Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Long Live Space Station!

4 Comments

So says Jeff Manber:

By all media accounts, including that of Augustine himself on the news shows, the officials were told that going back to the Moon or on to Mars is impossible at current budget levels. I’m happy about that—because it just seems to me that the Augustine panel’s report should focus not on another hardware project, but how the federal government procures space goods and hardware.

I’ve thought from the start that a government commission deciding which rocket should be built, or where the orbiting gas stations should be located, smacks of government planning at its worst. If all of Washington, including President Obama, can agree that despite investing $50 billion in General Motors, the auto czar has no place selecting the new models of automobiles, why should it be different for rockets or lunar modules?

For me, it was kind of a Cold War throwback to have watched as members of the Augustine panel have traveled around the country listening to engineers and industry executives talk up one launch system and bad mouth another, push for one new NASA program and throw cold water on another. Think “sunshine laws” meets a Politburo meeting.

Norm Augustine should report to the president that the problem afflicting our space program is not this hardware or that program, but the way we are spending our tens of billions for space.

Exactly.

[Afternoon update]

The Space Frontier Foundation says that Ares needs a death panel:

“Derivatives of proven commercial launch systems, and new ones under development, could meet any reasonable need for heavy lift,” said Foundation co-Founder, James Muncy. “The barrier is psychological: NASA will have to stop pretending it can design cost-effective launch vehicles and instead focus on exploration systems that fit on the launch vehicles taxpayers can really afford.”

Werb concluded: “The choice is clear. We can continue funding an overpriced, government space limousine, or we can kick-start a whole new industry that will reduce government’s costs and create new jobs. The tools of private sector innovation and competition offer our best and only chance to have affordable and sustainable human space exploration.”

Unfortunately, it’s not so clear to those who want to keep Huntsville green.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

A Farewell To Reader’s Digest

7 Comments

Lileks has some thoughts:

Reader’s Digest was a staple in our house, because Grandma gave it to us every year as a Christmas gift. Until I learned that it was required to make fun of it, I enjoyed every issue. Quizzed myself on the vocabulary test (It pays to increase your word power! Peter Funk was the author, I believe; the name was amusing then, and sounds like a BEFORE part of a Viagra ad now), learned to appreciate the difference at an early age between “Life in These United States” and “Laughter is the Best Medicine.” (Non fiction vs. jokes.) As a hypochondriac from an early age, I avoided “I Am Joe’s Duodenum” or “I Am Joe’s Throbbing Mass of Inevitably Non-Functioning Gristle,” and I never read the Condensed Books. By the time I came along they were mostly expanded articles, running under the “Drama in Real Life(TM)” banner, I think. We had some Condensed Books, which seemed wrong on every possible level, like compressed ice-cream or Star Trek shortened for extra commercials. What would you take out of a book to condense it? Did they just pick characters and subplots and tease them out of the story like a colored thread in a loosely-knit yarn scarf?

We used to have both the magazine and a lot of compressed books at our summer cottage in northern Michigan, and I read them voraciously as a kid. The magazine seemed to go downhill in the past years, though, and I haven’t read one since I turned an adult. I’ll always remember, though Susan Sontag’s speech to her leftist cohorts in 1982, in which she outraged them by rhetorically asking who would have been better informed about the nature of the Soviet Union, and communism in general — readers of The Nation, or of Reader’s Digest? What replaces it today as a purveyor of the truth against ideological lies (not that it itself had done that for many years)? The mainstream media doesn’t seem to think there’s much market for it.

Here are more thoughts on RD, and MBA consultants, from the other McCain.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Cindy Sheehan

3 Comments

…finally wises up:

I asked Sheehan about the fact that the press seems to have lost interest in her and her cause. “It’s strange to me that you mention it,” she said. “I haven’t stopped working. I’ve been protesting every time I can, and it’s not covered. But the one time I did get a lot of coverage was when I protested in front of George Bush’s house in Dallas in June. I don’t know what to make of it. Is the press having a honeymoon with Obama? I know the Left is.”

I think that the glow has worn off for the rest of us, if it was ever there to begin with. And they were never really anti-war — they were just on the other side (in this case, the Democrat side).

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Power And Danger

20 Comments

…of iconography. Live by the icon, die by the icon.

By the way, I know that some people don’t like to have to watch a video, and would rather read, and I generally am in their camp. But I think that this is a more powerful presentation than it would be if Bill had simply done it in an essay. It’s only eight minutes.

[Update late morning]

I’ve added a clickable graphic as sort of a teaser. I actually think that it would be better with ROFL…

[Bumped]

[Update mid afternoon]

A new Obama logo: line by line.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obama, ACORN And The SEIU

8 Comments

His relationship with these goons and thugs goes way back:

In Connecticut, the SEIU asked its members to attend Congressman Jim Himes’ town hall meeting and drown out the voices opposing ObamaCare:

Healthcare Town Hall Forum with Congressman Jim Himes

August 06, 2009, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM. …
Action: Opponents of reform are organizing counter-demonstrators to speak at this and several congressional town halls on the issue to defend the status quo. It is critical that our members with real, personal stories about the need for access to quality, affordable care come out in strong numbers to drown out their voices.

At a St. Louis town hall, four SEIU members surrounded and attacked ObamaCare protester Kenneth Gladney:

Yes, they surrounded me. Actually, after the first two guys got me on the ground, they surrounded me and started kicking me in the head and in the back, and the knees and stuff like that. And after it was done, I got up, kind of dazed, looking for my glasses. And the one guy actually was coming at me again, and that’s when the police came in and, you know, cordoned off everything and started, you know, started arresting people.

Why would the president of the United States have any interest in linking up with the SEIU, encouraging them to be his enforcers?

In the mid 1990s, ACORN and the SEIU partnered with other leftist groups to help form the Marxist New Party, a political coalition. In 1995, Obama sought out their nomination. He was successful in obtaining that endorsement and used a number of New Party volunteers as campaign workers.

What color shirts should we call them?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

Grading His First Semester

3 Comments

President Obama’s report card:

Subject: History Grade: F Comment: Among Barry’s weakest subjects. He experiences great difficulty identifying his centuries and has very little grasp of historical facts and events. As well, he shows a distinct aversion to diligent research. His instructor was particularly dismayed by his inability to tally the number of states in the union.

Subject: Political Science Grade: F Comment: A field of study which Barry would do well to avoid in the future. Fundamental ideas in statecraft appear alien to him. His romantic view of the world and his assumption of personal infallibility breed complacency rather than proficiency.

Subject: Economics Grade: F Comment: Barry shows no understanding of economic theory and seems incapable of mastering the complexities of the discipline. His class projects have advocated solutions to topic problems which would lead to disastrous results in the application.

Subject: Self-Esteem Grade: A++ Comment: A course only recently added to the syllabus. Barry led his cohort group by a wide margin and even exceeded the degree of instructor expertise.

Sounds like there’s room for improvement. But unfortunately, he’s the teacher’smedia’s pet.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Post-Racial Is Post-Democrats

11 Comments

Some thoughts on the slanderous R-word, from Frank J:

…here is an opportunity for Obama to really show he’s post-racial. He could say that people who toss around charges of racism at everyone who disagrees with them are nothing but poison to a political debate. They are as useful to the issue of race as having a Ku Klux Klan member on TV, ranting undisputed. But Obama can’t speak out against mindless charges of racism, because if the Democrats lose the issue of racism, they lose everything.

Yes, don’t look for him to avail himself of the opportunity any time soon.

[Update a couple minutes later]

George-Bush-by-proxie syndrome:

The origins of manufactured “politics of personal destruction” is Saul Alinsky, the mentor of a young Hillary Rodham, who wrote her 92-page Wellesley College senior thesis on the late Chicago-based “progressive” street agitator titled, “There Is Only the Fight.”

Mr. Obama and his Fighting Illini, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, have perfected Mr. Alinsky’s techniques as laid out in his guidebook to political warfare, “Rules for Radicals.” In plain language, we see how normal, decent and even private citizens become nationally vilified symbols overnight – all in the pursuit of progressive political victory.

Here’s hoping for a big backfire.

Except they’re not really “progressives,” any more than they are liberals. This isn’t progress — tyranny over individuals and individualists is the oldest idea in civilization.

[Update a few minutes later]

Fighting for his presidency, not reform:

…his end run damaged what was once his greatest asset — the belief among voters that he was something different.

Endless evasions and then a crackdown on opponents has made Obama look like just another president — and a cynical one at that.

Emotionally invoking his grandmother’s November death over the weekend to shame his critics was just the latest in a series of shoddy ploys.

Can President Obama escape the wreckage of his health care effort? Yes, but only if he stops being so slippery and starts leveling with voters.

Shorter answer: no.

[Update a few minutes later]

The Democrats misread their mandate:

Our system of government depends not only on how many votes you win, but how broadly distributed those votes are. This prevents one section or faction from railroading another. It is evident in the Electoral College and the House, but above all in the Senate, where 44 senators come from states that voted against Obama last year. That’s a consequence of the fact that Obama’s election – while historic in many respects, and the largest we have seen in 20 years – was still not as broad-based as many would like to believe. Bully for Obama and the Democrats that they have 60 Senators, but the fact remains that thirteen of them come from McCain states, indicating that the liberals don’t get the full run of the show.

For whatever reason, the Obama administration has acted as if those hagiographical comparisons to FDR were apt. It let its liberal allies from the coasts drive the agenda and write the key bills, and it’s played straw man semantic games to marginalize the opposition. For all the President’s moaning in The Audacity of Hope about how the Bush administration was railroading the minority into accepting far right proposals – he was prepared to let his Northeastern and Pacific Western liberal allies do exactly the same thing: write bills that excite the left, infuriate the right, and scare the center; insist on speedy passage through the Congress; and use budget reconciliation to ram it through in case the expected super majority did not emerge.

This might have flown during FDR’s 100 Days. But this is not 1933 and Barack Obama is no Franklin Roosevelt.

You can say that again.

[Update early afternoon]

The race card gets trumped.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Are We Having A Conversation Yet?

16 Comments

Some health-care thoughts on the disingenuity of the president and his administration from Ann Althouse.

[Late Sunday night update]

Mark Steyn also has some health-care thoughts:

there he was, reassuring the crowd that the provision for mandatory “end-of-life counseling” has “gotten spun into this idea of ‘death panels.’ I am not in favor of that.” Well, that’s good to know. So good that a grateful audience applauded the president’s pledge not to kill them. He has no plans, as he put it, to “pull the plug on Grandma.”

The problem with government health systems is not that they pull the plug on Grandma. It’s that Grandma has a hell of a time getting plugged in in the first place. The only way to “control costs” is to restrict access to treatment, and the easiest people to deny treatment to are the oldsters. Don’t worry, it’s all very scientific. In Britain, they use a “Quality-Adjusted Life Year” formula to decide that you don’t really need that new knee because you’re gonna die in a year or two, maybe a decade-and-a-half tops. So it’s in the national interest for you to go around hobbling in pain rather than divert “finite resources” away from productive members of society to a useless old geezer like you. And you’d be surprised how quickly geezerdom kicks in: A couple of years back, some Quebec facilities were attributing death from hospital-contracted infection of anyone over 55 to “old age.” Well, he had a good innings. He was 57.

He also points out the asininity of using life expectancy as a figure of merit for different systems, as so many proponents of a government takeover so disingenuously do:

“Life expectancy” is a very crude indicator. Afghanistan has a life expectancy of 43. Does this mean the geriatric wards of Kandahar are full of Pushtun Jennifer Lopezes and Julia Robertses? No. What it means is that, if you manage to survive the country’s appalling infant-mortality rates, you have a sporting chance of eking out your three-score-and-ten. To say that people in Afghanistan can expect to live till 43 is a bit like saying the couple at No. 6 Elm Street are straight, and the couple at No. 8 are gay so the entire street is bisexual.

Which brings us to the United States and its allegedly worst health system in the developed world. Here’s the reality: The longer you live in America, the longer you live. If you’re one of those impressionable “Meet The Press” viewers who heard New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg bemoaning U.S. life expectancy, and you’re thinking, “Hey, I’m 77. Just about at the end, America-wise. Maybe it’s time to move up north or over to Europe, and get a couple of bonus years,” don’t do it! If you’re old enough to be a “Meet The Press” viewer, your life expectancy is already way up there.

America is the Afghanistan of the Western world: That’s to say, it has a slightly higher infant-mortality rate than other developed nations (there are reasons for that which I’ll discuss in an upcoming column). That figure depresses our overall “life expectancy at birth.” But, if you can make it out of diapers, you’ll live longer than you would pretty much anywhere else. By age 40, Americans’ life expectancy has caught up with Britons’. By 60, it equals Germany’s. At the age of 80, Americans have greater life expectancy than Swedes.

How can this be?

He explains. Hint: it’s not because we have socialized medicine.