The Daily Chart
July 11, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The NATO summit in Washington concludes today, after which (P)resident Biden is scheduled to give a “big boy” press conference (both of his press secretaries used the term “big boy” for some inexplicable reason), though the scheduled time has already been pushed back by an hour, perhaps so Sleepy Joe can get in a quick nap. Anyway, one of the issues that I hope a reporter will ask Biden about
»
July 10, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Get ready for the all-time climate cult jamboree at the end of this year, as 2024 is shaping up to the planet’s “hottest year ever on record” (with “on record” being a key part of this panic attack). Judith Curry has a terrific post up on her site a few days ago explaining how a hot year was predicted for this year not because of rising CO2 levels, but the
»
July 9, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As John mentioned Sunday, the second round of the elections in France were a great disappointment. But like the British election, where Labour’s massive gains in House seats don’t really reflect public opinion very closely, the French election result required some jiggery-pokery with the far left that centrist opinion may come to regret—and soon. I suspect Marine Le Pen is now the odd-on-favorite to win the next election for president
»
July 8, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The data show that young people are not having sex anywhere near as much as they used to, but this only suggests that Jesse Helms was a prophet when he said, back in the 1980s, that perhaps social conservatives should support sex education in the public schools because then no one would learn how to do it. But now it seems that sex is disappearing from the movies, believe it
»
July 5, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As John discusses below, yesterday’s election in the UK is what is known as a “stonking” by the Labour Party, which gained its largest majority in decades. However, by raw vote totals, it is clear that the election result is hardly a mandate for Labour’s very left agenda that I predict will be very unpopular in a matter of months, and this will show up in the first by-elections that
»
July 4, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Now here’s the kind of social science survey research I can get into. As everyone knows Britain goes to the polls today for a national election that is expected the wipe out the Conservative Party. The vote tally should start coming in shortly. But it is interesting to see how vote projections surveys correspond to alcoholic drink preferences. As one might expect from stereotype, the Conservative Party does best with
»
July 3, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Yesterday I noted that the New York Times had discovered that low-lying islands weren’t disappearing under the climate-driven sea level rise, and today I’ll add that one of the other frequent claims about how climate change was destroying the Great Barrier reef continues to collapse faster than Joe Biden’s credibility. From Jo Nova: In 1985 humans were emitting only 19.6 billion tons of CO2 each year, and now we emit
»
July 2, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Regular listeners of our Three Whisky Happy Hour podcast will know that our “Lucretia” believes the 19th Amendment should be repealed. That’s easy for her to say! Actually, it seems a lot of people in Britain have sympathy with this point of view. From The Telegraph: Women’s equality has gone too far, say half of Britons About half of Britons believe that society has gone too far in promoting women’s
»
July 1, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Last weekend I remarked to my favorite bartender, a retired cop named Frank, that the Saturday night crowd at his high-end restaurant was notably off. Normally you can’t get into this particular spot (or its neighbors, who were also noticeably thin for Saturday night) without a reservation, and the barstools are often taken, too. But last Saturday we had the barstools all to ourselves. Frank told me there was a
»
June 28, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The conventional wisdom is that “MAGA Republicans” and/or Trump are in Russia’s pocket, oppose our help for Ukraine because they are isolationist know-nothings, or something like this. But here’s a curious survey finding comparing the responses of “MAGA” and “non-MAGA” Republicans, which not only shows more MAGA support for Ukraine than non-MAGA support, but also, by a closer majority, more realism about how Russia is slowly grinding down Ukraine and
»
June 27, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Two news items on electric cars of note this week. First, Volkswagen has agreed to invest $5 billion in electric carmaker Rivian. Does Rivian need this capital infusion? After all, Rivian has close to $8 billion in cash or cash equivalents on its balance sheet. Except, oh yeah, they are currently losing about $5 billion a year (their lowest priced model is $70,000). Maybe they think they can make it
»
June 26, 2024 — Steven Hayward
I’m not sure who first observed that a lot of progressivism these days has the effect of transferring income from the middle class to the upper class, this is certainly true of much of the “green” tax credits and subsidies that are supposedly driving our “energy transition.” This conclusion is amply demonstrated by a new working paper by Severin Borenstein and Lucas Davis at Haas Business School at UC Berkeley.
»
June 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Mark Perry reminds us: Unprecedented: Federal spending on interest payments for the $34T national debt now exceeds $1T for the first time and has doubled from $535B when Joe Biden took office, and interest payments now exceed spending on national defense by more than any time in history. Unlike climate change, this is the actual looming disaster and “existential threat” to America. Note: These are seasonally adjusted dollars at annual
»
June 24, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The news over the weekend that Washington Post editor-designate Rob Winnett will not assume the job after a staff revolt inside the money- and reader-losing paper ratifies Andrew Sullivan’s famous thesis from a few years ago that “we all live on campus now.” Media organizations now resemble self-governing college faculties, with the same result. I got to thinking how little I use my online Washington Post subscription any more, even
»
June 21, 2024 — Steven Hayward
That our college professoriate is skewed left is hardly news any more, but here’s a fresh look at it, noting that if you measure things by whether someone belongs to an “under-represented” group things really look out of whack, not to mention hypocritical.
»
June 20, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The population bomb of the 1960s is so over that the conventional wisdom is rapidly coming to embrace the “birth dearth” hypothesis that Ben Wattenberg and others started suggesting 30 years ago. More and more nations are starting to enact policies intended to raise their total fertility rate.
»
June 19, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Happy Juneteenth everybody! It is also the anniversary of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, so you can celebrate that instead if you like. See Jeremy Carl’s Twitter thread about the political origin of Juneteenth for more. In the meantime, I don’t have the raw data for this chart, but it seems metaphysically true:
»
