Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Pence’s Speech At KSC

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Bob Zimmerman listened to it, so you don’t have to. It was pretty uninspiring, at least to anyone who knows what’s going on.

[Update a few minutes later]

Keith Cowing has a word cloud of the speech.

[Update a few more minutes later]

And more from Loren Grush:

it was a speech with very little substance. There were many anecdotes about the US’s past achievements in space, Pence argued that recent administrations had failed to “match the spirit of the American people” when it came to creating space policy. Multiple times he insisted that Trump would open “a new era of American space leadership.” But the most recent presidential budget request calls for cutting NASA’s funding, as well as canceling some of the agency’s offices and programs. Space is expensive. How does Pence plan to match our ambitions with our missions if there isn’t a detailed money plan?

So, six months into the Trump administration, NASA doesn’t have any space policy priorities or definitive leadership. NASA administrators are often instrumental in steering the direction of the space agency, and without one, the agency will lack a strategy for how to move forward. This is now the longest amount of time NASA has been without a new permanent administrator; the record was previously held by President Richard Nixon, who took 164 days after his inauguration to fill the position, according to the Planetary Society. NASA’s current acting administrator Robert Lightfoot, who took over temporarily when Trump was inaugurated, has now served longer than that. And there’s no indication when a new administrator will be named.

“Depending on the details, this backwards speech could signal a backwards space policy, meaning rolling back the progress that’s being made instead of building on the commercial space policies that Reagan started and Obama continued,” says Larson.

I have no particular expectations about civil space from Trump. But I’m happy that at least milspace seems to be undergoing reform.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Trump’s Tweets

27 Comments

Kurt Schlichter says to stop caring about them:

I didn’t vote for Donald Trump to be a role model or a moral paragon. I voted for him to not be Hillary Clinton, and to incrementally move towards actual conservatism. Like everyone else who voted for him, I knew he wasn’t a doctrinaire conservative. But he believed in some conservative things, and that was better than someone who believed in no conservative things, and who wanted to stamp her sensible shoe into our faces forever.

Was he my first choice? No. Was he my second? No. But was there any other choice when it came down to him or Felonia von Pantsuit?

No. Which is something a lot of the cogs in the machine that is Conservative, Inc., still don’t choose to acknowledge.

That’s pretty much my take, too.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Obama’s Foreign-Policy Mess

23 Comments

Glenn Reynolds has a roundup of links and thoughts:

Yes, I keep repeating this stuff. Because it bears repeating. In Iraq, Obama took a war that we had won at a considerable expense in lives and treasure, and threw it away for the callowest of political reasons. In Syria and Libya, he involved us in wars of choice without Congressional authorization, and proceeded to hand victories to the Islamists. Obama’s policy here has been a debacle of the first order, and the press wants to talk about Bush as a way of protecting him. Whenever you see anyone in the media bringing up 2003, you will know that they are serving as palace guard, not as press.

Worth noting that the Nobel Committee embarrassed itself beyond redemption as well.

[Update a while later]

More of Obama’s foreign-policy mess: Venezuela, the Syria next door. Because he never met a dictator he didn’t like.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

James O’Keefe

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Why he’s a more honest journalist than most of the MSM:

O’Keefe has revealed them to be fools, remarkably unsophisticated in their response to his revelations. (Jeff Zucker, et al., looked like dimwits walking into the most obvious trap by dismissing Bonifield as a mere “medical” producer with the famous Van Jones already queued up for humiliation.) At this point, only the most naive believe what the MSM says. CNN is already a joke, but the NYT, WaPo, etc. are not far behind. We are all reading Pravda now.

We always were, it’s just become so much more obvious.

[Update a while later]

CNN tries to move forward:

…starting now, we’re instituting new policies for handling Russia stories. Stop groaning! This important! From now on, we’re going to need your Russia stories to all have an element of truth.”

The room erupted into chaos.

“What the hell?” screeched Wolf Blitzer. “Preposterous!”

“Wolf, your name is sort of like my puppy Woofy’s!” said Chris Cuomo. “Sort of.”

“Never!” snorted Christiane Amanpour, who had been annoying Jake Tapper because her enormous pink gyno hat was blocking his view.

“Look at it spin!” piped up Chris Cuomo between delighted giggles.

Jim Acosta stood up and adjusted his tie. “I want to register my outrage and disapproval of this hateful attack on the free press in the strongest possible terms!”

“Oh, knock it off, Jimmy. There’s no camera here,” Zucker said. “From now on, your anonymous sources have to actually exist. That’s final. I’m sorry people – calm down! – but you can’t quote sources who don’t exist.”

From the back, Don Lemon finished his drink and howled, “The voices tell me MANY THINGS!”

“Look,” said Jim Sciutto. “Like my friend Don, I deeply believe that invisible voices in our heads can be legitimate news sources. Especially if a different voice in our head confirms what the first voice told us.”

“But don’t you understand,” stuttered an indignant Brian Stelter. “Don’t you know that democracy will die in darkness if you impose arbitrary rules on us that limit our ability to report things that never happened?”

Kurt is a cruel man, but fair.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Trump And Russia, The State Of Play

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Byron York lays it out. As far as I can tell, Obama was doing more to help Putin subvert the election than Trump was. And what are the Democrats who are blocking witness testimony trying to hide?

[Update a couple minutes later]

More thoughts from Don Surber. As Glenn asks, then why is Mueller hiring over a dozen more prosecutors? What’s the crime, and who is the target?

[Update a couple more minutes later]

Chaffetz: Congress has to look over Mueller’s shoulder. They certainly need to bring him in to explain himself. And the Justice Department should assign someone else to the hopelessly compromised obstruction investigation.