Category Archives: Media Criticism

Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Climate Change: Data Or Dogma?

7 Comments

This looks like an interesting (and likely very entertaining) Senate hearing:

Witnesses:

Dr. John Christy
Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville

Dr. Judith Curry
Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. William Happer
Cyrus Fogg Bracket Professor of Physics, Princeton University

Mr. Mark Steyn
International Bestselling Author

*Additional witnesses may be announced

Stock up on popcorn.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The 25th Amendment

2 Comments

I was thinking exactly the same thing yesterday, listening to Obama’s delusional ramblings:

Without the use of the teleprompter, his speech can be described only as “halting.” It was impossible to count the number of times he seized up, able to deaden the silence with only a drawn-out “uh,” “um” or “ahhh.”

The White House dutifully scrubbed all the halts and stutters from the official transcript, and it was impossible to count them in real time. But a sample of his incoherent word salad found him stuttering about every 15 words, which comes to more than 330 “uh-um-ahhs” in a single appearance.

This is not the same soaring speaker who inspired so many in 2008. This is a broken-down man who has lost the only gift he ever had.

Unfortunately, there is no more 2/3rd of the Congress to act on this than there is for impeachment in the Senate.

I’d also note that I don’t think he ever had a gift for extemporaneous speaking. He was always Candidate, and then President Teleprompter.

[Update a while later]

A Democrat says that Obama’s fecklessness could drag us into a nuclear war.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Political Correctness

6 Comments

Jonathan Chait has decided he’s been mugged enough by the campus fascists:

The upsurge of political correctness is not just greasy-kid stuff, and it’s not just a bunch of weird, unfortunate events that somehow keep happening over and over. It’s the expression of a political culture with consistent norms, and philosophical premises that happen to be incompatible with liberalism. The reason every Marxist government in the history of the world turned massively repressive is not because they all had the misfortune of being hijacked by murderous thugs. It’s that the ideology itself prioritizes class justice over individual rights and makes no allowance for legitimate disagreement. (For those inclined to defend p.c. on the grounds that racism and sexism are important, bear in mind that the forms of repression Marxist government set out to eradicate were hardly imaginary.)

American political correctness has obviously never perpetrated the brutality of a communist government, but it has also never acquired the powers that come with full control of the machinery of the state. The continuous stream of small-scale outrages it generates is a testament to an illiberalism that runs deep down to its core (a character I tried to explain in my January essay).

Of course, given his own history, he’s not the best standard bearer for the message.

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Richard Posner

5 Comments

…and the Constitution:

This has implications that go far beyond the judiciary. The only reason for not tarring and feathering any government official for effrontery when they tell us what to do is that their power to do so is somehow legitimate. But that legitimacy comes from the exercise of constitutional power. If the Constitution doesn’t mean anything, well, then, maybe it’s time to go long on pitchforks. Because without the Constitution the angry mob is just as legitimate as the perfumed princes of the state.

Here is Josh Blackman’s take down of Posner.