May20
Tomorrow. At high noon.
It will be interesting to see how the media responds this time. Will the Tea Partiers still be racists, or rebels with a cause?
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Archive for Political Commentary
11131 results.
May20
Glenn Reynolds reviews a new book co-authored by mutual friends — America 3.0
May20
A Do-Nothing Congress
by Rand Simberg on May 20, 2013 at 11:04 amPosted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary
Call me crazy, but this sounds like good news. Given the vast improbability of them doing anything good, nothing seems to be preferable to me.
May20
A long piece on personal space travel, over at New York Magazine. I found this interesting:
Wincer is frequently asked if customers can bring children. Several parents have attempted to give flights as sweet-sixteen birthday gifts; one customer, she said, “at the moment is desperate to let her 12-year-old fly.” The FAA had yet to address such questions, and Wincer sees it as a matter of informed consent, of which she thinks a 12-year-old is not capable. Many customers have their own private pilot’s license, and many others are scared of flying or small spaces. She had just read a profile of one client who is terrified of roller coasters: “Jesus,” she said.
One of those things is not like the other. I’m not much of a fan of roller coasters, but that wouldn’t affect my desire for (or enjoyment of) a parabolic flight at all. I’m also acrophobic, but I have no problem with flying. Being high on a structure is a completely different experience than flight, at least for me.
Of course, this isn’t really true, or at least it’s quite misleading:
The primary goal of the shuttle program was simple: to create a reusable space vehicle that could transport materials to and from the International Space Station.
There was no “International Space Station” when the Shuttle was being developed, and wouldn’t be until 1993, though it was meant to be a precursor program to some sort of space station, which was undefined at the time. Of course, ironically, the fact that they built into it the capability to be a short-term space station probably reduced the incentive to actually build one, which is why the first bit of hardware for ISS wasn’t launched until almost twenty years after the Shuttle started flying.
May20
Benghazi And Going The “Full Nixon”
by Rand Simberg on May 20, 2013 at 9:58 amPosted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary
Thoughts from Roger L. Simon:
The Benghazi scandal is more disturbing than just lying about a terror attack to get reelected. And that’s pretty disturbing, considering the lies were made directly to the families of the victims. (cf. Hillary Clinton telling Charles Woods, one of the dead SEALS’ father, they were going to get the guy who made that video and revenge his son’s death.)
The Benghazi scandal, in all probability, would not have happened if the administration and/or the State Department took the War on Terror seriously or even, dare I say it, put the words terrorism and Islamic together in a sentence. But that would break a thousand narratives in the mind of Barack Obama, from his childhood with Frank Marshall Davis until now and back.
So now he is riding the whirlwind. The question is, will he carry us (and Western Civ) with him?
The biggest difference between Watergate and Obama’s crimes against the Constitution is that, unlike Republicans in 1974, there are probably no Democrats with similar integrity in today’s Senate. The House shouldn’t impeach unless and until Democrats start to call for it (and if this happens, it will be because they finally realize what a disaster a continuation of his rule will be for the “progressive” agenda). They wanted him, they got him, and he’s their problem now.
May20
Just A Coincidence, I’m Sure
by Rand Simberg on May 20, 2013 at 9:31 amPosted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary
The IRS harassment formally began the day after the president met with the head of the IRS union:
In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases.”
There’s a lot more to this. I suspect that last week just scratched the surface.
May20
Two young climate hysterisists bravely go into the lair of a Deniar.
May20
Lois Lerner, Liar
by Rand Simberg on May 20, 2013 at 9:06 amPosted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary
She maxes out on the Pinocchios. She probably can’t count them, though. By her own admission, she’s not that great at math.
May20
James Rosen
by Rand Simberg on May 20, 2013 at 7:38 amPosted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary
He was apparently being tracked and spied on by the Justice Department, and has been accused of crimes for simply being a reporter. But I guess it’s all right — after all, it’s not like he works for a “legitimate news operation.” As they said over at Twitchy, when you’ve lost Glenn Greenwald…
[Update a couple minutes later]
Heh.
Spoiler Alert: @presssec knows nothing about DoJ spying on @jamesrosenfnc. @barackobama only just learned of it today, while surfing the Web
— Tim Wells (@RightWingNerd) May 20, 2013
[Update mid morning]
Even though it’s that “illegitimate news organization,” Fox News, other “journalists” are taking notice:
Justice accuses @jamesrosenfnc, a v good reporter, of being “an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator” for reporting?? washingtonpost.com/local/a-rare-p…
— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) May 20, 2013
Serious idea. Instead of calling it Obama’s war on whistleblowers, let’s just call it what it is: Obama’s war on journalism.
— Eli Lake (@EliLake) May 20, 2013
Let’s hope that it’s the end of the slobbering love affair
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, one more:
These abuses of the First Amendment wouldn’t be happening if we had a constitutional law professor as president.
— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) May 20, 2013
[Update a couple minutes later]
Aaaaannnd, it wasn’t just James Rosen. Megyn Kelly is hot (an evergreen statement). But now, she’s also steamed.
Apparently the War on Fox News never ended. It just went guerrilla.
May20
IRS Abuse
by Rand Simberg on May 20, 2013 at 6:39 amPosted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary
It’s just the Chicago Way:
“Are you in your good senses?” said my father. “We have lives here. We have businesses. If we get involved in politics, they will ruin us.”
And no one, not the Roosevelt Democrats or the Reagan Republicans, disagreed. The socialists, the communists, the royalists, everyone nodded their heads.
This was Chicago. And for a business owner to get involved meant one thing: It would cost you money and somebody from government could destroy you.
The health inspectors would come, and the revenue department, the building inspectors, the fire inspectors, on and on. The city code books aren’t thick because politicians like to write new laws and regulations. The codes are thick because when government swings them at a citizen, they hurt.
And who swings the codes and regulations at those who’d open their mouths? A government worker. That government worker owes his or her job to the political boss. And that boss has a boss.
The worker doesn’t have to be told. The worker wants a promotion. If an irritant rises, it is erased. The hack gets a promotion. This is government.
So everybody kept their mouths shut, and Chicago was hailed by national political reporters as the city that works.
We have to take our country back from these thugs.
[Update a while later]
It wasn’t just the IRS. A Tea Party group was also harassed by the FBI, BATF and OSHA. It’s the Chicago Way.
May20
“Mistakes Were Made”
by Rand Simberg on May 20, 2013 at 6:18 amPosted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary
Three ways to tell there’s a cover up going on.
May20
…are “looking less likely.” The climbdown begins, at least at the BBC.
But remember, we’re still doomed:
Is there any succour in these findings for climate sceptics who say the slowdown over the past 14 years means the global warming is not real?
“None. No comfort whatsoever,” he said.
Well. All right then.
[Update a few minutes later]
The Guardian says we can’t let our guard down:
Otto said that this most recent pattern could not be taken as evidence that climate change has stopped. “Given the noise in the climate and temperature system, you would need to see a much longer period of any pause in order to draw the conclusion that global warming was not occurring,” he said. Such a period could be as long as 40 years of the climate record, he said.
Got that? Only warming trends are important. Cooling is irrelevant.
And their unjustified self confidence never flags:
Richard Allan, reader in climate at the University of Reading, said: “This work has used observations to estimate Earth’s current heating rate and demonstrate that simulations of climate change far in the future seem to be pretty accurate. However, the research also indicates that a minority of simulations may be responding more rapidly towards this overall warming than the observations indicate.”
He said the effect of pollutants in the atmosphere, which reflect the sun’s heat back into space, was particularly hard to measure.
He noted the inferred sensitivity of climate to a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations based on this new study, suggesting a rise of 1.2C to 3.9C, was consistent with the range from climate simulations of 2.2C to 4.7C. He said: “With work like this our predictions become ever better.”
Onward, comrades!
May19
“Everything Comes From The Top”
by Rand Simberg on May 19, 2013 at 10:25 amPosted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary
The “lower-level” scapegoats are starting to sing.
This was inevitable. And since these people follow the Clinton playbook (they are, after all, many of the same people), you can expect vicious attacks on their character and credibility once they come forward.
May19
OK, so, ignoring the fact that this goes against the president’s reelection narrative, please explain how it ends.
May18
…is falling apart.
May17
A Culture Of Intimidation
by Rand Simberg on May 17, 2013 at 3:39 pmPosted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary
My thoughts on the IRS crimes, over at PJMedia.
May17
The current state of play. This is disturbing:
Bolden has acknowledged in congressional testimony, most recently in an April 25 hearing of the Senate Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, that without a fully funded Commercial Crew Program, the agency may have to pick only one aspiring provider to fund.
That could happen as soon as next summer, when NASA plans to award the next round of Commercial Crew funding.
They make it sound like he’s issuing a threat when that’s exactly what Congress wants them to do. If I were Bolden (or rather, if I were administrator — obviously if I were Bolden I’d do what Bolden would do), I’d be figuring out a way to avoid the down select with a smaller budget. But if I were administrator, a lot of things would be done differently.
May17
“OK, so maybe those gun nuts weren’t as crazy as I thought they were.”
Out: Gun control.
In. Government control.
[Update a while later]
Joe Scarborough is having second thoughts, too: “Gee, maybe background checks aren’t such a red-hot idea after all.”
I hope that this is the week that the American people finally wake up, after having stared into the abyss.
May17
May17
Accountability
by Rand Simberg on May 17, 2013 at 12:17 pmPosted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary
OK, so if I’m understanding Carney and Obama and all the president’s men correctly, the only part of the federal government over which Obama has any insight or control is Seal Team Six?
May17
May17
May17
A Bad Week For Obama
by Rand Simberg on May 17, 2013 at 9:59 amPosted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary
This is our Newtown, except it actually does justify real reform. We have to seize the opportunity.
May17
May17
It’s not as simple as reported:
Put another way, this study says that liberals are a coalition of rich wimpy men and strong poor men. Bu contrast, conservatives are a coalition of rich strong men and poor weak men.
The study found that women are different from men: a woman’s upper body strength did not affect her politics.
Partisans would like to think that it is the smart people who support their side. In reality, though, that doesn’t work: both sides have their share of both smart people and dumb people.
Yes, the notion that smart people are naturally “progressive” is just one of their many conceits.
May17
…of the Mainstream Media:
The big question now is how many of the liberal media will return to form as this process unfolds itself with more whistleblowers emerging, and with documents subpoenaed and witnesses put under oath over the coming months. To be sure some already have reverted to their default position of excuse-making support, floating rationalizations to minimize the damage: Obama is too remote and disconnected (even, it may even be intimated as a fallback concession, a bit lazy what with all that golf and partying) to have actively instigated these shocks.
This would be the face-saving option for both Obama and the journalists who wish to remain invested in his cause, albeit at lower intensity now that they have conceded incompetence and perhaps sloth. He has disappointed them a little, but any overestimation they may have engaged in was out of the best of motives.
But others will take a different tack. Having devoted five plus years to the narrative of Obama the good, they will be ready to follow a new story line now, because it has the ultimate virtue in the news business: it is new. If the special committees which will investigate the scandals do their job, there will many veins to mine in uncovering and telling the stories of wrongdoing. In the 1970s, nobody made a good career move defending the Nixon administration’s use of the IRS against its opponents, after all.
It will be fascinating to see how they respond.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Some in the media have apologized to the Tea Partiers for not taking their concerns seriously:
“One of the guys said, ‘I’m sitting here looking at what you sent me last year and I’m embarrassed that I didn’t cover,’ and I said ‘I understand, this is so surreal, we didn’t know what we were dealing with,’” Zawistowski said.
Well, he should be embarrassed. They all should be. And an apology is the very least they could do after all of the lies and calumny that have been raining down on people who just wanted to see a return to Constitutional government. If they want to apologize, the best way to do it would be to start doing their damned jobs and stop carrying water for these incompetent thugs.
And they should follow the advice of Bob Woodward (and apologize to him, too):
I would not dismiss Benghazi. It’s a very serious issue. As people keep saying, four people were killed. You look at the hydraulic pressure that was in the system to not tell the truth, and, you know, we use this term and the government uses this term, talking points. Talking points, as we know, are like legal briefs. They’re an argument on one side. What we need to get rid of talking point and they need to put out statements or papers that are truth documents.
Don’t expect that from this gang. The media needs to learn that when it comes to Obama and the Democrats, they should not trust, and and they have verify everything.
May16
…are getting worse than we thought:
The author hypothesizes the reasons for this are that attempts in the latest generation of models to reproduce observed changes in Arctic sea ice are causing “significant and widening discrepancy between the modeled and observed warming rates outside of the Arctic,” i.e. they have improved Arctic simulation at the expense of poorly simulating the rest of the globe.
It continues to amaze me that so many supposedly smart people take this junk science seriously. You know what this stuff looks more and more like to me? Epicycles.
May16
Looks to me like the president dodged a question at his presser today, while pretending that he was answering it. Which only raises more questions, of course.
May15
He’s not only the best gun salesman in history, but he’s apparently selling conservatism, too:
If these scandals are indeed affecting the ideological landscape, this is bad news for liberals. It’s not just that the opposite ideology is getting some help from government bunglers, but the media is exacerbating the problem. Liberals believe that there is a role for government to play in mediating market failures, and there are plenty of stories of areas where the safety net is thinning as a result of sequestration—from cancer treatments to Head Start to Meals-on-Wheels—where government should step in. But those stories get lost in the scandal coverage of an administration, making it look like conservatives fundamentally understand something that liberals do not.
You don’t say.
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What Aren’t They Telling Obama
by Rand Simberg on May 20, 2013 at 2:46 pmA new trending Twitter hashtag.