Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

The Natural Gas Fiasco

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…at the New York Times:

Natural gas just might be the energy solution environmentalists say they want, but actually can’t stand because nothing would put them out of business faster. Forbes blogger Chris Helman words it perfectly:

We would have thought that the Times would be in favor of plentiful, low-cost natural gas. It burns a lot cleaner than coal, and with nuclear off the table for now, gas is poised to fuel U.S. economic growth for more than a generation to come. I can only guess that the problem, as the Times sees it, is that as long as we have all that cheap gas, there’s precious little need for solar panels, windmills and other cornerstones of their much-heralded but slow evolving green jobs revolution.

Forbes, on the other hand, thinks it’s pretty awesome that thanks to drilling ingenuity the U.S. has proven to have one of the world’s biggest and cheapest hoards of clean-burning gas. Now that’s a story.

This may be a solution to some of the idiocy in California as well, given out high electric rates due partly to NIMBY reluctance to build generating capacity and the insane carbon law they passed. We’re currently paying fifteen cents a kilowatt-hour in SoCal (more for amounts exceeding baseline). I can buy a generator like this one (or smaller), and produce the same power for about a quarter of that at current gas prices (and they’re likely to continue to go down). But I imagine if I were to do that, the carbon nazis would come after me. Also, I’m not sure if they’re designed for steady use, but I think that if you could come up with one that was fairly quiet and could run 24/7, it will become pretty attractive to a lot of people around here.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Media Demogogue

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It’s long been a characteristic of media hacks that they refuse to link to stories that they criticize, so they can just make up anything they want about it.

[Late morning update]

Another hack attack: “Isthmus columnist Emily Mills slimes me over the Wisconsin Supreme Court “chokegate” story…without taking the trouble to link to or quote anything I said. Or should I say without daring to link to or quote anything I said?”

In a sane world, these people would be fired for their lies.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

When Ken Melsen Testifies

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…what will happen?

Chairman Issa states that AG Holder “absolutely” knew about Gunwalker earlier than he testified that he did, and if Issa has the evidence to prove that the attorney general is part of a cover-up, then there is every reason to suspect Holder will be forced to resign, or will face impeachment.

This is a far more likely scenario than many think.

And it will be a lot harder for Obama to replace Holder with another criminal like him, given the new Senate composition.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Debt Problem

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…is even worse than we think:

Both make a case that Republicans should be making more often and more forcefully: The path out of our troubles requires spending cuts, and especially entitlement reform, but above all it requires growth. Without dramatically improved economic growth, no amount of austerity could help us avert a fiscal catastrophe, let alone improve the economic state of the average family. How to achieve dramatically improved economic growth is, of course, no simple question. But we can be pretty sure that tax increases on investors and job creators are not the way.

But it’s the only play the Democrats have in their playbook.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Failure Of Al Gore

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More thoughts from Walter Russell Mead:

The global green strategy was a comprehensive, unified and coordinated one. Green activists around the world, in some countries empowered because proportional representation gives fringe groups disproportionate political influence, would unite around the push for a single global solution to climate change. The global solution involved a treaty to be negotiated under UN auspices that would be “legally binding” and subject the emission of greenhouse gasses to strict global controls. Developing countries would receive massive transfers of official aid ($100 billion or more a year) to compensate them for the costs they would incur in meeting carbon targets; developed countries like the United States would face stricter targets still. The target for the treaty was to cap global emissions at levels believed to keep the global temperature rise this century to two degrees centigrade.

To reach this Valhalla, a political strategy was put in place; it is the strategy that the former vice president is still gamely trying to push in his Rolling Stone article. It has failed.

Good. As with Obama, his failure is success for the rest of us.

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, a success for the rest of us who don’t live in California. Here, he succeeded, because the voters are idiots, and the ruinous law that the Democrats and Scharzenegger pushed (thanks, Maria!) will be just one more factor that irretrievably sinks the state’s economic prospects.

[Late morning update]

Al Gore — idiot Malthusian.

As bad as Bush was, we really dodged a bullet in 2000.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

It’s Dead, Jim

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I was thinking about responding to Paul Spudis’s bizarre attempt to resurrect the Shuttle, but Clark Lindsey has spared me the trouble. In fact I had this exact thought when I read Paul’s post title:

…neutral would be a big improvement over reverse, which is where NASA has been going for the past decade. Constellation burned up many billions of dollars on a plan to build retro-tech vehicles that would have been just as expensive, if not more so, to operate than the Shuttle. The administration’s plan, of course, is not in neutral but is moving forward on development of cost-effective commercial launch systems, though this could be undermined by Congress’s insistence on parallel development of a super-expensive, super heavy lift vehicle based on Shuttle hardware.

And the double standard remains amazing:

Dr. Spudis asks,

How long will our rapidly growing government (with its rapidly shrinking discretionary budget) patiently support “commercial” New Space efforts?

This question is bizarre. The alternative to the modestly funded commercial launch services program is another gigantically expensive in-house NASA project that has no more chance of succeeding than all of the previous gigantically expensive NASA space transport projects. There is, in fact, no alternative to commercial launchers. If they don’t succeed at providing reliable transport at significantly lower costs than the Shuttle, NASA’s human spaceflight program will simply fade away. Fortunately, there is a very strong likelihood that they will succeed.

As Clark notes, it’s ironic that Paul continues to champion transportation approaches with the least probability of achieving his goal of a practical lunar base.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Michele Bachmann Versus Chris Wallace

Ignoring the “flake” question, for which Wallace later appropriately apologized, I thought that Bachmann did just fine on the discussion of gay marriage, states rights and the Constitution. Wallace seemed to think that she was being inconsistent, but I didn’t see that at all. Andrew McCarthy agrees.

Note that you don’t have to agree with Bachmann as to whether or not gay marriage is good or bad to agree that her position is the correct (and a consistent) one from the standpoint of process and law (just as one doesn’t have to oppose abortion to think Roe v. Wade a constitutional abomination).