Monthly Archives: October 2008

Political Commentary

Spreading THE Wealth

28 Comments

A vanity poster over at Free Republic makes a good point:

Last year I let a family member move in with me. I’ll call her my niece. My niece was down on her luck and needed a place to stay while she got on her feet.

As it turns out, she was actually down with drugs and needed a place to lie on the couch while she got on the phone. But anyway. I came home one day and was looking for my iron, so I could iron clothes to wear to work.

(“Work is that place you go to,” I explained to her, “and they pay you to do things for them. Yes, like that time you took the baggie to some guy named Raoul in the parking lot of the grocery store nearby. Rather like that, only more regular, and legal.”)

Anyway, my niece said, “Oh, I loaned the iron to my friend Rachel.”

I puzzled over this for a bit. She loaned my iron to some girl I barely knew? She loaned my iron to some girl she barely knew?! Would I loan any of her items to a friend of mine? Let me think. No. I wouldn’t.

So why would she?

The clue lies in the wording. “I loaned the iron…” THE iron. Not YOUR iron, Auntie Beth, THE iron. The local iron. The iron that existed here before I came and is therefore part of the landscape. Like the sun, the trees, and the street. Belonging to nobody, or everybody.

So let’s really parse what Barack Obama says to plumbers and other people who’ve done something with their lives besides lecture like a lawyer turned college professor turned professional pied piper: “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

I think the most important word in that sentence really is “the.” THE wealth. Not your wealth, says Obama, because it’s not yours. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t intend to spread HIS too thin. I have a feeling his daughters will be taken care of before anyone else’s kids.

Snide comments aside, Obama said THE wealth because that’s how he thinks of it. Community property. Belonging to everyone. Just THERE, like sunlight, a fact of life that we determine how to utilize.

To Obama, it’s not something that belongs to anyone. Not something you created, earned, or own. Just something that you somehow managed to get hold of, maybe by picking it off a tree, and now you need to share what came from that tree.

And don’t worry. That tree will always bear fruit. It always has, right? Well no, it hasn’t, but only the gardener who planted it realizes that. The lawyer who comes along representing the neighbors who’ve been eying that fruit tree doesn’t know, or care, how it got there. It’s there now, isn’t it?

And it isn’t your tree anymore. It’s THE tree.

Yup. Some want to spread THE wealth, and others want to create it.

Space

Lunar Landing Challenge

5 Comments

First attempts start in an hour and a half. Clark Lindsey is heading out to the site at the Las Cruces Airport. Wish I were there.

Good luck to all the contestants.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here’s the webcast.

[Update about 10:30 AM EDT]

If you’re watching the webcast (or even if not), it’s about four to five minutes from Armadillo’s first attempt.

[Update a few minutes later]

They had a successful first flight, except it ran short. They didn’t make it to ninety seconds. The judges just gave permission for two more legs within this window, but they have only forty-five minutes left, which includes getting back to the departure point with the vehicle.

[Update a few minutes later]

They’re about to make another attempt at the first successful leg. They’re cleared for flight.

[Update a few minutes later]

They just had a first successful 90-second flight. They have fifteen minutes left before their FAA window closes (though they have longer to get back to the staging area). It’s going to be a tight turnaround.

[Update at 11:30 AM EDT]

Too tight a window. They’re detanking. Level One remains unwon. There are three or four windows left. TrueZero will make the next attempt later today.

[A little before 2 PM EDT]

TrueZero is about to make their attempt. This will be interesting–it’s the first time they’ve ever flown the vehicle untethered…

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, it was interesting. Brief, but interesting. It ascended to altitude, but when it started its translation, it keeled over and dove to the ground, making a little smoking hole in the desert. There’s a small fire, no one was hurt, and the vehicle is lying on its side and vented. Fire department on the way. Do they have other vehicles, or was that their shot?

This is why you do full flight tests. They had no experience with untethered flight. They just got some.

[Update at 4 PM EDT]

Armadillo is going to make their second attempt of the day in half an hour. If they don’t make it, they’ll have at least two more shots tomorrow. Barring a disaster, they should be able to go home with some prize money this year, but there will still be some on the table for next year.

[Update at quarter to five Eastern]

Well, this will be controversial. The judges have allowed them to just do the return flight, picking up where they left off this morning, because they weren’t given the time earlier that the prize allowed, due to the unrelated FAA restriction. While one can understand the sentiment, technically they are not doing what the prize requires in terms of turnaround, and if they win today under the rule waiver, I fear that many will think it tainted.

[Update while listening to all the speechifying]

Clark has the story on what happened with TrueZer0. As noted they had one vehicle, and it was totaled.

[Update after the flight]

Well, they just had a successful flight. If they get back to the staging area in half an hour, they’ll have one first place for Level One, $350K. Congratulations to the Amadillo team.

[Evening update

Clark Lindsey reports that tomorrow could be exciting for Armadillo and the crowd:

This will be the first time they have done the tip and translation with a full 3 minute fuel load on Pixel. Always a chance it will come crashing down like TrueZer0 but with 1500 lbs of propellants

Again, like last year, I can’t understand why they haven’t done a full dress rehearsal.

Political Commentary

What Fred Said

10 Comments

Why can’t John McCain make a speech like this?

Obama and the Democrats believe that Americans in a time of crisis will be willing to sacrifice their freedoms, abandon their founding principles and common sense and ease into the mediocrity of the warm embrace of the Washington papa bear who will take care of all of our problems for us.

These are not the ideals of the America that drew brave men and women from all over the world to our shores. In most cases, they were fleeing nations with the heavy hand of government, intolerance and class warfare. They risked everything to experience our Founding Fathers’ notion of a limited government with powers that were delineated, checked and balanced, in a land where they could live and prosper in a free, dynamic, upwardly mobile society – the kind that existed no where else in the world. But Obama and his liberal friends don’t see things that way.

The liberal agenda is based upon the belief that there are elites among us who know more and know better than the rest of us. And that with the application of their intellect and power … and our money … they can impose regulations and establish programs, bureaus and agencies that will solve all the problems of the masses’.

Senator Obama and his supporters essentially see society not as dynamic and changing or full of opportunity. They see one that is divided by economic classes into which every one of us is permanently assigned. In their worldview, those in a lesser economic class are presumably resentful and envious. So it’s the government’s job to level things out … or as Senator Obama would say “spread the wealth around.” It’s about dividing the pie among static classes, not trying to make the pie bigger for everyone or creating opportunity in an upwardly mobile society.

This is the reason why they do not understand Joe the Plumber. Because he doesn’t have a higher income today they assume that he never will and that he believes he never will. They expect him to resent anyone whose doing better than he is, instead of planning to do better himself. They don’t understand the Joes of the world. Never have. Never will.

There’s more. And here’s the video.

Philosophy, Political Commentary, Space

A Depressing Comment

10 Comments

Over at Samizdata, Jonathan Pearce wonders if freedom seekers will be heading the other way after the election:

Occasionally, whenever one of us Samizdata scribes writes about events in the UK, such as loss of civil liberties, or the latest financial disasters perpetrated by the government, or crime, or whatnot, there is sometimes a comment from an expatriate writer, or US citizen in particular, suggesting that we moaners should pack our bags, cancel the mail and come on over to America. Like Brian Micklethwait of this parish, I occasionally find such comments a bit annoying; it is not as if the situation in Jefferson’s Republic is particularly great just now, although a lot depends on where you live (Texas is very different from say, Vermont or for that matter, Colorado).

But considering what might happen if Obama wins the White House and the Dems increase or retain their hold on Congress, I also wonder whether we might encounter the example of enterprising Americans coming to Britain, not the other way round. The dollar is rising against the pound, so any assets that are transferred from the US to Britain go further. Taxes are likely to rise quite a bit if The One gets in, although they are likely to rise in the UK too to pay for the enormous increase in public debt, even if the Tories win the next election in 2010.

For a number of reasons stated over there, it seems unlikely, but this comment stood out:

I think the general message here should be that the whole western world is on the same trajectory, and shopping around for liberty is going to be ultimately futile. In a sense, we all need to be “liberty patriots” and do our best in our own countries to reverse the rot, because wherever you flee to, it’s happening there too, if at a different pace or in in slightly different ways. The anti-liberty movement is operating in every nation, and trans and supra-nationally, and everywhere it is winning. There is nowhere to run.

Well, as I’ve long noted on this blog, that’s what space programs are for.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Muggers For Obama

36 Comments

Well, I guess now we know what Senator Obama meant when he told his followers to “get in people’s faces“:

Richard said the robber took $60 from the woman, then became angry when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on the victim’s car. The attacker then punched and kicked the victim, before using the knife to scratch the letter “B” into her face, Richard said.

And they accuse McCain and Palin of inciting violence.

Well, it could have been worse (and it may become so if he’s elected, and in control of the Justice Department). She should consider herself lucky.

[Update on Friday afternoon]

It turns out to have been a hoax. What a stupid woman. Normally it’s leftists who stage things like this.

Space

ISPCS Reporting

Clark Lindsey has his first report up, on this morning’s session on suborbital vehicles. Jeff Foust has a report on one of the talks as well, from Virgin Galactic.

[Thursday afternoon update]

Lots more over at Clark’s place. Just keep scrolling. It’s not a permalink, but I assume that he’ll put together a page of links to the posts when he gets back next week.

(Bumped from yesterday)

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Fraudulent Credit Card Donations

11 Comments

Why wouldn’t the Obama campaign prevent them?

John Galt of Ayn Rand Lane (zip code: a nonexistent 99999) was able to donate with no problem.

Despite the fact that the card holder’s name and address do not match the name he provided.

John McCain’s website? Rejected the same non-matching-information donation.

I guess when you’re gathering up tens of millions from the Saudis and Gazans you have to be a little lenient on matching up credit card donations.

Incidentally– when I f***ing order cheesesteaks from my local deli, I get dinged when I forget my current zip code and give them my old one.

Again, though: If Obama were demanding that credit card information matched donor information, he couldn’t draw in $150 million largely from fraudulent overseas donors.

Oh, such suspicious minds.

Why isn’t this as big a story as the Palin family wardrobe?

More at Powerline.

[Update a few minutes later]

Mark Steyn has further thoughts:

I was interested in the subject because I also have an online credit-card operation over at my website (obviously a little smaller than Senator Obama’s), and so I looked into what our CC processing requires. In order to accept financial donations from “John Galt” and “Saddam Hussein”, whoever runs the Obama website would have to modify the default security checks required by their merchant processor.

Now sometimes you do have to do a bit of modifying. My website has a lot of customers from overseas, and the default security settings can sometimes be a bit too eager to reject credit cards from countries where the “state or province” box is non-applicable or the postal code is in a non-American format. In other words, the default settings on a US online processing operation (with their bias toward US address formats) should be just what a legitimate US political campaign (anxious not to accept illegal foreign donations) is looking for. Instead, the Obama site appear to have intentionally disabled not only all the address checks (thereby facilitating overseas contributions) but the most basic criterion of all: the card name match (thereby enabling entirely fake contributions).

Yes. This doesn’t happen by accident.