worse to come. Greenwald disagreed with Hedges’ assessment, crediting Trump with positive steps like defunding USAID and firi…