Category Archives: Media Criticism
Climate Skeptics
…are the historical equivalent of slave owners.
Uh huh.
Merrick Garland
It’s too late for the administration to appeal to Constitutional norms:
the Obama administration, with its aggressive assertions of executive power, is in a poor position to appeal to constitutional norms. The administration showed a severe lack of respect for constitutional norms when, for example, contrary to decades of precedent that the Justice Department will defend any federal law with a plausible defense, it refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act; when the administration forced Common Core standards on local education without anything resembling explicit congressional approval or even debate, based on an aggressive reading of vague existing law; when the administration unilaterally changed immigration policy via executive order, after Congress failed to pass legislation that would have accomplished similar ends; when the president has simply refused to enforce provisions of Obamacare that proved politically problematic; and, for that matter, when the president advocated for and signed perhaps the only major piece of American social legislation (Obamacare) that not only failed to win widespread bipartisan support, but also attracted not a single vote in either house of Congress from the other party. More generally, President Obama has repeatedly promised to try to circumvent Congress using any arguably legal means available, on the rather extra-constitutional grounds, contrary to the norms attendant to the separation of powers, that “we can’t wait” for Congress to pass legislation that the president favors.
Beyond that, it’s not as “moderate” a pick as some are claiming. For instance, he opposed Heller and the 2nd Amendment, and would have disarmed residents of DC.
[Update a few minutes later]
And now for something completely different: Wolf Blitzer actually calls out Debbie Wasserman Schultz for hypocrisy.
Neil Tyson
We had a lot of fun with him over at Twitter this weekend, but this is the best piece I’ve seen describing why he’s such an obnoxious, bigoted pedant.
I’m Angry
“So I’m voting for Donald Trump.”
That really is the quality of logic going on here.
Space Policy
This is an interesting panel (it actually starts about half an hour in, I think) from last week’s Goddard Symposium. Four women (Marcia Smith, Lori Garver, Sandy Magnuson and Mary Lynne Dittmar) and one man, moderated by Frank Morring. As expected, Lori is quite politically incorrect.
“Burn It All Down”
Why this isn’t something a conservative would, or should say:
If you’re ready to burn down the world, you’re part of what’s wrong with the world. There are plenty of places on this planet where “burning it down” has been tried — Syria, Somalia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, the territories of Boko Haram — and the results are never anything short of catastrophic. It’s easy to forget, but even in the toughest of times, Americans are incredibly blessed compared to those living everywhere else. Our wealth, our spirit, our untapped potential, and our capacity for renewal are mind-boggling. And yet some significant portion of the population relishes the thought of sending it all up in flames.
You dare not call yourself conservative if you belong to this arson-minded mass. Conservatives are here to preserve, create, and build, not to ignite and destroy. Insofar as the torch is an American political tradition, it’s not a conservative one — it’s the recourse of our country’s worst radicals, from the Klan to the Weather Underground to the Black Panthers to Timothy McVeigh.
Victor Davis Hanson calls what we’re witnessing “Republican nihilism,” a dangerous strain of the historical perspective that there is nothing to approve of in the current social order. It’s a self-evidently ludicrous perspective when applied to our country as it stands today.
If you think that Trump will be a conservative, in any way, you’re deluding yourself.
Trump’s Speech Patterns
He talks a lot like Ross Perot.
Except without the east Texas twang.
The War On Cars
I share many of the New Urbanist ideas for cities, but I can’t cast my lot in with the group because they are screwball-daft when the subject of cars comes up, and will entertain any inconvenience as long as it’s anti-car. I don’t want to ride a got-damned bicycle to work. Most people don’t. Period. So you have to force them out of their cars into something else. If a neighborhood is made sufficiently inconvenient for cars, some will adapt, and some will find a home in a placewhere they can have a car. That’s your choice. If you stay, fine; glad you’re happy. If you go out into the far-flung exurbs because you want to drive, and are willing to endure a few inconveniences, then fine; that’s yhour choice. You’d think the Critics of Everyone Else’s Choices would be happy that people are living far out and taking the train in, but no, a fresh new horror has revealed itself as people continue to show the depthless roiling stinky-pitch of their hearts:
While city planners generally welcome transit hubs to their community, they are concerned that, if improperly located, the stations will actually increase sprawl by encouraging people to drive to rail stations instead of walking, biking or taking the bus.
People are driving to the train.
And PARKING.
The monsters.
The Pension Crisis
As I’ve said in the past, if the federal government bails out a state, it should be under the conditions that it revert to territory status until it has demonstrated fiscal responsibility over a long period of time. And in the case of California, it should not be allowed to come back in as a single state. If this requires a constitutional amendment, I’ll bet you could slam one through enough of the more fiscally prudent states pretty quickly.