Was nothing like what happened under Fast’n’Furious. But expect the defenders of the administration to attempt to continue the “they did it too!” defense.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
I Am Barack Obama
…and I am the one percent.
[Update a few minutes later]
If you think that someone else should pay your tuition because you want them to pay your tuition, and that’s your opinion — you’re just putting it out there, you might be a fleabagger.
Think Things Can’t Get Worse?
Think again. As long as the people who put these economically ruinous policies in place remain in power, they’re likely to.
[Update a couple minutes later]
How government spending impoverished us all. I think that the GDP is indeed a very flawed way of assessing the state of health of the economy. If we had a better measure, the notion that WW II ended the Great Depression wouldn’t make much sense at all. It simply set the stage for the recovery in the late forties, once we returned to sane economic policies after fifteen years.
The Iranian Assassination Attempt
Just demonstrates once again that our fearless leaders are clueless about Islam:
The Iranian government was making a statement, one it continues to make, and one which the Obama administration is incapable of hearing: the Iranian government does not perceive international law or any Western-based institutional system as legitimate. This is the same statement that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber, made when he pleaded guilty in a Detroit court of attempting to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight. Abdulmutallab claimed that he was not guilty under Islamic law, and was only pleading guilty because he was in an American courtroom governed by American law.
This was the mindset of Yasser Arafat, when in the wake of having signed the Oslo accords, he hastened to tell Arab audiences — in Arabic — that he had in actuality signed the Peace of Mecca, the peace Mohammed signed with the Koresh tribe.
Weeks ago, the Egyptian government withheld protection of the Israeli embassy from a bloodthirsty mob until President Obama himself directly intervened with the Egyptians. Prior to that moment, the Egyptian government was perfectly content to ignore its legal obligation to protect a foreign embassy, even when it meant the embassy personnel would be slaughtered.
The authentic voice of the Arab Spring is not seen in the MSM hype or the Obama administration depiction of democracy breaking out in Tahrir Square, but in the rape of journalist Lara Logan. The charade of the Arab Spring is revealed in the brain-splattered head of a Coptic Christian, who was one of dozens of Christians purposely crushed by military vehicles as they repeatedly sped through the crowd mauling demonstrators.
The Christians are protesting the burning of churches, a conflagration unleashed with the rise of Egypt’s Arab Spring and the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood. The face of the Arab Spring, so lauded by this administration and the MSM, is revealed in pictures of rank and file soldiers joining with the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood, who were brutally attacking the Christian demonstrators that the soldiers were supposed to protect.
In another indulgence of fatuous behavior, President Obama asked both sides to exercise restraint.
As I said, it’s like the idiot principal who suspends both the bully and the bullied for “fighting.”
October 14th
A day that should live in infamy:
Hank Paulson’s bloodless banking coup demonstrated that a nearly all-powerful government which believes it is untouchable can and will do anything once it gins up enough of a crisis atmosphere. Paulson’s putsch gave cover to the long list of heavy-handed actions which have followed during the Obama administration, from arbitrarily changing the pecking order in bankruptcy, to preventing nonunion manufacturing plants from opening, to defying direct court orders, to Dodd-Frank’s attempt to permanently keep the government in banks’ boardrooms — and much, much more.
This, too, is what fascism looks like.
Whittington Strikes Again
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.
A Libertarian Hangs Out On Wall Street
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.
“Progressives” Versus Democracy
It’s a never-ending story.
A Scandal Iceberg
Gunwalker was just the tip. But the media doesn’t want to know.
The Iran Plot
…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.