Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

The Binary Viewpoint

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Charles Krauthammer is generally a pretty smart guy, particularly on politics, but when it comes to space policy, he (like many) check their brains at the door and rely on emotion:

America’s manned space program is in shambles. Fourteen months from today, for the first time since 1962, the U.S. will be incapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone into Earth orbit. We’ll be totally grounded. We’ll have to beg a ride from the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.

So what, you say? Don’t we have problems here on Earth? Oh please. Poverty and disease and social ills will always be with us. If we’d waited for them to be rectified before venturing out, we’d still be living in caves.

Yes, we have a financial crisis. No one’s asking for a crash Manhattan Project. All we need is sufficient funding from the hundreds of billions being showered from Washington — “stimulus” monies that, unlike Eisenhower’s interstate highway system or Kennedy’s Apollo program, will leave behind not a trace on our country or our consciousness — to build Constellation and get us back to Earth orbit and the moon a half-century after the original landing.

Note the implicit unstated assumption (which occurs often in space policy discussion): there is nothing wrong with NASA that a sufficient and steady budget won’t cure, and that if only we would give it to them, and leave them alone, they’d be leading us into the solar system. That anyone who thinks Constellation in its currrent form an unwise expenditure is opposed not for sound technical or economic reasons, but because we oppose expanding humanity into space. That Constellation, if not perfect, is more than good enough, and we must redo Apollo and go on from there.

Despite the fact that he’s a former clinical psychiatrist, the possibility that it is a dysfunctional sclerotic bureaucracy, and that giving it the money that it requests to do what it wants to do might not only be a waste, but actually set us back in the goal that he seems so earnestly to aver, never occurs to him. That there might be better ways to achieve his goal is seemingly beyond his ken.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obama As Health-Care Salesman

38 Comments

He sux.

Who knew we were electing a national mother-in-law? And get a chance to endure increased taxes for the privilege. Obama’s supposed to be rallying support from voters, not castigating them. Outside the S& M parlor, most people do not enjoy paying to be disciplined.

What’s amusing is that his acolytes (including some in this very blog’s comments) are just as bad, because they use the same dumb arguments.

No surprise. The only thing he’s ever really been able to sell is himself. He may be the most spectacular example of the Peter Principle in world history.

[Update a few minutes later]

Uh oh:

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers…

…It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It’s scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we’ll come across in the final 1,002.

You can see why these fascists object to the notion of reading bills.

[Update late morning]

The civil war among the Democrats:

Blue Dogs had aired their complaints last week in a letter to Pelosi that caused her to delay the rollout of the bill until Tuesday. But when the bill was introduced, they felt Pelosi and the committee chairmen who wrote the legislation hadn’t taken their concerns into account.

That led to a tense session between Pelosi and Blue Dogs at the group’s regular Tuesday meeting hours after the rollout.

“The meeting did not go well. She just kept saying it was a good bill,” said one Blue Dog.

“There is a growing perception among many of us that our leadership meets with us but doesn’t listen to us,” said another Blue Dog.

What do you expect? She’s a moron. And I hope that she’ll continue to lead them…to a massive defeat next year.

[Noon update]

A modest proposal:

I propose that the government impose a single-payer system on the legal profession. Instead of charging private fees, all attorneys would have to send their bills to LegalCare, a new agency in the federal government. Because the government can bargain collectively, they can impose rational fees for legal services instead of the exorbitant billing fees attorneys now charge. Three hundred dollars an hour? Thing of the past. Everyone knows that the government can control costs through price-setting; now we can see this process applied to the legal system, where the government has a large interest in seeing cost savings.

How will we pay for LegalCare? I take a page from the House surtax method here, which will disproportionately hit doctors in a wide variety of disciplines. In this case, I propose a 5.4% surtax on lawyers, judges, lobbyists, and political officeholders at the state and federal level. They’re the ones who have enriched themselves through this inequity in the legal system. After all, why should we all have to pay for the single-payer legal system when we can penalize lawyers instead?

I think we need a big-bang solution that can integrate a solution to the health-care and legal-care crises.

[Update after 3 PM]

The public-option scam:

Some statements are inherently unbelievable. Such as: “I am an official of the government of Nigeria, and I would like to deposit $60 million in your bank account.” Or: “I’m Barry Bonds, and I thought it was flaxseed oil.” And this new one: “I’m Barack Obama, and I favor more competition in health insurance.”

They must think we’re stupid. And unfortunately, judging by the election results last fall, it might not be a bad bet.

[Update a few minutes later]

A shocking development — honesty from someone in Washington, from the CBO, of all places.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Saving The Mullahs

2 Comments

Obama continues to throw them a life line:

…even as the Iranian people are casting doubt on the legitimacy of the regime (and are being brutalized for doing so) and even as the regime continues trying to kill Americans in Iraq and elsewhere, Obama is giving the mullahs the three things they most need: confidence in their security, international legitimacy, and time.

As I’ve been saying for a month, there is nothing complicated about this: Obama wants the mullahs to win. That seems impossible to believe for many well-intentioned people, but once you accept it — and everything it implies — life starts to make much sense. It isn’t any better, mind you, but at least it makes sense.

Sadly, yes. It’s hard to show how persuasive you are in negotiating with your fellow dictators if they get inconveniently thrown out of office.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Is Zelaya The Next To Go Under The Bus?

2 Comments

Hugo Chavez seems to have given up on him. He probably figured that he had enough problems of his own. And of course, that means that their good bud Barack Obama has probably given up on him as well, since he never had a good case to make to support him in the first place, and he also has enough problems of his own. Good for the Honduran people, if not for him.

And note how the issue has fallen out of the news…

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Seducer

10 Comments

Viewing Barack Obama as an orchid:

As Natalie Angier writes in The Beauty of the Beastly, orchids are “among the most artfully deceptive” of flowers, having acquired “an extravagant repertory of disguises in color, odor, shape, and overall engineering” in order to lure their unsuspecting pollinators to do their covert bidding. Many orchids are actually “named after what their flowers resemble: spiders, butterflies, baskets, shoes, peas, and donkeys,” anything that might appeal to an emissary. “Little about orchids,” she continues, “is what it seems”; most of them “are shameless charlatans.” One in particular, the Lady’s Slipper, seems engorged with nectar, yet “not only is it utterly dry inside; it’s also a nasty trap.” Food for thought, if not for anything else.

Food for thought indeed.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Down Six Points In A Month

24 Comments

The president continues to drop in popularity:

How bad has Barack Obama’s decline at the polls become? Even CBS has finally realized it. Both approval and disapproval numbers have moved sharply over the last month, and in the wrong direction, as voters have discovered that Obama hasn’t a clue about the economy and creating jobs.

There was never a single reason, to anyone with a lick of economic sense, to think that Barack Obama knew the first thing about job creation. He had no experience with it in his life up to that point, and most of his chosen mentors and associates have been Marxists and other economic ignorami. Now that he’s validating those of us who were always skeptical, the rest of the rubes are catching on as well. And even CBS, with its skewed poll, can’t deny it any more.