January 17, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Gallup’s polling finds a massive shift in party allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans over the course of 2021. The rapidity of the shift is remarkable; Democrats began the year with a nine-point advantage, and the year ended with Republicans holding a five-point edge. Gallup’s data points are quarterly during the calendar year 2021: Party affiliation has usually tilted toward the Democrats for decades. But why did they enjoy
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January 17, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Today it takes three shots to be “fully vaccinated;” who knows how many it will take in the future? Britain’s Dr. Clive Dix throws cold water on the idea that we can vaccinate covid into oblivion: Dr. Clive Dix, who played a key role in helping pharmaceutical firms create the COVID-19 vaccines, told LBC radio on Jan. 16: “The Omicron variant is a relatively mild virus. And to just keep
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January 17, 2022 — John Hinderaker
We have rescheduled the Power Line VIP Live show that we postponed a week or two ago for next Wednesday, January 19. The show will start at 7 p.m. Central time (5 Pacific, 8 Eastern). As always we will talk about the news of the day, and look ahead to the rest of 2022–which, one hopes, can only be an improvement over 2021. We will take questions and comments from
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January 16, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Russia is carrying out a cyber attack on Ukraine, and it is reported–rather casually, it seems to me–that Russia is likely to invade soon: U.S. intelligence officials have determined a Russian effort is underway to create a pretext for its troops to further invade Ukraine, and Moscow has already prepositioned operatives to conduct “a false-flag operation” in eastern Ukraine, according to the White House. *** “We are concerned that the
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January 16, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday Paul said good riddance to outgoing Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and expressed the hope that the incoming Glenn Youngkin administration will “attack Northam’s radical policies with the same relentlessness that Northam and his party imposed them when they held power.” So far, it’s happening. Check out Youngkin’s first-day executive orders here and executive directives here. Full documents at the links, but the titles are inspiring: * EO-1 Ending the
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January 15, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Across America, citizens are up in arms about rising violent crime. In my own state of Minnesota, polls show that crime is voters’ number one concern. And when they say they want the governor to focus on violent crime, they don’t mean that they want him to encourage more of it. But liberals are untroubled by factors like public opinion, not to mention constitutional duty. Minnesota has a Sentencing Guidelines
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January 14, 2022 — John Hinderaker
We have rescheduled the Power Line VIP Live show that we postponed a week or two ago for next Wednesday, January 19. The show will start at 7 p.m. Central time (5 Pacific, 8 Eastern). As always we will talk about the news of the day, and look ahead to the rest of 2022–which, one hopes, can only be an improvement over 2021. We will take questions and comments from
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January 13, 2022 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about the fact that the State of Minnesota, under Governor Tim Walz, was engaging in blatant race discrimination in the distribution of monoclonal antibodies as a treatment for covid. In determining eligibility for such treatment, the state awarded points simply for being “BIPOC,” thereby irrationality and illegally discriminating against whites. As a result of criticism by me and others, as well as threatened civil rights litigation, the
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January 13, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The death knell for the Democrats’ attempt to make election integrity illegal came today, as Kyrsten Sinema announced on the Senate floor that she will not vote to suspend the filibuster. Her speech was excellent; you can see excerpts at the link. It is notable that everything she said was identical to what Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and every other Democratic senator said about the filibuster last time the Democrats
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January 12, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Unilever is a massive international conglomerate headquartered in London that predominantly sells food products. Like many other companies Unilever has gone “woke,” as its web site reflects. Unilever claims to be all about its “values,” a company that “take[s] action on the issues affecting our world.” But many observers are not convinced. The Telegraph headlines: “Investment star Terry Smith attacks Unilever for ‘ludicrous’ focus on social and environmental issues.” One
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January 12, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Joe Biden is a chameleon who, even when he was in possession of his faculties, probably didn’t believe in much of anything. Now, going with the flow, he has become a “woke” warrior who tries to portray himself as a civil rights activist, which he never was. Biden has repeatedly claimed in speeches to have been arrested in the cause of civil rights, once supposedly when he was trying to
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January 11, 2022 — John Hinderaker
That is a deliberately provocative post title. I don’t actually think that Anthony Fauci is mostly responsible for the coronavirus, but I do think that 1) the U.S. government had stopped funding research that made viruses more lethal or more transmissible because such research was considered dangerous; 2) Dr. Fauci was the main driver behind a change in policy in 2017–a change that some of his superiors, at least, say
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January 11, 2022 — John Hinderaker
I have heard of Ray Epps, but have not delved into the controversy (or “conspiracy theory”) about his possible relationship to the FBI. Today Jill Sanborn, the executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ted Cruz questioned her about the FBI’s possible role in the January 6 riot. Yikes https://t.co/XUZrdShBNQ — Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) January 11, 2022 Make of it what you
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January 11, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Rasmussen has polled a re-run of the 2020 election, with startling results: A new Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that, if the election were held today, just 40% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote to reelect Biden, while 46% would vote for Trump. Another 10% would choose some other candidate in a Biden-Trump rematch. *** Among voters not affiliated with either major party…Trump would
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January 10, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The CDC and other government agencies grossly overhyped the covid epidemic. Many suspect that this was done intentionally, in order to drive President Trump from office. The best argument against this hypothesis is that foreign government agencies were nearly as panic-stricken as our own. The Minnesota Department of Health maintains an extraordinary volume of records relating to every death that occurs within the jurisdiction. These data include not only the
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January 10, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Tom Brady has taken his team to the Super Bowl an astonishing ten times, one of the most remarkable records in sports. Sure, he has been an excellent passer for a long time, but a lot of quarterbacks can throw a football. It seems to me that his record must have to do with leadership as much as with athletic talent. Someday it would be interesting to get insight into
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January 9, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The political push to transform our electrical grid into reliance on “renewable” wind and solar energy keeps running into the laws of physics. The laws of physics are going to win, but the economic carnage in the meantime will be terrible. My colleague Isaac Orr documents, not for the first time, the futility of wind energy when the weather gets cold: It is a well-understood phenomenon that wind generation in
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