Category Archives: Media Criticism

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Life Extension And Entitlements

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This is a serious issue about which most people, including most policy makers, are in denial:

Ultimately, the question is this: are Americans entitled to unlimited life expectancy? If so, perhaps we need to say goodbye to the notion of limited government as a greater share of wealth is devoted to the health and income needs of a much longer-lived population. From where I sit, unlimited life expectancy sounds appealing. Unlimited government? Not so much. Mr. Kurzweil’s vision greatly amplifies the urgency of our getting on with the task of fundamental entitlement reforms.

The Founders said that we had a right to the pursuit of happiness, which to me would include the pursuit of an indefinite lifespan, if our pursuit is generally successful, and we’re leading happy lives. But they granted no right to live off the labor of others.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Gabby Giffords

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…poisons the well:

If Alter meant it when he said he hoped Giffords would become a “referee” of public discourse–an advocate for reasoned civility–he ought to feel terribly disappointed. She has instead turned out to be a practitioner of incivility and unreason.

That’s a harsh but justified appraisal of her op-ed in today’s New York Times, titled “A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip.” It’s a reaction to yesterday’s failure of President Obama’s gun-control proposals in the Democratic Senate. Giffords’s 900-word jeremiad should be included in every textbook of logic and political rhetoric, so rife is it with examples of fallacious reasoning and demagogic appeals. Let’s go through them:

Read all. Of course what happened to her is terrible, and tragic, but it doesn’t give her moral authority to bully and insult us with illogic. And the president has even less standing to do so.

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Chutzpah Of Max Baucus

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Mike Pompeo calls him on it:

If it’s a train wreck, Pompeo said, Baucus has no one to blame but himself.

“No one in the country bears more responsibility for the complexity of this law than you,” Pompeo wrote in a letter to Baucus on Thursday.

Baucus, as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was a key architect of the Affordable Care Act. Most of its major provisions were crafted in his committee, and the Finance draft was consistently treated as the primary bill even as other Senate and House committees worked on their own proposals.

“You drafted it, you twisted arms to get it passed, and, until now, you have lauded it as a model for all the world,” Pompeo wrote to Baucus. “Your attempts to pass the buck to President Obama’s team will not work, nor will they absolve you of responsibility for the harm that you have brought via this law.”

Baucus has a competitive reelection fight coming up next year — just months after the biggest pieces of ObamaCare are set to take effect. Republicans have already made clear that they plan to target Baucus over his role in getting the healthcare law passed, and problems with the implementation could make the GOP’s job easier.

My emphasis.

It certainly should make it easier. These people are truly disgusting.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Benghazi

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Over half a year later, the truth continues to drip out:

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”

Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights.

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood, though, denied the claims that requests for support were turned down.

Of course she did. That doesn’t make them untrue.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Gun Control

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Why the president lost:

By spending time on an assault weapons ban, gun controllers hurt themselves in multiple ways. They energized the NRA’s base, who could probably have been persuaded to live with background checks. They wasted time, which had a huge cost: gun owners care about gun rights all the time, but the rest of the population mostly cares about gun control in the wake of a high-profile tragedy. And they made themselves look less like serious negotiators who were willing to come to a compromise that the other side could accept, and more like they were trying to reinstate the kind of gun laws that NRA members had spent two decades beating back.

In other words, by demanding more, they got less.

Bottom line — he’s as incompetent at negotiation as he is at most things. And of course, it doesn’t help when you accuse people of cowardice because they don’t share your opinion.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Bad Gun-Control Law

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What’s the rush?

Of course, gun-control laws are mostly bad. And mostly unconstitutional.

Disclosure: the authors are my legal counsel in the Mann lawsuit.

[Update a few minutes later]

Why Obama is losing on guns:

…Democrats could have threatened to primary these Democrats or withhold campaign funds, but that’s not very realistic in states in which these moderates may barely hang on in an election in which the Democrats could lose their majority. The White House can try to ply them with pork, although that’s a lot harder to do these days since it isn’t clear there will even be a budget. And the president’s not very popular in many states, so an offer to campaign with and for these Democrats isn’t very enticing. For now it seems the Democrats may try to water down the Toomey-Manchin amendment and try to wean away a few red-state Democrats. It is a sort of legislative limbo in which the bar gets lower and lower, but in this case it’s not clear the red-state Democrats want to play the game at all.

It is a misnomer, then, to blame the “gun lobby” for the difficulty in passing legislation. The red-state Democrats, like most of their Republican colleagues, are reflecting their own constituents’ views. If you polled specifically in the states where these Democrats come from, I bet you’d find gun regulation and bans a whole lot less popular than the nation at large. (I imagine some of them are in fact polling.) If the president were more popular in red states or more able to induce enthusiasm, then that might have made a difference.

And it is still possible that the needle can be threaded. Unfortunately for the president, whatever passes will bear scant resemblance to his desired legislation.

Of course, he’s losing on guns for the same reason that he loses on many things — his agenda is not that of the public. They continue to want real jobs, and he continues to ignore their wants.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Racism In Higher Education

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And they can’t even see their own problem:

Perhaps we should not be surprised that Ivy League and other top-notch schools practice such ugly discrimination. After all, they had similar practices in the 1920s to ensure their schools did not have “too many” Jewish students. Today, they just want to make sure they don’t have “too many” Caucasians or Asians on campus. All they have done is change the groups targeted for discrimination.

Suzy Weiss and many other high-school seniors across the United States are being discriminated against because of their skin color or because they have an epicanthic fold in their eyes. Such racial and ethnic discrimination is morally wrong, and neither “diversity” nor anything else can justify it.

And yet they continue to attempt to do so, while calling us racists.