As one commenter asks, is Nancy Pelosi the Botox Kid?
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Who Will Replace Mike?
I think that it’s pretty much a fait accompli that someone will, and probably in less than three weeks. On The Space Show on Sunday, David Livingston asked me if I’d heard any rumors who might be the next administrator. I told him that the only name that I’d heard (and not from any off-the-record discussions) was Charlie Bolden. Bobbie Block has a blog post up now confirming him as a front runner.
I have no idea, assuming that he is in fact going to be chosen, and accepts, what this would mean for the agency, or my own desires for its future direction. The last time we had an astronaut as administrator (Dick Truly), it was kind of a disaster. He basically went to war with the GHW Bush administration over the Space Exploration Initiative, going so far as to send his congressional liaison over to the Hill to lobby against it, in preference to focusing on the space station, which eventually got him fired and replace by Dan Goldin (frying pan, fire). One shouldn’t draw grand conclusions from a single example (though many love to do so with Apollo, Shuttle, and ISS), but we have one unfortunate result of our one experiment with an astronaut administrator.
The other candidates mentioned are Scott Hubbard, Sally Ride (another astronaut, of whom I have good reason to think would be a disaster, from my point of view, because she doesn’t seem to share my own space vision based on past statements and activities), Wes Huntress and Alan Stern. Of those four, the only one that I can say right now that I’d like to see get the job is Alan Stern, based on his past comments about needing to harness private enterprise much more than the agency has been. For what it’s worth, Keith Cowing claims that none of them are interested in the job, with the possible exception of Hubbard.
What I found interesting though, is the last bit:
The current head of Obama’s transition team, Lori Garver, is hoping to be deputy administrator.
Lori has told me herself that she has no interest in being administrator, so this is consistent with that, at least. But I think it would be a mistake. I actually think that it’s more important for the deputy to be technical, with technical management experience, whereas the administrator need (even, perhaps in light of the Griffin experience, should) not be. The deputy is sort of like the COO of the agency, managing daily operations and coordinating the centers. The administrator is more like the CEO, and should be laying out strategy, and interacting with the public, White House and Congress. So while not necessarily endorsing her for either, I actually think that, assuming I had to make a choice, she’d be a better pick for administrator than deputy.
Shut Up And Sing
Jay Norlinger has an ugly and depressing compendium of artists imposing their politics on their audiences.
I have to confess that I, too, have thusly sinned (though I think in a much milder manner). At the Space Access Conference last March, prefatory to giving a brief talk on propellant depots (with a hundred-and-one-degree fever, though I’m not sure that’s an excuse or that I wouldn’t have done it at normal temp) I made a brief (and oblique — probably only a few got it) joke about Hillary “dodging sniper fire” in Bosnia, which had been in the news recently. It wasn’t at all in the same class as Nordlinger’s examples, but it was probably inappropriate. It was in no way germane to the topic of discussion, and I can see in retrospect how some Hillary! supporters in the audience could have been offended, if they got it. For that I apologize here.
I’m glad to live in a country in which these artists can engage in such boorish behavior, but I’m glad also that we live in one in which we can use our own free-speech rights to point it out (even in real time), with admonishments, boos, or even voting with our feet. If more did so, perhaps the phenomenon would at least be tamped down. It’s probably hopeless, though, when you live in New York, or Ann Arbor, in which these cretins feel safe in their cocoon to behave in this manner.
Update a few minutes later]
This seems related somehow — fighting back against the new Hollywood Blacklist. Andrew Breitbart explains what he’s trying to accomplish. Roger Simon has further thoughts.
He Would Know
Leon Panetta gets a critical endorsement for taking over the CIA:
President Clinton called him “a trustworthy public servant who knows how to keep his mouth shut.”
“Leon was by my side for two and half years,” said Mr. Clinton. “About 14 months of his service came during the time that I was not having sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, in the White House. During all those months, no one ever knew what my chief of staff knew or didn’t know, nor do they know it now.”
Mr. Panetta has also been a vocal opponent of the use of torture, but Mr. Clinton said “that’s likely just a lasting effect of his close contact with the former First Lady.”
The funniest thing is that I won’t be very surprised if Bill actually says something like this, given his foot-in-mouth behavior during the campaign.
The Botched Bloomberg Story
Here is my take on that silly story about the Obama administration “merging” NASA and the Air Force to keep the Yellow Peril from beating us to the moon.
Won’t Get Fooled Again
Meet the new culture of corruption.
Not the same as the old culture of corruption…
Thoughts On The Israeli-Iran War
From Robert Kaplan:
How do you fight unconventional, sub-state armies empowered by ideas? You undermine them subtly over time, or you crush them utterly, brutally. Israel, unable to tolerate continued rocket attacks on its people, has decided on the latter course. Our own diplomacy with Iran now rests on whether or not Israel succeeds. We need to create leverage before we can negotiate with the clerical regime, and that leverage can only come from an Israeli moral victory—one that leaves Hamas sufficiently reeling to scare even the pro-Iranian Syrians from coming to its aid. In defense of its own territorial integrity, Israel has, in effect, launched the war on the Iranian empire that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, in particular, can only have contemplated.
This war really started two and a half years ago, in Lebanon, and Israel has been fighting it mostly on its own, but as he points out, the US has to be ready to continue the pressure on Tehran if/when Israel crushes its puppet in Gaza.
An End To The Contract With America?
The Islamists want to roll the world back to the seventh century. Fortunately, the Congressional Democrats only want to revert back to 1993. It’s bad enough, though:
After decades of Democrat control of the House of Representatives, gross abuses to the legislative process and several high-profile scandals contributed to an overwhelming Republican House Congressional landslide victory in 1994. Reforms to the House Rules as part of the Contract with America were designed to open up to public scrutiny what had become under this decades-long Democrat majority a dangerously secretive House legislative process. The Republican reform of the way the House did business included opening committee meetings to the public and media, making Congress actually subject to federal law, term limits for committee chairmen ending decades-long committee fiefdoms, truth in budgeting, elimination of the committee proxy vote, authorization of a House audit, specific requirements for blanket rules waivers, and guarantees to the then-Democrat minority party to offer amendments to pieces of legislation.
Pelosi’s proposed repeal of decades-long House accountability reforms exposes a tyrannical Democrat leadership poised to assemble legislation in secret, then goose-step it through Congress by the elimination of debate and amendment procedures as part of America’s governing legislative process.
I was always grimly amused when I heard Democrats fulminating about how power-hungry Bush and the Republicans were. But this is what fascists do. Even “liberal” ones. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
I wonder how (or even if) the media will cover this?
Insulting The Nazis
Ron Rosenbaum says don’t compare them with Hamas.
[Update a while later]
The reaction among the left to Gaza seems passing strange to me, given that so-called liberals tend to elevate intentions over actual results when evaluating policies.
Raising the minimum wage increases lower-class unemployment? Who cares, our hearts were in the right place in wanting them to have a living wage.
Raising capital gains taxes reduces government revenue? That’s all right, it’s what’s necessary for “fairness.”
Welfare creates dependency on the government? Hey, we’re just trying to help the poor. Who are you to criticize us, you cold-hearted right wingers?
Disarming people leaves them defenseless? You gun nuts are just trying to stop us from trying to reduce needless slaughter with guns.
Green policies are helping bankrupt California? How can you complain about us when we’re trying to save the planet?
But somehow, all this gets turned on its head when it comes to their analysis of the Middle East. What are the Israeli intentions? To live in peace, without a threat to their lives and nation, and to minimize casualties, on both sides, in any war waged against them.
What are Hamas’ intentions? Their intentions (and not secret ones, but stated openly and proudly, as Ron Rosenbaum points out) are the most evil imaginable (other than the extinction of the human race itself). Their explicit goal is the extinction of all Jews in creation. They are prevented from achieving this goal only by their lack of military weapons with which to do so. If their capabilities matched their intentions, Israel would be no more, as would Jewry (and other infidels, eventually) everywhere.
But somehow, their vile intentions, which should be condemned, by the traditional values of these “liberals,” become irrelevant to the discussion. No matter that their intentions (to create as many casualties on both sides as possible) are often partially achieved — they are completely ignored. The focus is not on intentions at all, of either party, but only on outcomes. And since, by Hamas’ design, the vast number of casualties occur in Gaza, by Israeli weapons, and despite the life and treasure they expend to minimize them, the Israelis are viewed as the problem, and their intentions be damned.
It is a “liberal” Bizarro world.
[Update a few minutes later]
Some thoughts from Caroline Glick:
Q: Is the media here in the U.S. or internationally remotely fair?
A: When the media are only interested in what is going on when Israel defends itself, the answer is no, they aren’t fair. They don’t pay any attention when hundreds of thousands of Israelis are relegated to bomb shelters for weeks and months on end. They don’t care that Israeli children can’t go to school or day care because Hamas is targeting schools and day-care centers. They only cover the story when Israel finally decides to put an end to this crazy situation where our children are growing up underground. And this is appalling.
From CNN’s coverage of events here, for instance, you could easily come away from the news thinking that Israel is attacking Gaza for no reason. The European media, and much of the U.S. media dismiss the significance of Hamas’s missile, rocket, and mortar campaign against Israel by noting that these projectiles are relatively primitive and have no guidance systems. But this misses and indeed distorts the entire point. Hamas doesn’t need advanced weapons. Its goal is not to attack specific military targets. Its goal is to attack Israeli society as a whole and terrorize our citizens. That’s what makes it such an outlaw.
In fact, this random bombing of civilian targets is the very definition of war crimes. Due to their random nature, every projectile launched against Israel by Hamas is a separate war crime. And that’s the real story. But again, outside of publications like National Review and the like, the Western media have ignored this basic truth and worse, they have turned the criminal nature of Hamas’s campaign into a justification for it.
…Q: A lot of critics say that Israel is just going too far in its attacks. What do you make of the charge?
A: The interesting aspect of this claim is what it tells us about the success of anti-Israel propaganda. For instance, Richard Falk, the Jewish anti-Semite who the U.N.’s Human Rights Council appointed to act as its rapporteur against Israel began accusing Israel of committing war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza the moment Israel began its campaign. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch systematically fabricate international “law” backed by “eyewitness” reports from Hamas supporters in order to accuse Israel of breaking it every single time it takes any steps to defend itself, no matter how restrained.
Israel has done nothing in its campaign against Hamas that could be considered going “too far.” It has done nothing in its campaign that could be considered “disproportionate.” It has targeted military targets and terror operatives.
The fact of the matter is that Israel is held to standards that are discriminatory while its enemy — an illegal, openly genocidal terrorist organization — is defended and shielded from attack by the media, by self-proclaimed human-rights activists and by hostile foreign leaders like British Foreign Minister David Miliband and Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan.
It’s what they do. Read the whole thing.
On The Radio
I’ll be on The Space Show tomorrow at 3 PM Eastern (noon Pacific), to discuss Ares, Shuttle, EELVs, alternate architectures, Mike Griffin’s job prospects, etc.
[Monday afternoon update, with a bump]
The podcast is now available.