Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Xenophobic Bitter Clinger

1 Comment

Apparently, the president has become one. Well, at least he’s not clinging to his god or guns.

It’s pretty rich to hear this man complain about untraceable foreign donations, after the games he played with credit cards in the 2008 campaign.

More from Michelle (no, not that one — the one who has always been proud of her country).

[Update a few minutes later]

Back to the future! The White House has an “enemies list.” At least Nixon understood something about our enemies overseas.

I don’t recall, and can’t imagine, George Bush (either of them) ever calling out Democrat political operatives by name. He had a little respect for the office he held.

[Update a while later]

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Academics Seduced

2 Comments

..by radical Islam.

I’m not sure that “seduced” is quite the right word. I agree with Instapundit:

Bending over for tyrants is a major aspect of today’s academic culture, even as the benders-over proclaim their own courage and independence, and demonstrate those by attacking those whom they need not fear, while fearing those whom they do not criticize.

Islamaphobes.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Green Fervor

27 Comments

Red blood. More thoughts on the ecofascist snuff film, and the insularity of the politically correct:

This isn’t a joke for the benefit of you and me. No, this is a knee-slapper for those already committed to the cause. The subtext is, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could just get rid of these tiresome, inconvenient people?” That’s why they’re blown up without anyone trying to change their minds. That’s the joke: “Enough with these idiots already.”

How else to explain the fact that this thing went through the entire pre-production and filming process, was undoubtedly screened by any number of people — most likely including sponsors and PR people — and none of them said, “Are you nuts? We can’t go public with this.”

That’s the outrage here: not that they thought normal people would find it funny, but that the producers and sponsors clearly did think it was funny. It’s like one of those ugly inside jokes high-school cliques share that instantly become horrendous when outsiders find out about them. In their arrogance and insularity, they didn’t realize that their inside joke wasn’t appropriate for mixed company. Imagine Curtis’s horror when he discovered no one was laughing outside the green bunker.

One wonders if he’s learned anything from it.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Space Policy Foolishness

4 Comments

This is a sample of the kind of thing we’ll be working against next year: a Weekly Reader version of space policy, presumably from Representative Olson:

President George W. Bush inaugurated an ambitious and important plan to establish a base on the Moon by building much larger and safer rockets to take our astronauts beyond low Earth orbit. These rockets, called Ares I & Ares V, were part of a system called Constellation and they would be the backbone of a new system of vehicles capable of landing and supporting astronauts on the Moon or elsewhere in the solar system.

Mr. Obama, the candidate, announced he would cut the program and put the production of a heavy lift rocket for five years. But as the election approached, Obama changed his story to get elected and said not only had he always supported NASA & space flight but that he could and should do it better than the Republicans. Once elected Obama quickly returned to his original position and KILLED the program saying it would wait FIVE years.

Pete Olson has been working in Congress to save the space program and the jobs that go with it. Those jobs, filled by engineers, technicians, scientists and managers, are essential to the space program and if lost could never be recovered. This loss of personnel would be only a small part of the tremendous loss the entire nation would suffer as America would lose its lead in space flight. Pete Olson understands all this and working with the entire Houston delegation struggled to preserve what could be, but that was not enough.

I was, myself, dismayed to learn the program was greatly reduced in scope, but Olson explained as in a month when he expects Republicans to take the lead in the House again, that he and the others will be able to put more funding back into NASA to restore the mission. This is not the end. This is just the beginning Olson reported. I believe him.

What Pete Olson doesn’t understand about space space policy and technology would fill a middling-big library. No mention of the budget problems and schedule delays. No mention of the new technologies that will finally be funded. Nope, it’s the standard kindergarten treatment — George Bush had a wonderful plan for exploring the galaxy, bold and ambitious, and going along just swimmingly, and then that mean commie Barack Obama came along and Ended Our Space Program. It just makes you want to cry.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

America Will Survive The Obama Debacle

25 Comments

But will Democrats?

I love the Wile E. Coyote cartoons. It’s nice to see the country finally coming to its senses.

[Update a while later]

Related thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson:

Obama — egged on by obsequious advisers, an out-of-touch, hard-left base, and a toady media — decided that he had done what other Northern liberals had not, either because (a) the country was at last ready for European-style socialism, or (b) his singular charisma and talents could convince it that it was even when it was clearly not.

The result was that our Oedipus/Pentheus rushed headlong into socialized medicine, mega-deficits, needlessly polarizing appointments of the Van Jones type, and various federal takeovers, coupled with quite unnecessary editorializing about largely local matters — from the Skip Gates mess to the Arizona immigration law and Ground Zero mosque.

In each case, the supposed uniter deliberately weighed in on these controversies to quite unfairly demonize his opponents — “stupidly” acting police, Arizona xenophobes picking up children on the way to buy ice cream, Islamophobes wanting to deny religious liberty, etc. A thousand other nicks, from Eric Holder’s “nation of cowards” to Obama’s musings that at some point one needs no more income, ensured continual bleeding as his poll numbers fell by nearly 30 points in just 20 months.

The result was that the president soon lost the moral capital to push through an unpopular agenda — to such a degree that his out-of-the-mainstream views and his polarizing style of governance might well destroy Democratic congressional majorities for a decade.

A decade, if they’re lucky.

I never bought the conventional wisdom that the Obama campaign was brilliantly run. He was just the right guy in the right place at the right time. With the right skin color.