Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Space

Whittington Strikes Again

17 Comments

He has a typically ignorant opinion piece over at Yahoo News on SLS:

The proposal to stretch out the Space Launch System, crucial for plans to send astronauts beyond Earth orbit to the moon and other destinations, is an ill-advised attempt at predatory budgeting. It would increase the cost of developing the SLS while not addressing the reasons that the JWST has gotten into trouble.

SLS is not only not “crucial” for plans to send astronauts beyond LEO, it will be the death of any such plans, because even if it ever flies (unlikely) it will eat up all the available funding for the hardware and technologies needed to actually do that. We now know that NASA itself has identified several ways to send humans beyond LEO without SLS, and that all of them are much less costly, and can happen much sooner, than an SLS-based scenario.

…underfunding the SLS will disrupt a program that has finally gotten on track, which NASA insiders believe will be ready to finally take astronaut explorers beyond low Earth orbit before this decade is out.

In what way is the SLS “on track”? He doesn’t say. Which “NASA insiders” believe this? What pharmaceuticals result in such a belief? There have been no credible scenarios put forth for the SLS do a mission beyond LEO before this decade is out. Does he just make this stuff up?

[Evening update]

I hate to give his web site hits, but this is hilarious. What’s particularly hilarious is that after all these years, he still can’t get his permalinks to not have a double hash tag.

Rand Simberg really should get out more often and read more than just the latest press release from “Tea Party in Space.”

This is stupidity on a monumental scale. I don’t get my information from “Tea Party In Space.” They often, in fact, get info from me. I work on this stuff for a living, while Mark is too innumerate to even understand it. And note, he has no response to my question of who his “NASA insiders” are, or what drugs they are on.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Libertarian Hangs Out On Wall Street

7 Comments

A front-line report from Tim Carney:

While much of the occupiers’ anger at the “banksters” was typical talk about “greed,” the gripes almost always included something about undue influence. Anthony Hassan, an out-of-work construction worker from Norfolk, Va., sounded a common note, pointing out that bailed-out banks “take some of the money we’ve given them, and they hire lobbyists.” An organic farmer who traveled down from Vermont who called himself Mack (and would not give me his full name) said “we’re at a point where the people with the most money have the most influence.”

They’re right. It does undermine our democracy and harm our economy when hiring a former Senate majority leader, for instance, can be the best investment a company ever makes. Wealthy special interests do dictate policy too much, regardless of which party is in power. I don’t know who made the sign under which I slept Sunday night, but I agreed with its thrust: “Separation of Business & State.” The back read “I can’t afford a lobbyist.”

My agreement with these folks went no further, however, than a common diagnosis of the problem. Their proposed solutions — more campaign finance restrictions and curbs on the freedom of firms to lobby — showed disregard for the freedom of speech. They also don’t seem to understand that getting government more involved in the economy always gets business more involved in government. Outside the small minority of Ron Paul supporters at the park, none of the occupiers saw smaller government as the answer to cronyism and corporatism.

Hard for people who want handouts to be for smaller government. In that, they are diametrically opposed to the Tea Party.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Iran Plot

22 Comments

…some useful thoughts. Bottom line, it’s not a distraction from Justice Department scandals, and it’s not really anything new. It’s just part of the war they’ve been waging, and we’ve been pretending isn’t happening, against us for over three decades.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some questions for the president:

Do you consider the Iranian plot to bomb a U.S. restaurant an act of war? If not, would it have been an act of war had the plot succeeded?

Are you still willing to negotiate with Iran without preconditions? Are you still willing to grant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad entry into the U.S.? Do you maintain that your failure to support the Iranian Green Movement in 2009 was not a significant mistake?

In light of the Iranians’ willingness to plant a bomb in Washington, D.C., do you now consider a nuclear Iran unacceptable? Is a military option to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon off the table?

Nah. All we need is another “reset” button.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Should Liberals Be Skeptical?

8 Comments

…of Occupy Wall Street?

…it is just not the protesters’ apparent allergy to capitalism and suspicion of normal democratic politics that should raise concerns. It is also their temperament. The protests have made a big deal of the fact that they arrive at their decisions through a deliberative process. But all their talk of “general assemblies” and “communiqués” and “consensus” has an air of group-think about it that is, or should be, troubling to liberals. “We speak as one,” Occupy Wall Street stated in its first communiqué, from September 19. “All of our decisions, from our choices to march on Wall Street to our decision to camp at One Liberty Plaza were decided through a consensus process by the group, for the group.” The air of group-think is only heightened by a technique called the “human microphone” that has become something of a signature for the protesters. When someone speaks, he or she pauses every few words and the crowd repeats what the person has just said in unison. The idea was apparently logistical—to project speeches across a wide area—but the effect when captured on video is genuinely creepy.

True liberals certainly should be. But most people who call themselves that these days aren’t. And of course, it’s hard to take very seriously anyone who thinks that Dodd-Frank is “the best liberal hope for improving democratically regulated capitalism.”

[Update a while later]

The Wall Street protesters have been sold a bill of goods:

The narrative that came out of these events—largely propagated by government officials and accepted by a credulous media—was that the private sector’s greed and risk-taking caused the financial crisis and the government’s policies were not responsible. This narrative stimulated the punitive Dodd-Frank Act—fittingly named after Congress’s two key supporters of the government’s destructive housing policies. It also gave us the occupiers of Wall Street.

We have to take back the narrative.