Category Archives: Media Criticism

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The President’s “Science” Advisor

25 Comments

The more we learn about John Holdren, the more of a whack job he seems to be:

Holdren’s harebrained endorsement of the arboreal legal rights comes on the heels of learning he had previously advocated:

Laws requiring the abortion or adoption of illegitimate children; sterilizing women after having two children; legally requiring “reproductive responsibility” to those deemed by pointy-headed eugenicists to “contribute to general social deterioration”; and incredibly, putting sterilizing agents in the drinking water.

All this in the name of dealing with an impending overpopulation crisis that never materialized. When the news broke about Holdren’s troubling views, I thought it was particularly telling that despite the fact that Holdren thinks that Dr. Strangelove is a how-to manual, the New York Times ignored the revelations about Holdren’s past writings.

But as Mark Hemingway points out, at least he’s not a Christian.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

More “Acting Stupidly” By White People

18 Comments

Obama administration political operatives overruled DoJ career professionals in the decision to not prosecute Black Panther voting intimidators. I guess that means that it would be OK for KKK members in hoods to hang around voting places with guns, too. Right?

[Friday morning update, with a bump]

More thoughts from Andrew McCarthy:

Republicans…are pressing for details about internal DOJ deliberations on the case, particularly the role played by Obama political appointees in the dismissal. Holder, Mr. Transparency, is naturally stonewalling. Obviously, the enforcement of the civil rights laws is not as important as the discretionary firing of U.S. attorneys (regarding which congressional Democrats demanded, and got, reams of DOJ documents and testimony). Nor is transparent law-enforcement as critical as the top-secret prisoner photos that Holder wanted disclosed to the world despite warnings from military and intel officials that disclosure would endanger our troops.

Seper recaps the sordid facts: “Two NBPP members, wearing black berets, black combat boots, black dress shirts and black jackets with military-style markings, were charged with intimidating voters, including brandishing a nightstick and issuing racial threats and racial insults. A third was accused of managing, directing and endorsing their behavior. The incident was captured on videotape…. Witnesses said [Minister King] Samir Shabazz, armed with the nightstick, and [Jerry] Jackson used racial slurs and made threats as they stood at the door of the polling place.”

I’m sure you’ll be stunned to learn that the sweetheart settlement Holder’s Department gave these defendants does not require them to refrain from election activities. So of course Jackson, the alleged menacing racist who is also — surprise! — a Democrat Party operative, is right back in business again…

Change! But not much hope.

[Update mid morning]

Clarice Feldman has more:

The attorney general who engaged in this inexplicable act was appointed by President Barack Obama, who was sold to the voters as a post-racial figure and a constitutional law scholar.

In 2004, the misnamed left-wing outfit People for the American Way (PFAW) put forth a report entitled “The Shadow of Jim Crow,” which risibly confused efforts to prevent obvious voter fraud with intimidation and suppression. It concluded on this pot-banging note:

Robbing voters of their right to vote and to have their vote counted undermines the very foundations of our democratic society. Politicians, political strategists, and party officials who may consider voter intimidation and suppression efforts as part of their tactical arsenal should prepare to be exposed and prosecuted. State and federal officials, including Justice Department and national political party officials, should publicly repudiate such tactics and make clear that those who engage in them will face severe punishment.

So when I read this story from the Washington Times yesterday, I checked to see if PFAW had anything about it at all. I could find not one word.

Maybe PFAW missed the story, so I checked the NAACP website. I didn’t see a single thing criticizing the politicization of the Department of Justice in a way which undermines every citizen’s right to fair and free elections without intimidation.

Shocking. But expect commenter “Jim” to continue to shill and lie for this fascist and his (now) state-sanctioned black shirts. It’s what he does.

And she has a suggestion:

Perhaps in honor of the cop Obama unfairly maligned we ought to call this kind of racial discrimination “Jim Crowley.”

I like it.

[Update a few minutes later]

And more, from Heritage:

The Department’s spokeswoman says that “the facts and the law did not support pursuing the claims.” Really? Then why is the Department refusing to allow the trial team who actually investigated the “facts and the law” or the chief of the Voting Section who supervised the investigation to brief members of Congress? We all know why – because those lawyers would dispute the spurious claim being made by their political superiors.

Justice even sent a letter to Cong. Lamar Smith claiming that one of the defendants was dismissed because he was a resident of the building in which the polling place was located, a “fact” that is completely false. The Department’s own pleadings publicly filed in court in Philadelphia, as well as a poll watcher certificate issued to the defendant by the Democratic Party, show that that this defendant did not live at the polling place (a senior living center). This basic factual error shows just how unimportant the real facts were to those dismissing the case. And that defendant, whose MySpace page lists one of his general interests as “Killing Crakkkas,” was dismissed just in time to be reappointed as a poll watcher for the May 19 primary in Philadelphia!

When the facts don’t fit the narrative, the facts have to be ignored.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Space

FUD

5 Comments

Commercial space advocates have often complained that NASA tends to put a stick in the spokes of attempts to raise money and get ventures off the ground. Critics claim that this is a fantasy, and that NASA is both uninterested in, and incapable of doing such a thing. Jeff Foust points out the latest example of the “fantasy”:

[Here’s] a passage in a Wall Street Journal article this week (subscription required) about Virgin Galactic’s deal to sell a stake to an Abu Dhabi fund:

However, a NASA official cautioned that venturing into space is extremely costly, dangerous and difficult.

“Everyone has the opinion ‘we can do this’ but I’ve seen so many fail,” he said, adding that running a shuttle costs at least $3 billion a year.

All this is true: spaceflight is difficult and not cheap, and many ventures who have tried it before have failed. But what does the operating cost of the shuttle have to do with a suborbital space tourism system?

Absolutely nothing, of course. But it helps sow the seeds of doubt in the mind of an investor who might not know any better. And of course, the clueless reporter doesn’t challenge the comment, but simply stenographs it as though it’s not a complete non sequitur. Because he or she got the valuable opinion of an unnamed NASA official, which is all that matters.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

First African-American Elected President

5 Comments

Minorities and particularly African-Americans hit hardest:

The economic crisis has predominantly hit non-white working class men; the collapse of the auto industry is threatening to destroy the basis of the Midwestern black middle class. Key matters for African-Americans languish — the overincarceration of young black men that makes a mockery of American justice being the number one example. Government aid? That goes to bankers in Connecticut. If the President were white, there would be riots.

The conflict between the narrative and the reality is nothing new to anyone who has been watching these people for long.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

“HTML Deleted”

16 Comments

I was commenting over at NASA Watch, and in response to this comment: “I don’t understand why designing one big rocket to launch everything at once isn’t the better idea. Saturn V took the crew and the cargo to the moon…, I wrote something like “Because an approach taken in a race to the moon isn’t the best approach for building a program that is affordable and sustainable,” with a link to my piece at The New Atlantis. All comments are moderated over there. The post appeared, but like this:

Because an approach taken in a race to the moon isn’t the best approach for building a program that is

HTML DELETED

Apparently, Keith not only isn’t going to link to it himself, he’s not even going to allow links to it in comments. I wonder why he doesn’t think that his readers would find it of interest?

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obamacare

60 Comments

It’s even worse than you think:

The Democrats want to spend $1.5 trillion over a decade, impose an $800 billion tax increase in the midst of the worst recession in a generation, increase federal borrowing by $239 billion (on top of the $11 trillion the Obama budget already requires us to borrow through 2019), impose costly mandates on employers that will discourage hiring as unemployment nears 10 percent, force individuals to buy one-size-fits-all government defined insurance, and insert the government in countless new ways between doctors and patients. All of that would occur whether or not the plan includes a “public option,” which at this point it does include and which will exacerbate all of these problems.

As these facts have become clear, Obama’s standing has fallen and public opinion has grown decidedly less enthusiastic for the administration’s approach. The trend is likely to continue, because the details of the plan reveal that its two most serious drawbacks–its cost and the prospect of government rationing–are worse than even most of their critics have grasped.

Of course, that won’t stop them, in and of itself. We have to make our views known to our representatives next month when they’re back in their districts.

Though perhaps it’s not fair to call it Obamacare, since the president admits that he doesn’t even know what’s in the bill. And yet he continues to flail around attempting (and apparently failing) to defend it.

[Update late afternoon]

Why “health care” is not a right:

…imagine if the government had a body of experts charged with figuring out what your free-speech rights are, or your right to assemble, or worship. Mr. Jones, you can say X and Y, but not Z. Ms. Smith, you can freely assemble with Aleutians, Freemasons, and carpenters, but you may not meet in public with anyone from Cleveland or of Albanian descent. Mrs. Wilson, you may pray to Vishnu and Crom, but never to Allah or Buddha, and when you do pray, you cannot do so for longer than 20 minutes at a time, unless it is one of several designated holidays. Please see Extended Prayer Form 10–22B.

Of course, all of this would be ludicrous beyond words.

Actually, I can imagine this gang coming up with something exactly like that.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Know-Nothing In Chief

48 Comments

Fred Barnes says that it’s clear that the president is an utter economic illiterate:

Obama professes to believe in free market economics. But no one expects his policies to reflect the unfettered capitalism of a Milton Friedman. That’s too much to ask. Demonstrating a passing acquaintance with free market ideas and how they might be used to fight the recession–that’s not too much to ask.

But the president talks as if free market solutions are nonexistent, and in his mind they may be. Three weeks after taking office, he said only government “has the resources to jolt our economy back into life.” He hasn’t retreated, in words or policies, from that view.

…A good example of Obama’s economic shallowness is his unrelenting defense of the $787 billion “stimulus.” Enacted in February, it has had minimal impact on the economy. Yet Obama has no second thoughts. He says he wouldn’t change a thing about the stimulus. It has “already saved jobs and created new ones,” he said at the press conference, neglecting to note that 2 million jobs–a net 2 million–have been lost since it was passed.

That was clear even during the campaign, to those of us who are not. Unfortunately, most people (including most journalists) are in the same boat as the president.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Sorry” Seems To Be The Hardest Word

41 Comments

The president seems to be incapable of admitting error. Just another of his endearing narcissistic traits. Fortunately, as Tom points out, he has the New York Times to cover for him.

[Update a few minutes later]

Like the commenter over at Patterico’s place, this incident has reinforced my prejudices about race-baiting Harvard law professors.

[Afternoon update]

Obama seems to be one of those “liberals” who is capable of apologizing for anything and everything except his own actions. So since he’s always quick to apologize for me, I’ll do it for him. I’m sorry, Sergeant Crowley, that our president is a racialist, classless ass. I bear no responsibility, not having voted for him, but I’ll apologize anyway, just as he is happy to apologize for things that others have done for which he bears no responsibility, even when the apologees’ crimes are far more egregious.