Whenever I feel a little overexcited or too worked up over current events, I go over and read the dullest blog in the world. Then I feel calmer.

Trent Telenko has what is, in my opinion, a must-read post about military transformation and rebuilding Iraq (and other places as well). He speaks truth to the amorphous power of tranzi mushheads.

Here are the nut grafs (the emphasis is his, but I certainly agree with it):

Let’s face facts – the US Army has a far better track record than NGO’s in reforming national cultures. American vital interests and the vital interests of the Wilsonian style multilateral non- government organizations, like the U.N., that make up much of the international system today are fundamentally at odds. One or the other will survive the War on Terrorism and America isn’t going anywhere.

These international NGO leaders are going to force their replacement with American military draftees in the nation- building role. America can build lots of military police, signals, medical, quartermaster, civil engineering and civil affairs battalions for occupation duties very quickly, given the political will.

America is in the chaos elimination business because tyranny anywhere is a threat to Americans everywhere, even at home. That is the searing lesson of 9/11. There is no such thing as defense in this war – only the complete elimination of our enemies. This means killing terrorists and reforming at gun point the societies that breed them. This is why Democrats are dead and damned on issues of national security – the kind of naked military and cultural imperialism necessary to win is against the party’s secular religious creed.

NGO’s, on the other hand, are parasites. They thrive on the open wounds of chaos and disorder in the international system.

But read the whole thing.

A British MP says that Gaza is like the Warsaw Ghetto, without the gas chambers. [Registration required]

A few weeks ago, I expressed a concern about Burt Rutan’s X-Prize attempt, in which I wrote:

Burt Rutan may end up losing the X-Prize because he’s not doing what’s necessary in order to be able to legally fly by the end of next year, regardless of the technical readiness of his vehicle.

Now, from Aerospace Daily:

Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites, said the vehicles really are commercial aircraft and not subject to the stricter regulatory regime of space vehicles, such as booster rockets and the space shuttle.

The FAA office has asked Rutan to defend the safety characteristics of the White Knight launch vehicle and the Space Ship One, he said, a request he has refused. The FAA?s inquiries are not likely to postpone Rutan?s planned flight test schedule, he said, but added, ?it?s possible they will.?

If negotiations fail, Rutan said, he will move outside the FAA?s jurisdiction by obtaining a U.S. Air Force contract. The FAA?s regulatory authority does not
extend to military vehicles.

Rutan ruled out the possibility of moving his program outside of the U.S. to avoid the FAA?s spaceflight regulations. ?I?m geared to do my program at Mojave,? a commercial airport in California where the Scaled Composites program is based, he said.

Advantage, Transterrestrial!

Though I’m saddened to see my prediction come true.

Of course, if this quote is accurate, Burt doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t know what he means by “booster rockets,” but the Shuttle is not subject to any regulatory regime–it’s run by NASA. And the regime actually isn’t stricter–it’s just different (and it’s utterly unfamiliar to him). In many ways, it’s less strict, at least for commercial use, because it doesn’t require vehicle certification (an issue with whose problems no one is more familiar than Burt).

What he’s trying to do is avoid having to get a launch license, and because he’s already decided not to get one, it’s probably already too late for him to do so, or will be soon, because it’s not a process that can occur overnight.

The email correspondent who sent me this information, and is following these issues closely, characterized Burt as a “bull in a china shop.”

He’s going to set off an intra-agency dispute at the FAA, and then widen it to one between the FAA and the Air Force, if he insists on going that route. If I were the X-Prize committee, I’d be thinking really hard about slapping this down before it turns into a nasty mess, with terrible regulatory precedents.

[Update at 3:11 PM PDT]

I should add that moving off shore wouldn’t help him either, unless he renounces his citizenship as well. The US position is that it is regulatorily responsible for launch activities of US entities, regardless of their location on the planet, because of liability provisions of the Outer Space Treaty (yet another reason to get out of it).

[Friday morning update]

Just to clarify questions asked in the comments section, the EZ-Rocket can fly on an experimental aircraft certificate–it doesn’t go in, or even near, space. Here are the current FAA definitions (only recently announced) of suborbital vehicles and trajectories, which will require a launch license of some type.

Suborbital rocket: a rocket-propelled vehicle intended for flight on a suborbital trajectory whose thrust is greater than its lift for the majority of the powered portion of its flight.

Suborbital trajectory: the intentional flight path of a launch vehicle, reentry vehicle, or any portion thereof, whose vacuum instantaneous impact point does not leave the surface of the Earth.

Note that altitude is not a factor in the definition.

And I’ve linked it before, but Jeff Foust has a good overview of the current regulatory situation for suborbital here. This is pending any changes in legislation that may appear this year.

For those three readers I have who don’t read Instapundit, my Fox column is up. It’s a more genteel response to Mr. O’Reilly than my previous one, and it’s all-new, now with 38% less snark!

I also apologize to John Pike for accusing him of being a physicist.

Kevin Murphy, both in the comments section to this post, and at his blog, makes an interesting point about the potential “equal time on the web” provision being considered in the EU.

Who gets equal time after satire? Here, the form would say first amendment supporters, yet the meaning would say Bill O’Reilly and second amendment suppressors. Only the lawyers will profit from such a requirement.

Yup, which is just one more absurdity of the notion. Like Kevin, I suspect that they haven’t even thought about that problem.

Mark Steyn discourses on ongoing anti-Americanism masquerading as concern for Iraq. As always, he gets in a few delicious zingers.

After I wrote about my trip to Iraq in the Sunday Telegraph and its sister papers, I received quite a few emails from US troops in the country, the gist of which was summed up by one guy with a civil affairs unit near Baghdad: ?I?m glad to hear somebody report what?s really going on …the fact that there isn?t anything going on.? I saw no anarchy, no significant anti-US hostility, and no hospitals at anything like capacity. In other words, I was unable to find Will Day?s Iraq. I don?t honestly think it exists outside his head: as Dinah Washington once sang, ?Water difference a Day makes?; he has miraculously transformed Iraqi water into whine.

Mark Steyn discourses on ongoing anti-Americanism masquerading as concern for Iraq. As always, he gets in a few delicious zingers.

After I wrote about my trip to Iraq in the Sunday Telegraph and its sister papers, I received quite a few emails from US troops in the country, the gist of which was summed up by one guy with a civil affairs unit near Baghdad: ?I?m glad to hear somebody report what?s really going on …the fact that there isn?t anything going on.? I saw no anarchy, no significant anti-US hostility, and no hospitals at anything like capacity. In other words, I was unable to find Will Day?s Iraq. I don?t honestly think it exists outside his head: as Dinah Washington once sang, ?Water difference a Day makes?; he has miraculously transformed Iraqi water into whine.

Mark Steyn discourses on ongoing anti-Americanism masquerading as concern for Iraq. As always, he gets in a few delicious zingers.

After I wrote about my trip to Iraq in the Sunday Telegraph and its sister papers, I received quite a few emails from US troops in the country, the gist of which was summed up by one guy with a civil affairs unit near Baghdad: ?I?m glad to hear somebody report what?s really going on …the fact that there isn?t anything going on.? I saw no anarchy, no significant anti-US hostility, and no hospitals at anything like capacity. In other words, I was unable to find Will Day?s Iraq. I don?t honestly think it exists outside his head: as Dinah Washington once sang, ?Water difference a Day makes?; he has miraculously transformed Iraqi water into whine.

Here’s an interesting post from The Corner.

You know, not that I’m a conservative, but I’ve always disagreed with Keynes because, well, he was a collectivist, and his nostrums always seemed transparently wrong to me.

I never knew, until this day, that he was gay.

And I don’t care.

And I think that this is further proof that, whatever his education and reputation in economics, Paul Krugman is a loon.