Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Is FAA Belt Tightening Good For Commercial Spaceflight?

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Another CEI colleague, Luke Pelican, has a blog post at Open Market about the current House proposal to halve FAA-AST’s budget request:

Given the current quagmire facing NASA, the rapid development seen in the private space sector, and the uncertainty regarding the FAA-AST’s future regulatory plans, this budgetary restriction may help narrow the agency’s focus to ensuring a streamlined licensing process for commercial operators, rather than placing greater emphasis on regulatory efforts that could hamper future commercial space developments.

If they are going to cut the office’s budget, that’s at least a strong argument for pulling back their regulatory reach. They need to include the moratorium in whatever comes out of conference.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The “War On Terror”

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…is all about God:

…over hard history, we have learned that there are some struggles in which the evil of the fight itself supersedes the good of any potential victory. Faith is not knowledge; we should approach the super-natural with humility in our beliefs and forbearance towards the beliefs of others. And anyway, many cherished doctrines, no matter how deep or meaningful, don’t have much immediate effect on our lives. I believe that God is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit — but if it turns out He’s five guys named Moe, I’m not going to change my weekend plans.

So we hate the idea of fighting a holy war. But we have no choice. No matter what moral knots some self-loathing westerners tie the facts into, the truth remains, the other bastards started it and now it’s on. Doesn’t matter how tolerant you think you are. Doesn’t matter how many “Coexist” bumper stickers you own. If a man with a gun kicks your door down and starts telling you how to pray, there are only two possible outcomes: victory or surrender.

Yes. It’s been obvious to me that we’re in a holy war for ten years now (and I suspected it for over thirty, since the Iranian revolution). This is also how the war on Israel has to be viewed to make any sense. And I say that as an agnostic, with no God in the fight (so to speak). But unlike the left, which sees Baptists as the worst people on earth, and as a child of the Enlightenment, I know who my enemy is.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

“US Control Of Cis-Lunar Space”

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Say what?

Decades ago, when I was an AIAA Congressional Science Fellow, a group of AIAA industry representatives met with my then-boss, Sen. Adlai Stevenson, III, and asked what real influence I had exercised while doing staff work in Congress. Sen. Stevenson smiled and replied, “This is Washington. Not even the President has any influence.” It was meant as a joke, but the experiences of three presidents who proposed human space initiatives prove that it was no joke. George H. W. Bush’s Space Exploration Initiative was killed by NASA coming up with an unaffordable plan. George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration was hijacked by ideologues who wanted to create US control of cislunar space with a permanent lunar base.

Emphasis mine. That’s sure not what happened on my planet. On my planet, the VSE always contained a lunar base, but Mike Griffin and Scott Horowitz came up with an awful plan to implement it that never had a chance of succeeding in any affordable way. Not sure what planet Lou posted that from.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Credit Where It’s Due

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Anyone who’s been reading me for a while knows that I don’t have a very high opinion of the vice president, so when he does something praiseworthy, it should be noted. I thought that his speech yesterday was very classy, and in sharp contrast to Paul Krugman’s odious column. It was very refreshing to (for once) hear a member of this administration praising the previous one, rather than blaming it for all of its own problems.

Business, Economics, Humor, Political Commentary

America Needs A Control Group

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Frank J. has some thoughts on people who are anti-science:

despite the obvious importance of science, one group of people does everything in pure defiance of scientific methods: politicians.

What do politicians do when they think they have a great idea? They just go and implement it. It’s like someone thinking he’s got a cure for cancer and immediately injecting it into everyone he can. That’s a madman, not a scientist. You always have to at least try out your idea on monkeys to make sure it doesn’t kill them.

Were farm subsidies first tried on monkeys? Social Security? Bank bailouts? No, the unscientific politicians went straight to trying all their ideas on humans, and now we have a bunch of bankrupt people instead of harmless bankrupt monkeys.

But the problem with testing political ideas on monkeys is that forcing them to go billions into debt would violate animal-cruelty laws. The only ones we’re allowed to do that to are people.

There was an old joke in the Soviet Union. The teacher is lecturing the class on Karl Marx, and one of the kids raises his hand and says, “Teacher, is it true that Marx was a great scientist?” The teacher answered that, yes, indeed, he was the greatest scientist who had ever lived. The kid thinks for a while, and then says, “If he was such a great scientist, why didn’t he try this crap on rats first?”