Monthly Archives: December 2003

Happy New Year…

…to all of our readers. 2003 was not an easy year, but on the whole it was a good year. It was, of course, a huge year for Power Line, and for that we are grateful to all who have taken the trouble to click on our site. There are good reasons to hope, I think, that next year will be better still. The last word on 2003 goes to »

The Professor Cuts Loose

Glenn Reynolds says he isn’t a conservative. He’s young, he’s hip, he’s a libertarian. And he’s generally pretty laconic. But today he said what he really thinks about the Palestinians: “The United States should not try to play a ‘neutral arbiter’ in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. We should, in fact, be doing our best to make the Palestinians suffer, because, to put it bluntly, they are our enemies. Just read this »

More on the imaginary era of good feeling

Earlier today, in my response to E.J. Dionne’s latest column, I cited the Democrats’ positions on immigration as evidence of their rampant partisanship in the aftermath of 9/11. However, I did not describe what the Democrats did that was so unprincipled. Here is something I wrote shortly after I joined Power Line that provides the two grounds for my charge. The first comes from Michelle Malkin. The second is a »

Whither the Democrats

Peter Schramm at No Left Turns gives an excellent summary of the recent history of the Democratic party, plus his view of what’s ahead (which I think is probably too optimistic with respect to the 2004 election). Here’s Schramm’s recap and prognosis: “Clinton moves the party back towards the center, becoming the first Demo president to be re-elected since FDR. Quite an accomplishment, albeit marred by scandal (but that »

The political “fun and gun”

Lately, we’ve posted pieces comparing Howard Dean to George McGovern, Newt Gingrich, and even Arthur Goldberg. This piece by William Saletan of Slate suggests that Dean can also be compared to Steve Spurrier, who just resigned as the coach of the Washington Redskins after two dreadful seasons. Spurrier came to Washington touting his “fun and gun” offense that had terrorized college defenses for a decade. He ridiculed traditional NFL coaches »

Human folly at its worst

Michelle Malkin on the worst whiners of 2003. Those of you who have been able to repress the memory of at least some of these self-indulgent fools may be tempted to skip this one. But you shouldn’t. »

Don’t Take Investment Advice From This Man

Garry Trudeau is rich, and I can believe that he inhabits a financial world that is very different from mine. Still, I would have thought that his world at least contains the same stock market. Apparently not: The Dow is up 25% for the year; the Nasdaq is up 50%. Heck, even my portfolio is up a little. But propagandists like Trudeau never let the facts get in the way »

Hugh Hewitt

was also struck by E.J. Dionne’s latest “flight of factual fancy.” Hugh’s excellent response can be found on his excellent blog. »

How did this guy get a public forum?

The guy in question is E.J. Dionne. The public forum is the op-ed page of the Washington Post, a fact that goes a long way towards answering my question. But when one considers Dionne’s latest drivel even that answer isn’t entirely satisfactory. Dionne makes two arguments: (1) that President Bush squandered the good will of the Democrats after 9/11, “losing most Democrats forever” through his “bold conservative policies” and (2) »

What made Sammy run?

I ask our regular readers to indulge my reposting this item from last weekend for the benefit of readers coming over from National Review Online to check out our site. Being a child of the ’50s, I don’t recall a time when Sammy Davis was not a celebrity along with the rest of the Rat Pack. Although I learned as a teenager that he had overcome obstacles galore on his »

Our Intelligent Democratic Friends

A large number of mainstream Democrats–the cream of the crop, really–post comments on the issues of the day at “Kicking Ass,” an official forum of the Democratic National Committee. For some reason these intelligent, thoughtful, articulate liberals have become obsessed with Power Line. Here is the latest from one of the DNC’s prize intellectuals: “That’ll teach old Hindrocket to snoop around here. Never occurred to him indeed. I’ll bet mommy »

Subversion in Cuba

Granma is the official organ of the Cuban Communist party; it is one of the world’s most surreal, out-of-touch publications. But at least one Granma employee has apparently risked all in the name of political satire. The photos below are hard to make out, but you can see that someone at Granma altered Fidel Castro’s appearance to give him Adolph Hitler’s slicked-down hair and black moustache instead of his own »

Iraqis Judge Saddam

Healing Iraq has the results of a poll of Iraqis. The poll seems to be pretty broad-based, although it can’t be very scientific; for one thing, 81% of the respondents were men. For the most part, the Iraqis’ responses were pretty predictable. 59% said their reaction to Saddam’s capture was “overwhelming joy.” 56% want Saddam executed. 73% think Saddam’s capture will either decrease the resistance or terminate it altogether. Here »

The year of hating President Bush

Robert Samuelson, in the Washington Post, provides his take on the “fashionableness” of hating President Bush. He makes two main points. First, he argues that what the Bush haters really resent “is that his popularity suggests that the country might be more like him than it is like them. They fear he is exiling them politically.” Thus, “on one level, their embrace of hatred aims to make others share their »

Going negative

My friend Craig Harrison has come up with an idea for an anti-Dean ad I’d love to see. Take the anti-Goldwater commercial of the little girl pulling petals off of a daisy while a nuclear bomb goes off. Except that it would be al Qaeda blowing up a bomb here, while Howard Dean pulls petals from the daisy. The Bush campaign might consider this ad too inflammatory, but there’s always »

Where’s McDonald’s When You Need Them?

On the subject of the Iran earthquake, Glenn Reynolds linked to this piece by David Aaronovitch in the Guardian, but it’s too good to pass up: “[Iran’s President Mohammad] Khamenei had words of dubious comfort for survivors when he told them that ‘we will rebuild Bam stronger than before’. Given the collapse of 80% of the buildings, from the old fortress to the new hospitals, the Iranian government could hardly »

It was a very good year

Irwin Stelzer in the Weekly Standard recaps the state of the economy at year’s end. He finds that the economy “is roaring ahead at a pace that so amazes observers they are guessing it will slow a bit in the new year. That would still mean an economy growing fast enough to satisfy those in charge of George W. Bush’s reelection campaign.” Citing Gregg Easterbrook’s new book “The Progress Paradox,” »