Category Archives: Political Commentary

General, Political Commentary, Space

Best Wishes ToRIPSpeedy Recovery, Rep. Giffords

57 Comments

This is horrible:

Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot along with three of her aides by a gunman Saturday morning outside a grocery store in Tucson while holding a public event, Fox News has confirmed.

Twelve others were shot as well at Giffords’ “Your Corner” event held at Safeway. The gunman is in custody.

Sounds like it may have been an assassination attempt. I doubt it was over space policy, though. I hope it’s not as serious as it sounds. I’m kind of surprised that a gunman could shoot twelve people in Tucson without being shot himself — at least when I lived there, over thirty years ago, a lot of people open carried, in holsters.

[Update a couple minutes later]

NPR is no reporting that she was killed, with six others. My deepest condolences to her friends and family. I had deep disagreements with her on policy, and hoped for her electoral defeat, but this should not happen in a republic.

Of course, expect that “violent” Tea Party to be blamed in 3…2…1…

[Update a few more minutes later]

More over at Hot Air. The reporting still seems to be confused, but Fox News has also confirmed that she is dead.

[Update a couple minutes later]

OK, now Fox is saying alive but in critical condition. I guess we just have to wait a while for the fog of events to clear.

[Update a while later]

Out of surgery and “responsive” (which beats the alternative, I guess). Condolences to friends and family of those who didn’t survive.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The “Highjackers Of Islam”

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Who are they, really?

For years, we’ve heard how the peaceful religion of Islam has been hijacked by extremists.

What if it’s the other way around? Worse, what if the peaceful hijackers are losing their bid to take over the religion?

We need to nurture the apostates, but we can’t pretend they aren’t apostates. We are at war with Islam, whether we like it or not. Or to put it another way, we may not be interested in Islam, but Islam is definitely interested in us. And Israel has absolutely nothing to do with it, other than being on the front lines in the war.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

“A Uniquely Vicious Form Of Corruption”

6 Comments

That’s what ObamaCare is.

[Update a few minutes later]

The House has voted to repeal, with four Democrat votes. Now Harry Reid will be on the hot seat.

[Update a while later]

Comparing the votes:

In 2010, the Democrats passed ObamaCare by a 7 vote margin. In 2011, the Republicans passed the bill to repeal ObamaCare with a 55 vote margin.

In each case, one side of the vote was bi-partisan. In both cases, the bi-partisan vote was against ObamaCare.

That’s because we had to pass the bill to find out what was in it. Though technically, I think that there was one Republican vote for ObamaCare (Cao).

Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

The Appalling Judgement Of Some Voters

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Thoughts on John Edwards’ latest escapades:

There’s a saying that when Republicans pick a presidential candidate, they fall in line; when Democrats pick a presidential candidate, they fall in love. The Edwards saga reminds us that while we may think we know the figures we vote for, support, donate to, and volunteer to help elect, we generally don’t really know them. You know your spouse, your family, and your friends. Beyond that, you know the face that someone presents to the world. There’s probably quite a bit of angst, or regret, or pain, or rage, or zaniness or obsessions or any one of a million quirks and traits and secrets behind your neighbor’s pleasant smile. This doesn’t mean that everyone’s a ticking time bomb; it just means we should be cautious before we put anybody up on a pedestal. This particularly applies to the realm of politics, a field that tends to attract the ambitious, the narcissistic, the power hungry, and those who find it hard to resist the notion that they’re “special” and that the rules don’t really apply to them.

Back when OJ Simpson was first accused of murdering his wife and her friend, I recall how many people were shocked. I wasn’t. That is, I didn’t think of OJ Simpson as a thug, but I didn’t think of him as much of anything except a football player and rental-car salesman, so when I heard that he’d done this, I just said, “Meh.” I was also completely unshocked when Edwards was revealed to be a total sleaze bag (not to insult actual bags of sleaze). And in this case, I would have expected it, because he always came across that way to me.

Political Commentary, Space

Spaceport America Problems

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People are making a big deal of the fact that the new New Mexico governor Susana Martinez has canned Rick Homans, taking it as a sign that she is opposed to the spaceport. Over at Space Politics, some are blaming it on the Tea Party.

My theory? It’s exactly what she says:

“The citizens of Doña Ana County and Sierra County have spoken. They’re the ones who voted on whether or not they wanted to have their tax dollars spent on spaceport,” Martinez said during an interview Thursday before her send-off gala. “We’re going to respect that.”

But Martinez said she wants to “make sure that the spending is in the best way.”

“We can’t just agree to give tax dollars and then not be accountable to the taxpayers,” she said.

Doña Ana County and Sierra County voters in 2007 and 2008, respectively, approved sales taxes to back spaceport construction. However, about three-quarters of financing originated from the Legislature.

Martinez said her transition team had requested information, such as a contract between Spaceport America and anchor tenant Virgin Galactic, from the Richardson administration and, as of Thursday, hadn’t received it. She said she wants to audit that contract and spending on the $200 million construction project.

In addition to scrutinizing spaceport agreements, Martinez said she’s also interested in “how we bring private industry to be part of the spaceport, so that eventually state tax dollars aren’t necessary.”

I actually think that she’s understating things here, and being politic. While I’m unaware of any particular issue with Homans himself, Governor Martinez is surely aware of just how corrupt the Democrat machine in Santa Fe is in general (some have characterized the state as “Louisiana with jalapenos”) and she’s simply assuming the worst, and wants to root out any problems if they exist as soon as possible, and start with a clean slate. I might do the same in her position.

Political Commentary, Space

How To Cut NASA

5 Comments

Thoughts from Mary Lynne Dittmar. I disagree somewhat that we should simply appropriate the authorization, but it’s unlikely we’ll get a better authorization any time soon, absent fresh thinking from the usual suspects on the Hill. We do need to think about what capabilities we want to preserve within the agency (though I think that we need to completely restructure federal space policy, not just NASA).