The president is completely and totally wrong about it. No surprise — he’s completely and totally wrong about most things.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Good Russian Businessmen
I’ve said for years that no one, including the Russians, knows how much their space activities and hardware costs, because of the nature of their economy, in which proper cost accounting never existed under the Soviets. Presumably they have had time to fix this problem, but they don’t seem to have done so:
Russian engineering corporation Energomash sold rocket engines to the United States at half production cost, losing $32 million as a result, the Russian Comptroller’s Office said on Wednesday.
It did not say how many RD-180 engines were sold, only saying the loss was sustained in 2008-09, constituting 68 percent of the firm’s total losses.
This is going to be a headache for United Launch Alliance, which is going to have to purchase more engines in the future for the Atlas, and the price is likely now going to more than double, which means yet another increase in their costs. I think that Aerojet is actually licensed to manufacture the engines here, but they’ve never done so because it would cost much more than it has been to purchase from Energomash. This may change that calculation, but I’m not sure that it’s going to make sense even at the higher purchase price. It may still be cheaper to buy Russian. Of course, there could be a point at which the Pentagon makes a decision to subsidize the price, just for reasons of national security, to reduce our dependence on a nation that does not have our best interests at heart. If only we could get Congress to be sensible about Commercial Crew, so we can end our dependence on the Soyuz as soon as possible.
Why Gas Prices Are High
Because the Democrats want them to be. But don’t call them liberals. They’re not.
Congressional Rocket Follies
Mark Matthews has the latest on the absurdities of the Senate Launch System.
Government Motors
The GM bailout remains a bad idea. And I say that as someone with an immediate family member whose job was probably saved by it (though we’ll never know what the outcome of a conventional bankruptcy would have been).
One More Reason To Be Glad I Left Florida
They recently seem to have outlawed s3x there. As Ed notes, it’s going to put a damper on Spring Break. Guess they’ll all have to go to Cancun instead.
California’s Coming Train Wreck
…over high-speed rail. The plan is lunacy, really.
So Newt Is In?
Not a surprise, of course, he’s been saying he was going to do it all week. I’m not thrilled, but I’d vote for him over Obama, and one thing you can say — he would be the most pro-space president we’ve ever had.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the story from the HuffPo.
Hillary Clinton
But first, the popular question: Who cares?
Osama bin Laden was responsible for the most heinous act of terror in modern history. Only lawyers and their sophistry could defend human-rights protections for someone who displayed so little humanity. Right?
These arguments may seem obvious to most, but disquiet in legal circles has been growing after the initial euphoria following bin Laden’s death. It is quickly becoming apparent that the “who cares” retort will not wash, that Washington must establish a proper legal basis for having killed bin Laden. By doing so the U.S. could not only deconstruct the myth that an unarmed bin Laden was an innocent who was killed unjustifiably; it could also negate the jihadi narrative about Western hypocrisy: that we are no different from the terrorists. In what could be bin Laden’s last hurrah, Washington has yet to make its case, and the Obama administration is rapidly losing the narrative.
Via Kenneth Anderson, who has also been harping on this.
This is just one part of all the Keystone Kops nature of the administration actions in the wake of the killing. Another is why they’ve been talking about what a treasure trove of intel they got, and why they were in such a hurry to declare him dead:
I’m no expert on such matters — though I’ve talked to several about this — but even a casual World War II buff can understand that the shelf life of actionable intelligence would be extended if we hadn’t told the whole world, and al-Qaeda in particular, that we had it.
It’s a bit like racing to the microphones to announce you’ve stolen the other team’s playbook before you’ve had a chance to use the information in the big game.
But that’s exactly what President Obama did. He raced to spill the beans. The man couldn’t even wait until morning. At just after 9:45 p.m., the White House communications director, Dan Pfeiffer, informed the media: “POTUS to address the nation tonight at 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time.”
The announcement came less than three hours after Obama had been informed that there was a “high probability” that bin Laden was dead and that the Navy SEAL helicopters had returned to Afghanistan.
In other words, it seems that the White House planned to crow as soon as possible. Why? Nobody I’ve talked to can think of a reason that doesn’t have to do with politics or hubris.
I can’t, either.
A Brave Cartoonist
I’m not generally a fan of graphic novels, but this guy’s got some sand. Andy McCarthy has the back story.