Is Barack Obama A Bad Man?

This guy thinks so:

Bad people come to us as sweetness and light, charming, intelligent, confident, and often successful. But, they are chameleons who will say whatever is necessary in order to get what they want and do what they may. No truth. No empathy. No soul. Shape-shifting through life they reinvent themselves to suit their audience so as to be everything to everyone. Inside, they are soulless. Alone. Scared. Afraid of being found out and exposed as a fraud. Their fragile self-image hides behind a facade of confidence, humor, and “I’m above it all.” Hence, they appear arrogant, haughty, and cannot bear scorn or reproach.

Barack Obama is one of these bad people. He’s dishonest, narcissistic, and pinning him down can be like nailing jello to the wall. He’s all things to all people, but he is no one — an empty vessel. He uses people and then disposes of them when it’s expedient. His grandmother, his spiritual mentor, anyone who becomes an inconvenience is thrown under the now infamous bus. He is adept at mockery and ridicule. His arrogance is legendary. His skin is decidedly thin and he cannot bear to be contradicted or challenged. He works, not for the American People but, for himself.

He’s a lot like Bill Clinton in that regard, though people tell me the latter is very charismatic in person. It certainly doesn’t come across to me on television.

Space Alien Invasions And Hollywood

Ruminations from Lileks:

if you’re going to cross vast distances to conquer humanity for the usual reasons, I doubt they would use guns and bombs. An EMP for starters, then gas. But it’s never gas. No, they walk around with guns and shoot, and in the case of “Fallen Skies,” they have stormtrooper aim half the time. In last night’s episode the aliens set a trap in a food warehouse, where they suspected the humans might go. Let’s imagine that conversation in the war room:

“Corporal Xxrtg, send a Mechabot 3bV to the trap, and wait for the humans to come for food.”

“Okay, but -”

“But what?”

“If they’re coming for food, they’re probably attached to a larger group. Why not just call in their appearance, and have the huntercraft look for their heat signature and vaporize them all at once?”

“Don’t ask me. Ask Commander Plrgb. It’s his call.”

“As long as we’re at it, why not just send in hush-snakes with the gas? They’d -”

“Again with the gas! It’s always the gas with you.”

“It’s just easier, that’s all I’m saying. Have you seen the reports? We have a 37% kill ratio because someone upstairs says we have to shoot them one at a time. And forget about the wide-radius heat ray, apparently.”

“I don’t make the rules of engagement. Now get on it.”

“Sure. And tell whoever assigned us the Mechabot 3bV that the men call it Old Stompy. It can’t take two steps without giving away its position.”

“Get moving.”

“Yes sir.”

There are two ways the series can end: humans win, or humans lose. “Win” is nice, rah us, but I have a hard time believing that the time-honored Ragtag Band of Scrappy Fighters can defeat a culture capable of space travel. It even makes “War of the Worlds” seem silly, because you have to imagine this conversation at HQ: did you remind the contractors to refit the ships with biofilters?”

(Panicked expression) “I thought that was your job.”

“Hell no. I TOLD you.”

“No you didn’t.”

Remind me to hire him for my next SF flick (which will also be my first).

[Update a while later]

This seems related, somehow: s3x with creatures from the future can be bad for your offspring’s health.

The Tea Party Platform For Space

Tea in Space has a press release:

June 23, 2011 — For Immediate Release

TEA Party in Space (TPIS), a non-partisan organization, today publicly released the TEA Party Space Platform. “This is our response to the vacuum of leadership in Washington, D.C., for America’s national space enterprise,” said Andrew Gasser, President of TPIS. “Whether it’s timidity from the White House or Congress’ earmark-laden ‘compromises,’ our space dreams will be stuck on this planet unless someone articulates a vision based on economic and technical reality, so that’s what we’ve done.”
Continue reading The Tea Party Platform For Space

The Roots Of Liberal Nostalgia

Michael Barone has an interesting article at the Journal today (subscription required, at least for now):

There’s a longing on the left for the golden years of the 1940s, ’50s and early ’60s. Income distribution was significantly more egalitarian than it is today, and Americans had far more confidence in big government, the wisdom of our elected officials, and the ability of Keynesian spending policies to stimulate economic growth.

Hence the search for policies that will somehow get us back to those golden years.

I would note that the current nostalgic longing among some for a big-government space program has its roots in that same “liberal” impulse, though many, perhaps most conservatives don’t understand what an unconservative project Apollo was. NASA was, after all, one of those big-government institutions in which so many had faith in the post-war, early sixties. If you take away the raw rent seeking on the part of those who don’t want to see their home-state pork going away, this nostalgia lies at the heart of much of the outrage over Obama’s sensible new space policy. But unfortunately for NASA, the current justifiable disillusionment with government institutions in general is bleeding over to them as well.

The President’s Speech

I managed to actually listen to the whole thing because, praise Gaia, it was short.

I remain bemused at his idiosyncratic pronunciations. The Taliban remains the Tollybahn (Hey Mr. Tollybahn, tolly me banahna, daylight comes, and me wanna go home), yet Afghanistan is pronounced like Stan Laurel. It is clear that he doesn’t want to end the war so that he can reduce the nation-destroying deficit, but so that he can “reinvest” (i.e., continue to spend us into oblivion) at home.

And he remains, like most modern Democrats, congenitally incapable of using the words “win” and “war” in the same sentence, at least when it’s an American war — at best, it can be “ended.” He would choke on such a conjunction — our national sins remain too great to allow such an outcome. He only wants to “end” it. He reserves actual victory for his goal with respect to his much more fearsome and evil domestic enemies.

The Runaway NLRB

I agree with this:

The NLRB has five seats (and four members serving; there’s a vacancy at the moment). The fact that such a tiny group of unaccountable political appointees can just wake up one fine morning, have some Pop-Tarts, and then decide to rewrite the nation’s union-election rules is terrifying. Such changes ought to require an act of Congress.

My own preference would be to dissolve the NLRB, repeal the Wagner Act and the Railways Labor Act, and stop forcing businesses to accept contracts that they do not wish to accept. (In what other field of life is a contract considered valid if one side does not wish to be a party to it?) Our labor “relations” are an exercise in extortion, and they probably cost American workers more in the form of forgone opportunities and lost investment than they win for them. The problem is that the fruits of that extortion are highly concentrated: among government workers and the 7 percent or so of private-sector workers in unions. Repealing the Wagner Act sounds radical, and it would not be easy, but it would be a very good thing for the country.

I guess that makes me an “extremist.”

[Update a couple minutes later]

NLRB rulemaking at the speed of light.

The Office Of Civil RightsWrongs

Apparently it doesn’t think that free speech is a civil right.

Lukianoff notes that campus definitions of sexual harassment include “humor and jokes about sex in general that make someone feel uncomfortable” (University of California at Berkeley), “unwelcome sexual flirtations and inappropriate put-downs of individual persons or classes of people” (Iowa State University) or “elevator eyes” (Murray State University in Kentucky).

All of which means that just about any student can be hauled before a disciplinary committee. Jokes about sex will almost always make someone uncomfortable, after all, and usually you can’t be sure if flirting will be welcome except after the fact. And how do you define “elevator eyes”?

Given the prevailing attitudes among faculty and university administrators, it’s not hard to guess who will be the target of most such proceedings. You only have to remember how rapidly and readily top administrators and dozens of faculty members were ready to castigate as guilty of rape the Duke lacrosse players who, as North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper concluded, were absolutely innocent.

What the seemingly misnamed Office of Civil Rights is doing here is demanding the setting up of kangaroo courts and the dispensing of what I would call marsupial justice against students who are disfavored by campus denizens because of their gender or race or political attitude. “Alice in Wonderland’s” Red Queen would approve.

I hope that FIRE (which is a great cause to which you should contribute) will take them to court, and demand that they obey the First Amendment.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!