Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Media Will Be Quite Disappointed

28 Comments

The Panama city shooter wasn’t exactly a Tea Partier:

Clay Duke, the man who opened fire on a Florida school board Tuesday, posted a “last testament” on Facebook decrying the wealthy and linking to a slew of progressive sites including theprogressivemind.info and MediaMatters.org.

Doesn’t matter, of course — they’ll just lie about it, and call him a “violent right winger.” Because “right wingers” are violent by definition, right? Or perhaps they’ll just pretend he didn’t exist, though if he really were a “right winger,” there would be endless blathering by the lefty punditocracy about how the violent rhetoric of the racist Tea Partiers encouraged him. After all, these are the same hacks who still say that Tim McVeigh was a Christian.

[Update a while later]

Related: Guess which party the media never mentions the Westboro Baptist Church is affiliated with?

Political Commentary

A Question For Leftists

19 Comments

Are there any limitations on the federal government under the Constitution?

[Update a while later]

I don’t know if Radley’ site is still down, but meanwhile, via Paul Hsieh at Facebook, the nation’s political history in two lines:

Our political history in two lines:
“The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.” – G. Washington
“The Constitution? Are you serious?” – N. Pelosi

I don’t think she was serious when she took her oath of office. Then again, neither was George Bush, in that regard.

Humor, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

A CCW Joke

21 Comments

From an email list:

A guy cruises through a stop sign and gets pulled over by a local policeman.

He hands the cop his driver’s license, insurance verification, plus his concealed carry permit.

“Okay, Mr. Smith,” the cop says, “I see your CHL permit. Are you carrying today?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well then, better tell me what you got.”

Smith says, “Well, I got a .357 revolver in my inside coat pocket. There’s a 9mm semi-auto in the glove box.

And, I’ve got a .22 magnum derringer in my right boot.

“Okay,” the cop says. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, back in the trunk, there’s an AR15 and a shotgun.

That’s about it.”

“Mr. Smith, are you on your way to or from a gun range…?”

“Nope.”

“Well then, what are you afraid of…?”

“Not a damn thing…”

Political Commentary

Notes On “Plymouth Rock”

14 Comments

Jon Goff attended an interesting meeting at SwRI last week.

While a dual-Orion mission may be doable for a two-person crew, I still think that it’s more of a stunt than a serious mission, and I actually question the value of sending people to a NEO early, other than to demonstrate and practice deep-space capability. I’d also send an “armada” of two. I’m not sure you get sufficient redundancy from a single dual-Orion mission, due to potential common cause for the two docked vehicles. With two separate “ships” flying in a loose formation, you’d have a lot more depth in safety.

Of course, Orions won’t be cheap. Maybe Dragons instead. Then you’d get the bonus of having an asteroid map with the words, “Here be Dragons…” 🙂

But as Bigelow said, what you really want is an expandable habitat, and just take the capsule along for the entry, as (I suggested to Keith Reiley at Boeing yesterday on the phone) a motor home drags a car along for short excursions. Also, I can’t speak to what Boeing plans, but if I were them, I’d be scarring CST for deep space.

[Update a while later]

Now that I think about it, if you really want to eliminate common cause (other than a major solar flare), your armada would consist of a CST-based craft, an Orion-based craft (if you could afford it) and a Dragon-based craft.