But Other Than That…

March 20, 2011 Rand Simberg 19 Comments

“Barack Obama has been a failure in almost everything he’s done.”

Some of us are less shocked than others.

Also, appropriate smugness, at least when it comes to dealing with the real rubes. The question is, have they really learned, or will they fall for the con again next year?

[Update a few minutes later]

From community organizer to out-of-control cowboy: “I now call on Candidate Obama to protest President Obama.”

The danger of a president like this (and Hillary) was always that they’d feel compelled to demonstrate their national defense bona fides with some kind of ill-thought-out overseas action. But the up side is that it may at least get the Iranians to pay attention.

Science And Society, Technology and Society

Faster, Please

March 19, 2011 Rand Simberg 3 Comments

A new way to prevent or minimize thrombosis?

Philosophy, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

After Earth

March 18, 2011 Rand Simberg 28 Comments

Why, when and how may we have to find another home?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Wasting Sydney Herman’s Dollar

March 18, 2011 Rand Simberg 5 Comments

It’s time for Newsweek to be renamed Lastweek.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

My Goals For Our Libyan Adventure

March 18, 2011 Rand Simberg 43 Comments

They’re pretty limited, really.

I don’t really care who wins, as long as Colonel Whathisname loses. I think that attempting to influence the outcome of events beyond that are far too problematic, with poor prospects for success, and large prospects for quagmire.

But we need to remove this carbuncle from the backside of humanity once and for all, after more than four decades of his insanity and warmaking, particularly now that the president foolishly told him that his time was up, and that his behavior was “unacceptable.” To leave him in power after that pusillanimous action, with no plan to actually make it happen, would weaken us tremendously, in both the Arab world and the globe at large.

He needs to be reminded that actions have consequences — something that he seemed to have forgotten in the transition from Bush to Obama — and if he doesn’t live long enough to learn the lesson, then his successor(s) needs to know it. If we are to rid the world of tyranny, we have to get the proper incentives in place, and one of those lessons should be, if you want to enjoy a comfortable retirement, you don’t slaughter your own people when your rule is challenged.

[Update later morning]

Stephen Green: We seem to have gotten into this war without a strategy. Do we even have an objective?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Twenty Days Of Leftist Thuggery

March 17, 2011 Rand Simberg 49 Comments

…in Wisconsin. And crickets chirp from the same media that was insisting that we all tone it down after Gabbie Giffords was shot. But that was different. She was a Democrat.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

The Launch Lab

March 17, 2011 Rand Simberg 4 Comments

There’s a nice long piece at Air & Space about Mojave. I’m still reading it, so I may have comments later.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

What A Difference A President Makes

March 17, 2011 Rand Simberg 27 Comments

Thoughts on the new rush to war:

Just pointing out the obvious –

Like the comments in the BBC news section right now where you’d think no one had ever tried to put together a coalition of western democracies to depose an Arab tyrant who was abusing his population. And this one hasn’t even bothered to invade anyone recently.

From those comments one thing is clear – that was one well deserved Peace Prize!

Did these people never hear of Saddam gassing the Kurds, running over Shia with tanks to quell their uprising, or throwing his opponents in chippers?

Guess not.

I suppose that means my support for getting Saddam was “blood for oil” but my support for “Lyberation” is virtuous.

I just can’t figure myself out sometimes.

They told me if I voted for John McCain, we’d be bombing Arab countries while the supporters of the bombing promised that we’d be greeted as liberators. And they were right!

Yup.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

“Overpowering Horror”

March 17, 2011 Rand Simberg 46 Comments

Some thoughts on what it takes to slit the throat of a baby:

…to live under the rule of Jews! This is a matter of great shame, an “overpowering horror” that justifies baby-killing in the minds of many (I’d wager most) Palestinians to expiate that shame. I suspect that part of the loathing other Arabs feel for the Palestinians stems from their view that the Jews made the Palestinians their bitches, to be vulgar about it, and no Muslim worthy of the name would permit such an inversion of the natural order to happen. The very notion that a Jew should command and a Muslim obey, that a Jew should ride while a Muslim walks, that a Jew should be armed while a Muslim is weaponless is simply an abomination — an “overpowering horror.”

Not that most would be able to do such a thing — human beings are hard-wired to recoil from slitting throats of three-month-old babies. But while in other circumstances the inability to kill babies would be seen as a good thing, in this case those Palestinians who can’t bring themselves to do that see it as a weakness — they wish they could muster the courage to murder Jewish babies, but unfortunately they can’t. So the second best is to lionize those heroes who do have the cojones to wipe away the shame of being subject to Jewish overlordship.

We underestimate the cultural war in which we are engaged at our extreme peril. I’m not sure I agree that it’s “most,” but it’s enough that it’s as big a problem as the Nazis were, in terms of having to break the back of a racist totalitarian ideology. And we’re not doing much along those lines. Instead, we pretend it doesn’t exist, or that it’s just a few “extremists,” and that we should give equal time to the KKK and murderers of abortion providers.

Transterrestrial Musings