Christopher Hitchens verbally demolishes Bill MoronMaher and his imbecilic audience (and no doubt, some of my commenters). “Bush IQ jokes are the ones for stupid people.”
Category Archives: Media Criticism
This Should Put Her Over The Top
Caroline Kennedy has gotten the coveted Rosa Ortiz endorsement:
Senora Kennedy she is always know the issues. Every morning she always tell me, “Rosa, where is my New York Time paper?” Then she read it before she go to Fifth Avenue for the shopping. When she get back she tell me to put it in the recycle because to save the planet.
Senora Kennedy is the good boss for the people. She treat everybody on the staff very nice and no yell. We all get one day off in the week and she give the $200 bonus this Christmas. Except Maria because she broke the crystal bowl in the office when she dusting.
Senora Kennedy knows how to call the taxi. Senora Kennedy say to tell you she sometime call taxi by herself.
We’re so fortunate to have investigative reporter David Burge to ferret these things out. But Camelot Barbie shouldn’t feel too bad — Extreme Mortman has come up with a list of ten marketing flops that are bigger than her Senate bid. I think that Waterworld
is worse, too.
Goodie
I know, I know, we culturally insensitive types are always kvetching about how the radical Islamists want to take us back to the seventh century. Well, OK, we were wrong. They want to go even farther back:
On Tuesday, Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari’a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion.
Hamas’s endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time it renewed its jihad. Here, too, Hamas wanted to make sure that Christians didn’t feel neglected as its fighters launched missiles at Jewish day care centers and schools. So on Wednesday, Hamas lobbed a mortar shell at the Erez crossing point into Israel just as a group of Gazan Christians were standing on line waiting to travel to Bethlehem for Christmas.
I’m sure that the usual human rights groups suspects will be complaining any minute now.
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Bailout Rage
Arnold Kling vents:
De Rugy and the others also mention my other frustrations. First, that the Republican Party betrayed libertarians so badly on this issue. Second, that the media portrayed opponents of the bailout as unserious and ideological. Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulson were hailed as saviors, even though they could just have easily been portrayed as bumblers. The whole thing was portrayed as government having no choice but to come in and clean up the private sector’s mess, rather than an ill-conceived attempt to stop markets from adjusting to a mess that was created by a combination of market failure and government failure. Third, that even though much of the public instinctively and correctly opposed the bailout, it sailed through without costing Congressmen their seats.
The one upbeat commentator is Len Gilroy. He thinks that the high level of indebtedness of government will force politicians to scale back spending and to privatize. I’m sorry, but he comes off sounding like Mary Poppins on laughing gas.
As a commenter notes, the only hope is that a lot of non-libertarians are outraged, too. I hope it doesn’t end in riots, but I hope it ends.
Looking Pretty Damn Good…
…for a grandmother. Sarah Palin, that is:
The teenage daughter of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has given birth to a son months after the announcement of her pregnancy became one of the first dark clouds to swirl over the Alaska governor’s candidacy.
I can do the math. Will the moronic troofers (including you-know-who, who should have known better, not to mention some of my moronic commenters) who demanded to see Sarah Palin’s birth records for Trig give it up, now?
Probably not. They’ll just claim that we have to see the birth records for Bristol.
Dave Barry
Is not making this up this time.
I Am So Relieved
…to hear that the Obama transition team has cleared itself of any impropriety:
Greg Craig, the incoming White House Counsel, conducted his inquiry by taking questions to each transition staff member’s lawyer. The lawyers then went to the staff members and collected the answers. The lawyers then gave the answers to Craig.
In some cases — team Obama won’t say how many — Craig would go back to either the staff member’s attorney or the staff member directly for clarification. But it appears Craig’s direct questioning of staff was very limited.
Additionally, there was no independent effort to verify any of the information provided by the staff member or the staff member’s attorney. If, for example, a staff member’s attorney said there was no e-mail or text messaging with Blagojevich or his staff, Craig took that at face value. No one knows if there was any e-mailing or texting, by the way.
Also, the lawyers’ own words mattered to Craig. He told reporters on Tuesday’s conference call that Valerie Jarrett described Blagojevich’s suggestion he might be appointed secretary of health and human services as “ridiculous” when that subject was broached by the Illinois head of the Service Employees International Union.
How does Craig know Jarrett said the word “ridiculous”? He knows that because that’s what Jarrett’s lawyer told him. Jarrett didn’t say it to Craig. Her attorney did.
This reminds me of when Bill Clinton was fending off Juanita Broaddrick’s accusations of rape. He never denied it, but directed people to his attorney, who claimed that it never happened. Even though he had no first-hand knowledge of it. And of course, the press accepted it as a denial.
Doing The Right Thing Wrong
Mike Thomas has a misguided rant over at the Orlando Sentinel, bashing NASA and its supposed desire to go to Mars (something that is hard for me to discern, based on what it’s actually doing).
There are, broadly, two classes of NASA critics: those who think that it’s doing the wrong thing, and those who think that it’s doing the thing wrong. I fall into the latter camp, but Mr. Thomas is clearly one of the former. But his position seems to be incoherent. He thinks that NASA is supposed to be doing science (as indicated by his final words), and if so, he’s correct that manned spaceflight, as currently performed, contributes very little to it. But he doesn’t seem to think that it should be engaged in space science. He (like too many) thinks that NASA’s job is to heal the planet. My biggest fear of an Obama administration (at least in terms of space policy) is that they will agree, and divert it from its original role as an agency that looks outward, to one that looks instead inward.
Whether one believes that we should be doing more about climate change or not, Mike Griffin is correct that it is not within NASA’s charter to do the heavy (or even any) lifting in that regard. It was a heartburn that I always had with things like the Ride Report, and “Mission To Planet Earth.” If these are important things to do, then set up an agency to do them, but don’t defocus and distract NASA with them. In fact, it is much more a job for NOAA. The problem is that NOAA has no history of developing satellites, and has traditionally relied on NASA to do it for them. Perhaps that ought to change.
If NASA improperly gets assigned the task of healing the planet, it is inevitable that it will make it even harder for it to properly explore and develop space, which is what it was established to do. Now frankly, given how wrongly NASA has been doing the right thing, I’m not sure that it would be all that much of a tragedy if we were to end its manned spaceflight program. But unlike Mr. Thomas, I’d rather see it starting to do it right.
It’s All In The DNA
Apparently, not only are politicians born, not made, but it’s genetic. I find it ironic that the party that is supposedly the defender of the common man is so enamored of its own aristocracy. But I think that Democrats (and their enablers in the press) apparently lack a sense of irony.
[Update late evening]
Her Highness refuses to make a financial disclosure. Can you imagine that?
OK, her excuse is that she hasn’t actually been annointedselected by the governor to be the next Senator from New York, and she shouldn’t have to do so until she is. But doesn’t this just feed into the theory that she doesn’t have to actually “run” for the office, and that she should be “selected” just because of her DNA? I would think that the public would like to know this kind of 411 prior to their governor “selecting” her for the office. I mean, I’m all for being a Republic, where our elected officials make decisions, but this seems a little ridiculous.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
Victor Davis Hanson has further (relevant) thoughts.
Overwrought
Next Big Future has this week’s Carnival of Space. One of the linked articles is to an unintentionally amusing piece on the so-called “space exploration crisis”:
…it will be hard to justify a funding cut (and therefore a delay) of the Constellation Program. We already have a “5-year gap” between Shuttle decommissioning and proposed Ares launch (2010-2015), if this block on US-administered manned spaceflight is extended, the damage inflicted on NASA will be irreversible. However, I doubt we’d ever be able to measure the permanent damage caused to mankind.
Yes, if we don’t fund the current monstrosity, it will irreversibly and permanently damage NASA, and mankind. Riiiiggghhhttt. This part is pretty funny (and uninformed) as well:
It’s one thing dominating the globe, but if China or Russia leapfrogs the US for a dominance in the Solar System, it could spell disaster for the world’s only superpower and could spark a situation more reminiscent of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961. Think about it, rather than having nuclear weapon silos appear off the coast of Florida, other nations could operate with impunity in the space above the US. This might not be a reality now, but who knows what is going to happen in ten years.
Ummmm…it is a reality now. Other nations can “operate with impunity in the space above the US.” Does he think we currently have an ASAT capability? And even if it were a threat, what is Constellation going to do to solve it? It’s not even a military program.
As is often the case, the blogger ignores commercial activity, and foolishly equates whatever NASA’s latest waste of taxpayer dollars happens to be with “US-administered manned spaceflight.” Nowhere is there any discussion whatsoever of the merits of NASA’s plans — it is simply assumed that because they’re NASA’s they will advance humanity in space, and that failure to fund them will be a disaster.
Unfortunately, this kind of mindless mindset often prevails in actual policy discussions inside the Beltway, and not just on blog posts.