April 17, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Wisdom from the Book of Samuels

Featured image On August 2, 2023, Tablet editor David Samuels interviewed David Garrow, author of Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a massive attack on Israel and committed the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. In light of those events, and the recent attack on Israel directly from Iran, consider some of Samuels’ own statements during “The Obama Factor” interview: I find Barack Obama »
April 17, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Biden Cannibalizes Himself

Featured imageI remember when my grandmother reached her mid-90s, and she would tell old stories I had never heard before (and thus had no idea how true they might be), and then immediately repeat them like she was stuck on a tape loop. John notes below that Biden today twice told the story of his uncle’s World War II experience—not previously told that I am aware of—and how he may have »
April 17, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Net Zero? Oops, Never Mind

Featured imageGreat Britain, like other countries, has pledged to stop emitting carbon dioxide (“net zero”) by transitioning to a “green” economy. That means relying on wind and solar power rather than fossil fuels and nuclear. Such promises are easy to make, but it turns out they are impossible to keep. The Telegraph reports on a new study that was commissioned by the British government: Britain is incapable of building the wind »
April 17, 2024 — John Hinderaker

How Much Money Does the Government Waste?

Featured imageIt depends on how you define waste, of course. I would define whole branches of government as wasteful or worse. And one can say that all money spent by governments on DEI programs is wasted, regardless of how efficiently the programs are carried out. If you ask taxpayers, they think the government wastes a lot of their money. Our Thinking Minnesota Poll most recently found that, on average, Minnesotans–not known »
April 17, 2024 — John Hinderaker

What’s Eating Joe?

Featured imageJoe Biden has told countless whoppers, but this one is a doozie: he says his uncle was eaten by cannibals in New Guinea. Seriously: He told the story twice in one day: Actually, Joe’s uncle’s plane was went down, for unknown reasons, over open water. The plane sank and several crewmen went down with it. Their bodies were not found, but they weren’t eaten by cannibals. You can see in »
April 17, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Canada Extends the Victorian Age

Featured imageOn April 17, 2016, my mother Victoria Billingsley passed away at the age of 94. Today (April 17, 2024) she received a letter from Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare about “the recent cyber incident affecting local hospitals in the Southwest Ontario region,” including approximately 46,000 patients of Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare. As the letter explains: We can confirm that, unfortunately, you were included in this group and some of the personal health information »
April 17, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Confidence in the News Media

Featured imageGiven the news about NPR (and even the New York Times, currently enduring its own internal Maoist struggle sessions, which I’ll discuss separately), this chart hardly needs any explanation. Though I’ll add that if the media keeps going in its current mode, I’m sure they can drive public trust all the way down to zero. »
April 17, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Inside a “protest”

Featured imageNRO staff reporter James Lynch embedded himself in the New York City edition of the April 15 Kill the Jews rallies staged by A15 around the United States on Monday. I wrote about the rallies yesterday in “From sea to shining sea.” NRO has published Lynch’s story in “‘Israel Is a Terrorist State’: Scenes from New York City’s Disruptive Anti-Israel Rally.” Lynch’s story reflects the hatreds coursing through the mob, »
April 17, 2024 — Scott Johnson

In the J6 cases

Featured imageIn a week laden with news, we shouldn’t overlook the oral argument held yesterday by the Supreme Court in Fischer v. United States. The issue before the Court. Fischer is one of some 350 January 6 defendants charged with obstructing an official congressional proceeding allegedly in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (as well as other federal offenses). The question before the Court is whether the »
April 16, 2024 — John Hinderaker

A Terrible Idea Whose Time May Be Coming

Featured imageLiberals are trying to do away with the Electoral College, since in recent cycles they have done better with the so-called popular vote. Of course they can’t amend the Constitution, but they don’t need to: instead, they are pushing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Briefly, the Compact says that each signatory state will cast its electoral votes for whatever presidential candidate gets the largest number of votes, nationwide. That »
April 16, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: California Dreaming Indeed

Featured imageLast week the Wall Street Journal‘s James Freeman wrote about the wishful thinking of California elites who waive away any of the sensible causes for the droves of people leaving California (resulting in a sustained net population loss over the last few years for the first time in 170 years) such as high taxes, senseless regulation, rising crime, unaffordable housing etc. Maybe Mr. Newsom is just unlucky. This week in »
April 17, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Hey Folx: Today in Ivy League Inanity

Featured imageColumbia University is a hotbed of anti-Semitism right now, and has seen more than its share of ugly incidents since October 7. Right now Columbia president Minouche Shafik is testifying before the same House committee where Harvard’s Claudine Gay self-immolated last fall. I’ve watched a few minutes of the proceedings, and it is clear that Shafik is much better prepared than was Gay to give halfway sensible answers to the »
April 17, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Other Shoe Drops at NPR

Featured imageIn yesterday’s item about the suspension of longtime NPR business editor Uri Berliner for telling the truth about NPR’s deep ideological bias, I meant to conclude by saying that the obvious next step would be his dismissal from NPR. And today the other shoe dropped: Berliner has “resigned” from NPR, but make no mistake, it was quite clear that NPR’s new Stasi management would no longer tolerate his presence. And »
April 17, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Time for MTG

Featured imageJohn and I found the protracted humiliation of Kevin McCarthy in connection with his election to be Speaker of the House a clown show. By contrast, Steve Hayward looked mostly on the bright side in “In re: Speaker McCarthy — dissents and concurrences.” Since then the GOP House majority has been dissipating. The clown show set the stage for the shrinking of the small GOP House majority to a number »
April 16, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Iran Insanity

Featured imageTwo friends of mine comment on the Obama/Biden administration’s bizarre partiality toward Iran. In the New York Post, Glenn Reynolds writes: Post-[Iran’s] attack [on Israel]— going further yet beyond parody — the Biden administration’s chief effort has been aimed at demanding Israel not retaliate. That’s right. Israel has had more than a thousand of its citizens raped, tortured, murdered and kidnapped, it’s been subjected to a massive missile attack, and »
April 16, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Angela Davis Makes People Happy

Featured imageAngela Davis, winner of the Lenin Peace Prize, ran for vice president with the Communist Party USA in 1980 and 1984. Angela Davis is also listed as the performer of “Make Someone Happy,” beautifully rendered on alto saxophone. As it happily turns out, that is Australian altoist Angela Davis, who spent eight years in New York, recording albums, Lady Luck and Art of the Melody. Check her out on “Little »
April 16, 2024 — Steven Hayward

NPR Goes Full Gulag

Featured imageWe noted here last week the withering critique of National Propaganda Radio (NPR) by longtime NPR editor Uri Berliner. Turns out that NPR recently hired as its new head a complete commie, Katherine Mayer. How commie? Nate Hochman has some of the very many receipts: And just as James Damore was cashiered from Google when he questioned leftist orthodoxy, National Review is reporting that Uri Berliner has been suspended without »