I don’t know whether Barack Obama is an anticolonialist or not, but it’s quite ignorant to think that this would be an explanation for ending Constellation, which was not an “ambitious” project. An ambitious project would have been one to make it possible for us to actually colonize the moon, not redo Apollo. NASA is not being “converted” to improving Muslim self esteem, and anyone who actually understands the new policy knows that, but very few people seem to.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Francisco Franco Is Still Dead
And Chris Matthews is still an idiot.
The Coming Lost Decade
…for China. This is one of the (many) reasons that I don’t worry much about them dominating us in space.
The Miners Were Saved
Getting a nation’s economics right is more important than at any time since the end of World War II. Chile, Colombia, Peru and Brazil are pulling away from the rest of their hapless South American neighbors. China, India and others are simply copying or buying the West’s accomplishments.
The U.S. has a government led by a mindset obsessed with 250K-a-year “millionaires” and given to mocking “our blind faith in the market.” In a fast-moving world filled with nations intent on catching up with or passing us, this policy path is a waste of time.
There’s something you’re not going to hear the president say.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems related somehow. Obama is worse than Carter:
“For the last couple of years, President Obama keeps claiming that the recession was the worst economy since the Great Depression. But this is not correct. This is the worst ‘recovery’ since the Great Depression.” The extended stagnation, high unemployment, and the troubling potential for a double dip recession is starting to look more like the Depression itself now.
But the indictment of Obamanomics goes beyond the actual performance so far. Even worse is that the economic policies have been so illogical, so transparently doomed to failure, and so threatening to America’s future.
And he’ll continue them as long as we let him. We can start to fix it in nineteen days. Read the whole thing. I agree with all of it, except the “President Newt Gingrich” part.
[Update a while later]
Comparing two recoveries:
This is why those saying that Obama’s OK, because Reagan’s approval was bad at this point, are whistling in the dark.
Smuggling Classical Liberalism
…on to campus. We have to take back the academy from the left.
Smarter Than The President
Not that it’s a high bar.
“I beat Obama by 22 months.” Actually, thanks to the president, there have been an abundance of shovel-ready jobs. Every speech he gives is a shovel-ready job. You need hip waders, too.
What Next For NASA?
Justin Kugler has a good analysis of the NASA Authorization bill over at Open NASA.
Where’s My Flying Car?
How the left seems determined to give us a Flintstones future, instead of the Jetsons.
Iowahawk’s Carbon Day
It appears to have been a huge success.
Perhaps They Regret It Now
But if they don’t, I think they will in less than three weeks:
What these figures mean is that in the next Congress and in the next cycle these voters will have large numbers of people in office ready and willing to give them their wish. At the same time, 21 states are filing law suits against it; in state elections voters are voting against it; and bad news surprises — soaring premiums and coverage being dropped by employers and companies — are coming out every day.
As a result, we are seeing something unique in our history: an uprising of voters trying in every way possible to roll back an act that was always unpopular, and was passed by means most people think of as borderline legal, and without legitimacy in any sense of the word.
Whether people object to the act or the way it was passed is a moot question, as the answer is “both of them.” And its chances of surviving in the form it was passed in grow less and less every day.
If Obama vetoes a repeal of this legislative atrocity, I think it will seal his doom in 2012, and probably result in even more Republican gains that year.
[Update a few minutes later]
The White House isn’t sure what’s in the bill. Well, that’s perfectly understandable and completely forgiveable. After all, they were much too busy coming up with other schemes to wreck the economy to have had time to read it.
[Update a while later]
The looming Obamacare oil slick:
Russ Feingold spent the last few years telling everyone that ObamaCare would improve health care and reduce costs, yet 55% of Wisconsin residents did not believe this. Imagine how many people would have been opposed to it if they knew it was actually going to increase costs and reduce quality. All of the bill’s secrets are slowly coming to light.
Shortly after the overall bill was passed, Richard Foster, chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, issued a memo detailing the estimated financial effects of ObamaCare. Common sense would tell most Americans that a memo like this should have preceded the bill, but that would have ruined Feingold and Pelosi’s surprise.
The CMS memo reveals that in 2019 — long after the bill takes effect — there will still be 23.1 million uninsured. What’s more, page 15 of the memo indicates that the long-term care program contained in the bill is projected to run a deficit after 2025 which the CMS declares is “unsustainable.”
Amazingly, while the main reason given for the rush to health care reform was the rising cost of health care, the memo reveals on page 4 that the new reform will actually increase national health expenditures by $311 billion from 2010 to 2019. That’s $311 billion more in health care costs than if we had no reform at all.
I think that historians will look back on this (and not very long from now) and declare it one of the biggest political blunders in history.