October 19, 2018 — Steven Hayward
• You may have heard that outgoing UN Ambassador Nikki Haley killed it at the Al Smith dinner this week, especially with her quip that “I get it, you wanted an Indian woman, but Elizabeth Warren failed her DNA test.” Boom! In any case, here’s the whole 15 minute speech, which works pretty well I think. Nikki 2024! • Not sure whether I’ll be able to get this week’s Power
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October 18, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Wouldn’t you know it? The South Park guys were a year ahead of this week’s Elizabeth Warren headlines when it comes to DNA testing, with this segment that aired in September of last year: Now, when are Parker and Stone going to get around to doing a sequel to Team America: World Police? With Trump in office, it would be epic times a thousand!
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October 18, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Years ago, back in the early 1980s, I had a conservative friend in England who liked to say, “The great thing about America is that you either vote Tory or you vote Tory,” meaning that the Carter-Mondale Democratic Party of that time wasn’t very far to the left at all. I tried to explain why American conservatives didn’t see it that way, but you have to understand that from his
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October 17, 2018 — Steven Hayward
News item: Two GOP candidates assaulted in Minnesota. News item: Antifa mob overruns Portland, and Democratic mayor stands aside. (And to think, I had dinner once with Ted Wheeler a few years ago, before he was elected mayor of Portland, and thought he was a sensible human being. Another case of misleading first impressions I guess.) News item: Ricin sent to Sen. Susan Collins. News item: Democrat assaults, critically injures
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October 16, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Future historians are going to look back on yesterday as the moment identity politics started to die. Did Lizzy Warren not consider that she was releasing her embarrassing DNA results on the same day the trial of the lawsuit over Harvard’s discrimination against Asians began? (Prediction: Harvard is going to lose this case, though perhaps narrowly. In any case, it is going to roil the waters of elite college admissions
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October 15, 2018 — Steven Hayward
It is disputed whether delegates to the Democratic National Convention in 2012 booed a proposed resolution acknowledging God, but regular church attendance is nowadays one of the best predictors of partisan voting patterns (regular churchgoers vote heavily GOP), and needless to say environmentalism–especially the Calvinist-tinged kind dear to Al Gore–is the only religion that generates any enthusiasm among Democrats. Then there’s this: ‘I Stand For The Flag, I Kneel At
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October 14, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I’ve finished a long review of three new books out about Reagan and two key moments in the Cold War, specifically the “war scare” during the Able Archer exercise in the fall of 1983 when, it was subsequently learned, the Soviet Union went on high alert and possibly (it still isn’t clear) contemplated a pre-emptive first strike of their own, and Reagan’s efforts, through the CIA, to undermine Communism in
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October 13, 2018 — Steven Hayward
A lot of people inside the Grievance Studies camp are lashing back at what’s being called “Sokal Hoax Two”—the faux articles submitted and accepted for publication in various supposedly “premier” academic cultural studies journals. Even though the three hoaxsters, like physicist Alan Sokal who punked Social Text 20 years ago, consider themselves liberal or progressive, leftists are saying their hoax articles are a right-wing provocation, or something. But it turns
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October 13, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Yet another missive from Robert Kuttner of the lefty American Prospect that will warm the cockles, and many other things beside: Depart, I Say, and Let Us Have Done with You. That’s what Oliver Cromwell said to the Long Parliament in 1653. In May 1940, the British Conservative M.P. Leo Amery flung the same words at Neville Chamberlain, demanding that Hitler’s appeaser step down as British prime minister. The words
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October 13, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I was all set to declare this week’s gallery to be the “Nikki Haley’s Comet Edition,” but that was before Kanye West’s Traveling Medicine Show appeared at the White House on Thursday. That was some weird stuff, to be sure—the kind of thing Vice President Joe Biden might call a “big f—— deal” before an open microphone in the Oval Office, but that’s different because reasons. It is hard to
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October 11, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I caught a headline yesterday concerning how Arnold Schwarzenegger regrets and is apologizing for his old line about “girly men,” because #MeToo or something: In the summer of 2004, Schwarzenegger called Democrats “girly men” and urged voters to “terminate” them on Election Day — prompting outrage from his opponents, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time. Of course, the real reason the Governator is recanting is that he became a
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October 10, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Some days the absurd news just piles up so fast that there almost isn’t room for any fake news. Though tuning in to CNN for 10 minutes will cure you of this thought. Anyway, I wish some of the stories I spotted today were fake news, but alas, they are all read: Flight delayed after woman brings ’emotional support squirrel’ on plane Police escorted a woman off a plane Tuesday after she
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October 10, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I’ve seen several people observe that the anti-Kavanaugh protests of the last few weeks in Washington were demographically embarrassing for the race-conscious left. I recall seeing one comment that the composition of the protests was “whiter than a suburban country club.” But a new study just out from a British study group makes the left’s fanaticism about diversity and political correctness look even worse. The study, Hidden Tribes: A Study of
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October 10, 2018 — Steven Hayward
We reported here last year about research showing that a favorite Obama policy initiative known as “Ban the Box” (that is, prohibit employers from inquiring about a person’s criminal history on employment applications) was having the opposite effect, and was increasing discrimination against blacks. Two women economists writing in the Quarterly Journal of Economics concluded: Our results support the concern that BTB policies encourage racial discrimination: the black-white gap in
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October 9, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Did you hear the news: the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is out with a big new report on climate change, and you’ll never believe what it says! The headline is that scientists say we have only ten years left to save the planet! It’s Green Groundhog Day! Again. Or deja vu all over again, as that famous climate scientist Yogi Berra once put it. (Or was that the
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October 8, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I thought this story was a satire, or something from the superb Babylon Bee, but it’s true! And it’s too good to be true. National Review reports: Clintons Launch Speaking Tour to Provide ‘Insight into Where We Go from Here’ By Jack Crowe Bill and Hillary Clinton announced Monday a 13-stop live-event tour that is being billed as a chance for ticket holders to glean insights from the former first
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October 6, 2018 — Steven Hayward
This week the Power Line Show takes a break from the All-Kavanaugh-All-the-Time format of recent weeks, and sits down with historian William Anthony Hay, author of a brand new biography of Robert Banks Jenkinson. What? You’ve never heard of Robert Banks Jenkinson? You might recognize him better by his “stage name,” Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1812-1827, during the windup of the Napoleonic wars and the War
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