Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary

Out, Out, Damned Spot

12 Comments

This is pretty funny:

…if you were looking for symbolism, there was the moment when Emanuel finished shaking hands with commuters at a Chicago Transit Authority station and shoppers at a supermarket and climbed back into his black Dodge Caravan, in which he could be seen vigorously washing his hands — in clear view of television cameras and reporters.

I think this is going to be entertaining, starting with all the legal shenanigans he’ll have to pull to even get on the ballot.

[Late afternoon update]

Per comments:

Folks, the issue is not whether or not he should have disinfected. It was his clumsiness in or indifference to getting caught on camera. I’m not sure what he is, but he’s no politician.

I, for one, think that handshaking should be outlawed, or at least socially discouraged, and particularly in political campaigns. Think of how much productivity and even life is lost to viruses due to this archaic social ritual.

Political Commentary, Space

How Big Is The Coming Political Tsunami?

4 Comments

It must be pretty big, if Jim Oberstar is in trouble.

This is great news for advocates of commercial spaceflight. When the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act was passed a few years ago, Oberstar (then in the minority) fought to have the FAA regulate passenger safety for space vehicles with nonsensical talk of a “tombstone mentality,” despite the consensus among experts that it didn’t know how to do it, and that it would do nothing except strangle the infant industry in the cradle. The compromise was that it would be hands off until 2012, unless there was an accident to cause a revisit of the policy.

Well, the industry hasn’t moved along as fast as was hoped at the time, and we’re still in a situation in which the FAA doesn’t really have a handle about affordable safety requirements, though it will have to start regulating it in two years, absent further congressional action. Industry proponents have feared to raise the issue, because with the Democrat takeover in 2006, Oberstar had taken over the chair of the relevant committee.

There has been hope (looking almost certain now to all other than Dems whistling past the graveyard) that the Republicans would take back at least the House this fall, which would mean that his power to block an extension would be reduced significantly. If he ends up not even being in the Congress at all, let alone on the committee, that would be great news for progress and sensible commercial space policy.

History, Political Commentary, Space, Space History

Fifty-Three Years Of Space

3 Comments

Today is the Sputnik anniversary. Here are my thoughts from the fiftieth, written three years ago, in Orlando, not far from Disneyworld’s Tomorrowland (the California version was built a couple years before Sputnik) with some tomorrows that remain tomorrows over half a century later.

Over at The Space Review, Jeff Foust has his own anniversary thoughts, in the context of last week’s historic House vote. Also, He alsoFrank Stratford discusses the role of Mars in future human exploration.

[Update a while later]

I didn’t read that Mars piece before I linked to it — I just assumed that because the home page said it was by Jeff Foust, that it was worth reading. Actually, it’s by someone down under named Frank Stratford, and it’s got some nonsense in it, with no very clear point.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

No Lost Moon

24 Comments

It’s probably pointless to point it out, but Mark Whittington once again demonstrates his profound inability to comprehend English:

…last April, President Barack Obama was quite specific that the Moon would be excluded from any program of space exploration.

“Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before. Buzz has been there. There’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do”

Lori Garver herself pointedly excluded the Moon in a speech before a meeting of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics about her vision for the next fifty years in space.

In Whittingtonworld, not going someplace first is an “exclusion” of it. No one familiar with logic would draw such a conclusion. No one in the administration has said that we are not going back to the moon. All that the new policy does is remove it as the first target (as the Augustine panel suggested last year, for good reason). In fact, that is the only significant difference between the new policy and the original VSE, which was distorted beyond recognition by Mike Griffin’s determination to redo Apollo. As for Lori neglecting to specifically mention the moon in her speech in Anaheim (for which I was present), that was also not a “pointed exclusion.” A “pointed exclusion” would have been something like, “We are going beyond earth orbit, to asteroids and Mars, but not the moon.”

And of course, Mark continues to delude himself that what any president (particularly a likely one termer) states as a goal in space is going to matter a decade later, and doesn’t realize that Americans are no better at ten-year plans than Lenin was.

But as I said, it’s fruitless to expect Mark to get simple things like this right.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

European Terror Threats

1 Comment

And a warning in Berlin, that the Europeans have been ignoring for far too long. The biggest problem that liberal societies face in this war is how to properly confront a totalitarian political ideology masquerading as a religion.

[Update a few minutes later]

Geert Wilders on trial. This is a travesty, and a display of the true Islamaphobes are — those who betray western liberal values by shutting down any criticism of the most intolerant religion of all.