My thoughts, over at PJM.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Evil Versus Evil
Thoughts on the continuing academic cover up of the evil of communism. We should have the goal of making Marxists as much of a social pariah as Nazis, both on and off campus. Including the idiot Che admirers.
“No Labels”
Is a racist organization. It’s so much fun to turn the Alinskyites’ own weapons back on them.
The Weakness Of The Case For ObamaCare
Some useful thoughts from James Taranto:
In defense of Marshall, he runs a political blog and is not a lawyer. But our sense is that he accurately captures, as well as mirrors, the prevailing mentality of those on the progressive left who are lawyers. They refused to take seriously the argument that ObamaCare is constitutionally infirm, and they are now realizing that was a mistake.
We recall a conversation with a young liberal lawyer we met at an event in late March, a few days after the House passed ObamaCare. When we pointed out that there were likely to be court challenges to the new law, particularly the mandate to purchase insurance, she was dismissive. She asserted that the constitutional questions were well settled. When we offered arguments to the contrary, she did not engage them but became emphatic to the point of belligerence, insisting that it was “crazy” to harbor any doubts about the constitutionality of ObamaCare.
Our position was not that ObamaCare was clearly unconstitutional or that it was likely to be struck down, merely that there were serious constitutional arguments against it that had some possibility of prevailing. This modest claim so shocked our new acquaintance that an initially pleasant encounter turned rancorous and left us feeling she had insulted our intelligence.
Don’t worry, we got over our hurt feelings. But the dismissive attitude we encountered in that conversation and again in Marshall’s post leads us to think that the pro-ObamaCare side may not be prepared to mount a convincing legal defense. If there were five Stephen Breyers on the Supreme Court, they wouldn’t need to. But there are only four. If the Obama administration’s lawyers are to win over Justice Anthony Kennedy, they’ll have to do a lot better than arguing that the other side’s case is stupid, crazy and laughable.
And yet, based on the evidence, they don’t seem to be capable of it. Remember Crazy Nancy’s cackles of “Are you serious?! Are you serious?!” Yes, we were.
This is just a special case of the general proposition that the left, because it has cocooned itself in academia, the Beltway and the mainstream media, and excluded those with other views, isn’t used to actually having to defend its views, and when confronted with actual arguments against them, has to resort to “hater,” “racist,” “wingnut,” etc. It’s arguments, such as they are, are hothouse flowers that can’t survive in the wild. And probably won’t survive the SCOTUS, either.
The Media Will Be Quite Disappointed
The Panama city shooter wasn’t exactly a Tea Partier:
Clay Duke, the man who opened fire on a Florida school board Tuesday, posted a “last testament” on Facebook decrying the wealthy and linking to a slew of progressive sites including theprogressivemind.info and MediaMatters.org.
Doesn’t matter, of course — they’ll just lie about it, and call him a “violent right winger.” Because “right wingers” are violent by definition, right? Or perhaps they’ll just pretend he didn’t exist, though if he really were a “right winger,” there would be endless blathering by the lefty punditocracy about how the violent rhetoric of the racist Tea Partiers encouraged him. After all, these are the same hacks who still say that Tim McVeigh was a Christian.
[Update a while later]
Related: Guess which party the media never mentions the Westboro Baptist Church is affiliated with?
Unhappy With Republicans
Yes, let’s ask people how they like the new congress before it is even seated. You’d almost think they were biased, or something.
Defining Hate Down
Really, like “racism,” “hate” has become a meaningless word, at least when employed by the left (and like “racist,” “hater,” “liar,” etc. it’s part of a broad pattern of psychological projection on their part). In fact, it’s almost gotten to the point at which I consider being accused of it a badge of honor.
Hide The Decline
For some reason the WaPo failed to publish its own poll showing a new low in Obama popularity.
An Internet First
I rarely link to Mark Whittington’s site, but I think that this is history making. He has finally revealed one of his previously imaginary friends in his “Internet Rocketeer’s Club.” In this case, finally, it’s not imaginary.
I don’t think I really deserve the honor though, unlike Mark, I do know something about rocketry, having actually done it for a living. I also know about launch costs, economics, policy, politics, history, grammar, spelling, HTML, and many other things of which Mark seems innocent. But I hope I’ll get a secret decoder ring soon.
Health Care And Overreach
Twice now, while there were other factors in both cases, the Democrats have been severely punished in elections over their attempt to socialize medicine.
First, in 1994, they lost both houses of Congress because of HillaryCare, which fortunately didn’t pass.
They learned the wrong lesson from 1994, deluding themselves that they lost not because they attempted to take over a sixth of the nation’s economy, and one on which people depend for their very health and lives, but because they had failed to do so. So in 2010, they applied this false lesson to double down, deluding themselves this time that if they passed the latest unconstitutional monstrosity, it would be the key to electoral victory. Even Bill Clinton fantasized (or at least pretended to, perhaps as a way of sabotaging the Obama administration?) that it would magically become more popular once it was passed, and Queen Nancy assured us, holding her giant gavel, that we would find out what was in it then, and like it.
This time, they lost the House even more dramatically, and kept the Senate only because of a combination of safe Dem seats up that year and some flawed Republican candidates. The fact that the law remains on the books, with a president in the White House prepared to veto any repeal of it, his signature “victory” (ignoring the fact that it was rammed through the Congress in a partisan manner via undemocratic procedural gimmicks with very little White House guidance or input), will just make things that much worse in two years in the Senate, with many more vulnerable Democrats up for election, perhaps even providing the Republicans with a filibuster-proof majority.
So what false lesson will they take from this latest setback on their “progressive” road to serfdom? My prediction: the polls are all wrong — the bill was unpopular not because it passed, but because it wasn’t socialistic enough, lacking a “public option” (read “government option” or inevitable slide down the steep greased slope to single-payer). Because in their ideology, the “reality-based community” ise impervious to empirical data, or reason, or reality. It’s the thing that saves us from them, ultimately, in a country where the voice of the people is ultimately heard.
[Update a while later]
And here is Chris Gerrib in comments, right on cue, to validate my prediction.