It’s a never-ending story.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
A Scandal Iceberg
Gunwalker was just the tip. But the media doesn’t want to know.
Bloody Sunday In Cairo
…and the White House’s disturbing statement:
On Monday, the Christians’ funerals took place, and as the procession left the cathedral for the cemetery, further sectarian clashes occurred. State TV retracted its claim of Sunday, saying that no soldiers were killed after all and the earlier report had been fabricated. Unfortunately, this correction seemed not to have reached the White House, which expressed President Obama’s concern for the “tragic loss of life among demonstrators and security forces,” adding that “now is a time for restraint on all sides.” Perhaps I ought to join the president in his concern and call for restraint: I call upon the security forces to refrain from killing Christians, and upon Christians to refrain from dying.
This is the mindless mentality of the diplomat and “peacemaker.” It is the mentality of the school principal who sees a bully beating up on a defenseless kid, and suspends them both for “fighting.”
The Iran Plot
…some useful thoughts. Bottom line, it’s not a distraction from Justice Department scandals, and it’s not really anything new. It’s just part of the war they’ve been waging, and we’ve been pretending isn’t happening, against us for over three decades.
[Update a few minutes later]
Some questions for the president:
Do you consider the Iranian plot to bomb a U.S. restaurant an act of war? If not, would it have been an act of war had the plot succeeded?
Are you still willing to negotiate with Iran without preconditions? Are you still willing to grant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad entry into the U.S.? Do you maintain that your failure to support the Iranian Green Movement in 2009 was not a significant mistake?
In light of the Iranians’ willingness to plant a bomb in Washington, D.C., do you now consider a nuclear Iran unacceptable? Is a military option to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon off the table?
Nah. All we need is another “reset” button.
Cameron’s “Conservatives”
A depressing dispatch from Old Blighty.
California’s Slow Suicide
When the dust settled on Gov. Jerry Brown’s first legislative session in nearly three decades, no group had won more than organized labor, which heralded its largest string of victories in nearly a decade.
At the urging of the food workers’ union, Brown agreed to crack down on the use of automated checkout machines in grocery stores. At firefighters’ request, he approved new restrictions on local governments seeking to void union contracts. He guaranteed wages for workers in public libraries that are privatized — a bill sponsored by another labor group.
Those unions and others helped bankroll Brown’s campaign last year.
Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
What does “crack down on the use of automated checkout machines” mean? Outlaw them? All the groceries have them now. This is luddism, pure and simple.
[Update a few minutes later]
Plus, he’s not only taken away open carry, but established a state registry for long guns. Guess I know what state I’m not going to be buying any guns in. I wonder if this will survive a court challenge?
Yowza
Charlie Martin suddenly feels better about Huntsman. I can see why.
The End Of The Future
I missed this earlier, but last week Peter Thiel had a long and pessimistic essay on the stalling of American innovation.
Putting the SLS On Hold
…is not “putting human spaceflight on hold.”
The SLS is in fact the antipathy, the nemesis of human spaceflight for NASA.
Frankly, I would cancel both Webb and SLS, and rethink how to do Webb with a bigger launcher, such as Falcon Heavy.
Should Liberals Be Skeptical?
…it is just not the protesters’ apparent allergy to capitalism and suspicion of normal democratic politics that should raise concerns. It is also their temperament. The protests have made a big deal of the fact that they arrive at their decisions through a deliberative process. But all their talk of “general assemblies” and “communiqués” and “consensus” has an air of group-think about it that is, or should be, troubling to liberals. “We speak as one,” Occupy Wall Street stated in its first communiqué, from September 19. “All of our decisions, from our choices to march on Wall Street to our decision to camp at One Liberty Plaza were decided through a consensus process by the group, for the group.” The air of group-think is only heightened by a technique called the “human microphone” that has become something of a signature for the protesters. When someone speaks, he or she pauses every few words and the crowd repeats what the person has just said in unison. The idea was apparently logistical—to project speeches across a wide area—but the effect when captured on video is genuinely creepy.
True liberals certainly should be. But most people who call themselves that these days aren’t. And of course, it’s hard to take very seriously anyone who thinks that Dodd-Frank is “the best liberal hope for improving democratically regulated capitalism.”
[Update a while later]
The Wall Street protesters have been sold a bill of goods:
The narrative that came out of these events—largely propagated by government officials and accepted by a credulous media—was that the private sector’s greed and risk-taking caused the financial crisis and the government’s policies were not responsible. This narrative stimulated the punitive Dodd-Frank Act—fittingly named after Congress’s two key supporters of the government’s destructive housing policies. It also gave us the occupiers of Wall Street.
We have to take back the narrative.