Gail Collins and Bret Stephens | It’s Never a Good Time for the Hunter Biden Story – The New York Times

By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens

Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens are opinion columnists. They converse every week.

“Gail Collins: Bret, here’s one question I don’t think I ever asked you before: What do you think of daylight saving time?

Bret Stephens: About the same way I feel about Volodymyr Zelensky. The light of the West.

Gail: Your ability to have everything remind you of foreign affairs is awesome.

I was sorta impressed the other day when the Senate voted unanimously to make daylight saving time permanent, year-round. What’s the last thing they agreed about that easily?

Bret: Invading Afghanistan?

Gail: I think switching back and forth is stupid. But many sleep scientists seem to think standard time — winter time — is healthier. So I’ll go with them, just to be difficult.

Bret: This is a major difference between liberals and conservatives. Modern-day liberals are often quite happy to defer to the wisdom of experts, at least when it comes to subjects like public health or economics. Whereas those of us who are conservative tend to be — skeptical. We prefer the wisdom of crowds, or markets, to the wisdom of the purportedly wise. It goes back to William F. Buckley Jr.’s famous line that he’d rather “be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.”

Gail: Do you happen to know what William F. Buckley Jr.’s position on daylight saving time was?

Bret: Given that daylight savings was initially signed into law by Woodrow Wilson, I’d have to assume Buckley would have been against it.”

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT | NYT Comment:

The first half of this conversation was brilliantly light and funny. Hail to Gail and Bret.

Then Bret had to aim is ire at Hunter Biden, and Gail enabled his despicable behavior. Since Hunter hasn’t done anything illegal, and thousands of friends and family of the politically powerful have been profiting from that position for centuries, picking on Hunter Biden is a piddling distraction of the right, particularly, to keep people from talking about the real elephants in the room, income inequality, the climate crisis, and the extinction of species to name my top three. The biggest weakness of these two brilliant and funny opinion writers, is that they appear to not have even a small environmentalist’s bone in their bodies– articulate urban restauranteurs. I prefer to defend Hunter Biden, who has a work ethic and a strong resume. As an American MBA, working for a Ukrainian gas company, was helping support a critical ally of NATO as the cold war against the Russian Federation continued. These two cocktail comics should be more grateful for his service. Chastising Hunter for selling his paintings is also an example of silliness. So much modern, abstract art is sold for so much money, its embarrassing. But Hunter is just one of thousands of painters cashing in, and his work at least isn’t as bogus as virtual currency, that has an enormous carbon footprint, and is the preferred currency of criminals.

If Hunter Biden is found guilty of committing a crime, I will apologize to Gail and Bret.

David blogs at InconvenientNews.net