Category Archives: Media Criticism
The Stakes On Tuesday
…here are six of them:
anyone who thinks it doesn’t really matter whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney wins next Tuesday is, to put it bluntly, delusional.
The court is very important, but here’s one that they don’t mention. If Obama is impeached and removed over Benghazi (and anyone who doesn’t think this is a possibility is also delusional), we’ll have a President Biden.
[Update a couple minutes later]
We are now in a surreal situation in which the administration, its congressional protectors, and the compliant media are all in a no-comment holding pattern until after the election, when the truth will come out, in the same way that Watergate could no longer be suppressed after the 1972 election. It is only a matter of time when those who told initial untruths leak information about who told them to promulgate such unbelievable narratives. And we still do not know exactly why the ambassador was in Benghazi, with whom he was meeting, what exactly was the U.S. doing or not doing in postbellum Libya, and why did Stevens so fear for the safety of his people in a country declared a model of U.S. and allied intervention.
The secretary of state is in a bind. Susan Rice was groomed to replace her, as she prepared to successfully bow out after the reelection of Barack Obama, ostensibly to ready herself for Clinton 3.0. Now she dares not leave, given that in her absence her directorship at State will be scapegoated by the administration and the Obama-fed media. So she stays, as Susan Rice recedes into the background after being used — and subsequently humiliated — in advancing a scripted administration falsehood about the video. Amid this chaos, there will be some officials, who warned of the danger, who knew Libya was not safe, who wanted to send help to our trapped contingent, who did not think the attack came from mere protesters angry over a video, who were enraged by the cover-up, who resented the blame-gaming — and who will ultimately not stay quiet.
If they’re true patriots, they’ll start talking before Tuesday.
Dereliction Of Duty
…of the media:
The unfortunate message is that a compliant media will endanger national security to enhance the reputation of this administration; but not post facto worry about finding how it was lost and why Americans were killed — if it might question the administration’s judgment. Of all the things written about the four Obama years, one of the most telling will be how an entire industry forfeited its integrity for political purposes and lost its reputation.
Its reputation should have been lost in 2008.
Cross-Border Authority
The president lied when he said he gave the order to do everything possible to save the people in Benghazi.
“Unworthy Commander-In-Chief”
Which do you think will have a bigger effect on voters in a swing state, Nurse Bloomberg’s endorsement of Obama, or this devastating editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal?
At least more Nevada voters will know what happened in Benghazi.
[Update a couple minutes later]
At least Jake Tapper is reporting on it: “The Benghazi drip, drip, drip.”
People should realize that this is very much like 1972 (the Watergate break-in had happened that summer). We may be sparing ourselves another impeachment by removing the president on Tuesday.
Falling On Principle
Bill Whittle makes a plea to people who plan vote third party.
One other consideration is the number of SCOTUS justices who will turn 80 in the next four years.
Pro-Obama Polls
Eight reasons they’re wrong.
The Menendez Sex Scandal
Three things we can learn from it:
2. Democrats always screw you twice. First by working their will on you and second by delivering a lot less than they promised they would. The women in the story are complaining about this but that’s because they’re foreigners and don’t understand that this is actually standard Democrat operating procedure in this country. Just ask the workers trying to collect their government pensions in California. Indeed, Senator Bob’s approach to sex could even be considered the Democrat’s central philosophy: “You will bend over for us and in return we will promise to give you money and stuff… and then will give you a lot less than we promised.” If that were short enough to put on a campaign sign, people would be waving it at Obama’s campaign stops. Instead it’s just been shortened to “Forward!” Because “Over!” didn’t sound quite right.
3. It’s Democrat, not Republican, programs that send jobs out of the country. I mean, come on, are you going to tell me there are no prostitutes in America who can be screwed and then screwed again? There are plenty of them!
Maybe not when it comes to Bob Menendez. Perhaps he was offshoring because Dominiquenas were just doing the jobs that Americans won’t do.
[Update a few minutes later]
Hey, Senator, did you vote for Lily Ledbetter, and then underpay your prostitutes?
Well, to be fair, we’d have to know how much more he’d have paid them if they were men.
Disasters Create Bigger Government
78.4%
Some thoughts on Nate Silver’s latest prediction:
…one can think that Silver is probably right about the Electoral College, and simultaneously think that the 78.4 percent number is basically meaningless. Or rather, that it is impossible to formulate the epistemological difference between “There is a 78.4 percent chance that Obama will win” and “There is a pretty good chance Obama will win.”
My problem with it is that I don’t believe that he knows all of his data inputs to three figures. Yes, I know that’s how the polls purport to measure them, but three figures of precision are meaningless unless you also believe that the number is accurate. As another plug for my (still to be published) space safety book, here’s a relevant excerpt:
One of the very first things that scientists and engineers are taught is that you can’t get an answer more precise than the precision of the least precise factor from which it is derived. For example, we know the gravitational constant to many places, but when you multiply it by a mass that you only know to two places, that is the maximum precision that can be reasonably used to express the local gravitational field for that body. A good professor will mark down an answer on a student’s test that, while accurate, is unjustifiably precise. When I see engineers doing the same thing, I tend to think that they’re trying to impress the innumerate who don’t understand the difference between precision and accuracy. And I think that the safety numbers for Ares I were precisely wrong.
As is Nate’s election prediction. To me, it would be more credible if he just said 80%, though I still don’t buy it.