…is enough. Unfortunately, they still infest the nation, and continue to call themselves “progressives,” remaining ignorant of their own intellectual history.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
An April-October Marriage
Some thoughts, with a lot of amusing comments.
A Political Deadline For Afghan Troop Withdrawal?
You don’t say?
The 58-year-old Petraeus couched his committee answers in the standard Washington etiquette acknowledging civilian control of an obedient military.
However, his forthright replies rapidly reverberated across the Capitol, where so many in the political business are so ready to believe that the accelerated troop withdrawals were ordered by the Democrat more to enhance his troubled reelection plans, than because they would enhance the cause of crushing terrorist forces in Afghanistan.Afghan war US Sgt William Bee ducks just in time, file
Under questioning, Gen. Petraeus admitted today, “The ultimate [drawdown] decision was a more aggressive formulation, if you will, in terms of the timeline than what we had recommended.”
As previously noted, this not only has the potential to backfire, but a high probability of it. And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving politician.
Questions About NASA’s Heavy-Lift Plan
I ask them over at Popular Mechanics.
How Much Credibility Does The GOP Have On Taxes?
Not enough. And as he notes, the Democrats are completely hopeless.
“I Didn’t Create A Single Job”
At last, a presidential candidate who understand economics and the limits of government power:
“Don’t get me wrong,” Johnson said in a statement. “We are proud of this distinction. We had a 11.6 percent job growth that occurred during our two terms in office. But the headlines that accompanied that report – referring to governors, including me, as ‘job creators’ – were just wrong.”
“The fact is, I can unequivocally say that I did not create a single job while I was governor,” Johnson added. Instead, “we kept government in check, the budget balanced, and the path to growth clear of unnecessary regulatory obstacles.”
And the current gang in DC is doing exactly the opposite, so there’s no reason that continuing bad economic news should be “unexpected.”
[Update a couple minutes later]
The one stimulus that the government refuses to try:
It’s almost as if Washington envisions the economy not as a complex network of billions of voluntary, mutually beneficial relationships, but as a lawn mower which could be forced to run smoothly if only they’d yank hard enough on the starter cord.
Amid government’s rush to “do something,” we forget that, on a percentage basis, the nation’s most productive years, those in which the U.S. overtook Great Britain to become the world’s leading economic power, occurred prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. What many lawmakers and regulators are not considering here is the strong possibility that the stimulus and intervention have had a deleterious effect.
No, that couldn’t possibly be.
Et Tu, Jon Stewart?
He’s certainly not defending the BATF.
Meaningless Bipartisan Space Blather
An op-ed from Bill Nelson and Kay Bailey Hutchison:
The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 gave us the blueprint — a way to move forward with human spaceflight and to continue exploring the next frontier.
It extended the life of the International Space Station from 2015 to 2020 and eased NASA resources away from the end of the shuttle program and toward commercial spaceflight and NASA-led development of a heavy-lift rocket for deep-space exploration.
The blueprint we ushered through the Congress last fall also will help reduce the economic impact of the shuttle’s retirement. We made every effort to boost the aerospace industry and take advantage of an extremely skilled NASA work force. We also were able to avoid huge cuts at a time when Congress is slashing across the board.
While NASA and America’s space program are in a time of transition, one thing that most people can agree on is the need to press forward with human space exploration. Our country’s commitment to exploring space is a key in keeping the United States at the forefront globally of science and technology. Space exploration and a deeper understanding of how we can best utilize the great unknown is also vital to our national-security interests.
Translation: we don’t really know what “exploration” means, or how to do it, but we managed to keep the bacon flowing to our own states and those of our buddies. We’re also going to continue to claim that building a giant rocket for which there are no funded payloads is critical to national security, even though we have no idea in what way this might be true. And we’ll take credit for commercial spaceflight, even though we’ve been bad mouthing it for a year and a half, because we merely underfunded it, whereas the House wanted to zero it out altogether.
I hope and think that Nelson will lose his election next year, and Hutchison isn’t running again. I won’t miss either of them.
[Update a few minuts later]
Here’s a summary of a panel discussion in Orlando last week, on which Nelson sat. I have to say that he does sound like he’s come around on commercial space. But he’s still likely to lose, for reasons having nothing to do with space policy. I also think that Dale Ketcham overestimates the importance of space policy to the Florida electorate. They’ll be much more concerned about ObamaCare, Medicare and other issues.
Voting With Their Feet
Doctors and medical students are abandoning the American Medical Association.
Now, if we could just get lawyers to do the same with the ABA.
You Don’t Say
O. J. Simpson is going to confess to killing his wife?
I guess all that time he spent on the golf course looking for the real killer finally paid off.