When the president has lost Gary Trudeau…
Though I haven’t noticed much support for protesters in Iran. He let him off too easy.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Demagoguery
The president is now trying to distract from his own policies by blaming the oil companies for high gas prices, and he wants to increase their taxes, by taking away “subsidies.”
a) Does he really think that increasing oil companies’ costs will reduce gas prices? Apparently the question tied Jay Carney up in verbal knots.
b) Do oil companies get much in the way of “subsidies” that other companies don’t? If he’s talking about things like accelerated depreciation and R&D tax credits, this is helpful to any company, not just an oil company. If he is proposing to take it away from them alone, isn’t he simply punishing a vital industry because it’s making him look bad?
Ramesh Ponnoru makes a good point:
The big energy subsidies, on a per-unit-of-energy basis, are for ethanol, solar, and wind power. Get rid of the oil subsidies — and the “oil subsidies” — and nothing much changes. Get rid of the subsidies for those other energy sources, and those industries disappear. Just ask their lobbyists.
And good riddance, too, if they can’t make it without Uncle Sugar.
[Update mid afternoon]
“The president doesn’t know squat about energy production.” Which, unfortunately, doesn’t distinguish it in any way from most other subjects.
The Politics Of Star Trek
Thoughts from Ilya Somin:
Instead, it is the Federation that turns out to be a sort of kinder, gentler Soviet Union. Both are multicultural, federal, socialist states with an official ideology of egalitarianism. But the Federation lacks the Gulags, secret police, and mass murder (or at least we never see them on-screen!). Meanwhile, the Romulans represent several of the negative qualities that many leftists associate with the present-day West: elitism, arrogance, and intolerance for other cultures. The same can be said of many other Star Trek villains, such as the Ferengi, who represent the supposed evils of capitalism. At some level, of course, Star Trek is a projection of Western values. After all, egalitarian socialism is a Western ideology. However, Trek is far more hostile to the present-day West than Nussbaum and some other left of center critics recognize.
Some say Roddenberry was a dreamer. But (sadly) he’s not the only one. Imagine.
Good Question
Dear Mr. President: what took you so long?
Here’s why he waited: “…there was no immaculate conception!”
It is a shocker.
[Update late morning]
OK, so why is the birth certificate in layers?
[Bumped]
[Update just before noon]
More analysis. And the Freepers are discussing it. Many think that it’s an artifact of Adobe Illustrator.
Inside Every Leftist
…is a little authoritarian dying to get out. Harold Pollack channels his inner Tom Friedman.
Is Obama Too Smart For His Own Good?
Yeah, I laughed pretty hard, too, when I read Dana Milbank’s nutty theory (unless it was really intended to be a joke). Jen Rubin isn’t impressed by it, either:
I hate to be prosaic about this, but what is the evidence that Obama is a complex guy? ( None of the three gurus have met or actually diagnosed him, of course, and I’d bet, just a wild guess here, that they are liberal Democrats who just think he is swell.)
After all, Obama has not blazed new political or policy trails as Bill Clinton did. He’s written no scholarly books (sorry, memoirs don’t count). His understanding of the Middle East has been so slight and his strategy so misguided that there are no Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and we have been spectacularly unsuccessful in stopping the hegemonic aspirations of Iran. I mean, isn’t it just as likely that Obama’s a garden-variety liberal with poor decision-making skills?
Much more likely, actually. I’d go with Occam’s Razor here. And as she notes, they said the same thing about Jimmy Carter.
[Update mid morning]
Jonah Goldberg doesn’t think much of Milbank’s thesis, either.
In Which I Scoop Donald Trump
I’ve had a document for a while now that I have neither disclosed, or provided to Wikileaks. But now that the Donald seems on the verge of spilling the beans, I’ve decided it’s time to go public, so I can scoop, or “Trump” him (ha ha…). I can’t know for sure whether this is genuine, but in light of the rest of the history that is slowly being revealed, (e.g., by Stanley Kurtz), these Columbia transcripts that the president has refused to release look quite plausible. Continue reading In Which I Scoop Donald Trump
OK, Does Trump Have The Goods?
…or is he just continuing to bluff out a poker hand?
In an interview with the Associated Press, Trump alleged that Mr. Obama had been “a terrible student,” and wondered how he could have been accepted to prestigious schools like Columbia and Harvard Universities.
“I heard he was a terrible student, terrible,” Trump told the AP. “How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard? I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records.”
I would be very depressed about a choice between Obama and Trump, about as much as I was with the choice last time (partly depending on running mate — Palin was the only saving grace of the ticket), but I am popping lots of corn right now. Notwithstanding my current restrictions for salt and carbs…
If what I suspect is the truth eventually comes out, it will be a horrific indictment of affirmative action, which in this case may have resulted in the Peter Principle being accelerated to the nth power, having been instituted by the entire electorate. On the other hand, it may have inoculated the nation from making such a mistake again for decades. On the gripping hand, it will be bad news for good black candidates for decades, as I warned Obama supporters at the time.
[Update Monday evening[
But don’t say he’s not a conservative! Trump gave fifty grand to Rahm Emmanuel’s mayoral campaign. He must think that Republicans are stupid. Sadly, there’s a lot of evidence to support his belief.
Just A Right-Wing Fantasy
No, of course Atlas Shrugged has nothing to do with life in modern America:
Ah, that must be the Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Law, or one of the Fairness Laws, or something, right? The WSJ isn’t sure what law the NLRB is talking about, either. Not only do businesses routinely relocate to find the most advantageous environment possible, states and cities compete for that business by calculating their business climate. If this has escaped the notice of the NLRB, perhaps they should get out more.
This will be an important court case, assuming it’s fought. Then again, it’s hard to feel too bad for Boeing — as Mickey says, live by crony capitalism, die by crony capitalism. Sadly, we’ve also seen this sort of corporatism/fascism wasting our space dollars as well, in addition to inhibiting innovation.
Thoughts On Muslim Charity
…and fake “reformers”:
Sura 9:60 explicitly says that one category of Muslims to whom alms are to be given is those toiling “in the cause of Allah.” This passage is interpreted by classical Islamic scholarship to refer to those engaged in violent jihadist operations — a proposition for which I cite Reliance of the Traveller and the annotations to the official Saudi version of the Koran that interpret sura 9:60.
It is not an answer to this to say, as Ms. Qudosi does, “I am not an Islamic scholar.” She makes that concession, by the way, in order chastise National Review because “all it takes is a little bit of research and fact-checking to make sure you know what you’re talking about, rather than indulging in bigoted statements that ensure higher readership among a fringe audience.” But who is the one who has failed to do the research and fact-checking? I’d be delighted if Ms. Qudosi’s jihad-bleached version of Islam enjoyed such broad acceptance among Muslims that the interpretation I am writing about could be described as “fringe.” Unfortunately, it is accepted by millions of Muslims the world over, precisely because it represents the Islam of authoritative Islamic scholars and jurisprudents. Saying, “I’m not a scholar,” and putting your head in the sand rather than giving us a compelling reason why these scholars have it wrong may win you applause from Westerners desperate to be convinced, or from Muslims whose idea of “reform” is to pretend that the bad stuff is not in the doctrine. But it is not going to get you anywhere with the millions of Muslims who believe al-Azhar sheikhs and other scholars who’ve spent their lives studying authoritative sources like Reliance of the Traveller are a more reliable guide.
If it were only them sticking their heads in the sand, it would be one thing, but they insist that we all do.