Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Say It’s Not So

4 Comments

You will be as shocked as I am to learn that ObamaCare is going to cost more than advertised.

Well, as Queen Nancy said, we had to pass the bill to find out what was in it. It’s a shame that there couldn’t have been a cheaper way. I wonder if my ObamaCare defenders in comments really believed those CBO numbers, or they were just lying leftists? Speaking of which, Matt Welch notes that, as with health care, the president is lying about financial regulation as well. All while being on the take from the industry.

As the old saying goes, the problem with socialism is socialism. The problem with capitalism is capitalists.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Speaking of which, thoughts on cronyism and the left.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some House Democrats who were stupid enough to believe the CBO estimates (if they really were) are hearing a snapping sound.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Some Advice For Charlie Bolden

12 Comments

Next time a senator lectures him about Newsweak’s “invention of the year” (that doesn’t exist yet) and how Ares I-X proved that Ares I will be safe and work great, he should point out that it damaged the part of the rocket that was supposed to be reusable due to a parachute failure, that we still don’t know if we can do parachutes of this size that operate reliably, that it caused severe damage to the launch pad from scorching, and that it contained no elements of an actual Ares I.

[Update a few minutes later]

A depressing thought from Clark Lindsey:

NASA should at least have some sort of fact sheet that lays out the basics and is presented and discussed with the committee members and/or staff beforehand, especially those like Mikulski who are still open to new input. The written testimony from Bolden is clearly not doing the trick.

Of course, a fact sheet can never be long enough to inform a Senator on an appropriations committee, of all places, who doesn’t know the difference between marginal cost and recurring cost.

It’s sobering to realize that the state of confusion and superficiality displayed so vividly in these hearings on NASA, which involves funding in the mere nineteen billion dollar range, must certainly occur with most every item in the budget, including those that involve “real money”.

I think we saw this on full display with both the failed “stimulus” and health care, in which we had to “pass the bill to find out what was in it.”

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Question Authority?

2 Comments

Duuuude, that’s soooo 2008:

Joe Klein of Time magazine said the opposition rhetoric is bumping up against … SEDITION! It would make a great musical, wouldn’t it? “Teabagger on the Roof,” with everyman Bubya leading the townspeople in a rousing number. Sedition! Sediiiition! Why do we question the power of the state to regulate every aspect of our lives? (pause) I don’t know. But it’s sedition! And it is what Beck wants us to do.

Of course, Fiddler on the Roof had the tea party creed buried in the opening number. The townspeople crowd around the rebbe, and ask him to invent a prayer for the tsar. The rebbe is taken aback: a prayer, for the tsar, he says with astonishment, wondering how to reconcile his distaste with his duty as a man of God. He thinks. He says: May the Lord bless and keep the tsar. Far away from us.

Critics will note that tea baggerz want the tsar by their side holding their hand when it comes to the programs they want, like Medicare and Social Security, so ha ha, you’re hypocrites. Well, A) there’s no hypocrisy in wanting to get something out of a program into which you’ve been required by law to support for your entire working life, and B) the tea party, and its complaints, are not opposed to the existence of government. It’s the size and power they wish to debate. That’s okay, right?

No, not really. That would ruin the whole future. So we have to paint the opposition as a throbbing wad o’ Kluxers pinin’ for someone to boom up a Federal Building. Opposition to Bush was principled and civilized. Opposition to Obama is opposition to principles and civilization itself.

The double standard of these hypocrites is breathtaking.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

OK, We’ve Established What You Are

27 Comments

Now we’re just haggling over the price — what kind of socialist is Barack Obama?

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s a long piece, but I thought this a useful excerpt:

The non-hot socialism Hayek was describing often goes by the name of “social democracy,” though it is perhaps best understood as an American variant of Fabianism, the late-Victorian British socialist tendency. “There will never come a moment when we can say ‘now Socialism is established,’” explained Sidney Webb, Britain’s leading Fabian, in 1887. The flaw of Fabianism, and the reason it never became a mass movement on the Left, is that the revolutionary appetite will never be sated by its incrementalist approach. The political virtue of Fabianism is that since “socialism” is always around the corner and has never been fully implemented, it can never be held to blame for the failings of the statist policies that have already been enacted. The cure is always more incremental socialism. And the disease is, always and forever, laissez-faire capitalism. That is why George W. Bush’s tenure is routinely described by Democrats as a period of unfettered capitalism and “market fundamentalism,” even as the size and scope of government massively expanded under Bush’s watch while corporate tax rates remained high and Wall Street was more, not less, regulated.

This is the scam that they’ve been running for decades. Let’s hope that it’s finally coming to an end. The current polls, at least, would indicate that it is.

I would add that in today’s environment, it is not capitalism that is “unfettered” (and it’s been many decades since that was the case, if ever) but, given the rampant disregard for the Consitution, it is government that has no fetters. That’s what the Tea Parties are all about.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Questions Won’t Go Away

106 Comments

No matter how much the White House and the MSM want them to, about the birth certificate. Tom Maguire lays out the state of play. Put me in category three, along with his reader (as I’ve said, though not so clearly, for many months):

I would also posit that there are THREE “camps” of thought that get lumped into the “birther” category.

The first two are as [AllahPundit] stated.

The third is where I would put myself – a person:
1) who wonders why it is so difficult for Obama to provide an actual Birth Certificate; and
2) who sees a connection between the lack of details and secrecy regarding Obama’s birth and the lack of details and secrecy about so much else of Obama’s life – his connections to Ayers, his grades in college, the papers he published, the lectures he taught, etc.

I don’t think Obama was born in Kenya or any other place other than Hawaii.

But I find it outrageous and ridiculous that we know more about Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber than we know about Obama.

Yup.

For someone who is supposedly all about transparency, his past seems to be quite opaque. And the uncuriosity on the part of the media would be puzzling, if one actually took them at their word about, you know, “afflicting the comfortable, and comforting the afflicted.” Because Barack Obama seems to be pretty damned comfortable to me. And those of us who are afflicted with concern about just what kind of president we have need, if not a little comfort, at least a little honesty. Or at least an honest attempt to get it from this White House. We’re not so stupid, though, as to suspend respiration while waiting.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Comedy Central’s Cowardice

6 Comments

Some thoughts:

…note how entirely real radical Muslim threats and violence are treated as just part of the weather — something you have to adapt to — while nonexistent Tea Party violence is an existential threat to the Republic.

Watch out what kinds of behavior you reward, and what kinds you punish. You’re likely to get more of the former, and less of the latter.

[Update a few minutes later]

I liked this comment at Ann Althouse’s place:

Obama is reaching out to Muslims. Maybe he wants to learn the secrets of their success in shutting people up.

It sure looked like a threat to me. I’m sure the Department of Justice will get right on it.

[Update a while later]

Krikorian’s Corollary To Sullivan’s Law: “All organizations that are not actually anti-jihadist will over time become dhimmified and accommodate themselves to jihadism.”

Sounds right to me.

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Save The Planet

6 Comments

…cut back on the recycling.

…some national recycling experts have begun calling for government restraint in trash recycling, which can be more costly and environmentally damaging than dumping.

“We just assume recycling is always better,” said J. Winston Porter, president of the Waste Policy Center, an environmental consulting and policy organization. “But there’s a point at which you shouldn’t just recycle for recycling’s sake.”

I think we’re well past it. It’s become the new secular state religion.

My cynicism over it peaked a few years ago when (as I related in a blog post, but don’t want to look for it right now) I watched the recycling truck come by, and unceremoniously dump the contents of my yellow paper bin and my blue plastic and cans bin into the same repository on the truck, completely negating all of my entropy reduction efforts in sorting them. I do notice now, on my return to CA after five years, they’ve at least ended that fraud, and just have one big blue recycling bin.

Either way, give it up for Earth Day.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Simplifying The Job

28 Comments

I’m working on a piece along these lines for PM or PJM, but Jim Oberg beat me to the punch:

The plan to reshape the Orion spaceship as a standby rescue vehicle for station crews has profound implications for the requirements of the commercial taxi and its cost. This strategy means the taxis won’t have to last for six months “parked” in space, like Russia’s Soyuz spaceships. The simplification of the taxi’s mission will allow its hardware to be significantly less expensive to build and to validate.

The crucial systems for the taxis have mostly already been built and are available as off-the-shelf technology — which means the spaceships could be much cheaper, much smaller and much more reliable.

The FUD being spread by defenders of the status quo has been almost palpable, and it’s all unjustified.

[Update a few minutes later]

I should add that I doubt very much if the commercial contractors are going to use the Orion abort system. It’s overkill, in both weight and cost. In fact, for a much lighter vehicle, as a taxi would be, it would probably kill the occupants from the acceleration.