Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Layers Of Fact Checkers And Editors

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There’s kind of a weird editorial by Joshua Green over at the Boston Globe today. I don’t understand the title (Takeoff?), and he doesn’t seem to know the name of either the senior senator from Florida or the NASA administrator. And this kind of statement is always sort of annoying:

The real shock came in January, when President Obama killed its successor, Project Constellation, which aimed to return Americans to the moon by 2020.

What does it mean, to call Constellation the Shuttle’s “successor”? I guess it is, in the sense that it was the next human spaceflight program that would absorb all of the NASA personnel that were working Shuttle, but it’s not like it actually replaces the Shuttle in any functional sense, other than the ability to get crew to and from LEO. And then we have the usual dumb comments from people like Tom Delay:

Critics reply that killing Constellation and reorienting NASA is foolish and costly. “The innovations that have come out of the space program are phenomenal,’’ DeLay said. “With our failing manufacturing base, it is extremely important for our economy to maintain them.’’ Private space flight has shown promise, but it will be years before a commercial company can safely launch astronauts into space. Lacking the capacity to send US astronauts to the International Space Station, we’ll soon pay Russia to ferry them there, which won’t be cheap.

What “innovations” were going to come out of Constellation? The whole point of the project was to avoid innovation, with its associated technical risk. And I suppose that it’s technically true that it will be “years” before a commercial company can safely launch astronauts into space. But it won’t be as many “years” as it would have been with Ares/Orion. There’s no reason that the number of years need be more than two or three, except for resistance from Congress to fund it for dumb reasons like this:

…the loudest complaint regards “American greatness’’ — the idea that the willing forfeiture of our leadership in space amounts to a kind of moral trespass that will cede to nations like China and India the next great strides in science and technology.

This is mindless. We aren’t “forfeiting our leadership in space” by sensibly having private companies perform the mundane task of getting astronauts to and from there, half a century after the dawn of the manned space age. And China and India are both a long way from doing anything that will vault them ahead of us (and even longer, if we follow the new course instead of the moribund Constellation).

Where his critics have a point is in arguing that NASA lacks a clear mission. Without a directive and funding, talk of visiting Mars or an asteroid is grandiose but empty.

While the funding is lacking, due to squabbling on the Hill, there is a directive — to develop the technologies needed to make going beyond earth orbit affordable. But for people who look at the world through Apollo-colored glasses, unless it has a destination and date and unaffordably huge rocket (i.e., a five-year plan for the celestial crops), it’s not a real space program.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Now I’ll Have To Rethink My Position

24 Comments

Are the elite starting to turn against Obama?

“If you’re asking if the United States is about to become a socialist state, I’d say it’s actually about to become a European state, with the expansiveness of the welfare system and the progressive tax system like what we’ve already experienced in Western Europe,” Harvard business and history professor Niall Ferguson declared during Monday’s kickoff session, offering a withering critique of Obama’s economic policies, which he claimed were encouraging laziness.

“The curse of longterm unemployment is that if you pay people to do nothing, they’ll find themselves doing nothing for very long periods of time,” Ferguson said. “Long-term unemployment is at an all-time high in the United States, and it is a direct consequence of a misconceived public policy.”

But…but…Nancy said that paying people unemployment was the fastest and best way to create jobs!

Ferguson was joined in his harsh attack by billionaire real estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman. Both lambasted Obama’s trillion-dollar deficit spending program—in the name of economic stimulus to cushion the impact of the 2008 financial meltdown—as fiscally ruinous, potentially turning America into a second-rate power.

“We are, without question, in a period of decline, particularly in the business world,” Zuckerman said. “The real problem we have…are some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.”

Gee, Mort, I could have told you that two frickin’ years ago. Why did it take you so long to catch on that you were one of the rubes?

And I loved this:

Ferguson warned: “Do you want to be a kind of implicit part of the European Union? I’d advise you against it.”

This was greeted by hearty applause from a crowd that included Barbra Streisand and her husband James Brolin. “Depressing, but fantastic,” Streisand told me afterward, rendering her verdict on the session. “So exciting. Wonderful!”

Brolin’s assessment: “Mind-blowing.”

To be fair, though, I suspect that you could blow Brolin’s mind with a butterfly wing.

This can’t be good for his renomination prospects. The long knives will be out on November 3rd, I suspect.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

The Long View

73 Comments

If we can turn the cultural and political momentum around on gun grabbing, can we do it on big government, too?

We’ll find out. I think that Pelosi, Reid and Obama have awakened a sleeping giant. The “Silent Majority” is finally speaking up.

[Update a couple minutes later]

From a surprising source — liberals should defend the Second Amendment:

while liberals certainly do not argue for lawlessness, and will acknowledge the necessity of certain restrictions, it is generally understood that liberals fight to broadly interpret and expand our rights and to question the necessity and wisdom of any restrictions of them.

Liberals can quote legal precedent, news reports, and exhaustive studies. They can talk about the intentions of the Founders. They can argue at length against the tyranny of the government. And they will, almost without exception, conclude the necessity of respecting, and not restricting, civil liberties.

Except for one: the right to keep and bear arms.

When it comes to discussing the Second Amendment, liberals check rational thought at the door. They dismiss approximately 40% of American households that own one or more guns, and those who fight to protect the Second Amendment, as “gun nuts.” They argue for greater restrictions. And they pursue these policies at the risk of alienating voters who might otherwise vote for Democrats.

And they do so in a way that is wholly inconsistent with their approach to all of our other civil liberties.

Of course, true liberals (as opposed to “progressives”) have always supported the Second Amendment. But I can understand why those who want government to rule the people wouldn’t like it.

[Update a few minutes later]

There are over 1400 comments, most of them the usual (“but what about nukes and cannons?” dorm-room stuff), but I was amused to see a little side thread among some of the leftists about the relative virtues of .357 versus .44 Magnum, and carryability. Diversity!

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Happy Independence Day

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Sadly, I think that too many take our freedom for granted, and are too willing to trade it for government cheese. But I think that the past couple years have seen a reawakening of the principles on which the country was founded, as a backlash against the current political class, which to the degree that it isn’t entirely ignorant of them, seems to hold them in contempt.

Part of that backlash is two promising web sites, debuting today, Declaration Entertainment, and Big Peace, another Breitbart production. I wish them luck in their efforts to help restore the Republic.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

It Just Makes You Want To Cry

71 Comments

Here we go again. No one at this American Thinker piece, neither the author or any of the commenters, has clue one about the new policy:

Now, with the Obama administration’s new “plan” for NASA effectively ending nationally funded human spaceflight, we drop a torch others are grabbing.

Where do they come up with this nonsense? How can one sanely characterize a policy that extends ISS until at least the end of the decade, and that has billions of dollars budgeted to buy crew services, as “ending nationally funded human spaceflight”?

NASA has long been planning to cancel the Shuttle program, which is understandable, considering budget constraints and the priority of the Constellation program. But to cancel both programs leaves the U.S. with no viable human space transport. The International Space Station, which represents a $100-billion investment by U.S. taxpayers, will be unreachable by scientists and astronauts from the U.S. without hitching a ride on Russian or Chinese space transport. This is unacceptable.

Or from commercial American services, which will be available much sooner than Ares/Orion. And later, he finally gets around to discussing this:

With the ending of the Constellation program, there are no future human missions for the U.S., except those made possible in commercial spaceflight. While commercial spaceflight is tremendous in its future implications, it will progress only in areas that have demonstrated a possible fiscal return…and space operations are so expensive and difficult that it is highly unlikely that any true exploration would occur. Commercial space flight is space exploitation, not space exploration. For the foreseeable future, an entity like NASA — which is nationally funded and not constrained by profits and losses — and a project such as Constellation is the best way to extend our reach into and knowledge of space. Robotic missions are all well and good for certain applications, but one does not learn anything about putting humans in space by putting robotic vehicles in space.

Sigh…

Where to start?

Look. We are simply transitioning from a mode in which NASA develops and operates its own earth-to-orbit vehicles to spec, to one in which it purchases transportation services to LEO for crew from private providers, as it has been doing for years for satellites and probes. No one said that NASA was “getting out of the planetary exploration business” when it launched LRO and LCROSS on a commercial Atlas, and if they had they would have rightly been considered insane. Why is it any different for astronauts?

Exploration starts when we get into LEO, not at Cape Canaveral.

And you cannot simultaneously know anything about Constellation and state that it is “the best way to extend our reach into and knowledge of space.” Constellation was a fiscal disaster waiting to happen. It was unaffordable both in terms of its development costs, and its operational costs. There are many better ways to accomplish that goal. The new policy is one of them.

Jeebus crow.

Education, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Jobs Americans Can’t Do

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Scott Ott, on the disastrous state of the American educational system, thanks to the unions and collectivists. They’ve achieved Dewey’s dream.

And this seems related:

There’s good news for American education. About three-quarters of residents — 74% — know the U.S. declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776. The bad news for the academic system — 26% do not. This 26% includes one-fifth who are unsure and 6% who thought the U.S. separated from another nation. That begs the question, “From where do the latter think the U.S. achieved its independence?” Among the countries mentioned are France, China, Japan, Mexico, and Spain.

Actually, as a commenter points out, it raises the question — it doesn’t “beg” it (a phrase that confuses many people). Which is also a symptom of deteriorating education, even among the supposedly educated.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

As Predicted

15 Comments

It’s a media blackout for the Black Panthers and the (In)Justice Department.

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, at least the Al Gore sexual assault allegations have gone mainstream. As some have pointed out, part of his problem was his hubris in making himself a celebrity, which opened him up as fair game for the entertainment rags.

I wonder if he’s past his media sell-by date? Or they’re happy to toss him under the bus to give them a distraction from having to report corruption at the Justice Department?

[Afternoon update]

Well the Philadelphia EInquirer is finally covering a local story.