May 3, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Joe Biden is further under water than any modern president at this point in a first term. Here’s the table: It turns out that Biden is relatively stronger than many of his peer leaders: Gee—I wonder why so many leaders are so unpopular right now? (I wonder why the UK’s Rishi Sunak isn’t on this list, since he is heading for an electoral wipeout in just a few months.) Maybe
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May 2, 2024 — Steven Hayward
My pal David Bernstein of Scalia Law School at George Mason University notes the following on Twitter: One thing that hasn’t received enough attention is that major unviersities see themselves today not as American, but as global, institutions. American institutions are strongly opposed to antisemitism and support Israel’s existence. Globally, institutions ranging from the UN to the NGO establishment at best give lip service to antisemitism, and range from tolerant
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May 1, 2024 — Steven Hayward
It is hard to single out the worst appeaser among the university presidents currently cowering before anti-Semitic mobs on campus, and trying to defuse the situation through negotiations with people who have no interest in negotiating. But I think we have a winner. Yesterday, Carol Folt, president of the University of Southern California, tweeted out this: I had a second meeting today with the same group from the encampment. We
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May 1, 2024 — Steven Hayward
From our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a note about how the main gauge of consumer confidence continues to slip: “Confidence retreated further in April, reaching its lowest level since July 2022 as consumers became less positive about the current labor market situation, and more concerned about future business conditions, job availability, and income,” said Dana M. Peterson, Chief Economist at The Conference Board.
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May 1, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Today is May Day, but also the Victims of Communism Memorial Day, and as such today is the prefect day for this classic-hybrid format edition, featuring me in conversation with Elizabeth Spalding, chair of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. (Elizabeth is also Senior Fellow at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy and Visiting Fellow at the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College.) The Foundation has
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May 1, 2024 — Steven Hayward
I keep getting ads like these turning up in my social media feeds: I especially like the Yale person saying they read applicant essays “very carefully.” Probably almost as carefully as Stanford: Student gets into Stanford after writing #BlackLivesMatter on application 100 times CNN — If you’re applying to college, you can spend hours crafting the perfect admissions essay. Or you can just write the same word 100 times. It worked for
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April 30, 2024 — Steven Hayward
It turns out that Dan Rather isn’t the only beneficiary of revisionist documentaries and feature films that pervert the truth. I somehow missed it, but two years ago a British drama attempted to reverse the narrative of the famous “climategate” scandal of 2009, when a trove of internal emails from the tight-knit circle of scientists clustered around East Anglia University in the UK revealed some serious weaknesses of the standard
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April 30, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Every sensible person knows that wind power blows (and occasionally blows chunks), but today the Energy Information Administration (EIA) takes note. We’re adding massive wind power capacity under Joe Biden’s blowout “Inflation Reduction Act,” yet last year wind power output somehow went down: EIA’s write-up offers some fine comedy and obfuscation: U.S. electricity generation from wind turbines decreased for the first time since the mid-1990s in 2023 despite the addition
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April 29, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As I write, a little before 3 pm eastern time, it appears the letter from Columbia University’s leadership calling for a peaceful resolution of the situation, released on Friday, that Scott posted this morning is, to borrow the legendary phrase of Ron Ziegler, “inoperative.” That letter represented a de facto capitulation, and was, as Scott notes, playing for time, hoping the end of the school year would yield a dissolution
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April 29, 2024 — Steven Hayward
John reported a few weeks back about how the “beepocalypse” (“Colony Collapse Disorder,” as it was called by the disordered minds of environmentalists) can now be added to the pile of discredited environmental catastrophies, but haven’t environmentalists noted that the America Llama population is collapsing? Where are the protests? The “Save the Llamas!” t-shirts? P.S. If the chicken population is up, how come eggs and chicken sandwiches are so much
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April 28, 2024 — Steven Hayward
A few days ago, in “State of the Race,” I passed along the latest Bloomberg poll showing Trump surging back into a significant lead over Biden. Today it is CNN’s turn: Trump’s support in the poll among registered voters holds steady at 49% in a head-to-head matchup against Biden, the same as in CNN’s last national poll on the race in January, while Biden’s stands at 43%, not significantly different
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April 27, 2024 — Steven Hayward
A lot of young conservatives today like to disparage “Zombie Reaganism,” without actually knowing very much about him. But is there any political leader right now speaking as clearly as this? There is NOTHING better to watch today than THIS ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/IGr1F2mAmq — miha schwartzenberg (@mihaschw) April 27, 2024 Though I’ll my mischievous suggestion for the day:
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April 27, 2024 — Steven Hayward
We’re not done with Uncle Bosie yet, and I’m starting to wonder whether someone said something to (P)resident Biden about being a boss, or being too bossy, and it triggered one of his gummed-up but imaginative synapses to invent yet another tall tale about Biden lore—the Bidens being the greatest clan since the Borgias. The cannibalism makes perfect sense, too, since what’s left of Biden’s brain is clearly cannibalizing what
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April 26, 2024 — Steven Hayward
This survey of the most regretted college majors will come as no surprise to most of our readers, and I’m tempted to make the suggestion that student loan forgiveness should be granted in inverse proportion to this ranking. That is, if you majored in journalism, you’d be eligible for no more than 13 percent of your loan being forgiven. This would provide a strong incentive not to major in sociology,
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April 26, 2024 — Steven Hayward
We’re going up a day earlier than usual with this week’s (ad-free!) episode, partly because our constantly irregular travel schedules complicated things again, but more importantly to be timely, as John, Lucretia, and I have LOTS of thoughts on the Supreme Court argument yesterday about whether ex-presidents should enjoy broad immunity for any or all acts they took while in office. Lucretia and I think the president does, while John
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April 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Last Monday, April 22, was Earth Day, which found me in Washington DC doing a program at the American Enterprise Institute on environmental progress along with Roger Pielke Jr. If you missed the livestream, the video of the entire event is now up. It’s almost 90 minutes long in total, but my portion of the program is just the first 25 minutes or so. Chaser—while we’re on this subject, check
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April 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Right now we are hearing that crime—especially homicide—is falling (just like inflation—heh), suggesting that the runaway crime of recent years was somehow an epiphenomena of Covid. Here’s the chart getting wide circulation: These data are likely correct, but there is reason to doubt that crime overall is falling, for the simple reason that lots of people have lost confidence in law enforcement and prosecution and no longer report many crimes
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