Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Trump Versus Clinton

35 Comments

The latest Rasmussen. Put me with “someone else” (particularly given that I don’t vote in a swing state).

As I’ve been saying on Twitter for months, my concern with a Trump/Clinton match up isn’t that Clinton will win, but that one of them will, and both are terrible. I’d like to see a poll with some specific names (e.g., Cruz, Ryan, Mattis, Gary Johnson) as “other.”

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Losing Weight And Keeping It Off

1 Comment

The amount of unconscious junk science in this NYT article is staggering.

Note the underlying assumption: that calorie counting is useful, that burning calories (i.e., exercise) is useful, and that the type of calories you consume is irrelevant. And it’s all about the weight (they didn’t mention BMI, but I’ll bet they were measuring it). Did any of them do strength training? Because exchanging muscle for fat will increase metabolism.

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, War Commentary

Why Trump Is Worse

60 Comments

…than any previous Republican nominee (discounting the fact that he’s not really a Republican):

We know, from his deeds, words, and even his pronouncements in this campaign, that Trump offers nothing to conservatives – worse than nothing, he would evict us from any position within our own party. He gets his foreign policy ideas from Michael Moore and Code Pink (or worse yet, from Vladimir Putin); his abortion views are grounded in his sympathy with Planned Parenthood; he supports socialized medicine in the form of single-payer healthcare, higher taxes, more government spending, and Herbert Hoover’s trade policy. He’s never met a bailout or a crony-capitalist deal he didn’t like, or a Democrat he wouldn’t donate to. He’s astonishingly ignorant, emotionally unstable, and wholly incapable of saying no to Democrats. Trump is a spoiled, entitled rich kid who shows not the slightest understanding of the American way of up-by-the booststraps striving to better yourself; in Trump’s world, the rich get richer by having the right friends, and everybody else is a serf who needs the government to protect them from foreign competition.

Let’s compare Trump to some of the prior Republican presidential losers, and I’ll throw in Rudy and Newt for good measure since I’ve written on this site in their defense before…

RTWT.

[Update a while later]

In short: yes, you can find an example of many of Trump’s flaws in prior Republican presidential candidates. But not one of those candidates combined the total package of Trump: the unfitness to be Commander-in-Chief; the total lack of accomplishments, sacrifices or even efforts over his lifetime for any cause we believe in, combined with repeated efforts to assist the other team; the manifest lack of political principle, personal character or demonstrated political character; the ignorance; the catnip for white supremacists; the toxic effect on the brand of both the party and its ideas.

A vote for Trump, even in the general election, is a suicide note for the Republican Party and the conservative movement. I will never vote for Hillary Clinton, but I cannot in good conscience ever give aid and comfort to Donald Trump and the poison he represents.

That’s my current attitude. I don’t know whom I’ll vote for — it will depend on what I see on the ballot.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

A Cruz Surge In Indiana

42 Comments

I hope this poll is accurate, but if it is, I wonder what’s the cause? Carly? Pence’s (barely) endorsement? Boehner’s negative endorsement?

By the way, Boehner’s reaction to Cruz, and his talk about being buds with Trump should put paid to the notion of who the real “anti-establishment” candidate is.

[Update a few minutes later]

Allahpundit would like to believe it, too, but is skeptical.