Category Archives: Political Commentary

History, Political Commentary

Twenty Years After The Fall

3 Comments

..of the tyrant. Michael Totten has an interesting photoessay of a visit to Romania.

I’ve always wondered what democrats who grew up in communist countries thought of communists who grew up in democratic countries. Hardly anyone in the West ever voted with their feet, so to speak, by moving to a communist country, but communist dictatorships created millions of refugees who fled their homelands for Western democracies. East Germans were willing to risk being shot to make a run over the wall, Cubans are still willing to risk drowning to reach Florida, yet once in a while I still meet Westerners who have a warm spot in their hearts for regimes like Castro’s.

“What do you think,” I asked her, “of people in the West who think communism is a good idea but haven’t actually experienced it? There are quite a few people who admire the system in Cuba. You know the types I mean. The people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts.”

“Ah, yes,” she said. “They are ridiculous. But somehow I can understand them. Let’s take the example of France. In France they were all socialists when they were young. Sartre was a close friend of Castro’s. Gerard Depardieu was a close friend of Castro’s. They believed in this ideal, but after they saw what Stalin did they couldn’t look to the Soviet Union. So they turned their hopes to Cuba. Then they saw what Castro did. The only one who still seemed to live up to the ideal was Che Guevara. So they turned to Che Guevara. I understand them. They were wrong their entire lives, and it is difficult to admit this.”

And they are wrong still.

Hit his tip jar.

Political Commentary

The Time For Talk

14 Comments

…is over. Heh:

…nothing more effectively communicates that “the time for talk is over” than spending your week traveling to Pennsylvania and Missouri and giving speeches about your health-care plan.

Apparently the White House has never learned about the definition of insanity — to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results. The Obama team always seems to think that the solution is more cowbellObama.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

The Latest Lurio Report

1 Comment

…is out. Clark Lindsey has a summary of it. If you’re a subscriber (and if you’re not, you should be) you can read it here.

Charles seems quite encouraged by recent events. I’m a little less sanguine, because I’ve seen too many times how Washington can really screw things up, even when the people attempting to execute a good policy are acting in good faith.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Academy Awards?

40 Comments

There goes the neighborhood.

When I moved out here decades ago, one of the reasons that didn’t cause me to do so was proximity of the movie business. It was just for the space work, and the climate, and a general love of California. Just never had that much interest in it, or its denizens, and I can’t remember the last time (if ever) I watched an Oscar ceremony. Of course, I hardly ever go to the movies, so it’s likely that I haven’t even seen ninety percent of the contenders.

My big hope for this year is that Avatar wins an award for effects, and gets shut out on everything else. When a producer/director comes out and blatantly states that he was setting out to make an anti-corporate pro-“environment” movie, that should seal the deal, as far as I’m concerned. As Mayer famously said, if you want to send a message, use Western Union.

[Monday morning update]

Overall, I’d say that the Academy got it right. I think it’s interesting that, now that the evil tyrant George BusHitler is no longer terrorizing us from the White House, it’s all right to praise the troops, and to give an Oscar for best actress to a woman who played a Christian conservative (though maybe they were imagining what a feat of acting it must have been, as it would have been for them, for her to do so).

And we finally went to see Avatar yesterday afternoon (it’s no longer playing in IMAX, having finally been shoved aside by Alice, but still in 3D). It was just about as annoying as I expected.

Amoral anti-science philistine corporate toady interested in nothing but this quarter’s bottom line? Check. (Though to be fair, probably a lot of people in Hollywood have no experience with any other kind of businessman.)

Evil military guy who takes great joy in wiping out folks he considers subhuman? Check.

Scientists good, businesspeople evil? Check. Though again, to be fair, Hollywood often portrays scientists as evil as well.

Mindless worship of nature over technology (which is evil and destructive)? Check.

Perpetuation, even elevation of the pernicious myth of the noble savage? Check.

The last two, of course, are greatly aided by the propaganda effort that has been undertaken in our public school system for the past three or so decades. The Indians lived in peace and harmony, and in sustainable balance with their environment, bla bla, with no evidence to the contrary offered (e.g., mass slaughter of buffalo by driving them over cliffs, their horrific imagination for torture, the human sacrifices, the slash and burn, etc.). It’s all part of the ongoing effort to turn us from a nation founded on the principles of Locke to one based more on Rousseau. I’m glad that it wasn’t rewarded last night (though, had they invested one percent of the amount they did in effects on writing and story telling, and less cartoonish characters of a dimension greater than a half or so, that they did on effects, they might have gotten away with it).

[Update a while later]

Here’s an example of the brilliant dialogue:

NEYTIRI
Why save you?
JAKE
Yes, why save me?
NEYTIRI
You have a strong heart. No fear.
She leans closer —
NEYTIRI
But stupid! Ignorant like a child!

I think I know where the scriptwriters got their inspiration:

Eros: “You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!”

Harsh, I know. But that doesn’t make it not true.

Also, as Ray Kurzweil notes, Cameron seems to have a warped view of technology. Daisy cutters: bad. Arrows that can stop a man’s heart in less than a minute: good. And noble. And strangely, their bows and arrows are the only technology that these people seem to use. There is no mention of how their clothes and jewelry are made, though they clearly have them. And they clearly needed the Skypeople’s technology to destroy them. It’s all fine to have Gaia or whatevertheheckhername send a herd of stampeding hammerhead rhinocerous-like things, but that daisycutter would have been delivered if they hadn’t had a gunship and ordnance of their own.

And their only transport is the animals, though they don’t seem to use saddles. How do they expect to make serious war when they can get knocked off at the first impact with the enemy? The invention of the stirrup how the Mongols wiped up the place with everyone else. And really, don’t those flying things need seatbelts? I was quite amused to watch Sully firing his full auto cannon without being knocked off the creature from the recoil.

What this movie reminded me of was another movie with groundbreaking (at the time) effects, and terrible story, dialogue, and annoying characters. It was called Jurassic Park.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

There Is No “Plan B”

51 Comments

Or if there is, it wasn’t at the administrator’s request. And I think that Andy Pasztor should have done a little more digging before running his original story.

I think that all these rumors and leaks are just guerilla warfare by Ares/Constellation dead enders. And the end is growing near. If you look at the Senate Authorization language, it essentially buys into the new policy, for all intents and purposes.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

“The Science Is Settled”

5 Comments

…they told Copernicus.

[Late morning update]

Several “scientists” are continuing to plot attacks on the “deniers.” And they’re being led by Paul Ehrlich, one of the most discredited pseudoscientific totalitarian doom’n’gloomers in modern history? It doesn’t help that the president’s current science advisor was one of his protégés.

These folks have apparently never learned the old rule about holes.

Humor, Political Commentary

We’re Doomed!

5 Comments

A truly dire threat from a truly evil scientist:

No, the Pulsar Doom-Ray will not kill you — immediately. Ah, if only you were that fortunate! Instead, my ingenious device will instantaneously fuse shut the doors of your precious Congress and regulatory agencies. One touch of this button, and I shall bring your entire federal apparatus to a grinding halt — leaving you to suffer week upon week of Washingtonless agony!

Imagine now, if you dare, the fate that I may choose for you: first your vaunted health care bill will die, unreconciled, leaving you with a primitive 2009-level medical system. Trillions of dollars of your life-giving fiscal stimulus will go unspent, throwing tens of your countrymen out of work. Your ‘Smart Diplomacy’ peace partnership initiatives will go uncommunicated, resulting in discomfort and ill ease among the international community!

And this is just the beginning. The aftershocks will be no less painful, as the soothing transmissions of your public radio will fall silent. Diversity goals will remain unmeasured. Warning labels unmandated. Entire crops and cutting-edge artist communities will go unsubsidized. Cut off from your precious heroic public servants, you will be forced to helplessly fend for yourselves in the utter chaos of a dystopian unregulated hellscape where the living will envy the dead!

Actually, on second thought, I wouldn’t give him a dime.

[Late afternoon update]

[VOICE=”Jack Benny“]
I’m thinking it over…
[VOICE]