Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Cluelessness Of The Left

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On florid display here. It really is hilariously stupid that anyone would think this hurts Senator-elect Brown politically. One can only believe that if one believes one’s own idiotic caricature of Republicans and conservatives.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Speaking of playing against idiotic leftist stereotypes about Christians, I am loving Sarah Elizabeth’s diary:

So, the geniuses of the Obama spin machine have decided the best way to deal with the Brown/Coakley Battle of Bunker Hill and palpable discontent among the citizenry is suddenly to market the president as a populist. Like the YouTube video of the auto-fellating walrus that was going around a couple weeks ago, this is a chance to watch a truly spectacular feat of acrobatics at work. I hope Axelrod and Gibbs try to co-opt the tea party movement so that Rachel Maddow and David Shuster are forced to find a polite way to admit the president is a tea-bagger.

…Read that Arlen Specter told Michele Bachmann to “act like a lady” during a heated radio debate. I wish she’d responded, “I’ll act like a lady if you’ll act like a man.” Alas, she’s far classier than I.

I prepare for Larry King Live later tonight. The first time I did the show a conservative colleague who shall remain nameless told me to ask Larry what it was like to interview Oliver Cromwell. Needless to say, I did not take his advice. But now it’s all I can think about whenever I’m on. I have to consciously tighten my lips around my teeth to prevent this from escaping my mouth. If you ever see me pursing my lips on that show, this is why.

Hilarious.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

What A Nightmare Week For The Left

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Air (Un)America has gone tits up:

It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon, and that the Company will file soon under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business.

The very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America’s business. This past year has seen a “perfect storm” in the media industry generally. National and local advertising revenues have fallen drastically, causing many media companies nationwide to fold or seek bankruptcy protection. From large to small, recent bankruptcies like Citadel Broadcasting and closures like that of the industry’s long-time trade publication Radio and Records have signaled that these are very difficult and rapidly changing times.

Especially for a radio network that was redundant with much of the MSM.

Political Commentary

Striking A Blow

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…for the First Amendment. SCOTUS has struck down much of the atrocious campaign-finance laws, including the worst parts of McCain-Feingold. It’s a little disturbing that the ruling was so close, though.

[Update a while later]

Bad news for Babs?

“It certainly changes the Boxer race,” Stern said. “It means corporations, without setting up a PAC, can spend as much as they want opposing Boxer.”

While unions would be able to help Boxer, Stern said “they were already able to do it through PACs. Corporations were having more trouble doing so.”

It will be an interesting fall, here in California and elsewhere.

Political Commentary, Space

Outlived Its Usefullness

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I think that, with the nonsensical report that it released on Friday, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has demonstrated that it’s no longer a body to take seriously, if it was before. The notion that a paper rocket, that will be so expensive to operate that it will rarely fly, is safer than one with a proven track record is ludicrous. Mark Matthews has a report at the Orlando Sentinel blog. He points to perhaps the most absurd quote:

“To abandon Ares I as a baseline vehicle for an alternative without demonstrated capability nor proven superiority (or even equivalence) is unwise and probably not cost-effective,” notes the 117-page report, issued late Friday evening.

Specifically, the advisory panel attacks the idea of using commercial rockets and international partners to resupply the station, as suggested by a 10-member panel convened this summer under the direction of retired Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine.

The ASAP said NASA warned against putting too much faith in commercial or international spacecraft because there weren’t proper standards for safety.

The notion that anyone defending Ares is concerned with cost effectiveness is lunacy. Clark Lindsey has responded to this nonsense, and Elon Musk has put up a robust defense of his system:

“I have to say I’ve lost a lot of respect for the ASAP panel,” Musk said. “If they are to say such things, then they ought to say it on the basis of data, not on random speculation.”
…
According to Musk, the panel’s findings are “bizarre.” He says the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft “meet all of NASA’s published human-rating requirements, apart from the escape systems.”

“They’ve spent almost no time at SpaceX,” Musk said. “They’ve not reviewed our data. They have no idea what what our margins are, and what is and what isn’t human-rated.”

In addition, yesterday, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation put up a point-by-point response. It’s appalling to think that this sort of thing might actually influence policy. I hope it won’t.

Political Commentary

Meet The New Progressivism

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…same as the old progressivism:

Much…could be said about progressivism’s errors. Most damagingly, it argued that because progress had improved humanity and dissolved or overcome legitimate differences of opinion about morals and politics, the Constitution’s checks and balances and separation and dispersing of power were no longer necessary to prevent majority tyranny and officeholders’ abuse of power.

A central paradox of American progressivism arises from the divergence between its democratic aspirations and its aristocratic ambitions. On the one hand, progressives sought to democratize American politics by putting government in the service of, and giving greater say to, the people. On the other hand, they favored the enlargement of a distant national government, and the creation of an administrative elite that reduced popular accountability.

In the progressive classic The Promise of American Life (1914), Herbert Croly identified the source of this paradox with startling candor. Centralization and elite control were necessary to advance democratic ends because American constitutional government was based on “erroneous and misleading ideas,” and “the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.”

Along those lines, I found the president’s comments yesterday to be not just condescending, but contemptuous of the American people:

OBAMA: Well, here’s what I know is that when they actually find out what’s in the proposals for insurance reform, for making sure that we’re making health care more affordable, those specific provisions are actually very popular.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You made that speech in August.

OBAMA: Well, and one of the things that I have learned in Washington is you have to repeat yourself a lot because because unfortunately it doesn’t penetrate.

See, he just has to keep repeating it to us, like children, because we just won’t get it otherwise. The notion that we realize upon first hearing that it’s nonsense would never occur to him.

And, you know, If there’s one thing that I regret this year, is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us, that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values. And that I do think is a mistake of mine. I think the assumption was, if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on the, you know this provision, or that law, or are we making a good, rational decision here —

STEPHANOPOULOS: That people would get it.

OBAMA: That people will get it.

Oh, the people do get it, Mr. President. The problem is that the “good, rational decisions” seem to have been pretty thin on the ground in Washington this past year. The best evidence that people get it occurred on Tuesday in Massachusetts.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Insularity Of The Left

34 Comments

Some thoughts on why they were surprised yesterday.

President Obama is as insular as any president we’ve had. It is laughable to imagine Obama as the liberal Ronald Reagan, because Reagan himself was a Hollywood liberal and union head until the 1950s. Reagan knew how the other side lived and thought. He even liked some of them. Obama has had no such experience. He has had almost no personal relationships or consequential political dealings with conservatives during his whole life. In Obama’s mental map, conservatives are space aliens.

This puts Obama and insular liberals like him at a substantial political disadvantage. But even after Tuesday’s Brown Revolt, do they know it?

I think that when it comes to understanding small-government types, the left is don’t know squared. They don’t know what they don’t know. And it’s easy to defeat them in argument, because they’ve never really had to defend their positions, taking them morally and intellectually for granted in their hot-house environs.