Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Few Words For #OWS

7 Comments

…from Bill Whittle.

[Update a few minutes later]

The Left’s war on self reliance (not a permalink).

[Update a couple minutes later]

They are the one percent:

Many “Occupy Wall Street” protesters arrested in New York City reside in more luxurious homes than some of their rhetoric might suggest, a Daily Caller investigation has found.

And what did the arrest records of all those Tea Party members reveal? Oh, wait! There aren’t any.

The Tea Party is a political movement. #OWS is a crime wave.

[Update late morning]

Lifestyles of the rich and arrested — a slideshow of homes of the “99%.”

[Bumped]

Hey, remember how Queen Nancy told us that the Tea Party was just astroturf, not a real grass-roots movement? Well, ACORN has been busted:

…an activist named Channing, who has been at the Occupy Wall Street protests from the beginning, volunteers the information that the former ACORN organization–through its new front group, New York Communities for Change–is paying $10 per hour and $100 per day to homeless people to attend the demonstrations.

It’s such a popular protest among the disaffected, they have to be paid to attend. And I wonder where ACORN is getting the money? From the 53%?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

More Of That “Smart Diplomacy”

2 Comments

Thoughts on the UNESCO fiasco:

For the U.S., the UNESCO vote was a debacle, with the assembled states voting 107 to 14 in favor of admitting the Palestinians, and 52 states abstaining. That would have been the moment for the U.S. ambassador to read UNESCO’s assembly the riot act and announce that the U.S. was pulling out, as it did in 1984, under President Ronald Reagan; returning only in 2003, under President George W. Bush.

Instead, the U.S. diplomatic message to UNESCO has been one of apology, regrets and fawning statements of support for a U.N. body that has just slapped the U.S. in the chops. U.S officials have even been hinting that they are looking for some kind of workaround, to get the money flowing again.

Insanity.

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

The Latest Warm-Monger Scam

2 Comments

Some thoughts:

Here’s what interest me: why do the journalists and professors so fervently believe in things they cannot possibly verify on their own?

Well, they believe in the “scientists.” But why? Are all scientists always right? Of course not; the definition of science is that new information and ideas are constantly refining or overturning old verities. The definition of science is that scientists are sometimes wrong, or will be at some point.

What if it’s a class thing? Instapundit has a link to an essay class warfare within the New Class. “OWS is best understood not as a populist movement against the bankers, but instead as the breakdown of the New Class into its two increasingly disconnected parts. The upper tier, the bankers-government bankers-super credentialed elites. But also the lower tier, those who saw themselves entitled to a white collar job in the Virtue Industries of government and non-profits — the helping professions, the culture industry, the virtueocracies, the industries of therapeutic social control, as Christopher Lasch pointed out in his final book, The Revolt of the Elites.”

This seems to me to be the same thing. Journalists who are not scientists, or professors who are not climate scientists, identify with the Knowledge Class: the technologists and researchers.

The phrase “the science is settled” is the very antithesis of science. But these people don’t really understand science.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Are Schoolteachers Underpaid?

8 Comments

No:

Most teachers have Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees in education, and most people with education degrees are teachers. Decades of research has shown that education is a less rigorous course of study than other majors: Teachers enter college with below-average SAT scores but receive much higher GPAs than other students. It may be that a degree in education simply does not reflect the same underlying skills and knowledge as a degree in, say, history or chemistry. When we compare salaries based on objective measures of cognitive ability — such as SAT, GRE, or IQ scores — the teacher salary penalty disappears.

I’d always suspected that, but I had never actually seen the statistics. Colleges of Education should be abolished, or at least not eligible for federal funding of any kind, including student loan guarantees.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

How Honest Is The Obama Administration?

5 Comments

…not very:

Barack Obama wants to run for reelection posing as a crusader for clean government battling against the special interests. In 2008, I know that Obama convinced much of the press corps that he was running a “cleaner” campaign than his rivals.

Obama attracted some libertarian, moderate, and conservative support because he convinced people he would bring good government to the White House and curb the influence of special interests. Even if his is a liberal White House, the thinking went, at least it will be a HONEST liberal White House.

Team Obama has already indicated it plans to try to ride this wave again in 2012. David Axelrod pushed these lines on Sunday morning television. And now, liberal columnist Jonathan Alter, intimately dialed into the West Wing, is trumpeting this very argument. I quote Alter’s claims not to pick a fight with him, but because if Alter is saying it, you can bet this is the talk behind closed doors in Obama’s inner circle.

“He has one asset that hasn’t received much attention: He’s honest.”

But Obama frequently tells blatant falsehoods about important matters, and then in a Clintonian fashion explains how some interpretation of his words could be made to correspond to the truth.

For your consideration, I provide some counter-examples:

Lots of links there.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Occupy Wall Street Supporters

11 Comments

The comprehensive list:

Communist Party USA

The American Nazi Party

Revolutionary Communist Party

Black Panthers

Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan

CAIR

Some big names in the political world have also lent support to the cause:

President Barack Obama

Vice President Joe Biden

Nancy Pelosi

International Leaders and Governments:

Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei

Hugo Chavez

Revolutionary Guards of Iran

The Govt of North Korea

Communist Party of China

Hezbollah

They’re uniters, not dividers.