Category Archives: Political Commentary
The Problem With Central Planning
…which is to say, the problem with HEFT.
There is a civil war going on within the space agency, and even at headquarters itself. On one side is the old guard, who still cannot envision a NASA that doesn’t develop, own and operate its own launch systems. On the other are those who see that it must abandon this old failed paradigm in order to both afford to, and have the robust ETO infrastructure necessary to, move aggressively and sustainably beyond low earth orbit. The people running space policy on the Hill are (so far), sustaining the old guard, but they’re going to have a collision with reality in the next year, and they’re going to have more trouble than in the past getting their colleagues to go along with them, as hard choices have to be made about the budget, and progress in the new mode of contracting becomes increasingly undeniable. It cannot continue.
[Update a few minutes later]
I should note that Clark’s well-justified rant is based on this post by Jon Goff, in which he vents his frustration at the wilful blindness of the HEFT team to both technical and fiscal reality.
Half Of All States
…are now suing to stop ObamaCare.
Good. We have to fight this legislative atrocity on every front.
[Afternoon update]
Kansas (home state of the current HHS Secretary) has joined the suit. That’s over half, now.
[Bumped]
Do The Pro-ObamaCare Lawyers…?
…see any limits to government power? Nope. Like Elena Kagan, they’re totalitarians. But with smiley faces. Because, you know, it’s for our own good.
Except When It Comes To Unaffordable Unnecessary Rockets
Kay Bailey Hutchison will not be running for reelection. Why?
Instead of putting my seat into a special election, I felt it was my duty to use my experience to fight the massive spending that has increased our national debt; the government takeover of our health care system; and the growth of the federal bureaucracy, which threatens our economy.
Hey, if she’s worried about spending, I know a line item at NASA that could be profitably cut. It starts and ends with an “S.”
A Wikipedia War
A “Right Wing” Book
First, other than the clear warning Hitler was giving the world about his genocidal anti-Semitism, the important takeaway from Mein Kampf isn’t its ideological coherence, but its author’s obsession with revolutionary change. (Depending on your translation) The word “fascist” appears twice in Mein Kampf, and “Fascism” only once, while “revolution,” “rebellion,” “overthrowing,” and the like festoon nearly every page. His chief obsession (other than the Jews) is with the revolutionary “idea,” the notion that the masses can be galvanized and commanded through a radical new way of thinking. “The appearance of a new and great idea was the secret of success in the French Revolution. The Russian Revolution owes its triumph to an idea. And it was only the idea that enabled [Italian] Fascism triumphantly to subject a whole nation to a process of complete renovation.”
Which brings me to the second point. Mein Kampf is not in any serious way the opposite or parallel “right-wing” work to the “left-wing” Communist Manifesto. The two works are very different in style, intent, audience and, yes, ideology etc., but they do share a commitment to revolutionary change. All of these people insisting that it is some grand contradiction to admire both books don’t know much about one or the other. And to the extent Loughner read these books (which, again, I doubt), it is entirely plausible that he would like both of them. This is a kid who thought the entire metaphysical system was a con job in need of being torn down (David Brooks was very good on this point the other day, by the way). On that sort of thing, Hitler and Marx saw eye to eye. What shouldn’t need to be said is that neither Mein Kampf nor the Communist Manifesto are prominent Tea Party tracts.
But the smears and rewriting of history will continue.
Sheriff Dupnik’s Irresponsibility
His irrational partisan antics are going to make it harder for the prosecution.
How Deranged Have The Attacks Become?
This deranged. Notorious admitted-Bush-hater Jonathan Chait is defending her.
Fatal Honesty
NASA has told Congress that the Nelson rocket can’t be done within the schedule or budget. The GAO will back them up. This rocket is dead on arrival.
[Update a while later]
What’s happening here is that NASA is telling the truth because they think it will ultimately kill this legislated monstrosity, which they don’t want to build (at least at HQ). In the Shuttle days, they went along with an underfunded program because they feared that otherwise they’d have nothing (in terms of staying in the human spaceflight business). Today, they realize the the way forward is fixed-price contracts for services, not government rockets.