April 9, 2024 — Steven Hayward

NPR: National Propaganda Radio

Featured image One of the classic articles from 30 years ago that still gets recalled fondly was Glenn Garvin’s “How Do I Hate NPR? Let Me Count the Ways,” which I think first appeared in the late Washington DC City Paper. Even back then I referred to NPR’s two main shows, “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” as “Morning Sedition” and “All Things Distorted.” The very voice tones of Susan Stamberg and »
April 9, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

So Wise in the Ways of Science?

Featured imageAs Steve notes, a Canadian social scientist is out with “a paper that finds job applicants who include non-binary pronouns (like “they/them”) on their resumes get fewer call backs than normal people.” That is hard to top, but consider COVID Vaccine Hesitancy and Risk of a Traffic Crash, published by the American Journal of Medicine but authored by a trio in Canada. As Sir Bedivere (Terry Jones) might say, who are these »
April 9, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: A Conspiracy So Vast. . . [With Comment by John]

Featured imageEver since Richard Hofstadter published his worst book in 1964, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, it has been a sturdy cliche that conservatives and Republicans are more likely to believe conspiracy theories. This is nonsense to anyone with common sense perception (JFK assassination anyone?), but a new study in the journal Political Behavior (“Are Republicans and Conservatives More Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories?“) takes the usual deep quantitative dive »
April 9, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Hurricanes Down

Featured imageNowadays, all unfortunate weather events–and even, in some quarters, earthquakes!–are blamed on “climate change.” Reporters who probably don’t know better often recite as a fact that extreme weather events have been increasing as a result of global warming. But it isn’t true. Actually, if anything weather has been getting more benign. Take hurricanes. John Shewchuk undertakes to explain the long-term trend toward less hurricane activity. I am not sure whether »
April 9, 2024 — John Hinderaker

A Human Right To Be Cool

Featured imageThe European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Switzerland is liable to its citizens for its alleged failure to do enough about “climate change”: A group of 2,000 Swiss women have won a climate change case against Switzerland at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), in a ruling hailed as “monumental” by experts. The court agreed with the KlimaSeniorinnen, or Senior Women for Climate Protection, that the Swiss »
April 9, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Tariq speaks

Featured imageThe IDF has released video of the highlights of its interrogation of Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokesman Tariq Salami Otha Abu Shoulf. As IDF Lt. Col. (reserve) Peter Lerner puts it, “In his interrogation he reveals in simple terms how they organize the mass manipulation of the media.” As we have all seen over the years, it’s not too difficult. The terrorists and their allies have had it worked out for »
April 8, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Total Eclipse of the Sun

Featured imageThe eclipse was a bust here in Minnesota. We were supposed to get around a 70% eclipse, but it was cloudy and the Sun never came out, all day. So, a moot point. One of my daughters lives in Texas and reports that the eclipse turned out to be rather cool there. But what can you really say, on a politics-oriented web site, about a purely scientific phenomenon? You can »
April 8, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Full F5 Nonsense

Featured imageWelp, we had earthquakes on both coasts last week, and today a total eclipse in the heartland. Can boiling frogs and locusts be far behind? All caused, of course, by climate change. Because there’s nothing it can’t do. Including make liberal Democrats looks stupid: What about tornados! We know those are getting worse with climate change: Enjoy your eclipse everybody. Just remember to wear your fake-news filtering glasses. »
April 8, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Proofread this

Featured imageI’m not a fan of the Star Tribune, yet keeping up with it is an occupational necessity for me. The Star Tribune dominates the local news in roughly the same fashion that the New York times dominates the national news. It sets the agenda for other outlets that chase its tail. Over at Alpha News, we seek to fill the void created by the Star Tribune and its uncompetitive competitors. »
April 8, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Thought for the Day: Bill Clinton on Hamas

Featured imageYou know things are bad when Bill Clinton is the voice of moral clarity in the Democratic Party. Here’s what he said in 2016: “I killed myself to give the Palestinians a state. I had a deal they turned down that would have given them all of Gaza… between 96%-97% of the West Bank, compensating land in Israel, you name it.” “Hamas is really smart. When they decide to rocket »
April 8, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Olbermann Stalks Sage Steele

Featured imageOf COURSE it was scripted. If it hadn’t have been @sagesteele – the dumbest person I’ve ever worked with in sports or news – couldn’t have gotten through it. I mean Jesus, if this happened to you, you’d just assume it WASN’T being done to protect the network from you humiliating it – and yourself? That was Keith Olbermann, after Sage Steele revealed that her 2021 interview with Joe Biden »
April 9, 2024 — Scott Johnson

The word from Dearborn

Featured imageWe are given to understand that the Dearbornistan vote has something to do with the Biden administration’s turn toward Hamas. In the category of what’s wrong with this picture?, the invaluable MEMRI tuned in to the International Al Quds Day rally in front of Dearborn’s Henry Ford Centennial Library (perfect!) this past Friday (video below). Chants of “Death to America” were joined with chants of “Death to Israel” among the »
April 8, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Is the Earth Round?

Featured imageI thought that question was settled a long time ago. People have knows that the Earth is spherical (more or less) for millennia. The ancient Greeks not only knew it was round, they used triangulation to calculate its circumference to within a small margin of error. So, are there really still people who think the Earth is flat? Allegedly so. This video got a lot of circulation on social media. »
April 8, 2024 — Scott Johnson

A politician for our time, cont’d

Featured imageThe site formerly known as Twitter covers a lot of news that you won’t easily find anywhere else, if at all. When it comes to the Hamas-Israel conflict, most of it is of the heartbreaking or infuriating variety. The tweet below, for example, falls into both categories — “Hamas Negotiators have reportedly told International Meditators in Cairo that it has No Ability to Release the 40 Hostages in the Humanitarian »
April 8, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Declaration of Independence, Updated

Featured imageThe ideologically indescribable historian John Patrick Diggins once offered this version of the Declaration of Independence if it had been written by contemporary intellectuals: We hold these truths to be historically conditioned: that all men are created equal and mutually dependent; that from that equal creation they derive rights that are alienable and transferable depending on the larger question of needs, among which are the preservation of life, liberty, and »
April 8, 2024 — Scott Johnson

To the Supreme Court

Featured imageI found the oral argument of the case now styled Murthy v. Missouri last month to be utterly demoralizing. As soon as the oral argument concluded I rashly hazarded my assessment that it portends a victory for the massive censorship-industrial complex represented by the Biden administration, probably on procedural grounds (i.e., standing). My assessment was a hot take based on the tenor of the argument. The argument seemed to me »
April 7, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Truth and Consequences

Featured imageThis is from Britain’s Telegraph, but I think we would see similar numbers in other countries, and worse in some: Only one in four British Muslims believe that Hamas committed murder and rape in Israel on Oct 7, a major report has found. The numbers are even worse for “educated” Muslims: Younger and well-educated Muslims were the most likely to think Hamas did not commit atrocities on Oct 7, with »