Category Archives: Media Criticism

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Hundred Whole Microbaracks

11 Comments

The administration is going to have a meeting to figure out how to cut <VOICE=”Dr. Evil” hand=”upside down” pinky_end=”in mouth”>…one hundred million dollars</VOICE> out of a multi-trillion dollar (multi-barack) budget.

And then, of course, after they do it (probably from defense) they’ll say that their opponents are lying about them when they accuse them of not cutting the budget. This would be funny if it weren’t so sad and pathetic.

[Update early afternoon]

Fooling the innumerate rubes:

…why bother? Because it may enhance the president’s “budget-cutter” image. Seriously. President Obama has reportedly been working closely with noted behavioral economists, and their studies have shown that most people are “insensitive to scope,” meaning they are not very good at putting large numbers in their proper context. People will react about the same to a policy proposal whether the cost/benefit is $10 million, $10 billion, or $10 trillion. Consequently, the $100 million cut may seem huge to many voters. (Note to conservative lawmakers: This is why the tiny 2005 reconciliation spending cuts were just as difficult to enact as the substantially larger 1990s reconciliation spending cuts. So if you are going to propose spending cuts, you may as well go big).

And based on the outcome of last year’s campaign, they may get away with it. Sigh…

I really wish that opponents would use more visual aids, like bar graphs. Here is the budget. Here are the president’s budget “cuts.”

[Tuesday morning update]

Speaking of visual aids…

[Bumped]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Too Many Czars

Actually, one is too many, as far as I’m concerned, but now the Obama administration has more than the Romanov dynasty:

Government by czar didn’t work especially well in Russia. Hopefully, it won’t be quite so bad in this country. And, yes, of course I understand that Obama’s czars unlike the Romanovs are ultimately accountable to democratically elected officials. I also don’t expect Obama’s czars to be organizing pogroms or exiling dissidents to Siberia anytime soon. On the other hand, democratic accountability for America’s czars is increasingly tenuous in light of the fact that there are too many of them for most voters to even keep straight, much less understand and evaluate their performance in any depth. Here, as elsewhere, the rapidly growing size and complexity of government makes difficult for voters to monitor those who are supposed to be serving the public . Maybe Obama’s army of czars will do a good job anyway. A few of the Romanovs did. But for every “Czar-Liberator,” like Alexander II (who free Russia’s millions of serfs), there were a lot more oppressors and incompetents.

I’m not expecting any liberation from anyone in this crowd.

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The New Red Scare

6 Comments

It could happen here:

BOBBY

Look, Johnny… we saw what happened in History this morning. Maybe you got off to a rough start, but you’ve still got a chance to fit in. Why don’t you join one of the after-school clubs? There’s the Diversity Club, the Peace-a-longs, The Diversitarians, Feces Art Society, The Multidiversies…

DEBBIE

…don’t forget the Multiculturalettes!

BOBBY

And how, sis! What do you say, Johnny? It’ll be swell! And all our clubs have full federal funding. If you wash that greasy kid stuff out of your hair, I think you might even be FTCA material!

JOHNNY

No dice, Daddy-o! Taxes are for squares.

Bobby and Debbie look at each other quizzically

DEBBIE AND BOBBY

“Squares”?

JOHNNY

Yeah – L-7s. Cubes. Melvins. Nosebleeds.

DEBBIE

Bobby… I think he means he doesn’t like them!

BOBBY

Johnny! Keep it down! Do you want the Hate Speech monitors to hear you? That kind of language could be interpreted by as illegally offensive! They could send you off to Juvie for that!

JOHNNY

Ha! There ain’t no such thing as illegal speech.

BOBBY

What!? Says who?

JOHNNY

Sez dis.

Johnny whips out a laminated card from his dungaree pocket, close up of the Constitution

HORNS

bomp bomp BAAAAAAAAH!

NARRATOR

And so it begins. What Debbie and Bobby don’t know is that “John Smith” is actually Johnny “Snake” Republico, secret agitator for the forces of International Constitutionalism — the insidious extreme rightwing ideology that seeks to bring America to its knees by enslaving our helpless unsuspecting government, and stop it from giving you all the things that you want. It spreads like a cancer, slowly driving victims into violent, racist, anti-tax madness. It takes a strong will to resist the Consties’ hypnotic sales pitch — are Debbie and Bobby up to it?

Find out, after the commercial.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

(Right)Winging It At The DHS

4 Comments

Jonah Goldberg, on the hypocrisy and misplaced paranoia of the left (and the MSM, but I repeat myself) in seeing “rightwing extremists” behind every tree, while ignoring the real threats:

When Hollywood filmed the Tom Clancy novel The Sum of All Fears, it changed the real villains from jihadi terrorists to a bunch of European CEOs who were secret Nazis. Because “everybody knows” that’s where the real threat lies.

Sen. John Kerry belonged to an organization of vets that considered assassinating American politicians. (Kerry denied participating in those meetings.) Barack Obama was friends with, and a colleague of, a terrorist whose organization plotted to murder soldiers and their wives at a social at Fort Dix. A young Hillary Clinton sympathized with the Black Panthers, a paramilitary gang of racist murders and cop killers.

Bring that up and you’re a paranoid nutcase out of Dr. Strangelove.

But if you’re terrified of a bunch of citizens who throw tea in the water and demand lower taxes and less government spending, well, that’s just a sign of political seriousness.

Also, as John Miller points out, these people have gotten way too much mileage out of Tim McVeigh. And if his goal was to increase the power of the political “right,” it had exactly the opposite effect, blunting the Republican momentum from the 1994 elections.