Greetings!  Adios NBC Today Show co-host Hoda Kolb.  Today marked the last day of her full-time job at NBC News.  I was initially not a Hoda fan when she was named co-host in 2018 but I quickly grew to respect and even admire her skills as deft broadcaster with a light touch who could also handle hard news…Former Fox News prime time host Bill O’Reilly, who exited the network almost eight years ago in disgrace, was a guest at a recent Mar-a-Lago strategy session with the president-elect.  Mr. O’Reilly provides some details of the knee-bending meeting on his website…Podcaster/comedian Adam Carolla apparently applied to be a Los Angeles firefighter several years ago but was told he had to wait seven years because he wasn’t Black, Hispanic or female. (Hollywood in Toto)…Pizzagate gunman Edgar Welch was shot by North Carolina cops during a traffic stop on January 4.  He died two days later. Mr. Welch, who believed right wing conspiracy theories that a child sex trafficking ring was run out of a DC-area pizza restaurant, fired a rifle inside the restaurant in 2016.  He was sentenced to four years in prison by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.  (Gateway Pundit)…Weekend Watch:  As a Bob Dylan fan I’m heartily recommending A Complete Unknown.  Timothée Chalamet steals the show as the young troubadour roaming Greenwich Village, breaking hearts and shattering conventions.  To get the proper context of the movie, I suggest viewers also watch the Coen Brothers Inside Llewyn Davis and the mockumentary A Mighty Wind, which gives the folk scene a well-deserved but humorous skewering…If you keep reading, I’ll keep Righting. Howard

Greetings! The year is just over a week old and it’s already off to a rocky start: devastating fires in Los Angeles, the New Orleans terror attack and Trump’s expansionist ambitions.  Sheesh.  What’s going to happen after he takes office?...Farewell Jimmy Carter! WND  is not shedding a tear for him as it throws major shade on the late president accusing him for the unraveling of American culture....In a Truth Social post, Trump blamed the LA fires on California Governor Gavin Newsom, who he refers to in a derogatory term (of course)…LA Fire Chief Kristen Crowley is under fire from the right for being a lesbian and a presumably DEI hire.  The Pride website has a different point of view as evidenced by this headline:  “Amid Palisades Fire, LA’s First LGBTQ+ Fire Chief Is Proving Lesbians Get It Done”…The National Review has published a list of several must-read nonfiction books for 2025.  They include: Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life, Desire and Fate, and Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License, Not exactly bedtime reading…In the immediate aftermath of the November 5 presidential election, more than 100 readers unsubscribed from TheRighting.  Unfortunately, the exodus continues to this day although not at the same pace.  In my latest article for The Columbia Journalism Review, I reveal the sad truth why readers fled…If you keep reading, I’ll keep Righting. Howard