What headlines would look like there.
Obviously, I disagree with the one on global warming. “Consensus” is not a scientific term. And even if it were, it’s not close to 90%.
American Anti-Americanism
Lileks has some thoughts:
The point is: Donald wakes up in America, in a room bedecked with American symbols, and is unabashedly grateful. It was an appeal to a vague but widely assumed national identity that was clearly superior to the Nazi alternative in every possible way. Oh, sure, some weisenheimer in the back row may have grumbled “It ain’t our fight!” or “no fourth term for Rooosevelt!” No one in the audience went home and hugged a flag. But you could also look at the cartoon in a different light: “That Time a Cartoon was Unapologetically Grateful For America Without Including a Moronic Hyper-patriotic Caricature Named Biff Punchjaw To Let the Animators Off the Hook Lest You Think They Have No Awareness of the Nation’s Dark Side As Well.”
It stuck in my craw, my craw being dipped in extra-strength adhesive these days, because another site I visit looked at another wartime Disney cartoon and took it to task for its gendered attitudes. It is not enough to be correct today; one must also demonstrate awareness of previous incorrectness, and parade around your awareness like a flag in a rally. Annnd this came after a visit to an animation site, where the people in the comments fell over themselves to pick apart “Frozen” and the “Lost” Mickey short that preceded it. His nose! It’s historically inaccurate! Mickey’s nose didn’t look like that until 1931, but that’s the 1926 Pegleg Pete! Hah! From hell’s heart I fling my poo! Shame!
Plus, the usual weekly Captain Video as a bonus.
Helicopter Parents
…have raised a generation of physically adult children.
I’ve had jobs since I was twelve years old.
SpaceX
An asteroid has just hit the aerospace dinosaurs, in Europe, China, Russia, and here.
The TSA
Time (way past time, really, it should never have been created) to abolish it.
[Wednesday-morning update]
More thoughts from Veronique de Rugy.
Safe Is Not An Option
I didn’t expect the book to be available for purchase at Amazon for another couple weeks. This
Working on e-versions now.
The Obama Surrenders
…continue. Now the administration is surrendering to China, while pretending they aren’t.
Blue Origin’s New Engine
I’m glad they’re making progress, but I don’t understand why they want a hydrogen engine for a booster, particularly for suborbital. The exhaust velocities don’t match well, and you have a lot of handling and bulk-density issues.
Scott Walker
The next president?
We could do a hell of a lot worse, and have been. I wonder if his lack of a college degree is a bug, or a feature?
White House Youth
This isn’t creepy at all.
What color shirts do they get to wear?
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: ObamaCare and the totalitarian mindset:
Suppose some inventor hatches an idea for what he thinks would be a great and revolutionary new product. He raises money from investors, sets up office, hires people–and fails spectacularly. The company’s customer service is atrocious, the product is expensive and lousy, and the whole business plan is fundamentally flawed. Who’s to blame?
The news media, of course. After all, journalists could have put out stories touting the virtues of the product and explaining how to navigate the crummy customer-service system, and maybe then the whole business plan would have worked out.
That, at any rate, is the argument Paul Waldman puts forth in an article for the leftist American Prospect. Of course being a good leftist, Waldman is not blaming the media for the failure of a private business. But then neither would any nonleftist. Yet because the enterprise in question is a governmental one–ObamaCare, in case you’ve been away from Earth for the past two months–the argument somehow makes sense to him.
We find it not only wrongheaded but sinister (in every sense of the word). Waldman argues that journalists have a “responsibility” to provide “audiences with practical information that could help them navigate the new system”–and not just that, but to provide such information “repeatedly or people won’t get it.”
Remember, as the Democrats told us last year, government is the only thing we all belong to.