Monthly Archives: May 2023
May 31, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Do liberal women like to be victimized by the feral predators that haunt America’s cities? No. No, they don’t. This is why a crowd turned out for a city council meeting in Oakland, California, perhaps the most liberal city in the U.S., to protest the city’s soft-on-crime policies. This woman was one of several who spoke: This is how angry people were at the meeting last night. This is in
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May 31, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Target’s sales have dropped sharply following its bizarre “Pride” promotion of men’s women’s swimsuits, children’s grooming books, and the like. How Target went down the woke path will be studied by future generations of MBA students as a lesson in what to avoid. It remains to be seen whether Target’s sales decline will be long-lasting, but for now the situation is only getting worse. Yesterday, this performance of “Boycott Target”
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May 31, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The old saying, “There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians,” should be amended to include pollsters. The latest exhibit in polling as a “pseudo-event” (an artificial event created by advocates solely to generate a news headline, pace Daniel Boorstin) is an AP-NORC poll just out which the AP advertises with this headline: Most in US say don’t ban race in college admissions but its role should be small: AP-NORC poll
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May 31, 2023 — Steven Hayward
One of the big stories right now is the attempt to “decouple” from China, and also reduce vulnerability to Taiwan in the event of a ChiComm takeover or war that will affect our microchip supply. But it will not be easy, quick, or cheap. Here’s how we got into this situation, from Bruce Mehlman’s useful monthly compendium (and if you’d like to receive his monthly chartbooks, email him at
[email protected]):
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May 31, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I’m still working my way through Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s just-published memoir Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence. I hope to write a formal book review that administers justice to the book. In the meantime, I want to post a series of notes on the book. This is Ellison’s second memoir and it shares certain traits in common with the first, My Country, Tis of Thee:
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May 31, 2023 — Scott Johnson
James Freeman’s Best of the Web column yesterday asserts that “Biden has a Kennedy problem.” He takes a look at a new Echelon Institute poll “find[ing] that likely voters have a remarkably positive view of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the kooky environmental lawyer who is challenging Mr. Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination. In fact the Echelon survey suggests that Mr. Kennedy may have the best nationwide favorability rating of
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May 30, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The City University of New York has a law school that apparently is very far left. At this year’s commencement ceremony, a graduating law student who was elected by her classmates as their representative delivered a far-left screed: A graduate speaking at the City University of New York’s law school commencement called for a “revolution” to challenge oppressive institutions in the US — name-checking the “fascist” NYPD, military, Immigration and
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May 30, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Remember when government officials told us that we needed just a brief shutdown of economic and social activity to “flatten the curve” of covid transmission? The theory, although few seem to remember it, was that the same number of people would eventually catch covid, we just wouldn’t catch it all at once and thus we wouldn’t overload the hospital system. In fact, two weeks of curve-flattening turned into a year
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May 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Jon Reisman, Professor of Economics & Public Policy Emeritus at the University of Maine, devoted Power Line reader, and self-described “Statler and Waldorf Intern,” passes along this update of the Beach Boys classic tune everyone will recognize from the opening line: California’s Grid With apologies to Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Greta Thunberg Well, East Coast grids are hip I really dig wind mills they wear And the Southern grid,
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May 30, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
Some readers may already be familiar with the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique at Magic Kingdom Park, the place “where fairy tales come true.” Parents can watch as their children are “royally transformed” into elegant princesses and shining knights – “right before [their] eyes.” Your child will be welcomed into the boutique by one of the shop’s “fairy godmother’s apprentices.” Over the weekend, one little girl was lucky enough to be received
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May 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Many readers really don’t like the debt ceiling deal, but the irony is that relatively speaking divided government delivers better results than when Republicans have had unified control of the executive and legislative branches in recent decades, as a careful look at this data series will suggest: Meanwhile, here’s how Steve Moore, an ultra spending hawk, sizes up the deal: Hats off to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Eight weeks ago
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May 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward
• File this away for an update, though I suspect we won’t get an update if the story turns out as I expect: University of California President’s Berkeley Home Vandalized A hate crime investigation is underway after University of California officials say vandals painted racial slurs on the home of the UC president. The hate-filled graffiti has left a Berkeley neighborhood outraged and on edge. Bruce O’Neill showed NBC Bay
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May 30, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The New York Post publishes Jonathan Turley’s column on newly uncovered messages deriving from the panic induced by the New York Times coverage of the Biden family business in December 2018. Turley’s Post column is headlined “Bidens offer ‘safe harbor’ to Hunter as he flails over scandalous reports, new messages show.” In his long column, Professor Turley writes: “Joe Biden repeatedly claimed as a presidential candidate and as president that
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May 30, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I’m slowly working my way through Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s just-published memoir Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence. I hope to write a formal book review. I’m taking my time reading the book, compiling notes on it, and doing research on related points. I want to post a series of brief comments on the book on Power Line while I am working my way through it.
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May 29, 2023 — Steven Hayward
We don’t have many of the fine details of the debt ceiling deal Kevin McCarthy has struck with (P)resident Joe Biden yet, but my first proposition is that the exact details don’t matter, and my conclusion is that the outcome is a modest but potentially significant win for Republicans. I think McCarthy played a weak hand—the political equivalent of a pair of deuces—extremely well. The political outcome of this deal
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May 29, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The mark of a developed country is reliable, affordable energy. Despite this undeniable fact, the Biden administration and what Robert Bryce calls the anti-industry industry are rushing pell-mell to destabilize our electric grid, while charging Americans more and more for less and less electricity. This impoverishment of ordinary Americans is not an unfortunate by-product of liberal energy policies. Rather, it is the central goal of those policies. Bryce writes at
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May 29, 2023 — Steven Hayward
You didn’t actually think the leftist drive for “reparations” would end only with blacks did you? “Reparations” is merely the latest slogan for the perennial leftist dream of wholesale wealth confiscation and redistribution, and whatever tool comes to hand will be used. So of course there is a mounting call for “climate reparations,” ostensibly paid by fossil fuel companies, but of course that means in practice you and me and
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