Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Words Matter

10 Comments

Some thoughts on the president’s petulance and its effect on Tuesday’s electorate. I disagree with this, though:

Our 44th president is a man who has an excellent brain and a not-infrequently childish disposition and who thinks he knows what is best for everyone but has neither the patience nor the humility to deal with those who preach a different way. He’s both brilliant – and exceedingly petulant.

I continue to fail to see the evidence for his “excellent brain” or his “brilliance.” I think that both are highly overrated, and always have. My esteem for his intelligence has dropped, however, along with that of the now-unentranced public. They now realize he isn’t as smart as the media insisted he was. I now think him an ideologically blinded fool.

[Update a couple minutes later]

See, here’s a perfect example: “Obama Calls For Compromise, Won’t Budge On Tax Cuts.” Democrats think that “compromise” means “going along with what the Democrats want.”

And as usual, he demagogues and lies:

“At a time when we are going to ask folks across the board to make such difficult sacrifices, I don’t see how we can afford to borrow an additional $700 billion from other countries to make all the Bush tax cuts permanent, even for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans,” the president said. “We’d be digging ourselves into an even deeper fiscal hole and passing the burden on to our children.”

No one, least of all Barack Obama, knows how much it will cost to keep those rates in place, or if it will “cost” anything at all.

Humor, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, War Commentary, Weird

First It’s Cartoons

30 Comments

And now this:

Prominent Muslim religious heads have expressed anger and dismay on the information of a US dog being named ‘Khan.’ Maulana Syed Athar Ali said that it is a known fact that Muslims detest pigs and dogs.

“To name a dog a Muslim name by US security agencies is to deliberately incite the Muslim community. We would be meeting soon and devise a strategy to protest and seek apology from the US,” said Maulana Athar Ali.

Yes, of course. It was a deliberate act of provocation. And just how angry are they? This angry.

Hey, it’s a religion of peace. Or so they say.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Thoughts On Facts And Science

31 Comments

…from an unwashed hillbilly:

Those words mean two things to this unwashed hillbilly: (1) I have doubts that Obama is “the smartest guy ever to become President,” and (2) he lies.

When Obama was trying to sell the plan, he said it would bring the cost curve down. Once his plan was signed into law, he said he knew that it was “going to increase our costs.” At least that sure looks like a lie to this ignorant know-nothing. Maybe there’s some nuance I don’t understand. Or does “down” mean “up” in actuarial science? Maybe Katie Couric could enlighten me; she knows pretty much everything about climate science.

I guess I’m an unwashed hillbilly, too.

Political Commentary

Trampled By The “Astroturf”

35 Comments

Pity Nancy Pelosi.

Or don’t.

I am highly gratified by the losses of: Alan Grayson, Jim Oberstar, Phil Hare, Barron Hill, Bob “Who are you?” Etheridge, Russ Feingold, Charlie Crist, all the Blue Dogs who voted for the health-care disaster, and others, off the top of my head.

I’m disappointed that we haven’t ended the long national nightmares of Barney Frank, Harry Reid (though he’ll actually probably continue to do damage to the Democrats, particularly if he remains the Minority Leader), Loretta Sanchez, Barbara Boxer, and no doubt others.

I’m very happy to see Senators Rubio, Ron Johnson, and Pat Toomey, among others.

But the main thing is that at least we will be able to stop digging, and spend the next couple years Preparing to finish the job, in the Senate and the White House.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

California, Too Far Gone

49 Comments

We seem to have reached a tipping point here. Too many Californians think that they can have both lunatic environmental and economic policies, and a viable economy. Almost every initiative went the wrong way, as did the gubernatorial and senatorial elections, though the former was partly a result of an awful Republican candidate — Jerry Brown might have been beatable by Chuck DeVore.

It’s a positive feedback situation with increasingly negative results. The economic ignorami in the electorate vote for idiotic propositions, and send economic ignorami to Sacramento in the legislature and governor’s mansion, resulting in flight by the sensible, continuing to distill and concentrate the idiocy in the electorate. It will end in bankruptcy (the state is basically already there), and then they’ll demand a bailout from the rest of the country. Fortunately, with the new Congress, they won’t get it. But I don’t know if the state is salvageable at this point. It’s some of the best real estate on earth, but its current inhabitants don’t deserve it, and have squandered a great legacy.

It’s an opportunity for other states to poach a lot of space companies, I think.

[Update early afternoon]

California, winner of the Dumbest State Award, by a landslide.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Great Election News For Space

10 Comments

Jim Oberstar has lost. Not just lost his chairmanship of the House committee that oversees the FAA, but he’s completely gone from Congress.

What does this mean? It means that there’s a reasonable chance of getting an extension to the moratorium on FAA-AST regulation of passenger safety, which was due to expire in 2012. The suborbital industry hasn’t advanced as much as anticipated when the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act was passed in late 2004, so eight years wasn’t enough. The new chairman will probably be current ranking member John Mica of Florida. His district runs from the northern Orlando suburbs up to the coast from Daytona to St. Augustine, which isn’t really part of the space coast, but it’s just north of it, so I imagine he’ll be amenable to legislation that will help business there.

The Aviation subcommittee, currently run by Russ Carnahan of Missouri, will probably go to ranking member Tom Petri of Wisconsin. From his profile:

A persistent foe of government waste, Petri has repeatedly earned high marks from such organizations as the National Taxpayers Union, the Concord Coalition, Citizens Against Government Waste, Americans for Tax Reform, and the Watchdogs of the Treasury. Over many years he has repeatedly been named a “Guardian of Small Business” by the National Federation of Independent Business, and has won the “National Security Leadership Award” from the American Security Council.

Petri is known for his efforts to apply innovative solutions to problems, with a firm commitment to cost-effectiveness. Accordingly, Norm Ornstein, a prominent political scholar and expert on Congress, has called Petri “one of the most thoughtful members of Congress, filled with lots of ideas about how to make government better,” while senior Washington Post columnist David Broder has called him “a notably independent, creative legislator.”

Seems like he’d also be amenable to sensible legislation that promotes commercial spaceflight, which will also help NASA save money.

It’s really hard to appreciate what great and unexpected news this is. There were a lot of indications that Oberstar was in trouble, but it was still hard to believe that he could actually lose his election. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation should plan on trying to move some legislation this year. It’s hard to believe that the administration would be opposed, given its commercial-friendly space policy in general.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I just realized that I didn’t explain why Oberstar was so bad. Go read this article from 2005 at The Space Review.

[Update a while later]

Here’s a little disappointing news on the space front. I was hoping that Gabbie Giffords would lose in Arizona, and she almost did, but it looks like the libertarians kept her in office, by a couple thousand votes. But at least she’ll no longer chair the space subcommittee. Same thing happened to rocket scientist Ruth McClung. If those libertarians had voted for her, they’d have defeated (Arizona-bashing) Grijalva.

I often, even mostly vote libertarian in elections, to make a political point, but never in one that tight. I do prefer the lesser of the two evils, and it was particularly important in this election to remove as many Democrats as possible.

[Update early afternoon]

The Arizona races are still too close to call.