Alaska Air has a nifty new paint job on one of their airplanes. At federal taxpayer expense.
Alaska. Isn’t that the state where residents get a negative income tax as a result of their oil revenues? But hey, if your Senator is chairman of the Appropriations Committee, why pay for things out of your own pocket?
Mark Steyn writes about the “religion of peace“:
I found myself behind a car in Vermont, in the US, the other day; it had a one-word bumper sticker with the injunction “COEXIST”. It’s one of those sentiments beloved of Western progressives, one designed principally to flatter their sense of moral superiority. The C was the Islamic crescent, the O was the hippie peace sign, the X was the Star of David and the T was the Christian cross. Very nice, hard to argue with. But the reality is, it’s the first of those symbols that has a problem with coexistence. Take the crescent out of the equation and you wouldn’t need a bumper sticker at all. Indeed, coexistence is what the Islamists are at war with; or, if you prefer, pluralism, the idea that different groups can rub along together within the same general neighbourhood. There are many trouble spots across the world but, as a general rule, even if one gives no more than a cursory glance at the foreign pages, it’s easy to guess at least one of the sides: Muslims v Jews in Palestine, Muslims v Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims v Christians in Nigeria, Muslims v Buddhists in southern Thailand, Muslims v (your team here). Whatever one’s views of the merits on a case by case basis, the ubiquitousness of one team is a fact.
Clark Lindsey points out that, while there may be many good arguments against NASA’s human spaceflight program, the notion that we can’t afford it is ludicrous.
It’s really tragic that the debate is so simple minded. There seems little point in debating whether or not NASA should continue to spend money on manned spaceflight–that seems to be inevitable, for reasons of inertia, perceived prestige, and (most importantly) pork. So, as Clark points out, if we could accept that as a given, it would be nice to have an intelligent discussion about how NASA spends the money that they seem inevitably to be given. Unfortunately, that debate is driven largely by pork as well.
[Update at 8:50 AM EDT]
Jeff Foust has an article about media reaction over at The Space Review this morning.
[Late afternoon update]
There’s an interesting discussion in comments at this post by Jeff Foust at Space Politics, including comments on the existence of lunar water by Paul Spudis.
Cindy “Jihadi” Sheehan is going to take her US-bashing tour to the UK, so that she can provide aid and comfort to the enemy from there as well. This was the part I found hilarious, to show how out of touch many over there and in Europe are:
Despite the media battering she has received in the US, Sheehan has carried on with her campaign.
“Despite the media battering”? The media couldn’t get enough of her, until they got distracted by bad weather on the Gulf Coast. She got more than her fifteen minutes, because the media loved to cover someone “battering” George Bush on a daily basis, who could give them an excuse to cover her via her “absolute moral authority.” If it weren’t for the love-fest from the American media, she would have packed up her tent and shut down her Fabulous Flying Barking Moonbat Circus weeks ago.
The Washington Post has an editorial against the Vision for Space Exploration in general, and Mike Griffin’s implementation plans in particular. As usual, there are unstated assumptions built in:
…we believe that the needs of NASA — and the country — can, at this point, be better served by continuing and expanding robotic exploration.
But what are those needs? They don’t say. They think they know what they are, and assume that everyone agrees with them. But I can’t think of any needs of mine that are met by sending robots to other planets. NASA obviously has some need to do so, because they do so, but clearly that doesn’t satisfy the sum total of their needs either.
Once again, we have clueless pundits making policy pronouncements when we haven’t had a national discussion or debate about what the purpose is of having a national space program and policy. Until that happens, it will continue to be driven by the needs for pork in certain congressional districts.
Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan’s “freedom fighters” have murdered tourists (and no doubt damaged the tourism industry) in Bali again.
OK, they pulled the game out in East Lansing, winning in OT. They did better than I thought they would, but there’s still a Jekyll/Hyde quality to the offense. But having gotten past the Spartan hurdle, they’ll probably have a winning season now. They could even still win the Big Ten, but it still seems unlikely to me.
Tunku Varadarajan has an interview with a recent heroine of September 11.
Tunku Varadarajan has an interview with a recent heroine of September 11.
Tunku Varadarajan has an interview with a recent heroine of September 11.