Category Archives: Media

Hanging At The White House

Barack Obama, Healthcare, Media, Propaganda

Michael Smerconish, “a Philadelphia-based radio talk show host,” voted for Barack Obama, which is why, presumably, he is considered a conservative. Today was Smerconish’s big day—he made his way to the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House to interview the president. “The White House said that the president’s participation in the radio show was meant to counter some misinformation that is circulating widely concerning the administration’s health care agenda.”

I haven’t heard the interview, but I imagine that Smerconish provided the president with a conducive forum for his purposes. The New York Times, in its report, would have mentioned it if a typical townhaller mouth breather bothered Obama in any way.

The Times chose to air this provocative question: “One caller to the radio program asked Mr. Obama which elements needed to be included in a health care plan. He listed four points: reducing the cost of health care, protecting consumers from insurance abuses, providing affordable coverage to uninsured Americans and not adding to the deficit.”

Meanwhile, Smerconish has been doing the rounds on cable and crowing about his coup (but not his audience’s). His stock has soared. A day in the life of a successful media hustler.

Guinness World Record For Fuel Economy Set By Non-Hybrid

Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Media, Technology

You don’t need a commie car to conserve (your private) resources. “A 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI powered with Shell ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel” will do just fine. (My Turbocharged GTI is pretty thrifty and never gutless, as the Jetta tends to be.) Tire Business has the goods:

“Australian drivers Helen and John Taylor recently broke the ’48 Contiguous U.S. States Fuel Economy’ Guinness World Record, driving a car fitted with Goodyear’s Assurance Fuel Max tires.

The couple previously set the record in 2008 at 58.82 miles per gallon, driving 9,419 miles in a 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI powered with Shell ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel. Their new record, which was set using the same car, fuel and driving route, stands at an average of 67.9 mpg.

According to Goodyear, the pair began their trip July 28 in Sterling, Va., and traveled in a counter-clockwise route that included 14 official check-in and refueling stops across the country. They crossed the finish line at a Virginia Tire & Auto retail outlet in Ashburn, Va.”

Mrs. Taylor attempted to explain to Contessa Brewer—MSNBC’s large-faced, childish, lip-smacking anchor—that driving in high gear (and not necessarily slowly) conserves fuel. In other words, driving well. But Tess had only ever driven an automatic really really slowly, and so lost interest. Her focus further waned when she discovered (by stepping right into the trap and asking) that the fuel-efficient vehicle was not a commie car. A research assistant or producer will be in hot water.

Still, and as a I’ve written, “Perhaps the biggest obfuscation in the gimmick-car racket—which President Bush had fallen for too—has to do with the source of the energy. Whether a vehicle is propelled by hydrogen-powered fuel cells or electricity, both electricity and hydrogen don’t magically materialize in the vehicle. They must first be generated. Be it coal, natural gas, nuclear or a hydroelectric dam, these cars are only as clean as the original source of energy that generated the vim that powers them.

Other than to increase the consumption of gas, because people drive more in them, mandating so-called fuel-efficient cars is a grand exercise in compulsory misallocation and waste of capital. It proves that the development of technologies is best left to the market, not to environmental bureaucracies.”

Entangled In Afghanistan

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Media, Propaganda, Terrorism, War

B.O.’s latest on America’s exploits in Afghanistan: “This is not a war of choice, this is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaida would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

I concur with Michael Scheuer, who disavows Obama’s deceit:

“How many Marines and soldiers will die in Afghanistan before the mainstream media dares to speak the truth and ask questions based thereon? Yes, it is the mainstream media that is keeping us locked in Afghanistan, and they are doing so for two reasons:

1. They will do almost anything to avoid asking President Obama a hard question that would delineate the depth of his deceit.
2. They now support the Afghan war because it is not the children of the elite who are dying and because it is now being fought for social policy reasons – women’s rights, educating children, etc. – and not for any reason that pertains to America’s defense or future security.

Let’s start with a basic contention: America has lost the war in Afghanistan, and any further U.S. casualties are useless. How to test this contention? The following questions put to the president or his chief advisers on terrorism and Afghanistan – John Brennan and Bruce Riedel – would help to clarify the situation for all Americans. If any of these three men answer honestly, we will be out of Afghanistan in 90 days. …”

Read the complete column, “Questions on the Eve of the Afghan Election.”

Updated: The Authentic Ass-troturfers

Conspiracy, Constitution, Democrats, Founding Fathers, Glenn Beck, Healthcare, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Politics

“The outcry against state takeover of medicine is in the best of traditions. Yet the malpracticing media are discounting the fractious town-hall participants as proxies for corporate and political interests. And worse.”

“The Authentic Ass-troturfers,” my new WND.COM column, details these execrable efforts by the left-liberal news filters, and their political master. Yes, “Cronkite died the other day; news coverage croaked a long time ago.”

You’ll find particularly patronizing the manner in which MSNBC “Anchors David ‘Shyster’ and Tamron Hall inferred that, rather than ‘un-American,’ the turbulent town hallers were a little simple.”

To quote from the column, What “led our sleuth in a C Cup to ‘inform’ her viewers that the mutinous multitudes were muddled beyond belief”? “Town hall attendees seemed to be harping on the proper role of government, and not on the minutia of the messiah’s medical plan.”

Lo! Making a philosophical point instead of a utilitarian one—now that is dimwitted. …”

Read the complete column, “The Authentic Ass-troturfers,” in which I make sure to further dim the debate, at least as Tamron Hall of MSNBC would see it.

You can catch the weekly fare every Saturday on Taki’s Magazine too, where the reading is really good.

Update (August 14): BECK. I like Glenn. I’ve said so often. But you come to this space for reason, not for platitudes. That’s not going to change. If you like the Beck blackboard and its “delusional diagrams of multiplying giant ACORNS,” you have to consider the merits of Maddow’s Memos, and other conspiracies lurking behind what to this here rational individual are “really unremarkable events and associations.”

You can’t gravitate to Glenn’s conspiracies while rejecting Rachel’s.

And here’s the mundane truth Glenn’s conspiracies obscure (from the post “On Conspiracy Theories”):

The premise for imputing conspiracies to garden variety government evils is this: government generally does what is good for us (NOT), so when it strays, we must look beyond the facts—for something far more sinister, as if government’s natural venality and quest for power were not enough to explain events. For example, why would one need to search for the “real reason” for an unjust, unscrupulous war, unless one believed government would never prosecute an unjust war. History belies that delusion.
Conspiracy is not congruent with a view of government as fundamentally antagonistic to the individual and to civil society, a position I hold.

Politics is dirty; there is no secret or conspiracy to it. Glenn’s nonsense, aside being tedious and taking away from the important issues of the day that he could be covering, encourages a sort of childish faith in the institute of government: “Omigod: look what they’re up to. I’m going to cry if they don’t start being nice to me.”

The Founders bequeathed a limited government because they did not believe, like Glenn appears to, that filthy politics is so unusual and conspiratorial. It’s the norm! Stray away from their vision of the corrupting properties of power, and you wander into the real of Democratic Pollyanna politics.

True, Rachel finds conspiracy in private interactions, even though these do not use coercion or access public funds. So, I guess, she is worse. Still, that’s not much of a consolation for adherents of Glenn’s latest obsession.
Incidentally, why does Glenn not sketch a diagram of the military-media-congressional-industrial complex? It’s plenty meaty. I’ll tell you why: Warfare, any warfare, so long as it involves our sainted men in uniform and their chiefs and generals, is sacred to our Glenn.

Lesson: people see conspiracy where they want to.