Matt Welch has dismayed thoughts on the new Obama doctrine.
They’re not really anti-war. They’re either just on the other side, or they’re anti-Republican-in-the-White-House-war.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Hoping For A Shutdown?
Howard Dean should be careful what he wishes for.
In general, I’ve never been impressed by Howard Dean’s political perspicacity, and I agree with this:
“This isn’t 1995,” Weber said. “Obama is not Clinton; Boehner isn’t Gingrich.”
There’s something else about it not being 1995 that matters. A lot of the blame on the Republicans was driven by the media, which was still in shock and angry that their political party had been repudiated at the polls (remember the late Peter Jennings’ comment about it being a “temper tantrum” of a “two-year old”?). As I was mentioning to someone on the phone this morning when the topic of a shutdown came up, Fox News didn’t exist in 1995. Neither did the non-leftist blogosphere. They won’t have a free-fire zone to shape the narrative this time. If the Senate holds up a budget, or the president refuses to sign one, over a few billion dollars in budget cuts, when the public is pretty clearly much more concerned about spending levels now than they were then, it will be a lot harder to get the public, and particularly the independents, to blame the Republicans.
Why The Left Doesn’t Understand Iran
A review of a chilling movie.
As a commenter notes, one reason that the left is blind to this danger is that it views the world through a narrow prism of class and wealth, and doesn’t really understand religion or religious fanaticism.
Black Flight
Thoughts on the abysmal failure of “liberal” social nostrums, and their particularly devastating effects on the urban black community, from Walter Russell Mead. The problem is that they’ll probably take their voting patterns with them to the new locales, ruining them as well.
[Update a few minutes later]
The Jim Crow roots of the Davis-Bacon Act.
The College Application Process
Thoughts on the insanity of it, from George Will. Though I beat Andrew Ferguson to this beat almost a decade ago.
Earth Hour In London
A first-hand report on the Marching Morons, from Mark Steyn:
The money-no-object Metropolitan Police had helicopters whirring non-stop over Central London during today’s mass hallucination (they’re still overhead as I write), but, as usual, not a lot of competent policing on the ground. As is their wont, they did little to prevent property damage – or the general intimidation of visitors to the capital by so-called “anarchists” (an odd term for pro-government welfare-funded thugs).
An odd term indeed.
[Late Sunday evening update]
More thoughts on the oxymoron of leftist “anarchists.”
The War On Fox News
…is heating up again.
I’ll bet they still don’t have an exit strategy.
Heavy-Lift Follies
Keith Cowing, Marcia Smith and Jeff Foust all have reports on General Bolden’s comments yesterday, some of which were in response to questions from Keith. I would note (as Jeff does) that Congress doesn’t want a vehicle sized in metric tons — it asked for one in tons. NASA seems to have confused this issue by sizing in MT, and now Keith and Marcia are stating that as though it’s the requirement. But that oversizes the system considerably, as I noted in my satirical but sadly accurate robot theater a few weeks ago.
I Don’t Care
Getting The Incentives Right
Enlightened women honoring gentlemen.
For quite a while, I’ve been thinking that we’ve lost the concept of a gentleman, to the point that the word has lost its meaning. It makes me crazy when I hear a newscaster say something absurd and with no apparent irony, like “…the gentleman who raped the young woman is still being sought by police.” Folks, it’s not just a synonym for “man.”