Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary

Get That Man A Teleprompter

51 Comments

I missed or, rather, didn’t see the president’s news conference today. But Rich Lowry did:

Only someone who desperately hates the position he’s in now, having to try to accommodate political realities in a center-right country and kiss his former messiahship goodbye, would show such peevishness. We got a good look behind the curtain for a moment this afternoon, and it wasn’t pretty.

I’m guessing we’re going to see a lot more of that in the next two years. And it won’t bode well for his reanointment.

[Update a couple minutes later]

“If this deal gave people the belief that Obama might grow in office, the press conference probably deep-sixed that.

[Update a few minutes later]

Remember all that nonsense from the David Brookses and Chris Buckleys of the world in 2008 about his “first-class temperament”? It’s hard to take anything they tell us seriously, at this point.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Res Ipsa Loquitur

9 Comments

Well, not entirely. Ed Morrissey has some thoughts.

This is what happens when you put in place either economic incompetents, people who actively want to wreck the economy for their own political ends, or both. There are, after all, people who would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.

[Update a few minutes later]

Liberal math:

John Kerry was extolling the stimulus effects of unemployment benefits, as in more money returns to the economy for each dollar paid out to the unemployed. If so, why not simply put us all on unemployment benefits and watch the economy grow?

Or perhaps Kerry could advocate a national boat sales tax to collect the sort of revenue that he so carefully had tried to avoid. Or perhaps he might look carefully at zillionaire family trusts and the billions they divert from the strapped federal Treasury. Or perhaps he could take away the tax deductions on third or fourth homes above a certain square footage, maybe ending the deduction for property taxes on multiple homes?

My point? Why do Democrats always go after the orthodontist, electrical contractor, or insurance agency owner, and never the Buffetts, Kerrys, or Gateses? Bill Gates and Warren Buffett will defer more money from the federal Treasury by avoiding inheritance taxes (to channel their profits into their foundations) than all the billions lost this year by keeping tax cuts for small businesses.

Part of the problem is that these new aristocrats aren’t really liberals.

Political Commentary, Weird

More Bristol Derangement Syndrome

12 Comments

Well, at least these people didn’t shoot their television:

“I … believe that the program was fixed by extreme supporters of the Tea Party and Radical Right-Wing,” wrote one viewer. “There is no disclaimer that it is a political show, and instead that is what it has become. It is tragic to say that it could have been fixed but I hope ABC’s ratings blow-up and go down in flames.”

“You need to investigate the fraudulent voting practice on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars,” another viewer complained.

A third viewer protested that DWTS judge Carrie Ann Inaba’s hugging of Bristol Palin was “unfair treatment” that “was a signal for GOP/Tea Party supporters of Sarah Palin to ‘stuff’ the vote for Bristol Palin.”

“My 96 year old Mother-in-Law can dance better than Ms. Palin,” continued the viewer. “I want my Government to protect me the viewer from deceptive practices.”

Actually, I prefer the television abuser to people who want the federal government to regulate what I watch. Time to rein in the FCC.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

“No Future For The Jews”

4 Comments

In the Netherlands?

“I see no future for recognizable Jews, in particular because of anti-Semitism, specifically in Dutch Moroccans, who continue to grow in number,” Bolkestein reportedly said.

The former politician added that the many Arab television channels in the Netherlands contribute to the spread of anti-Semitism. He said he has no confidence in proposed measures to combat anti-Jewish sentiment.

“The Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues to fester,” Bolkestein said. “I foresee no quick solution, and anti-Semitism will continue to exist. Moroccan and Turkish young people won’t care about the measures.”

Politician Geert Wilders, who visited Israel this week, responded that “Jews shouldn’t emigrate, anti-Semitic Moroccans should.”

It is tragic that Holland, for centuries a bastion of tolerance and accepting of the oppressed from all over (e.g., before the East Anglian Puritans came to New England they had gone to Leyden) has absorbed an intolerant poisonous culture into its body politic. Charles Martel would be appalled. This won’t end well.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Honesty From Gene Simmons

11 Comments

He wants his Obama vote back, and admits that he voted for him because he was black. I suspect that there are a lot of people in the same boat, and they won’t make the same mistake twice. They expiated their racial guilt in 2008.

[Update a while later]

This seems right to me:

…ask yourself this question: How many people do you know who voted for Obama in 2008 but now express regret about the vote or reservations about his leadership?

Probably plenty.

Now ask yourself this: How many people do you know who voted against Obama in 2008 but have since been won over?

Probably not a single one.

The buyers’ remorse is strong in this One.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Dwindling

8 Comments

Sixty-nine years later, there aren’t many survivors of Pearl Harbor left. The war itself is passing out of living memory. And sadly, many of the lessons learned from it will probably have to be relearned, at the cost of how knows how many more innocent lives.

[Update a few minutes later]

Bing remembers. But it’s just another day to Google. You’d think it a significant date even to a “citizen of the world.”

[Update a while later]

When Japan attacked.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Pearl Harbor, Apollo 17, and Dragon

11 Comments

What do they all have in common? Well, as it turns out, not as much as I thought, or at least hoped, when I wrote this post at The Corner, because we now know that SpaceX won’t be flying tomorrow, due to a nozzle issue on the second stage. But the main points of it stand.

By the way, if they can change out a nozzle with only an additional two-day delay, that’s pretty remarkable. That kind of problem on the Shuttle could mean weeks. As I noted in comments over at Clark Lindsey’s, though, I wonder how many spares they have for upper-stage nozzles? If it were a first-stage nozzle, it would probably be no problem, because with nine engines, they have to really be cranking them out. But the single engine on the firstsecond stage, while using the same powerhead, has a different nozzle, because it has a higher expansion ratio for vacuum operations. But presumably, they have at least one in Florida, or if not, it’s a one-day trip from Hawthorne.