October 10, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Gretchen Whitmer Is Weird

Featured image One of the strangest aspects of this year’s campaign season was the Democrats’ effort to brand JD Vance as “weird”–an effort led by none other than Tim Walz! Vance’s brilliant debate performance put that one to rest, once and for all. But that doesn’t mean there is no weirdness in contemporary politics. Check out this very short video, in which Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer feeds a left-wing “influencer” a Dorito, »
October 10, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Poll versus Poll

Featured imageNearly 30 years ago I came up with what I nowadays call Hayward’s First Law of Inverse Poll Quality. The law holds: there more famous the poll or pollster, the lower the quality of the poll, and vice-versa; unknown pollsters are likely to provide better or more thorough polls. I first perceived this when I saw from the inside the internal polling for two major ballot initiatives in California. The »
October 10, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Nuke the Dems?

Featured imageThe most startling turnaround in recent months is the sudden revival of nuclear power. Three Mile Island is going to re-open (and put Jane Fonda in her grave), and Michigan is going to reopen a recently shut down nuclear plant. I’ll bet New York will revisit its bad decision to close down Indian Point (after which carbon emissions from New York’s electricity predictably went up). And then there’s Biden energy »
October 10, 2024 — John Hinderaker

The Times Is Depressed

Featured imageThis New York Times headline will warm your heart: “Republicans Appear Poised to Take Control of Senate, New Poll Shows.” How it must have pained them to write that! The actual article is much less definitive than the headline. It reports on only three Times/Siena polls. Two are holds by Republicans: Ted Cruz is up by four in Texas, and Rick Scott is up by nine in Florida. Neither is »
October 10, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Republicans Rising

Featured imageI wrote here about the fact that Gallup’s current polling finds, for the first time at least since 1992, that more Americans identify as Republicans than as Democrats. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal noted that this trend is consistent among various polls: Beneath the headline results in many polls, something unusual has turned up with big implications for politics: More voters are calling themselves Republicans than Democrats, suggesting that the »
October 10, 2024 — Scott Johnson

David Horowitz: Political war

Featured imageDavid Horowitz is founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the bestselling author of several books, including the classic autobiography Radical Son and The Black Book of the American Left. His new book is America Betrayed. He has sent us this column for publication on Power Line. David writes: Many Americans concerned about the fate of our country are asking themselves why the election polls seem so close. The »
October 9, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Did the Biden Administration Perpetuate Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine?

Featured imageThe Russia/Ukraine war has been a humanitarian disaster. Estimates vary, but somewhere around one million Russians and Ukrainians have been killed or wounded in the two and a half years since Russia’s invasion. Like almost all Americans, I was on Ukraine’s side when Russia launched its invasion, and I still am. But two and a half years down the road, one can only wonder whether Western support for Ukraine has »
October 9, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Notes on Coates

Featured imageBelow Steve takes up the incredible story of the roiling of CBS News by a morning host’s treatment of Ta-Nehisi Coates as an adult writer rather than the author of holy writ. Coates was peddling his new book attacking the existence of Israel. Having read his old book — Between the World and Me, published in 2015 and celebrated as a masterpiece wherever the left holds sway — I was »
October 9, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Hurricane Frequency and Severity

Featured imageWith Hurricane Milton bearing down on Tampa Bay right now, the usual chorus of climate change fanatics are using the occasion once again to throw up the familiar unfounded claims. The UN’s IPCC climate change project repeatedly says scientists are unable to attribute frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, or other extreme weather events to climate change or greenhouse gas levels. Here’s Roger Piekle Jr’s. able short summary of the »
October 9, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Mister, we could use a man like…

Featured imageCanada’s next federal elections is scheduled to take place no later than October 20, 2025. Canada’s Conservative Party is led by Pierre Poilievre. We like what we have seen of him. Who can forget Poilievre’s depantsing of a standard-issue left-wing reporter while he (i.e., Poilievre) stood calmly munching an apple? John posted the video here. This past April he spoke at a pro-Israel rally in Toronto (video here). Yesterday Poilievre »
October 8, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Musk Goes Missing

Featured imageOn Sunday night, fans saw the Dallas Cowboys defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers 20-17. What they didn’t see was Elon Musk in the stands, fresh off his appearance with Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, to commemorate the July 13 assassination attempt. “NBC choose not to show Elon Musk at the Cowboys vs Steelers game,” posted former Steeler Antonio Brown, noting that “Taylor Swift gets shown every game she’s at.” Brown, a Super »
October 9, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Knowing Naomi

Featured imageNaomi Klein, climate-justice professor at the University of British Columbia, is the author of “How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war,” a 6000-plus-word essay in the October 5 Guardian. Back in 1990 in The Varsity, a University of Toronto publication, Klein authored “Victim to Victimizer,” subtitled “What Israel has become: Racism and misogyny at the core of its being.” As the author explains: When I speak out on »
October 9, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Another Knucklehead Move by Walz

Featured imageTim Walz, speaking at a fundraiser in California, said, “I think all of us know the electoral college needs to go.” I don’t suppose he expected that comment to be controversial. It is a commonly-held view among Democrats, who have adopted the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” a back-door method of abolishing the Electoral College, in a number of states. Tim Walz signed it into law in Minnesota last year. »
October 9, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Loose Ends (265)

Featured image• The most amazing detail to emerge about the meltdown at CBS News over Tony Dokoupil’s interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates is that CBS News has an in-house “Race and Culture Unit.” Gee—I wonder what kind of people staff this unit, and what their viewpoint is? (See the latest on the matter from Bari Weiss and Oliver Wiseman here.) • Kamala Just Isn’t Very Good at This Department: Scott notes below »
October 9, 2024 — Steven Hayward

What’s Up with Joe?

Featured imageOne of my oldest pals in the writing racket—a fellow intern for M. Stanton Evans along with me back in 1981—sent the following observation this morning, which I cannot top: I’ve been saying for weeks that Joe Biden seems to be doing his sly best to sabotage the Kameleon’s campaign and that opinion is apparently becoming more widely shared. Jack Posobiec tweeted this morning that there was an “altercation” between »
October 9, 2024 — Scott Johnson

The same page

Featured imageVice President Harris is running for president as though she is somehow an outsider running against the establishment rather than its hand-picked mouthpiece. She’s not only an insider, she’s the second ranking officer in the incumbent administration. She has previously campaigned on every one of the policies of the Biden/Harris administration that have wrought so much damage to the United States. To take only one example, consider Biden’s opening of »
October 8, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Who’s Threatening Whom?

Featured imageJoe Biden says that Donald Trump’s “very dangerous” rhetoric is likely to lead to political violence. What is he talking about? I don’t know. Whatever Trump says about the Democrats, they say much worse about him. And of course it is Trump, not Kamala Harris, who has been the subject of two assassination attempts. Democrats like to warn against political violence, but when it happens, it nearly always is committed »