Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Reporting The Edwards Scandal

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Mickey Kaus makes the case:

The only legitimate reason not to cover this scandal, it seems to me, is simple sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards–and I’ve gotten enough emails from anguished and angry members of the MSM to conclude, with Estrich, that it’s the prime reason for the MSM blackout. True, I also suspect that if Mrs. Edwards were a conservative Republican, or even an unbeloved Democrat, the MSM might somehow find a way to overcome this compassionate sentiment. But that doesn’t make it wrong. Reporters don’t have to print everything. You could conclude that the need to protect Mrs. Edwards her children is so great, the karma of Enquiring so bad, that all of the obvious, public-interesty reasons for covering the story should be thrown out the window. And if John Edwards were already so damaged that in practice he’d never get a significant public office even if he wants one, I might agree (even if that meant sacrificing the deterrent effect of full exposure).

But that’s a point that clearly hasn’t been reached yet, at least not while most Americans are being kept in the dark about what, exactly, has led to Edwards’ mysterious disappearance from the political oddsmakers’ charts. A man arrogant and ambitious enough to think he can run for president posing as a loyal husband while keeping his second family secret, even as he visits his mistress in a famous hotel that is hosting a convention of journalists, will be arrogant and ambitious enough to keep hiding under the shield of his wife’s illness until he can attempt a comeback– if given the chance.

The alternative, it seems to me, is to let affection for Mrs. Edwards suck journalists into a Print-the-Legend world where they must spend their time burnishing–or at least accepting–the story powerful people and institutions want them to tell, the story of the wonderful Edwards marriage, rather than figuring out and telling readers the truth. If I wanted to be in that business I’d be a publicist.

That’s certainly what the “journalists” have been when it came to Barack Obama. Does anyone doubt that if Edwards were a Republican in similar circumstances, that there would have been a NYT story about it? The question answers itself.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

It’s That Time Of The Week Again

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Lileks examines the train wreck that is Garrison Keillor’s latest:

I’m sorry, but I’m just fascinated by his column. Each is nearly identical in formlessness, subject and general pointlessness. To be fair: we all write at haste and repent at leisure, unless we can somehow get it out of the Google cache. We all make inelegant remarks that seemed wonderfully writerly at the moment but curdle when exposed to another pair of eyes. It’s the perils of blogging. But he has an entire week to write these things. Never does he attempt to make an argument or explore a line of thought – it’s just flat assertions ladled out with nuance or shading. The sun rises, Bush is bad, life is long but also short and so you should sit outside and drink lemonade and think of the people who came before you and sat outside and drank lemonade and there is a comfort in that continuity and we need all the comfort we can get in these days when nihilists in golf pants are everywhere and the Republic lies in ruins. Also, he is given to run-on sentences. This week has perhaps the finest example yet.

If that’s not enough, there is some cereal blogging, too.

Political Commentary

The Whining Children

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…of capitalism:

Leaving religion out of it, no idea has given more to humanity. The average working-class person today is richer, in real terms, than the average prince or potentate of 300 years ago. His food is better, his life longer, his health better, his menu of entertainments vastly more diverse, his toilette infinitely more civilized. And yet we constantly hear how cruel capitalism is while this collectivism or that is more loving because, unlike capitalism, collectivism is about the group, not the individual.

These complaints grow loudest at times like this: when the loom of capitalism momentarily stutters in spinning its gold. Suddenly, the people ask: What have you done for me lately? Politicians croon about how we need to give in to Causes Larger than Ourselves and peck about like hungry chickens for a New Way to replace dying capitalism.

As Mark Twain once wrote, “If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”

Most people in this country have little appreciation how good they’ve got it. It’s a shame that we no longer teach history in school.

Political Commentary

Hell Hath No Fury

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Like a woman’s supporters scorned:

And what will the Puma members do after the Convention? Murphy concedes, “We’re realists. … We know the DNC is committed to the path of nominating their chosen candidate.” In November she explains, “We are protesting the election.” Members will sit home, write in Hillary’s name or vote for John McCain. She explains, “That up to them. That’s part of our whole philosophy.”

Kronert says that he won’t be voting for Obama and thinks “Obama is running his campaign on the ‘Change, Hope, a new kind of Politics’ marketing gimmick.” He also is one voter who thinks experience matters (“Obama is a two year senator with one year of that being on the campaign trail.”)

Shanon from Maryland, another Puma member who donated to Hillary and voted Democratic in five straight past elections won’t vote for Obama, listing his lack of experience, qualifications and track record among her concerns. She says, “I will vote McCain, third-party, stay home or write Hillary Clinton in. At this point, Ichabod Crane is looking better than the choices I have. But make no mistake, I have a choice.” Eli, a self-described “Clinton Democrat” from Massachusetts, says he’s not voting for Obama because “Quite simply, he is not qualified.”

The healing continues.

Political Commentary

Saving The Planet

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That’s what Nancy Pelosi claims to be doing. Well, good. She seems to consider it more important than her political career:

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken July 25-27 found that Americans by numbers approaching 2-1 would be more likely to support a candidate who backs expanded offshore drilling.

Well, I hope that she really does consider it so. I certainly do. Of course, it’s hard for me to think of anything less important than Nancy Pelosi’s political career. Let us hope for a rapid end to it.

History, Political Commentary, Space, Space History

More SpaceX Perspective

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Clark has a round up of links.

It was a little strange, and sad, descending into the LA basin yesterday. I had a left window seat, and I looked down at the old Rockwell/North American (and back during the war, Vultee) plant in Downey, which had been abandoned back in the nineties, and saw that Building 6 appeared to be no longer there. A lot of history in manned spaceflight took place there, but now there’s almost no manned space activities left in southern California at all. Not in Downey, not in Huntington Beach, not in Seal Beach. It’s all been moved to Houston, and Huntsville.

Except, except. A minute or two later, on final descent into LAX, I saw Hawthorne Airport just off the left wing, and quite prominent was the new SpaceX facility, which had previously been used to build jumbo jet wings.

So perhaps, despite the indifference of local and state politicians, the era of manned spaceflight in LA isn’t quite yet over. And of course, Mojave remains ascendant.

Philosophy, Political Commentary

Remembering The Gulag

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Lileks reminisces:

I got all three volumes from the drugstore – which should have told me something about the land in which I lived, that one could buy this work from a creaky wire rack at the drugstore – and it taught me much about the Soviet Union and the era of Stalin. After that I could never quite understand the people who viewed the US and the USSR as moral equals, or regarded our history as not only indelibly stained but uniquely so. Reading Solzhenitsyn makes it difficult to take seriously the people in this culture who insist that Dissent has been squelched. Brother, you have no idea.

Indeed.

Business, Political Commentary

Arrived Safely

28 Comments

Sort of.

When I had the privilege of paying American an extra fifteen bucks to check my bag today, I had no idea how much extra service they’d be rendering. Apparently, with this new program, they’ve come up with an innovative new luggage-handling process that enables them to expeditiously lose your suitcase on a non-stop. And it only took me an hour and a half after the wheels touched down to discover this new capability.

When I got to the carousel that was supposed to be for my flight, it was full of luggage from not one, not two, not three, but four different Dallas flights, as evidenced by inspection of the tags. Apparently, another innovation that the airline has come up with is to get the luggage to the airport before the passengers arrive, and then helpfully leave it all on the carousel, so that the few bags from your own flight from Fort Lauderdale won’t feel lonely and ostracized, and can fit in better with the crowd. Or perhaps the aircraft simply arrived in LAX sans occupants, the latter having somehow been spirited away en route by Bushco to be shipped off to Gitmo for the ritual waterboarding and holy book defilation, with the airline complicit in both the act and the cover up.

I reported the miscreant item to the baggage service.

“Did you look at the bags we have outside the door here”?

No, that hadn’t occurred to me, because I lacked the imagination to conceive that a bag would be removed from the carousel by the authorities with hundreds still milling around seeking their luggage.

“Let’s go over and look.”

We go back over to the carousel.

“Sometimes it might have a Dallas tag on it, because it might have gotten rerouted.”

This, as there remained hundreds of Dallas arrivals on the swirling machine, whose contents I had now seen several dozen times.

I marveled at an airline that could get a bag rerouted through Dallas and somehow end up there at the same time as I, who took a non-stop from Florida. Does the luggage get to skip the layover?

Bottom line: I am now the proud owner of a receipt that informs me that in the event they locate the missing suitcase, it will be delivered to my room. So I am here for a business meeting in the morning with no clothing except that on my back. Well, OK, and my keister. And, yeah, my feet. But still.

I have to say that I agree with the sentiment.

[Update on early Monday morning]

Well, when I check the web site to track it, it seems to have shown up overnight. It’s supposed to be delivered sometime this morning to my hotel. No word on where it had been sequestered. I was kind of wondering if someone else took it off the carousel. They’re not bothering to verify tags any more at LAX, as they did in the olden days.