…are they losing it? I think that the researchers are confusing “science” with many of the modern self-proclaimed practitioners of it. I’m know that my faith in science is as strong as ever. My faith in institutions of it? Not so much.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
The Health-Care Disaster
Thoughts on the failure of the Blue model from Walter Russell Mead:
Obamacare was supposed to be the capstone in the arch of a new progressive era. The Dems were going to show us all that government really does work. Smart government by smart people, using modern methods and the latest up to the minute research from carefully peer reviewed articles in well regarded social science journals can solve big social problems. Obamacare was going to be such a big hit that even the bitter clingers would have to put down their guns and their Bibles long enough to thank the Democrats for this wonderful new benefaction.
But even if the Supreme Court doesn’t pull the trigger and kill the law in June, the darn thing won’t fly. The public hates it, and the longer it’s on the books the less popular it gets. This isn’t like Social Security, a program the public fell in love with early on and still cherishes today. It isn’t like Head Start, which remains dearly beloved even though there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that it helps anybody other than the people it employs. Obamacare is only marginally more popular than the Afghan War; already its estimated cost has doubled and we all know these numbers are likely to continue to increase. Obamacare so far is a political flop and shows ominous early signs of being a policy misfire as well. The benefits don’t seem to measure up to the hype, more people are going to lose their existing insurance, premiums are going up and the impact on the deficit is going to be worse.
This is a horrible piece of legislation — as misbegotten and useless to its friends as it is menacing to its enemies. The question is: why? Why did the blues write such a bad law? Why, given a once in a lifetime chance to pass a program that Dems have longed to achieve ever since the New Deal, did they craft a sloppy mess that nobody understands and few admire, and then leave their law so unnecessarily vulnerable to constitutional challenge?
The answers tell us much about why blue progressive thinking is losing its hold on the body politic — and why blue methods generally aren’t working as well as they used to.
It can’t lose its hold fast enough for me.
Barack Obama
Race hustler. It’s what they do. It’s who they are. It wouldn’t even be surprising, if not for all of the fraud and lies about the “post-racial” president he would be four years ago.
[Update a few minutes later]
Merchants of Despair: the latest from Bill Whittle.
Cuban Health Care
Here we go again: the continuing media myth.
What Did George Zimmerman Say?
If this is true, it’s not good for the Narrative.
[Thursday morning update]
Did ABC News doctor the video to make it look like Zimmerman was uninjured?
[Bumped]
It’s Not Just The Mandate
ObamaCare is tyrannical with regard to doctors and insurance companies as well.
Martha Zoller Show
I’ll be on at 10:15 EDT tomorrow morning to talk about my PJMedia piece.
The White House/Media Cocoon
…and why it led them so far astray on ObamaCare. My latest is up at PJMedia.
[Update a while later]
ObamCare, and how nice people crush freedom:
…there’s always a good reason to take your freedom away — your health, the poor, your evil opinions, the lousy way you raise your kids — and never a reason to preserve freedom except the love of freedom itself. Thus, so often, the people destroying the American way of life are actually nice people who just want to help.
The paving stones of the road to perdition…
Freedom
The President’s Dangerous Demagoguery
Thoughts from VDH:
What do all these presidential interventions teach us — other than that there are two sides to every story? First, that race and gender are flashpoints in our culture, as liberals see justice routinely denied to Americans on the basis of their sex and skin color, and conservatives believe these issues are continually trumped up to further divide the country and serve the political interests of a partisan elite.
But a larger lesson should be the president’s, because a disturbing pattern has developed in his editorializing, which is aimed exclusively at those whose policies and language he implies lead to horrific acts like the shooting of African-American teenagers, the smearing of young feminists, the shooting of Democratic congresswomen, or the jailing of African-American professors. Yet in every case, further evidence, more information, and subsequent events suggested that the president had offered either incomplete or misleading commentary to the nation, predicated not on a desire for healing or truth, but on a wish to gain partisan advantage.
With the world in recession, facing energy shortages, and on the brink of war, it is politically unwise for the president of the United States to offer commentary on contentious issues, especially before the facts of such disputes are fully known. To do so at worst can interfere with ongoing investigations, and at best pits the office of the presidency against private individuals. In every case, Barack Obama cannot conclude that his commentary created greater unity rather than further polarization.
Oh, he’s clearly quite capable of coming to all manner of delusional conclusions.