Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Green Cars’ Dirty Little Secret

20 Comments

They’re not very green. All they do is move the emissions to a different location.

The electric car might be great in a couple of decades but as a way to tackle global warming now it does virtually nothing. The real challenge is to get green energy that is cheaper than fossil fuels. That requires heavy investment in green research and development. Spending instead on subsidizing electric cars is putting the cart before the horse, and an inconvenient and expensive cart at that.

It’s not about the economics. It’s about feelings, which are of course the highest value.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Self-Hating Gun Owners

27 Comments

That vast constituency that is apparently the last hope of those who would disarm us.

[Update a few minutes later]

(Astronaut) Mark Kelly, federal gun criminal?

I believe he probably bought the AR for his own protection for the same reason I bought mine. He didn’t expect to be caught doing it. Now, it appears, he says his intentions were to give it to Tucson PD from the beginning. The local prosecutor needs to get involved. When Mr. Kelly completed ATF Form 4473, which he had to do to legally buy the weapon, he had to answer question 11.a, which says “Are you the actual transferee/buyer of the firearm(s) listed on this from? Warning: You are not the actual buyer if you are acquiring the firearm(s) on behalf of another person. If you are not the actual buyer, the dealer cannot transfer the firearm(s) to you.” If he had answered no to this question, which he now claims was his intent all along. He would have been denied. Additionally when he signed the form at the bottom of Section A, he did so bellow the following in bold face type. “I certify that my answers to Section A are true, correct, and complete. I have read and understand the Notices, Instructions, and Definitions on ATF Form 4473. I understand that answering “yes” to question 11.a. if I am not the actual buyer is a crime punishable as a felony under Federal law…etc.” It doesn’t matter, as he now claims, whether he intended to give the weapon to law enforcement or the Pope, straw purchases are illegal and by his own statement Mr. Kelly appears to have committed a felony.

This could end up being delicious, if the local federal attorney investigates. But of course, working for Eric Holder, he won’t.

FWIW, I don’t believe him. As the commenter says, he bought the gun because he wanted it, and thought no one would notice. He’s becoming a Sarah Brady, with more hypocrisy.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Asteroids

13 Comments

Earth gets a rush of weekend visitors:

“The scary part of this one is that it’s something we didn’t even know about,” Patrick Paolucci, president of Slooh Space Camera, said during a webcast featuring live images of the asteroid from a telescope in the Canary Islands.

At least we’re doing a better job of looking for them now. And crowdsourcing of the amateurs with their increasing capabilities could help. A couple decades ago, hardly anyone was talking or writing about this, though I was.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Who Can Defend Hugo Chavez?

17 Comments

Idiots:

In a different era, he might have been called a fascist. After all, Hugo Chávez was an anti-Semitic demagogue and chauvinistic nationalist who hated Israel, hated the United States, hated democracy, and favored state control of the economy. A onetime paratrooper and failed coup leader, Chávez aggressively militarized Venezuelan society, creating pro-government citizen brigades to serve as his own praetorian guard and arming them with Russian-made assault rifles. He threatened neighboring countries and constantly warned of looming foreign invasions. He promulgated wild conspiracy theories about Jews and Americans. He befriended the most reactionary and fascistic governments on earth, including the theocracy in Iran, the gangster regime in Russia, and the racist Mugabe dictatorship in Zimbabwe.

I’m happy to call him one in this era. And he is living proof of Jonah Goldberg’s thesis.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Gun Guys

3 Comments

What “liberals” need to understand about them:

I want to go back to the gun law history. In 1987, Florida responded to a wave of crime by loosening restrictions. Were you surprised by what happened as a result?

At the time, I thought, “Oh, this is going to be a bloodbath.” And it wasn’t. The late ’80s were a very violent time in the U.S. The crack cocaine thing was in full flower. Then Florida did this, and most liberals thought it was crazy. But crime dropped. A lot. Crime there is now half of what it was before then.

…These are precisely the kind of people the Democratic Party says it exists to serve. Over and over, people I met on my trip would say, “I don’t get it. Democrats are the party of the working man. How can the Democrats do this?” They feel so alienated that they won’t listen to the Democrats on climate change or health care or immigration or anything else. As a Democrat, it broke my heart to hear this over and over and over again. These are our guys. These are our people, and they hate us. We take this anti-gun position and we’re giving these people away, and we’re getting nothing in exchange. We are not making the country safer.

He might want to reconsider some of the other things that “liberals” think are crazy.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

How To Grow The Economy

87 Comments

Cut spending, stupid:

Barack Obama has been trying to stimulate the economy with record-high government spending funded by higher tax rates and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s low interest rates.

But as Stanford economist Michael Boskin points out in the Wall Street Journal, “Japan tried that, to little effect, in the 1990s.” Slow growth has become the new normal there.

There are alternative policies. One is to cut government spending, or cut it more than you raise taxes. As Boskin points out, the Netherlands in the mid-1990s and Sweden in the mid-2000s “stabilized their budgets without recession [with] $5-$6 of actual spending cuts per dollar of tax hikes.”

And he notes that Canada reduced government spending in the mid-1990s and early 2000s by an amount equal to 8 percent of gross domestic product.

Those cuts weren’t painless, but they put Canada on a trajectory different from ours. Canadian voters value budget surpluses, and Canada managed to avoid almost all the bad effects of the 2007-09 recession.

I think that Keynes himself would be appalled to see the things being done in his name.