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A New Year’s Eve Reunion for ‘The Beatles’

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Getting Power Line's own "fab four" (John, Paul, George and Ringo, Scott and Steve) together at once is almost as hard as getting The Beatles back together, even though all of the Power Line Fab Four are still living. But we did better than that: For our special year-end wrap-up and prediction show, we also assembled "Yoko Ono" (Susan Vass, aka "Ammo Grrrll") and "Brian Epstein" (aka, Joe Malchow, who really is our Supremo Producer). We reviewed a few loose ends from the political news of 2018, talked about the politics of Silicon Valley, and made predictions for 2019, which hopefully no one will write down because they will surely be wrong, as most predictions are. Ignore the argument at the end between Steve and Joe about which California appellation produces the best red wines. Joe is wrong.

Hosts:
John HinderakerPaul MirengoffScott JohnsonSteve Hayward

Discussion (4)

  • RufusRJones@RufusRJones

    I am so angry about how the GOP handled the ACA repeal. They had eight years to get ready. They had three months after Trump got elected. At least three senators were liars about repeal. 100 representatives.

    They should have just accepted the fact that the ACA was the greatest Cloward and Piven maneuver of all time. They should've done one year of education and town halls. They needed to figure out how to deal with their RINOs in the states that legitimately have some problems that really need to be socialize more than others.

    It should've been wiped out, and they just should've started over with the system that Avik Roy recommends. It has to be universalized somehow. The question is how honest and transparent you are about it and how are you can minimize the central planning.

    I have a very bad feeling about all of this. If you have any wealth or income you're better off just ignoring politics and figuring out how you are going to protect it. We are going in a very bad direction.

  • Leslie Watkins@LeslieWatkins

    Really enjoyed hearing the band get back together. Hope there can be more of it in 2019, but Steve has kept things going really well.

    I agree with Rufus above. How the members of Congress allowed themselves to take a vote that left things so up in the air that it made them vulnerable to charges of not wanting to cover preexisting conditions is beyond me. I think GOP members are more oriented to their personal ideologies than to reaching any kind of useful consensus, whereas Dems are avid team players.

    That said, absent that issue, I think Republicans would have fared much better in the midterms and, so, might rebound in 2020.

  • RufusRJones@RufusRJones

    Trump made me very nervous for three reasons. He is an inflationist. Lack of civic knowledge and civic experience and lack of foreign-policy knowledge.

    He's clearly an inflationist. He's worse than the average citizen or politician. That is how developers think. He was not going to be a leader on the Fed like Reagan tried to be. Seriously this is the whole ball of wax if you want conservatism or libertarianism to actually sell and succeed. I cannot believe he got rid of Yellen to freak out about this guy. Think about how educated Trump is and he doesn't understand this while running as a Republican. Very few even get what I'm talking about.