May 17, 2024 — John Hinderaker
In yesterday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt, a catfight broke out among Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene and Democrats Jasmine Crockett and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Insults were traded, involving Crockett’s fake eyelashes and Greene’s “bleach blonde bad built butch body.” You have to see it to believe it: This video lays out what happened in tonight’s heated exchange in the oversight hearing pic.twitter.com/7QTmpsa1eA — Acyn
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May 16, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I spent the last few days in Bismarck, North Dakota, attending the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference. It was a remarkable event, with more than 2,400 attending from five countries. Attenders included luminaries like Harold Hamm, but the conference’s most eagerly awaited appearance came this morning, when Governor Doug Burgum addressed the group. Burgum spoke without podium or notes, effortlessly citing energy facts and statistics. He knows energy better than any
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May 15, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Things are not going well here in America. That is obvious to pretty much everyone who lives here. And yet, our democratic, free market heritage is not yet entirely squandered. That is perhaps most easily seen through the eyes of others, like Britain’s Telegraph, which documents how much better off we Americans are compared with UK residents: Pay in Britain has long lagged behind the United States, with the average
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May 15, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Donald Trump and Joe Biden have agreed to two in-person debates. The first will be on CNN on June 27, the second on ABC on September 10. The link goes to CNN, which says there will be no studio audience. The rules that Trump and Biden have agreed to will exclude all minor-party candidates, with the possible exception of Robert Kennedy, although as I read the report, his chances of
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May 14, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Leading Democrats have realized that Joe Biden is hopeless as a presidential candidate, and that Donald Trump may actually win the election. Their desperation is therefore mounting, and they are pulling out all the stops. For a long time, the New York Times has been basically a clipping service for the Democratic National Committee. But in the present crisis, the Times is taking hysteria to a level that might embarrass
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May 13, 2024 — John Hinderaker
In 2002, a Twin Cities gang member, Myon Burrell, murdered an 11-year-old girl named Tyesha Edwards. She was sitting innocently in her home when a bullet fired incompetently by Burrell in a gang shoot-out brought her life to an end. Burrell was sentenced to life in prison for Edwards’ murder. But someone–who was it?–wrote years ago about the mismatch between the dead victim and the living murderer. The murderer can
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May 13, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Dartmouth has avoided the ignominy suffered by some of its Ivy peers during the current anti-Semitic moment. That is because its president, Sian Leah Beilock–I missed it when Congress passed a statute requiring every university president to be a woman–has reacted swiftly to illegal demonstrations on Dartmouth’s campus. The major incident was when anti-Jewish protesters erected tents on the Dartmouth Green, surrounded by anti-Semites who linked arms to “protect” the
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May 12, 2024 — John Hinderaker
This happened a week ago, but I just saw it courtesy of Christopher Monckton on Watts Up With That?: Here is perhaps the most spectacular instance of invincible ignorance I have come across in a long career studying this phenomenon and working to prevent its weaponization and deployment by those who mean harm to democracy. Here is a verbatim clip from a recent interview. Your mission, should you choose to
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May 11, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Tonight Donald Trump held a rally before 80,000 to 100,000 cheering fans in New Jersey. Joe Biden, in contrast, could hold a rally in a parking lot. Trump is not one of my 25 favorite politicians, but the fine points are rapidly becoming irrelevant. The New York Post reports: “You could take the 10 worst presidents in the history of our country, and add them up .. and they haven’t
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May 11, 2024 — John Hinderaker
A family member pointed out this PETA tweet as an object of derision: Just a reminder that tuna fish are individuals who didn’t want to die to be your sushi dinner. — PETA (@peta) May 5, 2024 Heh. Are tuna fish “individuals” that shouldn’t be caught and eaten? That is an easy view to mock, as many did in comments on PETA’s tweet. As commenters pointed out, tuna are predators.
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May 11, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The giant Eurovision pop music competition came to a climax with the finals this evening in Malmo, Sweden. Pretty much all of the news surrounding the event related to Israel’s participation. Israel’s representative, Eden Golan, all of 20 years old, was booed during rehearsals. Thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators turned out Thursday for the semifinal rounds, and again tonight during the final round of competition: Thousands of people protested in Malmo
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May 10, 2024 — John Hinderaker
A person could make it his life’s work to respond to all of the ignorant, unfair and dishonest attacks that liberals make on Donald Trump. I don’t want to do that. But I do want to comment briefly on the latest Trump “scandal”: At a Dinner, Trump Assailed Climate Rules and Asked $1 Billion From Big Oil.* Many outlets tried to make it sound like Trump was soliciting a bribe:
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May 10, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about how Israel’s presence has roiled Eurovision, the big European pop music competition. Each country is represented by an artist, either an individual or a group. After two semifinals, the lineup for the final evening is now set. Somewhat remarkably, the Israeli contestant passed through the semifinal round and will compete in the finals. The result is predictable; the London Times reports: “Thousands protest over Gaza as
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May 9, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The New York Times, alarmed that its fellow leftists have outed themselves as anti-Semites on campuses and in the streets (not to mention in Congress), has published an interminable article, with four reporters’ bylines, claiming that Republicans are the real anti-Semites. There isn’t much need to read the article, as the headline says it all: “How Republicans Echo Antisemitic Tropes Despite Declaring Support for Israel.” The Times purports to use
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May 9, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The kill-the-Jews protests at one “elite” university after another have exposed the low level of both information and intelligence of some students, and even some professors. But the Princeton protest has established a milestone of sorts, as one of its leaders complains of “starving,” a condition she apparently blames on the university. She and the others are on a hunger strike. They also, she says, are “immunocompromised,” a weird claim
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May 8, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Well yes, of course. But at the Wall Street Journal, James Freeman highlights an interview with the Times’s current executive editor, Joseph Kahn. Hope springs eternal, I guess: Regular news consumers may recall Ben Smith as the Buzzfeed editor who helped define post-journalistic coverage of the Trump presidency by publishing the bogus Steele dossier in 2017 while admitting he didn’t know whether it was true or false. Naturally Mr. Smith
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May 8, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The Financial Times headlines: “The violent gang crisis shaking Sweden.” Spoiler alert: it all has to do with immigration. Sweden has suffered an extraordinary spate of violence in recent months, particularly in Uppsala and its neighbour to the south, capital Stockholm. At its worst in September and October, barely a day went by without a shooting, bombing or hand grenade attack — sometimes several. The Nordic country has gone from
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