Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Mexifornia

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Observations from VDH:

That schizophrenia is what confuses so many about illegal immigration — the simultaneous furor over even the suggestion of compliance with federal immigration law and the occasional symbolic expressions of dislike for the United States in public fora, whether booing at the Rose Bowl at mention of America, or walking out of a California high school en masse at the sight of an American-flag T-shirt on Cinco de Mayo.

When a foreign nation is treated as the home team, and when the home team is booed in the Rose Bowl, I think we can see why the entire open-borders, non-enforcement, ‘La Raza’ paradigm of tribal chauvinism based on ethnic solidarity has been proven an abject failure — summed up by one word, “hypocrisy.”

And it’s just one factor in the continuing California decline and ascendancy of Texas and the Gulf Coast.

Well, at least they’re wising up in Holland.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Disadvantages Of An Elite Education

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A long but important essay, that explains much about the mess we’re in, when one considers that these people are running the country, and our lives, particularly the one currently in the White House. For what it’s worth, I’ve never had a problem talking to either plumbers or auto mechanics. Perhaps because I’ve spent a good part of my life doing both.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

How The Obama Administration Conned The WaPo

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…on “Fast and Furious.”

It’s easy to con someone who wants to be conned. The story was too good to check.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The White House goes Pravda, and sics the MSM on the GOP. And of course, it’s happy to oblige.

[Afternoon update]

The fired whistleblower speaks:

When asked if ATF had violated the law in this case, he responded:

Of course if violates the law! They conspired to traffic firearms, you can’t do that under color of law. … There was no intent to follow the guns, this never had a chance of succeeding. It was a failed plan from the beginning.

I think that this whole administration was a failed plan from the beginning, that never had a chance of succeeding. Fortunately, since success would have been even more disastrous, from the standpoint of maintaining our liberty, than their failure has been.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Why Is The World’s Greatest Orator…?

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…such a lousy rhetorician?

if Obama is following popular sentiment, he certainly isn’t leading it. And has he ever managed to do that? The New York Times’s incoherent mishmash of an editorial on the speech tries to damn him with faint praise: “At his best, the president can be hugely persuasive.” But even that praise is highly unpersuasive. True, Obama was persuasive enough to get elected president–but that was with a hapless opponent, a dour nepotist as his intraparty rival, a public fed up with the other party, and a media-driven cult of personality.

Part of that cult of personality is the myth that he is the World’s Greatest Orator, a myth the Times evokes with its hazy recollections of times when he was “highly persuasive.” When was he highly persuasive? When he sold the public on the so-called stimulus and ObamaCare? When he campaigned for Democrats in 2010? When he rallied public support for his last change in Afghan policy, an increase in the U.S. troop presence?

The truth is, there’s an Emperor’s New Clothes aspect to Obama’s supposed status as the World’s Greatest Orator. We’ve heard the myth of his eloquence over and over, yet he keeps “unexpectedly” making gaffes or tin-eared statements.

I’ve always thought his oratorical powers, like most if not all of his vaunted aspects, greatly overrated.

[Update early afternoon]

What’s up with all the presidential gaffes?

When you add up all the mistakes he’s made–not slips of the tongue, but real errors in statements and speeches he could read from the ubiquitous teleprompter–they make quite a number. So what? you may ask. The answer is that hundreds of people traditionally read the drafts of presidential speeches and statements. That happens for two good reasons. First, presidential utterances are instant policy. It’s hard to walk away from a public statement. Second, the myriad political appointees want their leader to look good, and they strain to ensure the accuracy of his statements. Or at least they did when I had first-hand knowledge of such things, now a few years back.

I don’t think that is happening in this administration. A friend said to me earlier today that he was really amazed at the discipline of Obama’s team, specifically in the small number of leaks compared with previous administrations–especially W’s years. It’s a good point, and that only happens when information flow is severely restricted; when only a handful of folks know what’s happening, chances to leak are reduced. (On the recent decision on force level reductions in Afghanistan, for example, most of the “inside the Beltway” rumors were dead wrong).

I suspect that drafts of presidential speeches and statements are treated the same way. I think they are only circulated among a very small number of people for comment, and those people are probably very busy, and don’t have the time to check things like the precise name and history of a Medal of Honor recipient.

That would explain today’s embarrassment (embarrassment to us, to the nation–he speaks for us, after all–since he doesn’t seem to suffer embarrassment very often), but it doesn’t explain things like the apology for his lack of fluency in “Austrian” or his lack of knowledge that we have a Marine Corps (pronounced “core”). That comes from lousy education, from lack of basic knowledge about the world. And if I’m right about the small number of administration officials who get to see his words before they’re delivered in public, it tells us that they, too, aren’t properly educated.

It tells us that the president and his trusted advisers are the products of the atrocious, politically correct educational system that’s wrecking the country in so many ways. And it’s very worrisome. It’s part of the Orwellian universe that envelops many of our leaders, a universe in which they feel free to simply invent “facts” so long as they fit the emotional and ideological pattern that really matters to the elite.

I think it also tells us that he himself is the ultimate poster child for affirmative action, and continues to be.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Static Scoring Of Health-Care Costs

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Yuval Levin notes that CBO is admitting that their projections are intrinsically wrong:

What we have here, in other words, is a frank admission by CBO that their methodology ignores the effects of policy changes on the behavior of both providers and consumers—effects which must, of course, be essential to the consequences of any health-care reform.

This methodological “gap” strongly favors the left in the health-care debate, because it assumes that the economics of health care are just a matter of manipulating levels of spending, and so that crude price controls will not affect access and quality and that market competition will not reduce costs. There is, of course, ample evidence of the former effect (especially in Medicaid, which in most states pays doctors at even lower rates than Medicare, at least for now), and there is some evidence of the latter too (though market forces haven’t had much of a chance to be tried, except in the Medicare prescription-drug benefit; other experiments (like Medicare advantage) all take place in the shadow of the existing fee-for-service Medicare system and so can’t really change the behavior of providers—they therefore have neither traditional Medicare’s ability to boss doctors around nor a market system’s ability to keep costs down, so they end costing no less than traditional Medicare, and sometimes even a little more.)

It’s the same kind of scam that they pull when they statically score the effect of a change in tax rates. It’s lunacy to assume that it will have no effect on behavior, and yet they do, and so delude themselves that they can predict with any confidence the resulting revenue.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“I Didn’t Create A Single Job”

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At last, a presidential candidate who understand economics and the limits of government power:

“Don’t get me wrong,” Johnson said in a statement. “We are proud of this distinction. We had a 11.6 percent job growth that occurred during our two terms in office. But the headlines that accompanied that report – referring to governors, including me, as ‘job creators’ – were just wrong.”

“The fact is, I can unequivocally say that I did not create a single job while I was governor,” Johnson added. Instead, “we kept government in check, the budget balanced, and the path to growth clear of unnecessary regulatory obstacles.”

And the current gang in DC is doing exactly the opposite, so there’s no reason that continuing bad economic news should be “unexpected.”

[Update a couple minutes later]

The one stimulus that the government refuses to try:

It’s almost as if Washington envisions the economy not as a complex network of billions of voluntary, mutually beneficial relationships, but as a lawn mower which could be forced to run smoothly if only they’d yank hard enough on the starter cord.

Amid government’s rush to “do something,” we forget that, on a percentage basis, the nation’s most productive years, those in which the U.S. overtook Great Britain to become the world’s leading economic power, occurred prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. What many lawmakers and regulators are not considering here is the strong possibility that the stimulus and intervention have had a deleterious effect.

No, that couldn’t possibly be.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Elena Bonner

Jay Nordlinger remembers:

Last summer, Bonner reflected, “I can say that many of Chazov’s Western colleagues [in the anti-nuclear organization] were wonderful people and high professionals. But they, I think, understand nothing of the essence of socialism-totalitarianism, and were very easily deceived by the organization’s name.”

She continued, “Millions of people today are deceived just as easily, believing in the slogan of the Middle East ‘Quartet,’ ‘Two states for two peoples.’ And I’m afraid that they will realize their mistake only after it becomes impossible to save the State of Israel without a third world war. It will be like Munich. You remember what Chamberlain said: ‘I have brought you peace.’ And the Second World War began!”

In Bonner’s view, the Nobel peace prize had “been devalued.”

No kidding. And sadly for freedom, the world remains full of useful idiots.