All posts by Rand Simberg

What He Said

Joe Katzman has one of the best explanations that I’ve seen for my reasons in thinking that a President Kerry would be a disaster, even though I too think that it’s vital that we somehow, despite the odds, develop a second major party that has the defense of the country foremost in its mind:

I…understand the impetus to look at two candidates who offer less than the times demand, and see the stakes before us, and tell oneself that Kerry will have to do the right thing.

But you know what? He absolutely does not.

Look at Europe now, or look back into human history – illusion and passivity in the face of real threats is an option, and some leaders and states will take it.

One question: is Kerry one of those people? Simple question. Simple answer.

Kerry’s positions on issues like Iran are clear, and were openly stated in the debate: normalize relations with the world’s #1 terrorist sponsors while they undermine Iraq & Afghanistan, offer them nuclear fuel, propose sanctions the Europeans will drag their feet on in order to stop a late-stage nuclear program that’s impervious to sanctions anyway, and oppose both missile defense and the nuclear bunker-buster weapons that would give the USA defensive or offensive options in a crisis.

Gee, I’m sleeping better already.

Despite the fact that I think that George Bush is in many ways disastrous, and wish that there were a viable alternative, I remain convinced that the only realistic alternative would be even worse. And I think that the best way to slap the Dems in the face, to throw the bucket of icewater on them, to wake them up from their hysterical dreamland, is to repudiate them thoroughly at the polls–to force them to face reality, and shed themselves of their delusions about the enemy we face.

What A Day

And then there were three.

On the forty-seventh anniversary of Sputnik, on the day that the Ansari Prize was won, astronaut Gordon Cooper, one of the original Mercury Seven, has died. Of those seven, only Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, and Wally Schirra remain with us.

Of course, he was not an uncontroversial astronaut:

In his post-NASA career, Cooper became known as an outspoken believer in UFOs and charged that the government was covering up its knowledge of extraterrestrial activity.

“I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets, which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on Earth,” he told a United Nations panel in 1985.

“I feel that we need to have a top-level, coordinated program to scientifically collect and analyze data from all over the Earth concerning any type of encounter, and to determine how best to interface with these visitors in a friendly fashion.”

He added, “For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists and astronauts. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us.”

Nonetheless, he was a hell of a pilot. Rest in peace in the cosmos.