Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Private Space Station Progress

10 Comments

Bob Bigelow was at the reception last night. So was Leonard David, who got him to spill the beans on his “sovereign clients.” I think that Mike Gold makes an important point:

While countries in Asia and Europe take commercial advantage of space, “my fear is that this could become yet another extremely lucrative economic opportunity that is engendered here … and then shipped overseas,” Gold cautioned. “The U.S. Congress should spend less time questioning the business case of the commercial market. They need to spend more time trying to figure out how to grow that market and ensure that it happens here in the United States.”

With their blinkered “NASA must develop, own and operate its own vehicle” mentality, they are unwittingly aiding commercial space — in Russia.

Education, Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

Kos, Pwned

82 Comments

I’m capturing this history quiz here for posterity, before it scrolls off Twitter (not a permalink, which is why I’m doing it):

# #KosHistoryQuiz US const. establishes which 3 branches? (a) Exec, Judicial, Legislative (b) EPA, IRS, Sesame Street (c) Obama, Obama, Obama less than 10 seconds ago via web

# #KosHistoryQuiz who wrote the Marshall plan? (a) George Marshall (b) Penny Marshall (c) Josh Marshall (d) Marshall Law 5 minutes ago via web

# #KosHistoryQuiz Boston Tea Party was a protest against (a) taxes (b) tuition increases (c) insensitivity against the Founding Muslims 13 minutes ago via web

# #KosHistoryQuiz “1773” is (a) teabagger racist code (b) Chicago area code (c) L33t H4x0r code 24 minutes ago via web

# #KosHistoryQuiz how many lefty bloggers does it take to screw up a Palin-is-Stupid meme? (a) 1 (b) 1773 (c) how many do you got? 36 minutes ago via web

# #KosHistoryQuiz 1773 is (a) year (b) street address of Palin Derangement Clinic (c) Kos’ new nickname forever and ever 40 minutes ago via web

# #KosHistoryQuiz which party occurred in 1773? (a) Boston Tea Party (b) Boston Red Sox World Series party (c) Boston album release party about 1 hour ago via web

# #KosHistoryQuiz outline these Supreme Court decisions (1) Brown v. Board of Education (2) Plessy v Ferguson (3) Palin v Voices in Kos’ Head about 1 hour ago via web

# #KosHistoryQuiz which phrase is not is the constitution? (a) separation of chuch and state (b) right of privacy (c) ummm (d) potrzebie about 1 hour ago via web

# #KosHistoryQuiz what is the significance of 1773? (a) Boston Tea Party (b) year when GOP invented slavery (c) sales of Kos’ last book about 1 hour ago via web

# Bring a blue light and disinfectant. @DLoesch I’ll be on Parker/Spitzer tonight about 2 hours ago via web

# #tweetsfrom2009 Dear Lord, please give me more money than Suge Knight and a bigger package than Bret Favre about 2 hours ago via web

# MelissaTweets RT @TheSenator: For @pbsgwen, et al: http://tinyurl.com/2cw8fz2 #fail #eyeroll | LOL about 2 hours ago via TweetDeck Retweeted by iowahawkblog and 3 others

# @jimgeraghty if all those swing district Dems lose, the ones left in DC will be some heretofore unknown level of super-concentrated idiocy. about 3 hours ago via web

# ridiculers of Sarah Palin’s “1773” reference respond http://t.co/YFMHcnT about 4 hours ago via Tweet Button

# MattOrtega @RevDrEBuzz @tahDeetz @iowahawkblog You people are fools. I wasn’t questioning the date of the original Tea Party. about 4 hours ago via TweetDeck Retweeted by iowahawkblog and 5 others

# @MattOrtega mmm hmm. And you can see 1776 from your house. about 4 hours ago via web

# @jtLOL Will the following students please report to remedial history class @pbsgwen @markos @mattortega about 4 hours ago via web

# @pbsgwen What kind of wallpaper did Palin choose for her rent-free apartment in you head? about 5 hours ago via web in reply to pbsgwen

# #KosHistoryQuiz sum year of the Boston Tea Party and # of US states. Divide by latest MSNBC Nielsen rating. (a) infinity (b) math is hard

For those who need a little background on how Markos “don’t know much about history,” Bryan Preston has a good summary and links. Of course, Kos is the guy who thinks that Turks are Arabs.

And I’ve never been as impressed with Gwen Ifill as my supposed intellectual betters expect me to be.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Satire

The Job-Creator-In-Chief

13 Comments

Why is he playing favorites in Texas?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 214,000 net new jobs were created in the United States from August 2009 to August 2010. Texas created 119,000 jobs during the same period. If every state in the country had performed as well, we’d have created about 1.5 million jobs nationally during the past year, and maybe “stimulus” wouldn’t be such a dirty word.

To quote the president in another context, you’d think they would be thanking him, but I’ll bet those ingrate Texan hicks won’t even vote for him in 2012.

[Tagged as “Satire” because I’ve never created a “Sarcasm” category. Maybe I should.]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

What Happened To All The Hurricanes?

7 Comments

Al?

The crazy 2004 and 2005 seasons were supposed to be the new normal. Pretend scientists like Al Gore said global warming was here, and we had better listen to him because he had all the answers. People pay Al Gore $200,000 to speak, but that doesn’t mean he knows anything.

I hope this is another bubble. We’d be better off paying him that much not to speak.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Credentialed Gentry

7 Comments

…and the unpersuaded yahoos:

…maybe that is what defines an elite: the lip-curled reproach to anything that has come before this privileged and smug generation—tradition, faith, heroic self-denial—and the illusion that their disdain is somehow a broader and more enlightened “love.”

For the most part, the “yahoo” non-elites do not begrudge the gentry their private jets, their private clubs, and their private schools. They do, however, begrudge them the superior dismissal of their values, and the constant attempts to control how others get to live their lives.

The ineducable masses begrudge the hectoring about their taste for “gas guzzlers,” from people who ride in limos. They dislike being dismissed as “provincial” or “parochial” by people who only associate with others of the same neighborhood and mindset. They are weary of being portrayed as less compassionate, less well-meaning, gosh darn it just lesser people because they believe in giving an equal-opportunity hand-up, rather than an impossible-to-sustain equal-hand-out.

The elites don’t want to be called “elite.” But they reinforce the perception with every tax-shelter they pursue, every privilege they grasp, every tax bill they can’t be bothered to pay until they’re forced to, and when they pretend that middle-class wages are undertaxed, greedy, ignoble, selfish, and unfair.

I wouldn’t mind quite so much if they were really, you know, elite, instead of someone who managed to get a piece of paper from Harvard or Yale.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Geert Wilders, Western Sages

5 Comments

…and Islam:

During a March 2009 interview with the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby, Wilders had earlier rejected the notion he “hates Muslims,” while providing a frank characterization of the totalitarian nature of Islam:

I have nothing against the people. I don’t hate Muslims. But Islam is a totalitarian ideology. It rules every aspect of life — economics, family law, whatever. It has religious symbols, it has a God, it has a book — but it’s not a religion. It can be compared with totalitarian ideologies like Communism or fascism. There is no country where Islam is dominant where you have a real democracy, a real separation between church and state. Islam is totally contrary to our values.

By making this latter claim, Wilders shattered a corrosive modern taboo, enforced rigidly and without forgiveness by cultural relativist politicians and government bureaucrats as well as influential “savants” in media, academia, and religion.

But Wilders’ assessment not only comports with scholarly observations made (primarily) before the advent of the postmodern Western scourge of cultural relativism, it is supported by contemporary hard polling data from 2006 -2007, and a more recent follow-up reported February 25, 2009. At present, overwhelming Muslim majorities — i.e., better than two-thirds (see the weighted average calculated here) of a well-conducted survey of the world’s most significant and populous Arab and non-Arab Muslim countries — want these immoderate outcomes: “strict application” of Shari’a, Islamic law, and a global caliphate.

We keep our head in the sand (or in the case of Joy Behar and Whoopie, up our fundament) at our peril.