Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

We’re Not As Dumb As You Want Us To Be

18 Comments

…and you’re not as smart as you think you are.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is worth repeating:

If I had said a day ago that your typical New York Times reporter doesn’t have the vaguest sense of what the rule of law means, I would have heard from all sorts of earnest liberal readers — and probably some conservative ones too — about how I was setting up a straw man. But now we know it’s true. It’s not just that she doesn’t know what it is, it’s that even after (presumably) looking it up, she still couldn’t describe it and none of her editors raised an eyebrow when she buttered it.

I wouldn’t mind this rule by the “elites” quite as much if they really were elite, and not just graduates of grade-inflated Ivy-League schools who apparently never learned much of use in the real world, (assuming that they even had the cerebral propensity to do so).

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

How Quaint

7 Comments

Thoughts from Jonah Goldberg, on the ridiculous notion that the left has that only the courts can or should assess constitutionality:

Newsweek’s Ben Adler was aghast at the clause in the GOP’s Pledge to America that Republicans will provide a “citation of constitutional authority” for every proposed piece of legislation. “We have a mechanism for assessing the constitutionality of legislation, which is the independent judiciary,” Adler wrote. “An extraconstitutional attempt to limit the powers of Congress is dangerous even as a mere suggestion, and it constitutes an encroachment on the judiciary.”

A progressive blogger, meanwhile, writes in U.S. News & World Report that such talk of requiring constitutionality is “just wacky.”

Before we get to the historical niceties, a question.

Does anyone, anywhere, think legislators should vote for legislation they think is unconstitutional? Anyone? Anyone?

How about presidents? Should they sign such legislation into law?

Yet, according to this creepy logic, there’s no reason for congressmen to pass, obey, or even consider the supreme law of the land. Reimpose slavery? Sure! Let’s see if we can catch the Supreme Court asleep at the switch. Nationalize the TV stations? Establish a king? Kill every first-born child? Why not? It ain’t unconstitutional until the Supreme Court says so!

And of course, that means the president can’t veto legislation because it’s unconstitutional, because that’s apparently not his job. Wouldn’t want to “encroach” on the judiciary!

Of course, reasonable people understand how absurd all of this is.

Sadly, the country is not run by (nor is the media staffed with) reasonable people.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Non-News In Space

9 Comments

People are making too big a deal of Lori’s statement yesterday that we are not abandoning the moon. This is not any different than NASA has been saying since February, though the message has been badly garbled, and the president didn’t help with his flip and foolish comment about how “Buzz has already been there.”

Flexible Path always meant just that — flexible, and that flexibility included the ability, eventually, to go to the lunar surface, just not as a first destination.

Now, as it happens, I don’t think that it’s as expensive to build a lander as NASA and the Augustine panel seemed to think, particularly if you have a depot at L1 or L2, and we could have even retained the VSE plan of return to the moon first, but it doesn’t really matter now, because some future administration and Congress is going to make that decision. The important thing for now is to focus on developing the technology and building the hardware that’s necessary for all BEO missions, regardless of ultimate destination, while the opportunity exists. And one thing that doesn’t include is a heavy-lift vehicle, but at least until we can get a sensible Congress (perhaps next year, but there’s a lot of education to be done on that front), we will have to waste money on it. But as long as there’s enough left over to do the things that do need doing, and we don’t starve them for funds (Mike Griffin’s greatest sin), at least we won’t have to waste any more time.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

But Don’t Call Them Fascists

56 Comments

What were they thinking? It’s amazing to see them so willing to show their true totalitarian nature so blatantly. And it’s too late to pull it, despite the attempts. That’s the magic of the Internet.

[Update a few minutes later]

A comment that Iowahawk left at the Youtube page (and reposted on his FB page):

In order for your “No Pressure” advert to have been made, I am assuming several writers pitched a professionally-prepared storyboard to a committee, detailing shot-by-shot each second of …the film. The committee approved it, along with a minimum $250,000 budget to hire actors, director, & crew. Each scene probably took 3-10 takes, and weeks of post production by special effects wizards.

At no time did a single person involved in this clusterf**k say, “hey, maybe it isn’t the best PR to air our fantasies about detonating the people who don’t agree with us into a mist of blood meat and bone fragments.”

This has got to be the biggest FAIL in the entire history of the internet. Anyone remotely associated with the production of this film should forever be banished from any public institution in the English speaking world, and immediately referred for psychiatric evaluation.

I know what my evaluation would be.

[Update a while later]

More thoughts from a James Delingpole:

With No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness.

Again, what were they thinking?

They were thinking something like the things these people (who were finally brought to justice) were thinking. Because they’re all children of the first totalitarian, Rousseau. It’s what the left does.

[Update a few minutes later]

Spring time for Al Gore — the eco-Anschluss.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Change!

2 Comments

I did not know this:

The basic idea of debate under rules is not especially sinister: It is simply a way to control the abject chaos of the People’s House. But it used to be that lots of bills came out under “open rules” wherein any member in the chamber could move to amend at the appropriate time. Nancy Pelosi’s 111th is the first Congress in history that hasn’t brought a single bill out under an open rule.

I don’t find it at all surprising, of course.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

They Hate Us

46 Comments

They really, really hate us:

They think we are fools. They view our religion as superstition. They label our skepticism as ignorance and our patriotism as racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and fattening.

Nothing is worse to a liberal than fat.

The liberal contempt for America is shining through.

President Obama called voters “whiners” in public. Heaven knows what he calls them in private.

Rubes.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Why Chuck Schumer Should Be Losing

6 Comments

…and would be, if the press did its job properly:

Fortunately for Schumer, that article ran on page A3 of a Saturday edition, and did not become a big story. The New York press never seriously examined why a New York senator was so focused on the health of a California bank, why Schumer aired his fearful comments so publicly, or how the collapse of IndyMac aligned with the financial interests of donors to Schumer and the DSCC.

…There’s a great deal of disembodied anger at Wall Street in the public today. It is interesting how little of that anger or scrutiny is directed at the senator closest to Wall Street, whose actions, in this case, were strangely fortuitous to the bottom line of his donors.

Interesting, and infuriating.