Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

What We Need To Get To Mars

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Over at Wired, Adam Mann has a piece on the technical requirements. I’d take issue with this:

NASA estimates it would need to fire at least seven of its new SLS rockets to deliver to orbit the people, supplies, and ships necessary for a Mars mission. While no cakewalk, that’s a great deal easier, faster, and cheaper than what we could do today.

There is no evidence to substantiate this statement, and a great deal of counterevidence, from NASA’s own internal studies.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Climate Campaign

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How it plans to get its groove back:

Look for this to be the headline of the next IPCC report, due out in September. The report will walk back previous estimates of climate sensitivity, but will affirm that we’re still doomed unless we go ahead with the previous program of handing over power to bureaucrats to control our energy supply. You read it here on Power Line first.

The interesting part will be to see whether climate orthodoxy proposes a new, and theoretically more plausible, GHG emissions reduction target and timetable, like a 50 percent cut by the year 2060. I doubt it. Hatred of “fossil fuels” is the categorical imperative of modern environmentalism, and it long predates the arrival of global warming as an issue. The original complaint was that that hydrocarbons produced too much conventional air pollution, but once we solved that problem global warming became the fallback position. Nothing will deter environmentalists from this wisp—certainly not facts or progress. I’m betting they’ll stick with the previous 80 by 50 target. But if they come in with a different one, I’ll do the math to figure out what year in the past it will take the U.S. back to: I’ll bet it will still be something like 1925. Stay tuned.

It was never about science. It was always about control, and political power.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

A US Lunar Colony?

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New legislation is being introduced in the House:

The Reasserting American Leadership in Space Act (H.R. 1446), introduced by Rep. Bill Posey (R-Florida), would direct NASA to come up with a plan to return to the Moon and “develop a sustained human presence” there by 2022.

…But Houston, we may have a problem passing the Reasserting American Leadership in Space Act, considering that in September 2009, President Obama’s blue ribbon Human Space Flight Review Committee concluded that any plans on the part of NASA for future human exploration of space beyond low-Earth orbit would be “perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources.” In other words, further exploration of the Moon would require money that NASA just does not have and is unlikely to get from Congress.

That’s not the problem. NASA has plenty of money to establish a lunar base. What they don’t have is the discretion to spend it intelligently toward that goal, instead being forced by the same people proposing this bill to waste billions on a launch vehicle it doesn’t need to do so. Someone needs to tell them that, if NASA won’t.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obama’s Assault On The Constitution

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The media can’t claim that they weren’t warned:

Let’s consider some examples of the many unheeded warnings that free speech would be endangered should Barack Obama become president. The initial threat to launch criminal prosecutions over the Ayers ad set off a flurry of brief but pointed predictions. Michelle Malkin, one of the first and most energetic to cover these controversies, warned, “The Obama campaign is giving a glimpse of the future for conservative free speech.” Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey suggested that ”bullying people through the Department of Justice as a candidate will cause reasonable people to wonder what will happen if Obama gets elected.” The editors of National Review decried ”a desperate call for the Justice Department to muzzle political speech through the prospect of a criminal investigation – a demand that provides a disturbing sneak peak into what life would be like under an Obama Justice Department.”

The controversy over my appearance on the Milt Rosenberg show meant there were now two incidents to discuss, so the warnings grew a bit sharper and more detailed. Writing at NRO’s Media Blog, Guy Benson said, “This tendency to lash out and engage in baseless name-calling not only smacks of desperation; it also may foreshadow an Obama presidency’s strategy in handling unfavorable media reports and sources.” Powerline’s John Hinderaker’s remarks seem pertinent today: “If Obama is elected President, will he appoint an Attorney General who will carry out politically-motivated prosecutions like the one he is now demanding? I suppose we can’t know for sure, but why wouldn’t he? If he demands criminal prosecution of free speech that opposes his political interests when he’s a candidate, why wouldn’t he order it as President?” Meanwhile, five years before controversies over the AP, James Rosen, and Sharyl Attkisson, Ed Morrissey suggested that, for their own sake, national media ought to stop ignoring Obama’s assaults on the press: “Maybe other journalists should take heed. If Obama becomes president and they commit the crime of Journalism in the First Degree, how will these same people react with the full weight of the federal government behind them? If they stoop to character assassination now, what will they do when they have much more powerful tools at their disposal?”

They didn’t want to know, or believe it, any more than with the Clintons. He was their guy.

And speaking of warnings, the Republicans who voted to confirm Eric Holder should be particularly ashamed:

I became aware of Holder’s 1995 investigation of Rich after Holder’s confirmation-hearing testimony, but wrote about it before the vote on his nomination. This demonstration that Holder had given misleading testimony to Congress in the 2001 pardon investigation and the 2009 confirmation hearing, simply added to the Rich pardon itself and the remaining mountain of reasons to reject his nomination. Yet, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to confirm him, 75-21. Joining 54 Democrats were 19 Republicans – Alexander (Tenn.), Bennett (Utah), Bond (Mo.), Chambliss (Ga.), Collins (Maine), Corker (Tenn.), Graham (S.C.), Grassley (Iowa), Gregg (N.H.), Hatch (Utah), Isakson (Ga.), Kyl (Ariz.), Lugar (Ind.), McCain (Ariz.), Murkowski (Alaska), Sessions (Ala.), Snowe (Maine), Specter (Pa.), and Voinovich (Ohio).

What a waste of oxygen those “Republicans” were.