Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Gun Control

47 Comments

The great fizzle:

…the assault weapons ban has been deep-sixed by Democrats in the Senate. Same with any limit on the size of magazines. The argument now is all about increasing the reach of background checks, although any bill that can pass the Senate and the House will be much less extensive than the president or his supporters would like.

The gun control debate has shown the president again to be hopelessly detached as a legislative mechanic and ineffectual as a shaper of public opinion. Before writing rhetorical checks that his own party’s majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, couldn’t cash, the president might have at least consulted with the wily old son-of-a-gun about what was plausible and adjusted accordingly. He might have taken into consideration Reid’s ribbon-cutting ceremony with National Rifle Association honcho Wayne LaPierre at the Clark County Shooting Park in Las Vegas in 2010.

Once again, we’re saved from the fecklessness of the electorate by his incompetence.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Redefining America (And Space Policy)

11 Comments

Larry Greenfield writes that those who prefer tyranny are winning. Unfortunately, like many conservatives, he doesn’t understand what’s going on with space policy:

American innovation both promoted and benefited from the space race. Today, Mr. Obama has lowered his sights, cut NASA spending, and opposed lunar exploration and continued human spaceflight.

This is simply untrue. The administration hasn’t cut NASA spending — the Congress has, on a bi-partisan basis. And while the administration did shut down the disastrous Constellation program whose stated purpose was to get us back to the moon, it had no real prospects of doing so. They have not “opposed continued human spaceflight.” They have repeatedly requested funding increases for commercial crew, the only NASA program with any chance of getting Americans to orbit on American rockets in this decade, and Congress has repeatedly cut the funding for it. One can argue about how effective the administration’s plans will be, but to say that they oppose human spaceflight is simply false as a matter of objective fact. In fact, in its actions of wasting billions on an underfunded, unneeded new rocket, and starving of funds the programs actually needed to get humans beyond earth orbit, one could say that it is Congress, including many of the Republicans within it, that is objectively opposing continued human spaceflight.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Global Warming Hysteria

13 Comments

…is dissipating:

1. Global warming has gone AWOL over last 10 years, per the satellite record

2. Cumulating [sic] CO2 emissions in the atmosphere have had a minor impact on global temperatures over the last 20 years

3. The mainstream press, as represented by The Economist, and other proponents of convential [sic] climate orthodoxy are moving closer to the AGW skeptics’ (lukewarmers’) position

4. The publics [sic] (per Pew) belief in catastrophic AGW predictions is plummeting

As it should. As Robert Tracinski says:

So here’s the state of play of climate science a third of a century into the global warming hysteria. They don’t have a reliable baseline of global temperature measurements that would allow them to say what is normal and natural and what isn’t. Their projections about future warming are demonstrably failing to predict the actual data. And now they have been caught, yet again, fudging the numbers and manipulating the graphs to show a rapid 20th-century warming that they want to be true but which they can’t back up with actual evidence.

A theory with this many holes in it would be have been thrown out long ago, if not for the fact that it conveniently serves the political function of indicting fossil fuels as a planet-destroying evil and allowing radical environmentalists to put a modern, scientific face on their primitivist crusade to shut down industrial civilization.

I think that history will record that 2009 was the height of the hysteria, just before the release of the CRU data and emails, which broke the fever, and was a partial cause of the Copenhagen fiasco. And “FOIA,” whoever he or she is, will be viewed as a hero of humanity.

[Mid-morning update]

The new climate deniers.

[Later-morning update]

Why Freeman Dyson is a skeptic about climate “science”: “I believe any good scientist ought to be a skeptic.”

Amen.

Here‘s the full story.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Bachelor Of Arts Degree

22 Comments

The new high-school diploma:

Obviously, if Beaudry et al right, this is ferociously depressing news. It suggests that we’re pushing more and more people into (more and more expensive) college programs, even as the number of jobs in which they can use those skills has declined. A growing number of students may be in a credentialling arms race to gain access to routine service jobs. Or maybe the productivity of our nation’s wait staff is spiking as more skilled workers flood into these jobs.

And as evidence, McDonald’s is now requiring a college degree to be a cashier. And it’s positively destroying the low-skilled workers. This isn’t going to end well.

[Update on Friday]

OK, so it turns out that the McDonald’s help-wanted ad was erroneous. But the fact that it was believable should concern, and it may in fact be a sign of things to come.