Other people are starting to notice that the president isn’t as smart as advertised.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
False Headline
I know it’s more exciting than the prosaic reality, but someone needs to tell the copy editor at MSNBC that there is nothing in this article to indicate that SpaceShipTwo is going into space this fall. All it says is that they may start drop tests.
Which raises the question again — do they have an engine yet?
Find The False Assumption
…in this article about which asteroids are good prospects for human visits. It should just jump right out to regular readers. I’ll reveal over the fold: Continue reading Find The False Assumption
The Magic Is Gone
Thoughts on the obsolescence of Barack Obama:
It was canonical to this administration and its functionaries that they were handed a broken nation, that it was theirs to repair, that it was theirs to tax and reshape to their preferences. Yet there was, in 1980, after another landmark election, a leader who had stepped forth in a time of “malaise” at home and weakness abroad: Ronald Reagan. His program was different from Mr. Obama’s. His faith in the country was boundless. What he sought was to restore the nation’s faith in itself, in its political and economic vitality.
Big as Reagan’s mandate was, in two elections, the man was never bigger than his county. There was never narcissism or a bloated sense of personal destiny in him. He gloried in the country, and drew sustenance from its heroic deeds and its capacity for recovery. No political class rode with him to power anxious to lay its hands on the nation’s treasure, eager to supplant the forces of the market with its own economic preferences.
Obama never understood that the notion of a leftist or “progressive” Ronald Reagan was an oxymoron.
An Inside Look
…at the development of Markos’ new book cover.
Pretty funny stuff.
Paul Ryan
…is too kind to Paul Krugman. He only says that he’s “intellectually lazy.”
Why They’re Not Hiring (Part 2)
More thoughts on this post from yesterday:
The flat truth is no one is going to hire new employees unless there is some reasonable promise that the additional cost of the employee will be recovered through increased profits resulting from the new employee’s work. That’s not “greed”, it is bare survival in tough economic times. And all the recent additions to per-employee costs aren’t alone. There is a seemingly endless well of new possible costs coming, including new environmental regulations, the possibility of a massive new “carbon tax”, and “card check” that promises to raise labor costs even further with exactly zero (at best) increase in productivity. Vague gestures towards a few thousand dollars of tax credits to stimulate job growth don’t even begin to cover the risks.
On top of it all, if you happen to be an oil worker on the Gulf Coast, your job is politically verboten. Sorry about that. Or not.
Only a crazy person would be eager to start large-scale hiring in this political environment. Yet many anti-corporation zealots profess themselves outraged that the Evil, Greedy Corporations won’t get with the business of economic recovery.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
Happy First Month
Declaration Entertainment has been going for a month now. Look forward to more details on a private mission to Jupiter.
Sharia Law
…is the new Jim Crow. This is a meme worth spreading, I think, as a key psyop of the war we’re in.
The Big DNA Letdown
Thoughts on the (so far) overhype of genetic sequencing.
I think that there are going to be huge breakthroughs in health and longevity, but our understanding of genetics is currently much too dismal for them to come from DNA analysis in the near term.
My understanding is that the DNA is a recipe, not a blueprint. And while even with a blueprint of a house, the final product is still dependent on the carpenter, it is at least specified. A recipe can have much more varied outcomes, depending on the cook, and the available resources and ingredients.