It’s hard to believe that it’s been seventeen years. Glenn Reynolds has some links and thoughts. Yes, Barack Obama was feckless, but part of the reason we got him was due to the fecklessness of George Bush, and the mismanagement of Iraq. I thought at the time the administration had a strategic plan for the Middle East, but I was wrong.
[Update a while later]
It’s a 19th-century solution for a 21st-century problem. Most of the takes on this have been idiotic, but this is a good one. I’d note though, per the end, it’s not a choice between a Space Corps/Force or Space Guard. We need both.
Like me, Byron York remembers the 90s, the Clinton administration, and the Chinese government. But that was different because shut up.
The reach of the Clinton’s is long.
I missed this earlier in the week, but Mike Snead has a long essay on passenger safety over at The Space Review. It’s a useful history, that touches on many of the themes of my book, but I believe that it’s technologically premature to apply the principles to human spaceflight. Spaceflight participants (not passengers) must be aware of the risks of the varied methods of building spaceships, and accept them accordingly. No one should, at this point in history, get aboard one with the same expection of getting safely off that one does with an airliner, particularly because different people have different risk tolerances and goals. There will come a time when trips to space will be considered common carrier, on certified vehicles, but we are years from that time.
John McCain served his country well in Vietnam. My condolences to his family and friends. I wish that he had never been in politics.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) August 26, 2018
[Update a while later]
Thoughts from Jim Treacher about a “humorous” take on McCain’s death.
Ken White: Yes, it does corrupt justice, but not (just, or even) because they’re “rats.”
Yes. Trump is wrong about why flipping is bad, but he's not wrong about flipping is bad. Prosecutors have far too much power, with too little accountability. It's a travesty of the justice system. https://t.co/2p0anto9d5
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) August 24, 2018
Sore-loser Democrats want to change the rules.
None of this was unanticipated by the Founders. They considered popular vote for the presidency and Senate a bug, not a feature.
Want power to the people? Then you want capitalism.
Well, it certainly resulted in the brutal premature deaths of many tens of millions of people in the last century. But maybe they weren’t doing it quite right. We’ll just have to keep trying until they get it right. For the children.