Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Missing The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

6 Comments

Gerard van der Leun isn’t:

The death of the P.I. and its “life in death” on the Web is only the second in a trend that will grow. And as the other papers fail into the Web we will hear, again and again, about the Internet, about Craigslist, about The Drudge Report, and a hundred other reasons these papers are dead. What we will never hear is that their editorial policies and news slanting were part and parcel of their demise. We will never hear about the willed insults, slights, and snubbing of fully half of their potential circulation pool. Journalists and editors write a lot about “taking personal responsibility” when it comes to others. You never hear them write that about themselves. There’s no mea culpa among liberal newspaper journalists these days. There’s only “The Internet ate my newspaper.”

It could apply to a lot of the corpses.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Glimpse Through The Veil

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…of the travesty, indeed atrocity that American public education has become:

The reporter, Ginger Thompson, describes how a teacher prepares students for a standardized test. It’s a classic case of “teaching to the test” rather than teaching the subject itself. But that’s only part of the problem:

“If you see a question about Bolsheviks on the test,” Ms. Cain said, “the answer is probably Red Scare.”

So that’s the one thing Virginia high school students are apparently expected to understand about the Bolsheviks: They inspired American paranoia. That’s the Bolshevik legacy, you know.

Sadly, it’s no doubt a tip of the iceberg. And of course the NYT reporter found nothing remarkable about it.

Philosophy, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

“Space Cadet” Politics

8 Comments

Nader Elhefnawy has a sort-of interesting, but ultimately confused and confusing piece about the political inclinations of space activists over at The Space Review today.

I’ll have more to say about this later (it really needs a longer essay than Elhefnawy’s itself), but I’m too busy with a deadline to respond immediately. It’s confusing because he uses the terms “liberal” and “conservative” as though there is some common consensus on what these words mean, despite the fact that he shows examples where they are the opposite of conventional thinking (e.g., post-modernists as pre-modern “conservatives” and “nineteenth-century” (which I would call classical) liberals). Also, as I note in comments over there, there can hardly be more of an oxymoron (excluding the obvious ones like jumbo shrimp and congressional intelligence) than “left-libertarian.”

Also, I wonder if he is aware that it was H. G. Wells himself who coined the phrase “liberal fascism”?

There is also some (perhaps inadvertent, and again, confused) slander of the community as well. But go read for yourself, and I’ll try to tackle it later.

[Update in the afternoon]

At least with regard to the straw men and blatant misrepresentation of the views of the alternate space community, Clark Lindsey has responded:

The broad consensus certainly does not predict anything as ridiculous as “Earth-to-low orbit costs being slashed to $100 a pound by 2012”. The expectation is in fact that low transport costs will be achieved over time via incremental development of reusable systems of increasing robustness and reliability. The incremental approach keeps development costs down while robustness provides for low operations costs. The time scale for this process will depend on the parallel growth of markets like space tourism to pay for the hardware development and to drive flight rates higher.

Elhefnawy implies that all the “experts” hold to his views on these matters. However, I can easily point to people with decades of experience and solid records of accomplishment in the space industry who are now participating in NewSpace companies and who believe that large cuts in the cost of space access are achievable. There are, in fact, a number of examples of projects already, such as the Bigelow habitats, the Surrey Satellite GIOVE-A, the SS1, etc., that were accomplished for costs dramatically below what they would have been if carried out by a government agency or a conventional aerospace industry firm.

Apparently Professor Elhefnawy has a pretty restricted circle of “experts.” Perhaps he should attend Space Access in a couple weeks and broaden both his technical and political horizons.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Making Orwell Proud

32 Comments

Some examples from VDH:

Guantanamo is still open, but there are no longer “enemy combatants” there (Perhaps the name of the camp can be changed next?). The old campaign snicker that a naïve McCain really believed that a then-stronger economy is “fundamentally sound” is now the new Obama gospel about a far weaker one. There are to be no more earmarks in spite of 8,000-plus new ones. A $3.6 trillion-dollar budget is proof of commitment to financial responsibility; the remedy of Bush’s borrowing profligacy is to increase the deficit from $500 billion to $1.7 trillion. Bush’s signing statements bad; Obama’s signing statements good. An end to lobbyists in an administration ensure there are over ten; the highest ethical standards mean the nominations of Daschle, Richardson, etc. The changing meaning of words really does trump memory and reality itself.

Not to mention what a disaster that it would be to make health insurance benefits taxable, which was one of the many mendacious ways by which they slithered into the White House, except that now, maybe it’s not such a bad idea:

Now that Mr. Obama has begun the health debate, several advisers say that while he will not propose changing the tax-free status of employee health benefits, neither will he oppose it if Congress does so.

Let me translate: “Yes, I don’t want to take responsibility for it, because even my lapdogs in the media might find that too much hypocrisy to stomach after all my demagoguery on the issue last fall, but I’ll sign the bill when it gets to my desk, so go for it.”

Well, actually, I’m not sure that it would make Orwell proud. More likely sad at his own prescience.

Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

When Waxing Is Outlawed

5 Comments

…only outlaws will wax:

Cherry Hill salon owner Linda Orsuto said that women would “go ballistic” if the proposal passed. She said that some women would resort to waxing themselves, visiting unlicensed salons or traveling to other states, including Pennsylvania, in a quest to remain bare down there.

“The clients are going to freak,” said Orsuto, who owns 800 West Salon & Spa, on Route 70. “It’s a hot issue, and we’re going to have to do something.”

Isn’t it wonderful to have a government so solicitous of our welfare that we (well, they) are driven to back-alley waxing?

And as Jonah notes, it is interesting how many people didn’t want to discuss it.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

The Country Is In The Very Best Of Hands

3 Comments

Congressman on the space committee, meet the real space program:

At one point he raised a few eyebrows when he said America’s position in space depended “particularly on funding from the US Congress. Only governments can really afford space.” That was a rather odd comment given the number of people in the room who do business in, and make money from, space, without relying on the Congress for funding. Asked about that comment in the Q&A session that followed his speech, he amended his comments somewhat. “Fundamental research has to come out of the government and then our private sector will partner with us as a government to improve it and make it more ubiquitous, so to speak.”

Later in the Q&A came the topic that is almost inevitable in any discussion of commercial space policy in the US these days: export control, or ITAR. “Can you comment about your thought on ITAR and the ability for US companies to sell products overseas?” someone asked. Griffith had a blank look on his face. The questioner, and others in the audience, repeated and elaborated on the question: you know, ITAR, export control restrictions, that sort of thing? “Is that a ‘Buy America’?” he asked. “I’m not quite sure.”

Sigh…

Well, at least, given that he’s completely innocent of the issue, he might be amenable to being persuaded into a sensible position on it. I’d rather have someone who is educable than someone who is damned sure of the wrong answer.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

What Did We Get For Spendulus?

24 Comments

Bupkis:

…that prediction and the job calculations cooked by the president and his economic advisers have already been proven wrong. A Republican insider on Capitol Hill explains that the “forecast for saving or creating jobs is based on the stimulus ensuring that the unemployment rate not exceed 8% between now and 2014.” But we are already passed the 8% mark.

What would have happened without the stimulus? According to the administration’s calculations, we would then hit 9% unemployment. But that is the very figure that many economists now predict we will hit in a matter of months. Some predict we will hit 10%. Four states have already hit that figure.

This is the biggest financial fraud in history. It makes Madoff look like a humanitarian.