Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

“Unfit To Be President”

22 Comments

Barrack Obama says Donald Trump is. Howie Carr says it takes one to know one:

Brave talk from a guy who thinks there are 57 states, that they speak Austrian in Austria, that they speak Arabic in Afghanistan, who pronounced the state he lived in for three years as “Mass-a-tu-setts,” who pronounced corpsman as “corpseman.” Who thinks the Transcontinental Railroad was “intercontinental.”

He described Eric Holder’s wife, a physician, as a “nationally renowned ohbee-gynee.” He misspelled “Syracus” on his NCAA brackets sheet. He is utterly tongue-tied without a teleprompter. He makes “recess” appointments when the Senate is not in recess.

If he had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. His grandmother was a typical white person. The Cambridge Police Department acted stupidly.

It never ends with this buffoon. Yesterday, in Singapore, he mangled the name of the country’s founding father. He can’t be bothered acting like an adult. He chews gum in public. Remember how he took selfies of himself with the Danish hottie at Nelson Mandela’s funeral?

The media were all over Trump like white on rice yesterday because he was goofing around with a baby at a rally. But Obama gets a base on balls on absolutely everything. If his middle name weren’t “Hussein,” it would be “Entitlement.”

Indeed.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Faithfully Executing The Office

2 Comments

The administration has an on-line guide to how to avoid deportation.

Part of defending the Constitution is upholding the law that flows from it, as ruled by the courts (and the courts of ruled against the administration’s lawlessness on this issue). This is exactly the opposite, and should be an impeachable offense against Lynch, if not Obama himself, but the Congress continues to lack feck.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The ATF is illegally hoarding gun owners personal information.

Tar. Feathers.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Empire Strikes Back

2 Comments

An incumbent Tea Partier has been knocked off in the primary. Those opposed to spending will have to step up their political game, but this also shows that all politics is local. The farmers wanted (almost literally) their pork.

[Update a few minutes later]

This seems related somehow: Political moron Meg Whitman is joining forces with Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump.

[Update a couple minutes later]

This seems related, too: “The soul-sick leadership ‘elite’ in America.”

Scare quotes because there’s nothing elite about them at all. They’re incompetent vain greedy power-hungry hacks.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Iran

36 Comments

Reagan sent them a cake and a bible, but Obama shipped them $400M in cash. But don’t call it ransom!

[Thursday-morning update]

Why did the mullahs want the ransom in cold hard cash? The question answers itself:

Don’t the Iranians trust us? After all, they know we’re good for it, even if we have a national debt of 19 trillion. Of course, we do have a history of withholding payments from Iran, not that they don’t deserve it. Or maybe they just wanted to stick it to Obama-Kerry at the last moment, show who’s boss.

Well, they did that, but I suspect there is another reason – the great flexibility and usefulness of cash, something that can be distributed hand-to-hand without having to go through the banks and their nosey wire-transfer tracking. Like the Mafia, the mullahs are not keen on transparency. They like to keep to themselves how they use their money.

I’m sure that Valarie Jarrett is pleased.

[Update in the evening]

The Justice Department objected to the cash transfer, but was overruled.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Why NASA Human Spaceflight?

9 Comments

Jeff Foust writes that that’s the question the media should be asking of the presidential campaigns. I agree; until we know why we’re doing it, it’s not possible to come up with sensible way of how to do it.

And this is an interesting parenthetical:

…perhaps, the answer would be not to spend the money at all: in the mid-2000s, the Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative members of the House of Representatives, proposed cutting funding for President George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration as part of a broader set of spending cuts. The chairman of the committee at the time? Then-Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, now Trump’s running mate.

Though there’s no requirement that it be the case, historically, the vice president has generally been responsible for space policy (going back to Johnson), though that has been much less the case in the second Bush and Obama administrations (thankfully, in the case of the latter).

Administrative, Business, Economics

Blogging

19 Comments

I’m taking a little break from house renovation to post a few things on a Sunday morning, but we have a lot to do still, and not sure when we’ll get back home to California. It’s kind of weird/depressing to be living (and kind of camping out) in the (unfurnished) old house again. It has a gourmet kitchen that we remodeled ourselves, but few utensils and tools (e.g., we have a fancy GE Advantium microwave, but don’t have a toaster). We did get a good inflatable queen bed, and it’s fairly comfortable. We bought a little gas camping grill which is a pretty good deal for $40 at Home Depot, and grilled steaks last night on the patio by the pool, and tossed Caesar salad in a bowl she bought at Walmart. We don’t necessarily mind buying things we can’t take back to California, because we can leave them with her son who lives in Lake Worth.

Patricia’s not generally a Walmart shopper, but she was amazed at how low cost useful items were. It’s why Sam Walton has brought more Americans out of poverty than any government program.

BTW, we’re trying to sell the house ourselves. If we give it to another realtor, they’d end up taking two thirds of our equity in commission, which just seems crazy for what they actually do. Easier to drop the price and take the difference ourselves. If you know anyone crazy enough to actually want to live in south Florida, it’s a great house in as good a neighborhood as they come, given that it’s in south Florida. Note that while a lot of people have been getting rid of their screened pool enclosures, I’ve steadfastly insisted on keeping ours, to protect ourselves from the deadliest animal on earth. It’s particularly worth noting now that zika has shown up in Miami.

[Update Monday morning]

Here’s the web site that’s listed in the Craiglist ad, with a lot more pictures.

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

Dumb Luck

11 Comments

What’s with the post-modern emphasis on it?

As noted, it provides an excuse to redistribute from those who have “won life’s lottery” (as Dick Gephardt once put it), to those less “fortunate,” who then can purchase steaks on food stamps from a hard-working sales clerk who has to get by on hamburger, or worse.

It’s worth noting that there are some fields in which a lot of luck is involved, because the supply of “talent” (such as it is) vastly exceeds demand (e.g., Hollywood). When you see a family of actors (e.g., the Baldwins or Afflecks), it’s because once one of them is in, they then have the connections to bring in the others. And they know it. The guilt they feel knowing that they lucked out while others equally talented didn’t make it probably drives a lot of their “liberal” (which isn’t really; it’s leftist) guilt.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Bernie Versus Hillary

7 Comments

FWIW Daily Kos says that absent fraud, he would have won by a landslide. Of course, absent fraud, including weaponizing the IRS against the Tea Party, Obama would have lost to Romney.

[Update a few minutes later]

“Hey, Bernie supporters, you poor saps never had a chance.” Well, everyone tried to tell them. The Democrats are a massive racist organized-crime syndicate masquerading as a political party.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!