Thanks to everyone who did citizen lobbying to make this happen. Henry Vanderbilt offers his thanks as well, and discusses events to come (the next battle will be over the 2011 NASA appropriation). Clark Lindsey has thoughts there as well, and a lot of links here.
[Update a while later]
Lori Garver is going to do a press conference in a few minutes. You’ll be able to stream it here, at least in theory.
They really, really hate us:
They think we are fools. They view our religion as superstition. They label our skepticism as ignorance and our patriotism as racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and fattening.
Nothing is worse to a liberal than fat.
The liberal contempt for America is shining through.
President Obama called voters “whiners” in public. Heaven knows what he calls them in private.
Rubes.
I have a piece up at PJM this morning about space pork.
…will continue to decline:
The answer to every challenge is to found a new program, borrow billions to run it, hire millions more loyal to the progressive gospel of public employment, and demagogue any who oppose it. The public is starting to see that the president’s ideology is really a mixture of the Ivy League, the left-wing of the Democratic Party, the tired canards of the black caucus, extremist residuals from Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, and twenty years of university multicultural, utopian pacifist, and moral equivalent indoctrination. His Democratic Party is not one with half the House Democrats and does not appeal to liberal independents. He’s the sort of progressive professor whom the proverbial new student comes home at Thanksgiving to quote to a shocked parent..
Obama can no more adopt a centrist identity that Rev Wright could become a Billy Graham, or Jimmy Carter could pivot like Bill Clinton. Most House Democrats grasp that unwelcome truth and so mightily fear his presence in their districts.
As he says, it’s going to get very ugly.
[Update late afternoon]
President Stuxnet:
In 2008 A.D., a rather inscrutable individual was elected president of the United States and proceeded without delay to covet and acquire a more or less identical distinction, intent on destroying the temple of constitutional liberty under the rubric of a “fundamental transformation.” Of course, there is more to it than simply desiring a historic reputation by whatever means at his disposal. It has become obvious that the president is a confirmed Alinskyite seeking to replace a functioning republic with a socialist mega-state. His leftist friends and mentors, now well-known, along with his policies and activities make this a more than reasonable assumption.
Expect to see a lot more of this in the next two years, as he finally gets the vetting he should have gotten in 2008.
[Bumped]
Mike Griffin is opposed to the Senate bill. That right there makes me support it. Kind of like how I vote for issues that I don’t know much about by going the opposite from whatever the LA Times endorses.
Mike Griffin should just take his own advice, and shut up.
It’s looking like the House will vote tomorrow, but it needs two thirds to pass the Senate bill. The emphasis up until now has been on killing the House bill. Now we’re trying to get the Senate bill passed and signed. Clark Lindsey has details.
[Update, early evening in CA]
Jeff Foust says that the vote may be close. Call your Congressperson.
…and would be, if the press did its job properly:
Fortunately for Schumer, that article ran on page A3 of a Saturday edition, and did not become a big story. The New York press never seriously examined why a New York senator was so focused on the health of a California bank, why Schumer aired his fearful comments so publicly, or how the collapse of IndyMac aligned with the financial interests of donors to Schumer and the DSCC.
…There’s a great deal of disembodied anger at Wall Street in the public today. It is interesting how little of that anger or scrutiny is directed at the senator closest to Wall Street, whose actions, in this case, were strangely fortuitous to the bottom line of his donors.
Interesting, and infuriating.
…from an Iranian president at Yale.
Ronald Reagan was castigated by the bien pensant for calling the evil empire what it was. When the Iranian people attempted to cast off their brutal and tyrannical government, Barack Obama acted as though it was inconveniencing his futile diplomatic efforts.
…is education. Actually I disagree. I’d say that, in terms of advancing the “progressive” agenda, it has been a massive success.
[Update a few minutes]
The president’s hypocritical lip service on school choice, and the reason for it:
Perhaps the president is feeling pressure to adopt reform language because of the attention being paid to the new documentary Waiting for Superman, which charges education unions with the poor state of American education. But the plight of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program falls squarely with certain members of Congress and the Obama administration, which has continually acquiesced to union demands.
These unions are, by a long shot, the largest contributors to members of Congress. The two major education unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), make 95 percent of their political contributions to Democrats. And with a budget of more than $355 million, the NEA spends more on campaign contributions than ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Walmart, and the AFL-CIO combined.
I think this is criminal, at least morally.
An interesting interview with Claire Berlinski (the second of five running this week).