Most people have been fact checking all the nonsense that was in the domestic portion of the president’s speech last night, which was its focus, but Barry Rubin vigorously fisks the crack pipery that was the foreign-policy bits.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
A Twinkle Of Hope
My lead article in the special Reason February issue on space is on line now. This paragraph is somewhat pertinent to today’s events:
Can space policy be fixed? Not without the national will to do so. It would take either real visionaries making policy decisions or some sort of existential crisis (e.g., an asteroid with our number on it) to break out of the policy logjam. But the chances of the former are not as low as one might think. Had Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) not switched parties seven years ago while being allowed to keep his seniority, the 88-year-old defender of the status quo would not be the current chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Instead the chairmanship would have fallen to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who has defended the administration’s space policy. Rohrabacher will almost certainly take over when Hall retires or is term-limited out in five years. If Newt Gingrich by some miracle wins the GOP presidential nomination and the White House, he would be the most space-conversant commander in chief in American history. So the stars might yet align.
But I still think it’s an uphill battle for Gingrich to win, even if he wins Florida.
Fried Food And Heart Disease
No, it doesn’t increase the risk.
Just one more nail in the coffin of the notion that the enemy is fat. What’s important is the type of fat, and lard is actually just fine, at least in terms of either cholesterol or weight gain. The real problem with fried foods is the batter. And the potatoes in the fries.
Obama’s Green Energy Albatross
What a disastrous policy.
A Tale Of Two Rights
My thoughts on abortion and guns, over at PJMedia.
OK, I Think I’ve Had Enough To Drink
…to sit through the #SOTU. I’m not in @VodkaPundit ‘s class, but I do what I can.
[Wednesday-morning update]
Was the president’s speech as boring to watch as it was to read? Well, you can read it faster.
[Update a while later]
An Obama Voter
Larry Summers’ Economics Memo To Obama
Eleven stunning revelations. Actually, I’m not that surprised.May of them are what we’ve been saying all along.
Roe V Wade
The pervading dishonesty. It really was a judicial atrocity, and that’s true regardless of one’s opinion on whether or not abortion should be legal.
World War
The tide of war is not receding, it’s advancing:
…we face a global war waged by a well-established alliance of Iranian and Syrian Islamists, Russian and Chinese crony plutocrats, and Latin American radical leftists who share a love of totalitarian control of their own people and a hatred of America. We have failed to design a strategy to win this war, and indeed it often seems as if our leaders share the world view of our enemies. Obama thought he could make deals with all of them, apparently believing this would come about when they realized he shared their conviction that most of the world’s problems are America’s fault. Indeed, when push comes to shove in their own countries, his instinctive response, as Fouad Ajami recently wrote regarding Syria, is to favor the success of the anti-American tyrants.
Also, why Western elites don’t understand the world, and why their foreign policies fail.