From presidential candidate Iowahawk. I think I should start measuring the draperies for my office as Space Czar.
All posts by Rand Simberg
Ask Me No Questions
…and I’ll tell you no…well, you know the old saying…
Hillary! doesn’t seem to be on a listening tour this time around:
Iowa Falls resident Alene Rickels, 51, when asked her thoughts about the event, said:
How Long Is Long Enough
Ilya Somin writes about the clash of values between those of us who want to live, and those who want us to die. And no, I’m not referring to Islamists.
Do What I Do, Not What I Say?
Did Mike Huckabee, aspiring to be the Nanny-In-Chief, have gastric bypass surgery?
It wouldn’t shock me. I see him as a Republican version of Bill Clinton, minus the womanizing (including the involuntary relations with women).
[Update on New Year’s Eve]
This seems to be a pretty good refutation of the speculation. Not that it makes me any more inclined to vote for a nanny, even one who follows his own advice.
Routing Around The Disruption
Fred Thompson bypasses the MSM:
I am not consumed by personal ambition. I will not be devastated if I don
The Great Fall Of China
Or…Honey, I shrunk the economy!
China’s GDP is forty percent smaller than previously assumed. Walter Russell Meade considers the implications.
One that he doesn’t point out is the hysteria by some (including the NASA administrator, except that in his case I suspect that it’s just a cynical attempt to scare Congress into giving him more money for “Apollo on steroids”) that they will beat us back to the moon is even less justified than it was at the higher number.
China not only has a much smaller economy than ours after the PPP recalculation, but it has a much smaller economy per capita, since their population is over four times ours (resulting in average per capita income of about an eighth of ours), with a much smaller middle class. That means that the Chinese peasants, the vast majority of whom are still in poverty by US standards, are likely to be even less happy about boondoggles to the moon than we are.
And as Meade points out, the government is not sufficiently stable to risk the popular uproar that might be engendered by large numbers of people who are unhappy to see their national wealth spent to send a few taikonauts off to Luna, while they continue to have no running water. I expect the Chinese program to continue at its current snail’s pace, but to think that they will beat us back to the moon any time soon, or at all, remains a fantasy.
[Via Instapundit]
The Real Debate
Perry de Havilland discusses the real issue in the creation-evolution wars, that never gets discussed, because it’s taken as a given that the government will fund education:
I have no problem with people believing whatever wacko things they want (and for me that includes all religion), but the evolution vs. creationism debate should be a non political one and the only way that can ever be true is when the state is no longer involved in education.
I think creationism is nuts and it makes me think less of Ron Paul that he has a religious objection to the theory of evolution. But frankly this should not be a matter for political concern and he at least is highly unlikely to force state schools to teach it (or anything else for that matter). The fact that it is a political matter shows something it very wrong and the correct ‘something’ that needs debating is not evolution, it is state schooling. Return all schooling to the private sector and the whole issue goes away from the political sphere. Let the market decide if there is demand for schools that teach creationism, I have no problem with that at all.
Nor do I.
The Pathology Of Pakistan
In his last column of 2007, Mark Steyn has thoughts on what is perhaps currently the biggest security problem in the world.
…the
Where Did The “Neocons” Go?
Michael Young is wondering:
…maybe it’s time to stop referring to the neocon policies of the Bush administration. The neocons are gone, many for so long that no one seems to remember their leaving. What we now have in Washington is a mishmash of old political realism and improvisation, topped with increasingly empty oratory on freedom and democracy. That should please quite a few of Bush’s domestic critics. He’s returned to the futile routine in the Middle East that they always urged him to.
Well, the anti-war folks are always fighting the last anti-war.
Where Did The “Neocons” Go?
Michael Young is wondering:
…maybe it’s time to stop referring to the neocon policies of the Bush administration. The neocons are gone, many for so long that no one seems to remember their leaving. What we now have in Washington is a mishmash of old political realism and improvisation, topped with increasingly empty oratory on freedom and democracy. That should please quite a few of Bush’s domestic critics. He’s returned to the futile routine in the Middle East that they always urged him to.
Well, the anti-war folks are always fighting the last anti-war.