Category Archives: Social Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Romney Is No Savior

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…and that’s the point:

Do you hear yourselves? You’re Americans, not Europeans. You are the fruit of a nation constituted in liberty and based on the idea that the people can govern themselves. You should not wait for the king who sleeps beneath the hill.

Oh, I realize — I see — you look at 1980 and now, and you see the similarities and then you cry out “Romney is no Reagan.”

This is good, because Obama is no Carter. And our situation is in many ways far worse than it was.

But it is good, most of all, because Obama was bad enough that he woke the force that protects this country. It had been asleep for seventy years, sleeping beneath the dark hill of statism. It is now up, and roused and active. It is moving. The tea parties are proof of that, as is the massive swatting the Lords of Political Correctness got over the Chick-fil-A business.

Romney is a decent business manager. He’s a decent man. He likes America. He wants America to like him. He’s not going to actively dismantle our way of life, as will the one now in power. There will be no attacks on freedom of religion, no wild power grabs for the Internet, no executive orders that violate the laws of the land. He will not hanker for more “flexibility” so he can give more to Putin. And — this is petty but important for how the world sees us — he will neither apologize nor bow to foreign leaders.

Is he perfect? Oh, goodness, no. Is he exactly what we need? Probably not. Who is? Do you know the trouble we’ve got ourselves into by trusting presidents for this long? It’s a big hole. No one man can get us out of it. Only we can. And it will take time.

But that’s fine. He won’t be anointed by any gods. There will be no halos and no Greek columns. Instead, he’ll be the elected by the people and the people — the sovereign people of this free land — who are now awake will stand ready to make sure he knows it.

The Founders didn’t envision the president as a messiah, and neither should we. That kind of thinking was one of the reasons that our ancestors left Europe.

[Update]

Link is fixed, sorry!

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

That “You Belong To The Government” Video

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…was no gaffe:

Later this summer, Obama notoriously argued that government created the environment for success through infrastructure spending. “If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that,” Obama told a crowd in Oakland. Obama later claimed he meant that businesses didn’t build the infrastructure that allowed them to be successful, and that government deserves the credit. But where did government get the capital to build the infrastructure in the first place? From the successful businesses that produced that capital, not from the Progressive Sunshine Forest.

The reference to churches in the video is another interesting point, although not one that Democrats want voters to notice. This administration imposed a mandate on employers to provide free birth control and sterilization to employees, even those employers whose religious values prohibit them from facilitating such access. Explicitly religious organizations such as schools, health care providers, and charities did not get an exemption, either. The message was very similar to what the video argued: you can join a church, but you belong to the government.

Yup.

Media Criticism, Social Commentary, Space

A Not-So-Green Space Program

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When I first heard that Los Angeles had won the competition to house an orbiter at the science museum on Exposition Boulevard, I scratched my head, trying to imagine how they were going to get it there. At the Space Technology Expo, the museum had a booth, and I asked the young lady working there. “Oh, we’re still working it out.”

[shocked voice] “You didn’t have to submit a plan with the proposal?”

“No, not a detailed one.”

At the SpaceUp LA a couple weeks ago, we saw a description of the plan, using a very precision crawler, in which it was noted that a “few” trees might have to be removed.

Well, “a few” has turned into four hundred mature trees, and the locals, justifiably, aren’t happy about it. I wonder how much support the project would have gotten if they’d known this up front?

Anyway, one of the amusing things about the LA Times piece is the technical ignorance on display:

Several alternatives for the Oct. 12 move were considered but ultimately discarded.

Taking the massive shuttle apart would have damaged the delicate tiles that acted as heat sensors.

Ummmm…no.

The tiles are not “heat sensors.” They are heat protectors, insulating the vehicle from the hot plasma of entry. The heat must be shielded against, not just “sensed.”