December 8, 2022 — Steven Hayward
With the new Supreme Court term under way, and with several potential landmark oral arguments already in the can, I decided to catch up with Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, and author of Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court. It turns out that the kind of confirmation battles that have become famous ever since Robert Bork in 1987 are not
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December 8, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Lately I’ve been saying “Things are going to get worse before they get worse,” and while I still think that is true, today the stars have aligned to bring us a bunch of cheering news. • Starting with a strike today by 1,000 New York Times employees, which can only improve the product. One of the striking employees is Nicole Hannah-Jones, impresario of the egregious 1619 Project, but how can
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December 8, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Douglas Murray has a new venture entitled “Uncancelled History” that some readers may be interested in following. Its opening act is a ten-episode series of interviews with leading contrarian thinkers who take on the woke ideology of historical distortions that everyone knows today. I hope this is the first of several “seasons” of this great concept. The third episode in the series features Power Line favorite Jean Yarbrough of Bowdoin
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December 7, 2022 — Steven Hayward
There’s been a lot of news in the last few weeks about how artificial intelligence bots are on the cusp of being able to write prose, poetry, and music as well as or better than humans. Color me skeptical—art is not chess—but there’s one instance I can think of where even a primitive AI system would be better than the current human being attempting the job: President Biden’s press secretary
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December 7, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Amidst the latest Trumpstorm (“Trumpenkampf“?), let’s revisit one of John Marini’s sage observations from way back in 2016 that is especially useful to keep in mind just now: It is possible that the Trump phenomenon cannot be understood merely by trying to make sense of Trump himself. Rather, it is the seriousness of the need for Trump that must be understood in order to make sense of his candidacy. Those most
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December 7, 2022 — Steven Hayward
You likely have seen the meme showing a lit candle with the question, “What did environmentalists use for light before candles?” Answer: “Electricity.” This quip comes back to mind with the first chart here showing that for all the talk of the growing share of “renewable” energy (meaning chiefly wind and solar), the overwhelming majority of “renewable” energy is actually hydropower (which environmentalists oppose in the U.S.—in fact many state
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December 6, 2022 — Steven Hayward
One podcast I try not to miss is The Glenn Show, hosted by Brown University economist Glenn Loury, and I make a point of never missing his regular every other week guest, the Columbia linguist John McWhorter. I am slow in getting to McWhorter’s most recent book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. Here’s his case that “wokery” is literally the new religion of the left:
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December 6, 2022 — Steven Hayward
John pointed out here yesterday the fantasy of battery storage, but here is another look at the problem. The belief that we’re going to make intermittent wind and solar power “work” by having massive amounts of battery storage depends on fantastic assumptions of future battery production. The amount of lithium—the current main ingredient of our best technology at the moment—necessary for these projections is depicted vividly here:
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December 5, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Roger Scruton’s charming and invaluable memoir, Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life, includes a chapter explaining how he first started turning in a conservative direction (he wasn’t raised one—his father was a devoted semi-socialist Labourite), when he witnessed first-hand the student revolt in Paris in May 1968. He was repelled by the spectacle, and concluded that ‘whatever these people are for, I’m against.’ But what were the student protestors for?
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December 5, 2022 — Steven Hayward
New data from the OECD settles an argument that raged from the first days of the COVID hysteria: Sweden’s decision not to lockdown turns out to have been the correct one. The OECD’s calculation of total excess deaths from all causes (since COVID lockdowns increased other causes of death) was the lowest in the developed world, as seen here: While we’re here, let’s note that a certain person beloved for
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December 5, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Move over David Deeble, J.P. Sears, and Ammo Grrrll: we have a new comic to induct into the Official Power Line Comedy Club: Tyler Fischer. Here he neatly skewers NPR and practically every other major woke news media sensibility in just sixty seconds: every liberal news show pic.twitter.com/APQiQG8ysp — Tyler Fischer (@TyTheFisch) July 3, 2022
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December 4, 2022 — Steven Hayward
For quite a while it has seemed like we are stuck in a time loop determined to repeat the 1960s, with rising crime, urban riots, racial politics that summons the complete capitulation of the liberal establishment, vast expansion of the welfare state, etc. Also rats in New York City. Bloomberg reports: Wanted: NYC Rat Czar. Will Offer Salary as High as $170,000 New York Mayor Eric Adams is looking for
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December 4, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• John Yoo, currently back over in Italy—again—for yet another academic junket, passes along the following story by email from Rome: I was sitting in the Lufthansa lounge in Munich airport on my way to Rome just now. Up comes a tall German-looking fellow. Q: Are you John Yoo? John: Yes. Q: I listen to your podcast! John: Really? In Germany? Q: No! In Finland! John: What??? How??? Q: I
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December 3, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I can’t really vouch for this “fever” chart format, because I don’t have the raw data. But it kind of matches the regional differences in the use of “soda” and “pop” to describe fizzy carbonated soft drinks. And it makes some intuitive sense.
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December 3, 2022 — Steven Hayward
This really should be a Two Whisky Happy Hour this week as the whisky bar is short one bartender. John Yoo is overseas yet again to Italy for some nefarious purpose, so it’s just me and Lucretia slinging the 180-proof analysis of the Twitter revelations and other news headlines of the end of the week. But the main topic is following up on the mid-week conversation with Glenn Ellmers on
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December 3, 2022 — Steven Hayward
This was the crazy-turned-to-eleven week when Alyssa Milano took pity on Sam Bankrupt-Fraud and tried to distract attention from his plight by picking a fight with Elon Musk, but over in the shadows Kanye [Ye] West said, “Hold my German beer: watch THIS!” I certainly hope over the weekend we hear from Bono, or some other leading celebrity, so we’ll know what to think. In the meantime, I hope some
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December 2, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I know we have previously shared data on the sharp downward trend in climate-related deaths over the last century, which is exactly the opposite of what the climate hysterics and their stenographers in the media claim daily. I think we used this chart before: Here’s a new look at the data worth passing along: Meanwhile, you know the leading climate-related case of death is? Cold weather, especially when you can’t
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