Obamanations

Featured image Barack Obama has entered from stage left to instruct American Jews to return to the Democratic fold in their usual numbers. The video below captures him in Milwaukee this weekend retailing the “very fine people” lie. The high-handed arrogance of this riff is incredible. "If you’re a Jewish American worried about the rise of antisemitism,why would you place your faith in somebody who sat down for pleasantries with Holocaust deniers, »

Voter ID Check Versus Candidate Blood-Alcohol Test

Featured imageOn election day voters become public officials empowered to make the call on who becomes president, governor and members of Congress. California voters can also approve or reject ballot measures on tax policy, such as the landmark Proposition 13, the People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation.  In the style of John Lennon, imagine an unelected imposter posing as a legislator and casting a vote to approve a tax increase. That »

Countdown to Meltdown?

Featured imageMy mentor M. Stanton Evans liked to say that “There is no absurdity that you can invent that a liberal will not state seriously.” (An alternate formulation: “Liberalism today is impossible to satirize, since there is no absurdity it will not embrace in pursuit of ideological obsession.”) And thus one of his favorite quips starting about 20 years back was that “We young conservatives had to get over the Goldwater defeat »

Election Week in Pictures (1): The ADHD Election

Featured imageImma gonna have to do several special TWiP editions this week, aren’t I? Let’s start with this ADHD election. The fall campaign began with cats being eaten in Ohio and looks to be ending with everyone having an ADHD episode and shouting, “Look! Squirrel!” And yet the government SWAT raid on Peanut the Squirrel is a fitting example of governance today: don’t enforce the border, or law and order on »

Is the Future of Our Democracy at Stake?

Featured imageThe Democrats are trying to run on the issue of “democracy,” which polls tell us ranks around fourth in voters’ rating of issues. It has never been clear what Democrats mean by claiming that Our Democracy™️ is on the ballot. Ironically, though, in a very real sense it is. I have been in Europe for the last couple of weeks. A few days ago, I had a conversation with a »

Who ya gonna believe?

Featured imageWe turn to CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski for a review of Harris campaign ads running in Pennsylvania geared to an audience of Jewish voters and in Michigan geared to an audience of Arab Muslim voters (video below). They raise the classic Chico Marx/Duck Soup question: “Who ya gonna believe?” In this case the alternatives aren’t “me or your eyes,” but rather Harris in the Pennsylvania ad or Harris in the Michigan »

2024 An Election Odyssey

Featured imageFor a film released in 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey stands up well on the technical side, with its beeping gadgetry and spaceships floating to the strains of Richard Strauss. The film also invites a comparison of recent events in America, including Tuesday’s election. On the Discovery One, headed for Jupiter, astronauts Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) contend with the HAL9000 computer that controls »

Latinonsense

Featured imageSteve makes short work of the ridiculous “Latinx,” but also needing attention is the more common “Latino.” The term derives from the region of Latium in central Italy but it was never applied to the Italian-born Angelo Codevilla (The Ruling Class) or people such as Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Antonin Scalia and many others. “Latino” is applied to people with ancestry in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe, so they are more »

Veep thoughts: Final pre-election edition

Featured imageThe Washington Free Beacon has posted the final pre-election edition of its Veep Thoughts series (video below). This is volume 29 The Veep Thoughts archive to date is underneath the linked story. The brevity of the videos and the soothing musical soundtrack almost make them palatable. The big event this week was Vice President Harris’s “closing argument” at the Ellipse south of the White House. The Free Beacon reported on »

The Week in Pictures: Garbage Time Edition

Featured imageEveryone who still watches an NBA game on TV will know the kind of game where, in the midst of a one-sided blowout, the end of the game has come to be known as “garbage time,” when the third stringers are in and everyone is taking wild shots and not caring very much. Since Kamala’s team has been third-stringers all along (with Joe Biden as the person who never should »

Hugh Hewitt takes a hike…

Featured image…from the Washington Post, that is. First he walked out on the Washington Post Live’s First Look podcast with the absurd Jonathan Capehart and Ruth Marcus this morning (video below). Then, according to the follow-up New York Post story, Hugh quit his gig as a Post columnist. Hugh was Power Line’s first media friend, from the summer and fall of 2002 in our early days online. He is something of »

Lily lights it up

Featured imageRepublican Lily Tang Williams — “survivor of Mao’s cultural revolution,” “American by choice” — is running against Maggie Goodlander in New Hampshire’s Second Congressional District. See Ms. Lee’s video campaign bio here. Ms. Goodlander, the wife of historically awful National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, is favored to win. I hadn’t heard of Ms. Williams until the video clip below turned up on X yesterday. Having watched it several times now, »

Bill Clinton for the Win—or Kill Shot?

Featured imageJoe Biden is conspicuously missing from the Harris-Walz campaign surrogate and celebrity blitz, unlike Barack Obama. There’s also Bill Clinton, who privately may not really want Kamala Harris to win because it would make Hillary’s reputation sink even further. But he’s clearly straying from preferred campaign talking points when he goes off about the Palestinians and Hamas. As has been reported in the past, the person in the world Clinton »

Another Dumb, Weak Trump Woman

Featured imageIf you haven’t already seen it, this is for your viewing pleasure. Trump’s National Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, absolutely lays waste to an ABC Democratic Party spokeswoman: HOLY SHT! @kleavittnh absolutely destroyed this ABC host to oblivion 🔥🔥🔥 She will crying herself to sleep later 😂 Best clip of the day 👏🏼pic.twitter.com/hKZ6oqC4b6 — Sara Rose 🇺🇸🌹 (@saras76) November 1, 2024 For what it is worth, I would say that Trump, »

Dems Gone Crazy

Featured imageIn the last days of the presidential campaign, Democrats have cranked the hysteria up to 12. Start with Tim Walz, who referred to Elon Musk as “that gay guy,” and then, with a malicious leer, said “Michigan knows that word.” Walz’s aides now say he “misspoke,” and blamed it on a “stutter.” We have listened to Walz’s endless yammering for some years now, and we can assure you, he does »

Friday Podcast Bundle: 3WHH & Ricochet!

Featured imageWe’re up a day earlier than usual with our weekly episode of the 3WHH podcast, and I did another turn on the Ricochet podcast out this afternoon as well, with special guest the novelist and Hollywood screenwriter Andrew Klavan. And in this last 3WHH episode before the election, your bartenders pour a stiff one in honor of the end of recycling, since were back to pure garbage now, though Biden »

The Daily Chart: Sorting Out the Manufacturing Story

Featured imageWith everyone talking about preserving or restoring American’s manufacturing might, it is worth noting that there is a huge construction boom for manufacturing facilities under way: But when you look closer, you quickly discover that much of this is being driven by the spending spree of the Biden so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” and related sugar highs, which may or may not fully reflect underlying economic reality: The other thing to »