It was originally scheduled for 9 AM EST, but it’s been delayed. The clock at the webcast is currently at 54 minutes and counting.
[Update shortly after the test]
Well, the webcast was a little glitchy, but it looked like a successful firing and shutdown to me. Now on the launch on Tuesday. Which, coincidentally, in addition to being the 69th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, is the 38th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 17, the last mission to the moon.
…but then, the so-called “reality-based community” has never been all that into reality.
[Update a few minutes later]
Raise your own taxes, Fareed, but leave ours alone.
The only reason I watch This Week on Sunday morning, particularly since Christiane Amanpour took over, is to see George Will, who doesn’t appear in any other venue, as far as I know. Well, we had a treat this past week, when instead of her panel (which is always too short anyway) she devoted most of the show to Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who tell us that we’re not being taxed enough. Hey, wrote the feds as big a check as you want, guys, pour more of your own money down the rat hole, and get a receipt. But leave the rest of us out of it.
It’s Cyber Week
And thanks to the readers who bought the netbook and the shoes. Every bit helps keep this blog going.
A new course has been added to the LaunchSpace catalog. Doesn’t look like it’s worth attending, though — the course instructor probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
It’s a nice gesture, but a drop in the barrel in terms of savings. We need to be much more radical.
…stinks up the room in Cancun. Which makes the economy-killing legislation passed by the morons in California (including moron-in-chief Schwarzenegger) even more pointless.
[Update a few minutes later]
An excerpt:
Our genius environmentalists came up with the idea that in order to make the treaty more palatable to US public opinion and therefore to the Senate, the US would assume an open-ended and eternal obligation to pay tens of billions of dollars a year to various developing world governments, however corrupt, incompetent, dictatorial and unfriendly these might be. Iran, Cuba, and North Korea would get money just like Yemen, Syria and Sudan. In exchange, these countries along with India and China would accept restrictions on their carbon output that are significantly less drastic than those to be imposed on the US.
Who could possibly object to a smart plan like this? What US Senator wouldn’t love to defend a vote to force taxpayers to subsidize Iran while giving China permanent business advantages over the US? Surely Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would find nothing to attack here. Getting two thirds of the Senate to ratify a no-brainer like this would be a cakewalk.
This is the fruit of the gigantic brains of the Great Gurus of Green. This is the bright shining idea at the core of the UN process: that US opposition to Kyoto could be overcome by requiring the US to pay tens of billions of dollars in Green Danegeld to the third world every year. And the people who thought of this had Big Degrees from Name Schools! We know, because they keep telling us, that they are smarter than the rest of us and they understand complex systems better than we do. These are the geniuses to whom we are to entrust ever greater control over ever larger swathes of the global economy because, after all, they see so clearly and so far.
The world’s in the very best of hands.
Apparently, the maximum revenue from income taxation is 19% of GDP, regardless of tax rate. The implication is that a) this should be the maximum size of government spending as well and b) that we should have rates in place that maximize economic growth. But that doesn’t satisfy the class-envy warfare mentality of the left, including the president.
Talking truth to tyrannical fecklessness among the Eurocrats. It sure looks like the beginning of the end for the European project. Good riddance.
[Update a few minutes later]
The European Parliament is not about freedom.
How much longer can we afford this nonsense?