Probably not. It’s pretty clear that Holder has perjured himself, and he’s likely to do it more next Tuesday when he testifies to Congress again.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
The Academic Bubble
Is getting more and more attention.
More Of That “Smart Diplomacy”
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.
The Latest Warm-Monger Scam
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.
Setting The Record Straight
Newt Gingrich’s daughter clears up a long-standing media lie about him.
Drug Shortages
Did the White House undercut Congress? I’m shocked, shocked.
Are Schoolteachers Underpaid?
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.
How Honest Is The Obama Administration?
…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.
Occupy Wall Street Supporters
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.
The Government Caused The Housing Crisis
This shouldn’t be news, but it is, because it doesn’t fit the leftist media narrative, which is that it was caused by underregulation.
[Update late morning]
Will the Republicans break their pledge to stop interfering in the housing market? If so, I will be disappointed, but not surprised.