Author Archives: Steven Hayward

The Week in Pictures: Gemini AI Edition

Featured image Don’t believe the headlines that Mitch McConnell is really stepping down. He’s going to replicate himself as an AI robot. Just keep in mind the lifespan of turtles, and you’ll know I’m right. And the crash of Google’s Gemini AI is a distraction—it’s just another CIA-Taylor Swift psy-op.   Want: Headlines of the week:   And finally. . . Tulsi Gabbard:     »

Death to DEI

Featured image Bryan Caplan, professor of economics in George Mason University’s excellent economics department, has a long article out today with the James Martin Center about the attempt to impose a mandatory “Just Societies” course for all students at George Mason starting next fall, and the course is a total ideological DEI wokefest. He also has a separate Substack article that goes into lengthy detail. Partly because Caplan blew the whistle on »

The Daily Chart: Heavy Metal Madness

Featured image One fine sunny Sunday several years ago found me in Helsinki, Finland, where I spotted a rock bacd setting up in a square by a park, and I decided to linger for some free live music. Who knows—I could be catching the next Abba, or Eurovision Song Contest contestant. Well, it wasn’t any of those. What it was is kinda hard to describe. Best I could do at the time »

The Daily Chart: Another Red/Blue Dividing Line

Featured image As we have noted repeatedly here, people are voting with the feet and moving from high crime/high tax blue states to low tax/low crime red states in increasing numbers. Alongside tax rates as a factor in higher economic growth in red states is that red states are more likely to be right-to-work states than blue states. This is not universally true; heavily unionized Michigan was a right-to-work for a decade, »

Liberal Fragility

Featured image Liberals really are extremely fragile people. This helps explain why they need “safe spaces” with cuddly stuffed animals, grief counselors, and warning labels against “microaggressions.” The latest evidence is a completely unironic and totally un-self-aware piece in the New York Times about the anguish of liberal law professors having to teach constitutional law at a time when the Supreme Court leans right. It’s so upsetting that some professors are moved »

The Daily Chart: Forget Red v. Blue

Featured image Yesterday we noted Trump’s rising strength among certain voting groups. How about by profession instead of ethnicity, gender, and the other usual things? Like professions perhaps? Everyone likes to say the political divide in America is between red states and blue states. But it looks like the division is more white versus blue when it comes to who is supporting Trump’s campaign—that is, white collar professionals against blue collar workers. »

Don’t Buy the Never-Trump Comfort Blanket

Featured image I keep seeing Trump skeptics and their media svengalis say that while Nikki Haley is not coming close to beating Trump in any primary battle, she is getting sufficient support to conclude that there is a critical mass of Republicans who don’t like Trump and may not turn out for him in November, and boy is he in big trouble because of this. Don’t buy it. I note that back »

Remembering Sir Roger

Featured image Social media alerts me to the fact that today would be Sir Roger Scruton’s 80th birthday. Sadly, Sir Roger passed away from cancer in 2020. I got to know Sir Roger fairly well in his last decade, and had several splendid exhilarating dinners with him and his lovely wife Sophie over very expensive bottles of fine Bordeaux (among his 50-plus superb books was, after all, I Drink, Therefore I Am—highly »

Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement, 1964-2024. RIP

Featured image This fall will mark the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the famous “free speech” movement at UC Berkeley. You can find my account of it, written in the aftermath of the Milo Yiannopoulos riot of February, 2017, which I was present for, at this link. The Yiannopoulos riot was bad enough, but last night there was a sequel at Berkeley. As loyal readers may know, I am not around »

The Daily Chart: Trump Gaining Strength?

Featured image My pal Henry Olsen explains in his recent Telegraph column that Trump is underperforming his polls in recent contests, and appears to be stuck between a very solid floor and a rigid ceiling. Perhaps, but the Telegraph included this graphic, taken from recent Pew polls, that suggests a different picture: To be fair, a generic Republican ought to be polling about 60 percent of the white vote, and that’s just »

Tucker Does Middle Earth

Featured image Okay, this is officially the funniest thing on the internet right now: “Tucker Carlson” explaining the real story of Lord of the Rings. (There are a bunch more of these on YouTube, like this one. YMMV.) As promised, Here’s an AI Tucker Carlson narrating The Lord of the Rings@MiddleearthMixr @TuckerCarlson pic.twitter.com/eiXtR0m2qz — Dr. Maverick Alexander (@MaverickDarby) February 25, 2024 »

The Daily Chart: Housing Bubble 2.0?

Featured image Right now the unaffordability of housing has become a national issue, and not just one for the two coasts. The fundamental reason for this is the spread of coastal-style over-regulation of housing to the interior states of “flyover country,” which had for decades mostly resisted the over-regulation of housing. Rising interest rates have something to do with this too. In any case, maybe another housing crash is in the works? »

Sweden Seeing the Reality of “Diversity”

Featured image This morning I stumbled across a Tweet linking to an Australian “60 Minutes” segment about the unassimilable migrants that are causing the crime rate and other social dysfunctions to soar in Sweden. Turns out the episode is seven years old, but since we don’t see Australia’s “60 Minutes” here (and our CBS “60 Minutes” won’t touch this subject with a ten meter pole), I doubt little has changed in the »

Joe Biden—Christian Nationalist?!?!

Featured image Like John, it would be hilarious to observe the left’s sudden obsession with “Christian nationalism” if it weren’t based on an abysmal ignorance that is itself a grim threat to the continuation of our republic. I guess Thomas Jefferson was a Christian nationalist for the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, although in fairness to stupid leftists, they don’t believe in “self-evident truth” either, because »

Podcast: The 3WHH, Eye-Bleach Edition

Featured image This episode has everything: a how-to guerilla guide to improving your McDonald’s hamburger experience; a spirited discussion of the Alabama Supreme Court decision that defines frozen embryos as persons (I think the media is willfully misreporting the decision—John is not so sure); those crazy new presidential rankings from political scientists—and even some soft-core porn! Say what? Well, it turns out that that Judge Arthur Engoron, who oversaw Trump’s alleged fraud »

The Week in Pictures: Dog Bites Man Edition

Featured image This is the week we got confirmation that Joe Biden is not merely a doddering, senile fool, but a bad dog owner, which is cosmically worse. Meanwhile, the FBI continues its string of comic incompetence, arresting an informant it has had on its payroll for more than a decade (paging Inspector Clouseau!), but only when it became useful to embarrass Republicans. It’s enough to make you want to put a »

Loose Ends (245)

Featured image • Behold the newest frontier in “equity”—”vaccine equity.” Which is needed to counter “vaccine nationalism.” (And you thought “Christian nationalism” was the worst threat out there.) You think I am making this up? From Nature magazine today: Today, nearly one-third of the world’s population has still not received a single dose [of COVID vaccine], and the death toll resulting from vaccine nationalism continues to grow. . . As time runs »