Today is the 4th anniversary of the appearance of one of the most memorable political essays in American history, “ The Flight 93 Election,” written by the pseudonymous author “Decius.” It began with this memorable attention-grabber: 2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to... Source
As I’m sure you’ve heard, Trump the Dictator is messing with the U.S. Post Office in an attempt to steal the election. He’s removing blue boxes from corners! He’s taking mail processing machines out of service! He’s tying the shoelaces of mail carriers! Can artificial snowstorms be far behind? Or genetically modified super dogs to chase mail carriers away? This is one of those frenzied stories... Source
After a one week hiatus for jury duty, the Three Whisky Happy Hour with Steve and Lucretia is back, but with a role-reversal: Lucretia bartends this week! Partly this is so Lucretia can school Steve on how to think about vigilantism and the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who has been charged with murder for what appears to have been self-defense in the Kenosha riots earlier this week. Source...
This week’s Power Line Three Whisky Happy Hour finds Charles Lipson bellying up to the bar for a flight of whiskys that begins with a tale of his mis-spent youth discovering the “bootleggers and Baptists” hypothesis in the course of violating numerous federal and state laws, as well as his legendary Henry Kissinger impression. We take up three topics to go with three shots of whisky: the rapid... Source...
Are we possibly headed to a complete electoral and political meltdown in November, complete with riots in the streets and threats of secession by some states? Last week something called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) made huge news with a 22-page report on a simulation exercise of scenarios of what might happen in the event we have a contested election in November. A bipartisan groups of... Source...
This especially fast-paced edition of the Three Whisky Happy Hour with “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, gets off track right at the start, when an incidental mention of the famous 1978 Bakke case turned into an extended revisionist “what if?” thought experiment. From there we turn our attention to logging the accelerating BGR (short for “Biden Gaffe Rate”)... Source
America’s newspaper of record—which is the Babylon Bee of course—is out with the headline, “Biden Campaign Says He Is So Close to a VP Pick He Can Smell Her.” The Bee really needs to stop scooping the New York Times. In any case, in this episode of the weekend happy hour Lucretia and I survey the box canyon Biden has got himself into by pledging to pick a woman running mate who essentially has to... Source
I’m starting to come to the view that having K-12 education and colleges and universities shrink because of COVID-19 might be one of the bits of good news arising out of the pandemic. Our universities are the principal source of the noxious ideas that are plaguing the country right now, and decades of conservative attempts to reverse this slide or reform campuses have proven largely unavailing. Source...
Lucretia and I are already departing from our nascent Islay-Highland-Irish whisky flight format because we have a guest bartender and malt master on with us for this weekend’s episode—John Yoo! John not only knows the deep history of fine Japanese whiskies, but also the Constitution and presidential power. He has a terrific new book coming out on Tuesday, Defender in Chief: Donald Trump’s Fight... Source...
The estimable New York Post reports on a clear example of “expert” junk science that purports to prove that “men should limit alcohol to just one drink per day.” This is clearly the first step to full communism, plus an obvious ham-handed attempt to shut down our brand new Three Whisky Happy hour. Lucretia and I counter with the supreme wisdom of Lady Thatcher, who once wrote a friend... Source
For our 200th podcast, we assembled all four Power Line Beatles, John, Paul, George and Ringo Steve and Scott, to kick around various current topics, including Steve’s own experience with cancel culture, the state of the presidential race, whether the United States might actually break up after this election regardless of who wins, and above all some reflections on 18 years of Power Line... Source
Steve and “Lucretia” are back with another “Three Whisky Happy Hour” to end the week, dishing out a sweet Irish whisky to go with our idea for the attack ad we hope the Trump campaign will run against the Democrats, a mild American bourbon whisky for the uneven Harper’s magazine statement opposing “cancel culture;” and a bracing peaty/smoky Scotch whisky to ponder the question of whether... Source
Gov. Kristi Noem The centerpiece of this week’s show is an in-depth interview John Hinderaker conducted this week with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who has charted her own course in managing the COVID-19 pandemic in her state, refusing to shut down the state’s economy, and getting out ahead of the virus with a common sense approach. Gov. Noem is getting high marks for her steady and... Source
By popular demand we’re bringing “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, back to the show, and we’ve decided to start our own “Three Whisky Happy Hour,” because why should Greg Corombos and Jim Geraghty have all the fun (and the booze) with their Three Martini Lunch. As Lucretia is a champion whisky drinker, we decided to offer up American bourbon, Scotch (the more bracing Islay... Source
Daniel Mahoney of Assumption College has a short and compelling essay up today at Real Clear Politics on “What Does Our Nation Mean to Us? Rejecting the Culture of Hate.” I decided to post our regular weekly podcast a couple days ahead of schedule to match up with Dan’s article because it meshes perfectly with the conclusion of our wide-ranging conversation about the roots of our present... Source...
When I heard the news that the nihilist mob plans to take down the statue of Theodore Roosevelt astride his horse in front the Natural History Museum in New York City, I knew I had to ring up Jean Yarbrough, the Gary Pendy Sr. Professor of Social Sciences at Bowdoin College, and author of the best book on TR’s political thought and legacy, Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition. Source...
On Wednesday, “The Beatles” (John, Paul, George and Ringo Scott, and Steve) got together for a live online VIP chat session, covering everything from the riot scene, the fall election, statue-tipping, The NASCARash, and other sports. A lot of VIP members who couldn’t make the show asked if we’d make available a recording, and we decided to make a highlight reel into a podcast and offer it to the... Source...
This week’s guest is Michael Shellenberger, the founder and president of Environmental Progress, and author of an important new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. Most books about the environment typically feature breathless panic about how the world is coming to an end. Michael’s book is a rare outlier that debunks the extremism of most such apocalyptic claims... Source...
Joel Kotkin is one of America’s premier analysts of urbanism, urban economics, demographic change, and social trends. His brand new book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, turns upside down the conventional liberal narrative about why the middle and working classes are under pressure. It’s not capitalism and markets, but their perversions, especially in the hands... Source...
When our cities start to come apart and people say it seems like 1968 all over again, that can only mean one thing: time to get in touch with Fred Siegel. Among Fred’s many fine books is The Future Once Happened Here: New York, LA, DC, and the Fate of America’s Big Cities, which explained the high cost of incompetent liberal rule of our major cities in the 1960s and 1970s... Source...
Funny how the COVID-19 crisis has nearly disappeared from the news, after having been the subject of wall-to-wall media attention for three months. Riots have a way of doing that, though the mass rioting doesn’t seem to have concentrated the mind of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio very much, fueling further rumors that he really has shot his brains with his heavy reported dope-smoking. Source
“Decadence” is one of those familiar terms that is trivialized or rendered comic by overuse—perhaps you’d say from decadence itself. And while most people think decadent is mostly a synonym for “sumptuous,” it has a wider and deeper meaning, which is the subject of Ross Douthat’s new book, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success. Douthat, a columnist for the New York... Source
John Ellis John M. Ellis, distinguished professor emeritus of German literature at UC Santa Cruz, is out with a terrific new book, The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, The Damage It Does, & What Can Be Done About It. This slim book makes for depressing reading indeed, covering the landscape of our ideologically corrupt colleges and universities. What needs to happen to change things? Source...
Zachary Wood This episode flips the format, with my guest interviewing me for a change. Zachary Wood is a graduate of Williams College, where he was the president of a student group called “Uncomfortable Learning,” whose mission was to invite to campus outside speakers with a heterodox perspective (which is code for “conservative” for the most part). Invitees included Charles Murray... Source...
Barack who? Is it just me, or is Obama the incredibly shrinking president, destined already to be remembered in the same league as John Tyler or Warren Harding? Charles Lipson, emeritus professor of politics at the University of Chicago, is out today with a terrific article at RealClearPolitics, “ Trump’s Methodical Destruction of Obama’s Legacy,” that walks through how President Trump is step-by... Source...
Michael McConnell John Hinderaker joined me today to co-host this special edition of the show. Yesterday Facebook announced the creation of a 20-member oversight board that some media accounts describe as a “supreme court” to advise and in some cases rule on what kind of material can be taken down from the popular global site. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about this... Source...
Phil Magness When the news broke yesterday that the New York Times‘s egregious “1619 Project” had won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary, I knew the only thing to do was get Phillip W. Magness on the line. Magness, a senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, is the author of a brand new and indispensable book answering the factual errors and gross interpretive... Source...
Joe Malchow The Wall Street Journal this morning includes an article from T.J. Rodgers, the retired founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductors, with the provocative title, “Do Lockdowns Save Lives? In Most Places, the Data Say No.” Rodgers mentions in the first paragraph that much of the statistical work behind his article was done by our own Joe Malchow, who is Power Line’s Wizard of Oz behind the... Source...
Terry Anderson It’s Earth Day today—and not just any old Earth Day, but the 50th anniversary. It’s passing rather more quietly than in many previous years because the coronavirus crisis is eclipsing everything at the moment. But a lot has changed since the first Earth Day. Not only is the environment in the United States, and in most places around the world, in much better condition than it was in... Source
Last week Dr. Jonathan Geach, an anesthesiologist treating some COVID-19 patients in Tennessee, wrote an article on Medium that created a sensation: “ Eight Reasons to End the Lockdowns as Soon as Possible.” Dr. Geach joined us today to review the article, and, since the COVID-19 story is moving so fast, preview a sequel on “Moving Goalposts” that he is readying for publication. Source
