Category Archives: Media Criticism

Hating Everything That Congress Has Done

For the first time in my political life, I am in agreement with the majority:

The numbers: Bank bailouts, 61 percent disapprove versus 37 percent approve; national health care, 56 percent disapprove versus 39 percent approve; auto bailouts, 56 percent disapprove versus 43 percent approve; stimulus, 52 percent disapprove versus 43 percent approve. Only financial reform, with 61 percent approve versus 37 percent disapprove, is a winner for the representatives and senators seeking re-election.

OK, not entirely. I think that the financial reform was a mess, and will prove disastrous as well.

“Left-Wing” Violence

surges in Europe.

What I can’t figure out from this article, and I don’t have time to dig into the underlying documents, is what they’re defining as “right wing” versus “left wing.” And where do radical (i.e., those who actually follow the Koran and submit to the dictates of Mohammed) Islamists fall?

As for the fools in comments who say that both the Islamists and the “right wingers” in America want a theocracy, where is the evidence? (And no, Glenn Beck doesn’t want a theocracy.)

Me, I’m a simple sort of guy. I think that people who like big and powerful government, for whatever purpose, whether running peoples’ economic or personal lives, are left wingers. Those who value the liberty of the individual are on the “right,” and by that definition (unlike the nutty ones that the leftists come up with) I’m happy to be called a “right winger,” and even a “wingnut.” If we can’t agree on that, then the whole concept of “left” versus “right” is pretty meaningless. The only issue is where to put the so-called anarchists? The reason I say “so called” is that they don’t believe in a limited government to protect the natural rights of individuals. They don’t seem to believe in much at all, other than violence.

I Hope They Remain This Delusional

The president continues to fantasize that he’s a campaign asset this fall:

Obama himself has largely shucked his “postpartisan” ideal, and you can expect some sharp rhetorical elbows thrown at Republicans when he addresses a Labor Day rally in Milwaukee on Monday. That’s likely to escalate in coming weeks as Obama – and first lady Michelle Obama – go stumping for Democrats.

“They’ve forgotten I politick pretty good,” he told a crowd in Austin, Texas, last month.

Oh, yeah? Tell it to Creigh Deeds, John Corzine and Martha Coakley.

I continue to challenge the conventional wisdom that Barack Obama is either a good campaigner or a smart politician. He won the nomination because the Dems wanted an alternative to the arrogant and “inevitable” Hillary and he was black. He won the election because McCain was a horrible candidate and ran a horrible campaign, people were fed up with the mushy Bush-era Republicans, and because he was black.

People have gotten to know him now, and they don’t like it.

The Green Shirts

Some thoughts on the new green fascists and mass murderer wannabes, from Glenn Reynolds:

In contemporary America, no respectable person would advocate, say, the involuntary sterilization of blacks or Jews. Why, then, should it be any more respectable to advocate the involuntary sterilization of everyone? Or even of those who cause “social deterioration?”

Likewise, references to particular ethnic or religious groups as “viruses” or “cancers” in need of extirpation are socially unacceptable, triggering immediate thoughts of genocide and mass murder.

Why, then, should it be acceptable to refer to all humanity in this fashion? Does widening the circle of eliminationist rhetoric somehow make it better?

I don’t see why it should, and I don’t see why we should pretend — or allow others to pretend — that hate-filled rhetoric is somehow more acceptable when it’s delivered by those wearing green shirts instead of brown.

It’s a fetish of the left. It’s like the eighties, when they feigned outrage at the way the South Africans treated blacks, and were indifferent to the fact that places like the Soviet Union treated everyone that badly, or worse. If you’re a leftist, it’s perfectly OK to oppress people, as long as you’re an equal-opportunity oppressor.

Also, Jim Bennett emails:

Actually, Tom Clancy wrote a novel about a rich eco-nut who funds the clandestine development of a plague that will wipe out all of humanity, except for a small group who will have the antidote.

Highly improbable, of course. Almost as improbable as the one he wrote about the fanatic who crashes a fully-fueled airliner into a major US government building.

Not just improbable — unthinkable. At least if you’re Condi Rice. But perhaps not if you’re John Holdren.