RealClearPolitics

Not even a full year into the Biden presidency, voters have grown weary of the Democratic Party and its leftward lurch; 65% of independent voters no longer believe that this country is headed in the right direction. This means that the voting blocs Democrats have traditionally counted on to “vote blue no matter who” are thinking twice. Leading the charge – and sending Democrats into a panic – are Hispanic voters. This demographic is increasingly voting Republican, an exciting trend that began in 2020 and has continued into 2021. Nationwide, former President Trump captured 32% of the… Read More in

The president sounded exhausted. He knows the American people are too, and on the day of the longest night, the day when the Northern Hemisphere reaches its farthest tilt from the sun, he said as much. “I want to start by acknowledging how tired, worried, and frustrated I know you are,” Joe Biden said in a White House address Tuesday, when he unveiled new measures to battle the omicron variant of the coronavirus. Much of the message was familiar. He said again that if you aren’t vaccinated, get the shot. And he said that if you are already vaccinated, get

Political polarization in the United States is bad. Americans don’t just dislike the other party; we hate anyone associated with it. We increasingly indulge our worst impulses. We grow ever-more biased against people with different political perspectives. Hatred for those in an opposition political party in the U.S. has risen steadily since 2000 – when around 10% to 20% of Democrats and Republicans said they despised the other party – to today, when about half say so. There’s no end in sight. Generation Lab/Axios polling just released some disturbing new findings: Young Democrats really hate… Read More in Real Clear

How much do solar, wind and electric vehicle companies get in federal handouts and tax loopholes in President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill? Well over $100 billion in taxpayer largesse. If all the tax credits are included, that number could reach half a trillion dollars. No other industry in American history has ever received this lucrative a paycheck. The folks at the Institute for Energy Research calculated that this is on top of the more than $150 billion in subsidies these industries received from Uncle Sam in the last 30 years. The umbilical cord to taxpayer wallets never gets

Some hot takes have been surfacing recently about how former President Trump is losing influence in the Republican Party, or is ever so slightly fading from the spotlight, and the new twist is that this strengthens Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. That with his conference behind him, “the Old Crow,” as Trump calls the longtime Kentucky senator, is free to cheer on the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6 and tell Trump, “You do you.” Part of this theory – that the grip McConnell has over Senate Republicans is more like a chokehold, and not even the Trumpiest of his

It’s been a year of hope and uncertainty in the states – and the prospect is for more of the same in 2022. Hope has been spurred by the economic rebound; sales tax revenues swelled as Americans bought taxable items at pre-pandemic levels while also boosting personal savings rates and inflation. Hope also came from Congress, which after a series of false starts provided state, local, territorial and tribal governments with $350 billion as part of President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan. Despite this economic cushion, uncertainty prevailed in most states as the COVID-19 pandemic surged,… Read More in Real

BROWNSVILLE, Pennsylvania — Just before 10 a.m., cars begin pulling into the parking lot of the Country Thrift Market, a sprawling former grocery store 40 miles from Pittsburgh. Normally, folks in the area shop for gently used clothing, toys and deeply discounted home goods here. But today is different because Santa Claus is on site along with free cookies, provisions, frozen turkeys and hundreds of brand-new winter coats in every child’s size. Most of the cars and trucks that pull in have seen better days, but the children inside them look excited, seemingly unaware they are in need of… Read

As if we needed reminding that Americans don’t trust the news media, a recent report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford found that the United States ranks dead last in news consumer confidence out of 46 countries surveyed. One major criticism is that too many journalists appear to reside in a bubble far removed from the day-to-day life of most Americans. Reporters overwhelmingly vote Democratic, are white and clustered along the coasts. They are far likelier than the average news consumer to hold a master’s degree and therefore to come from a privileged… Read More

“Get off our front porch. Get out of our front yard. And stay out of our backyard.” This might stand as a crude summary of two draft security pacts Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei A. Ryabkov delivered last week as Russia’s price for resolving the crisis created by those 100,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders. Ryabkov’s demands appear to be a virtual ultimatum, designed to be rejected by the U.S. and NATO and provide Moscow with a pretext for an invasion and occupation of part or all of Ukraine. Among the maximalist Russian demands: Written guarantees from NATO that it will