Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary

Does Arizona?

52 Comments

…have a right to defend itself? It seems pretty clear that the federal government has fallen down on one of its basic jobs, per Article IV, Section 4.

[The United States] shall protect each of them [the States] against Invasion;

As Glenn notes, when armed people are coming across your border and kidnaping and killing people, seems like a textbook example of an invasion. But no, the federal government is too busy making us buy health insurance and regulating how much salt we should eat to meet its constitutional responsibilities.

Business, Economics, Education, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Remains Of A California Day

11 Comments

Some depressing thoughts from long-time Democrat (who will be voting for Mickey Kaus in June) Victor Davis Hanson:

…how would we return to sanity in California, a state as naturally beautiful and endowed and developed by our ancestors as it has been sucked dry by our parasitic generation? The medicine would be harder than the malady, and I just cannot see it happening, as much as I love the state, admire many of its citizens, and see glimmers of hope in the most unlikely places every day.

After all, in no particular order, we would have to close the borders; adopt English immersion in our schools; give up on the salad bowl and return to the melting pot; assimilate, intermarry, and integrate legal immigrants; curb entitlements and use the money to fix infrastructure like roads, bridges, airports, trains, etc.; build 4-5 new damns to store water in wet years; update the canal system; return to old policies barring public employee unions; redo pension contracts; cut about 50,000 from the public employee roles; lower income taxes from 10% to 5% to attract businesses back; cut sales taxes to 7%; curb regulations to allow firms to stay; override court orders now curbing cost-saving options in our prisons by systematic legislation; start creating material wealth from our forests; tap more oil, timber, natural gas, and minerals that we have in abundance; deliver water to the farmland we have; build 3-4 nuclear power plants on the coast; adopt a traditional curriculum in our schools; insist on merit pay for teachers; abolish tenure; encourage not oppose more charter schools, vouchers, and home schooling; give tax breaks to private trade and business schools; reinstitute admission requirements and selectivity at the state university system; take unregistered cars off the road; make UC professors teach a class or two more each year; abolish all racial quotas and preferences in reality rather than in name; build a new all weather east-west state freeway over the Sierra; and on and on.

In other words, we would have to seance someone born around 1900 and just ask them to float back for a day, walk around, and give us some advice.

It’s hard to see much hope, given how the looters in Sacramento have arranged things with their gerrymandered districts.

On that last recommendation, does he mean upgrading I-80, or a new freeway with a different (presumably more southerly) route? Perhaps just south of Yosemite, providing a quick route to the Mammoth ski area for the Bay Area? But where would it hook into another interstate? The only two options are I-80, way to the north, or I-15, far south. Ideally, I guess it would continue east all the way across Nevada to extend I-70 in Utah all the way to California. In any event, it’s a pipe dream given the current state of state finances.

[Update a while later]

I haven’t been up that way in a few years. Is 395 four lanes all the way to Mammoth through the Owens Valley now? That would be a natural place to hook in a new road.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Jennifer Rubin Explains Life

20 Comments

…to David Brooks:

I have a rule of thumb: when a writer, especially a good one, excessively uses evasive or convoluted rhetoric, he is hiding something. Let’s try this: Obama, a very liberal politician, was smart enough to know he couldn’t win the presidency as a hard leftist. He posed as a moderate. New York Times columnists sung his praises. Pundits assured us that he was beyond ideology, a sort of philosopher-king with very neat pants. He got into office. He governed from the far Left. The president signed bill after bill, spending money we didn’t have and running up the debt. Obama insisted on a mammoth health-care bill the country hated. He egged Congress on to pass it. Meanwhile, the country recoiled. They hired a moderate on advice of pundits and media mavens and got a far-Left liberal, a ton of debt, an expanded federal government, and a slew of new taxes.

How’s that?

What’s amazing is that anyone takes David Brooks seriously, especially after this. Even more amazing that he’s still trotted out by the MSM as one of those “respectable,” “thoughtful” “conservatives.”

Political Commentary, Space

Mutiny

43 Comments

The Ares folks are reportedly defying the White House.

The problem, of course, is that they still have their budget, and they have allies in Congress. I feel sorry for them, because they’ve put a lot of effort in this, and don’t want to see it go for naught, and they’re caught in the middle of a war between the White House and the Hill, or at least a few key people on the Hill, and it’s a non-partisan battle. Unfortunately, if Congress doesn’t get a budget out this year (which seems likely to me) and does a continuing resolution, this could go on for many more months, wasting a lot more money and time, and delaying the start of anything useful in a new direction. And a Republican Congress next year could shut down or redirect the whole mess. Newt and Bob Walker and Dana are going to have to stay on the hustings to try to get their fellow elephants not to screw things up.

[Update a few minutes later]

This does nothing except increase the pressure on SpaceX for a successful Falcon 9 launch, of course. The political stakes are unfairly high for them.

Political Commentary

The Blago Trial

40 Comments

…may turn out to be quite interesting (in the Chinese curse sense) for the president.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The defense wants to subpoena him:

“President Obama has direct knowledge to allegations made in the indictment,” the defense said in its filing. “In addition, President Obama’s public statements contradict other witness statements.”The defense said it still has not received notes from FBI interviews of Obama even though it first sought that material in December.”

Goody. Another opportunity for a Democrat president to perjure himself and obstruct justice.

[Friday afternoon update]

Blago sends a not-so-subtle message to Obama.

It’s not good for Obama. But whether you agree or disagree with his politics, it’s clear that he’s in a difficult position.

His former close buddy, Rezko — “That’s not the Tony Rezko I know” — still swings like some albatross from his neck, and it’s getting quite stinky. It’s hard to transcend the old politics of the past with that dead bird weighing you down.

It’s going to get pretty crowded under that Chicago bus.

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Say It’s Not So

4 Comments

You will be as shocked as I am to learn that ObamaCare is going to cost more than advertised.

Well, as Queen Nancy said, we had to pass the bill to find out what was in it. It’s a shame that there couldn’t have been a cheaper way. I wonder if my ObamaCare defenders in comments really believed those CBO numbers, or they were just lying leftists? Speaking of which, Matt Welch notes that, as with health care, the president is lying about financial regulation as well. All while being on the take from the industry.

As the old saying goes, the problem with socialism is socialism. The problem with capitalism is capitalists.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Speaking of which, thoughts on cronyism and the left.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some House Democrats who were stupid enough to believe the CBO estimates (if they really were) are hearing a snapping sound.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Some Advice For Charlie Bolden

12 Comments

Next time a senator lectures him about Newsweak’s “invention of the year” (that doesn’t exist yet) and how Ares I-X proved that Ares I will be safe and work great, he should point out that it damaged the part of the rocket that was supposed to be reusable due to a parachute failure, that we still don’t know if we can do parachutes of this size that operate reliably, that it caused severe damage to the launch pad from scorching, and that it contained no elements of an actual Ares I.

[Update a few minutes later]

A depressing thought from Clark Lindsey:

NASA should at least have some sort of fact sheet that lays out the basics and is presented and discussed with the committee members and/or staff beforehand, especially those like Mikulski who are still open to new input. The written testimony from Bolden is clearly not doing the trick.

Of course, a fact sheet can never be long enough to inform a Senator on an appropriations committee, of all places, who doesn’t know the difference between marginal cost and recurring cost.

It’s sobering to realize that the state of confusion and superficiality displayed so vividly in these hearings on NASA, which involves funding in the mere nineteen billion dollar range, must certainly occur with most every item in the budget, including those that involve “real money”.

I think we saw this on full display with both the failed “stimulus” and health care, in which we had to “pass the bill to find out what was in it.”

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Question Authority?

2 Comments

Duuuude, that’s soooo 2008:

Joe Klein of Time magazine said the opposition rhetoric is bumping up against … SEDITION! It would make a great musical, wouldn’t it? “Teabagger on the Roof,” with everyman Bubya leading the townspeople in a rousing number. Sedition! Sediiiition! Why do we question the power of the state to regulate every aspect of our lives? (pause) I don’t know. But it’s sedition! And it is what Beck wants us to do.

Of course, Fiddler on the Roof had the tea party creed buried in the opening number. The townspeople crowd around the rebbe, and ask him to invent a prayer for the tsar. The rebbe is taken aback: a prayer, for the tsar, he says with astonishment, wondering how to reconcile his distaste with his duty as a man of God. He thinks. He says: May the Lord bless and keep the tsar. Far away from us.

Critics will note that tea baggerz want the tsar by their side holding their hand when it comes to the programs they want, like Medicare and Social Security, so ha ha, you’re hypocrites. Well, A) there’s no hypocrisy in wanting to get something out of a program into which you’ve been required by law to support for your entire working life, and B) the tea party, and its complaints, are not opposed to the existence of government. It’s the size and power they wish to debate. That’s okay, right?

No, not really. That would ruin the whole future. So we have to paint the opposition as a throbbing wad o’ Kluxers pinin’ for someone to boom up a Federal Building. Opposition to Bush was principled and civilized. Opposition to Obama is opposition to principles and civilization itself.

The double standard of these hypocrites is breathtaking.