Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

IRS And Benghazi

22 Comments

We need a select committee for both, since the administration continues to stonewall. I really don’t understand Boehner’s reticence in this. They don’t have to make the mistake of impeaching before the election, as the Republicans did in 1998, but they could certainly lay the groundwork for it next year, and an issue in Senate races.

Oh, and speaking of stonewalling, is it 2013, or forty years earlier?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Baghdad Bob At The White House

3 Comments

What in the hell does “the core of Al Qaeda” even mean?

It’s a de facto “core” even if the administration doesn’t want to call it that, just as there’s a de facto U.S. retreat is in progress even if the administration doesn’t want to call it that. After all, the evacuation of personnel and the closure of diplomatic missions are physical acts involving actual people being transported thousands of miles. They are actions in which real concrete and steel buildings are being shuttered, at least temporarily. Set against these tangible events are Carney’s word games about the core and the periphery.

This is nothing except a pathetic attempt to continue to maintain the campaign lies of last year.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

To The New Editor Of Science Magazine

5 Comments

An open letter:

…you do have an unparalleled opportunity, which is to turn what has become just another glossy advocacy magazine back into a distinguished scientific journal.

Unfortunately, during the intervening 35 years of your remarkable scientific career since you were a graduate student, a once-stellar magazine has fallen on hard times. Starting with Donald Kennedy, and continuing under Bruce Alberts, it has become a shabby vehicle for strident climate activism … and that experiment has proven once again that Science can’t be both an activist journal and a scientific journal. Science magazine has thrown its considerable (but rapidly decreasing) weight behind a number of causes. And yes, some of those causes are indeed important.

The problem is that you are convinced the causes are hugely important, and you want to convince us of the same. But once you convince people that your causes are more important to you than your science, that’s it for your authority regarding the science. You either get to have activism, or you get scientific authority. You don’t get both. And the past actions of your magazine have clearly demonstrated that these days your activist causes are much more important to you than the science.

Read all.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Smart Diplomacy

2 Comments

The Egyptians turn on us. But there is this:

The idea that observing the treaty with Israel is something the US “buys” from the Egyptian military with aid is a typical US liberal media construct. It magnifies our importance and flatters our narcissism, distorts the nature of our relationships with Israel and its neighbors, and provides a simplistic picture of both Egypt and US policy. The Egyptian military supports the peace treaty with Israel because stability on its eastern frontier (and the return of Sinai, which came with the treaty) are in Egypt’s national interest.

I think that one of the reasons the military tossed out Morsi (in addition to the obvious public dissatisfaction with his incompetent and ideological, undemocratic rule) was that they didn’t want to get sucked into a war with Israel.

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

Remembering Ploesti

36 Comments

Thoughts on energy and war from Bob Zubrin:

In World War II, we controlled the oil. In this war, the enemy does. This is an unacceptable situation, because it places our fate in the hands of people who want to kill us. In World War II, we had no compunction about destroying the Nazi fuel-making facilities at Ploesti and Leuna, or about systematically sinking the Japanese tanker fleet, because we didn’t need their oil. As we have seen, those attacks were incredibly effective in breaking the enemy’s power. On May 12, 1944, the day of the Leuna raid, the Third Reich ruled an empire comprising nearly all of continental Europe, with a collective population and industrial potential exceeding that of the United States. A year later, it did not exist. Once Japan’s tanker fleet was sunk, the collapse of its empire was almost as fast. Today we are confronted by an enemy without a shadow of the armaments of the Axis; all the Islamist countries have is oil. Were we to destroy that power, they would be left with nothing at all. But we can’t hit them where it would truly hurt, because our economy needs their oil to survive.

And we have people in power who think that climate change is a bigger risk than totalitarianism. Because, you know, in many ways, they don’t mind totalitarianism that much, as long as it’s their own.