…the watermelons show their true colors:
Watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside. This is the theme of my forthcoming book on the controlling, poisonously misanthropic and aggressively socialistic instincts of the modern environmental movement. So how very generous that two of that movement’s leading lights should have chosen the anniversary of Climategate to prove my point entirely.
I think he’s right. This nonsense is politically dead in the US.
Suckers found:
Suckers: GM found a lot of them, even though a) by its own admission, it lacks “effective internal controls” over its finances; b) it’s still saddled with the UAW, which is already pledging ‘no more concessions’ and even making some trouble; c) its Opel subsidiary is hemorhaging money at a rate of billions a year; d) a high Opel official declared the IPO “premature” while noting that “there is still too much red tape and inefficiency;” e) it has surrendered a majority stake in its promising Chinese joint venture to its Chinese partner f) its bailout plan assumes it will maintain a market share of 19 percent, but its share most recently fell to 18.3 percent, part of a decades-long decline; g) who knows what accounting gimmickry was used to dress up the books; h) the government has intervened in GM’s decisionmaking more than it’s let on; i) we don’t know if GM’s new products (like the Chevrolet Cruze) will have traditional GM reliability–the company better hope not; and j) the name “General Motors’ is now so tarnished that the company is removing it from auto show displays, hoping buyers will not associate “Buick” or “Chevrolet” with such a negative brand …. P.S.: GM stock purchasers won’t be suckers, of course, if their shares rise. So far, they’ve risen 3.6 percent, even though the NYT reported that “several of the people involved in the offering said they expect to see a potential 10 to 20 percent jump in the share price on Thursday, typical for an initial offering.”
Too bad the taxpayers weren’t given an option of whether to buy or not.
Does Google hard-code bias into its search engine?
It makes you wonder what they might do politically as well, considering where most of their employees’ political contributions go.
It was nice while it lasted, but it’s over.
…and the beginning of the Texas era:
This state of crisis is likely to become the norm for the Golden State. In contrast to other hard-hit states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada, which all opted for pro-business, fiscally responsible candidates, California voters decisively handed virtually total power to a motley coalition of Democratic-machine politicians, public employee unions, green activists and rent-seeking special interests.
In the new year, the once and again Gov. Jerry Brown, who has some conservative fiscal instincts, will be hard-pressed to convince Democratic legislators who get much of their funding from public-sector unions to trim spending. Perhaps more troubling, Brown’s own extremism on climate change policy–backed by rent-seeking Silicon Valley investors with big bets on renewable fuels–virtually assures a further tightening of a regulatory regime that will slow an economic recovery in every industry from manufacturing and agriculture to home-building.
What a disaster.
Wayne Hale thinks that he posted in haste. But the problem remains:
Now I have re-read it and have some additional thoughts. It is clear that this is a vast scaling down from the requirements that say, Ares-1 and Orion had. And many of the paragraphs say that the specifications and standards can be replaced with alternatives, or with other standards that “meet the intent of” spec such and such. That is good. And to the casual reader that sounds like a big change. Unfortunately, it is not. Having to prove that an alternative standard is just as good as the standard NASA listed is an uphill battle. The adjudicator will be some GS-13 who has lived with one standard his whole career, understands it thoroughly, probably sat on the technical committee that wrote it, and loves it. Proving that his baby is ugly is going to be time consuming, and probably fruitless. I speak from sad experience.
So, what is my recommendation? Simple. Do what the Launch Services Program does: require that providers HAVE standards and follow them – don’t make them pick particular processes or standards, let the flexible, nimble, [your adjective here] commercial firms pick what suits their business best. As long as they have standards and stick to them – that is what we should require.
I would note that this is the FAA’s approach for launch licensing of passenger flights, until the industry matures sufficiently to develop certification standards (a point in time that is many years off).
It’s an honesty problem:
Sixteen of the waivers, you won’t be surprised to learn, were granted to union-based plans, which confirms that the sleaze-addled bill became a sleaze-addled law. Why, after all, should a few chosen companies be granted dispensation while others subsidize them?
The administration argues that these waivers are necessary only until reform takes effect in 2014, at which time workers will enjoy a wide range of approved options. Now, clearly anyone gullible enough to believe that a giant, invasive regulatory scheme is going to spur competition and choice is already working for the administration. But even if we were to suspend our disbelief, how does any of that comport with the president’s claim that we can all keep our insurance if we like it? (Answer: not well.)
The president has a problem with a lot of his claims. And as long as he continues to delude himself that the problem is the dog-food ad, and not the dog food, he’s going to continue to decline in popularity.
For its recognition by Popular Science. Xombie is a lot better pick than that hilariously (yet sadly) idiotic Time pick a couple years ago.
[Update a few minutes later]
Similar congratulations to SpaceX, for the Falcon 9 selection.
This would explain much:
…after I taped my PJTV interview yesterday with David Kirkham — whose Utah Tea Party toppled Bob Bennett and brought a new Speaker into the Utah State House to boot — and Mike Wilson, whose Cincinnati Tea Party helped paint Ohio red last week, they stayed on the hookup and were talking about how the biggest surprise to both of them, each a political neophyte, was how comparatively easy politics was compared to running a business.
So it attracts mediocrities (if that’s not too kind a word) like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. And Barack Obama. They’re not competent at anything else. Not that they’re particularly competent at that, either.
[Update a couple minutes later]
They’re arrogant people, with much to be modest about.
[Update a while later]
The real Democrat messaging problem: they can’t get people to ignore reality:
This was the progressive agenda in full, with accomplishments and ideas most politicians could only dream of, and yet what happened in this election? The Democrats faced a historic loss with the public turning hugely against them. And why? It really comes down to a messaging problem. Liberals just couldn’t get their voices heard over the noise from their one foe that is always trying to tear down all their plans and belittle every accomplishment: reality.
The reality noise machine — with its job losses, terrorist attacks, and budgets — is always trying to shout down liberals’ ideas with its fear-mongering of actual problems that need to be addressed and a physical reality that needs to be appeased. When liberals create or save millions of jobs with a trillion dollar stimulus, there goes reality saying we’re spending money we don’t have and unemployment is only going up. When a progressive plan is proposed to get everyone free health care, there’s reality with its message of gloom that nothing is free and our health care will only get worse. And if we ever try to appease some nation like Iran through peaceful, diplomatic means, reality is always pointing out how close they are to nuclear weapons. Reality is obnoxious, and these days it’s everywhere, and people are actually listening to it over liberals.
For instance, look at the whole “death panel” debate from a while back. Despite numerous liberal journalists and commentators assuring people that death panels were not mentioned in the health care bill and that it was completely made up, people decided to instead listen to the reality of bureaucracy and limited supply over the intelligent people telling them to ignore that. And when New York Times columnist Paul Krugman constantly argues that we need to spend even more to get out of this economic situation, do people listen to the Nobel Prize-winning economist or reality? These days it’s reality, and people are going to keep choosing reality over their own interests unless liberals learn to fight back with better messaging.
Stupid realists. Who are they going to believe — the “reality-based community” or reality? Come on, people.
…for commercial space. A warning from Wayne Hale:
NASA at its highest leadership level has committed to try to allow commercial space flight providers a great deal of flexibility and cost control. There are ways to do this which will not compromise safety in design or operation. But having NASA civil servants as the arbiters of whether or not thousands of requirements have been satisfied is not the way to accomplish neither safety nor cost efficiency.
So whether Commercial Space Flight gets $6 billion or $3 billion or $50 million, the entire effort is on the way to a train wreck.
NASA must change or this effort will fail.
No doubt. Part of the point of the new policy was to get NASA to change, but it’s going to be a very painful process, and there will be vicious guerilla warfare in the trenches. The draft requirements are just one of the skirmishes in that war. At some point, they will have to be revealed, to allow them to be properly critiqued before they become something more than draft. If NASA had a strong administrator, he would note that they will be signed off at the top, where the buck stops. But if NASA had a strong administrator, Ed Weiler wouldn’t still be in charge of SMD.
If the train wreck occurs, it will be NASA’s problem, though, not that of the commercial providers. There will be commercial human spaceflight, sooner or later. NASA can make it happen sooner, but they won’t be able to prevent it, and once everyone sees other people flying on SpaceX/ULA/Boeing/Whoever vehicles to Bigelow (and perhaps others’) facilities, it’s going to be impossible for NASA to get the billions some (either at NASA or on the Hill) will request for their own doomed programs, in the coming austere fiscal environment. There is only one way forward for human spaceflight, and that’s commercial providers.
[Update a few minutes later]
I should add that I am not surprised, of course, in any way by Wayne’s report.