My thoughts on the past weekend’s Space Access conference, and other current space events, are up over at Popular Mechanics.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
We Had To Pass The Bill
…so we would know what was in it:
In other words, theoretically the law kicks them out of the federal health plan now in order to force them to join insurance exchanges … that don’t exist yet. Looking forward to tomorrow, when we’re inevitably told that they meant to do that. Exit question for lawyers: Who would have standing to sue to force the federal health plan to drop Congress now? Any citizen, or is it more refined than that?
I can’t wait until they try to pass a bill to fix that one. If it’s not filibusterable, nothing is.
[Tuesday morning update]
Legislate in haste, repent in leisure.
It’s an incumbent protection plan! All those Evil Republicans who thought they would sweep into power next fall will think twice, now that they know the job comes with no health benefits.
I can’t stop laughing at these morons, and the imbeciles who voted for them and defend them, and told us how these wise solons knew exactly what was in the bill and that we were fools for not understanding it.
[Lte morning update]
Maybe they should complain to the White House. After all, the president told us all that “if you like your current plan, you can keep it.”
Hilarious.
Repeal Looks Like A Winning Issue
Forty-seven percent (47%) of voters believe repeal of the health care bill will be good for the economy. Thirty-three percent (33%) disagree.
Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Republicans and 54% of voters not affiliated with either major party favor repeal. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Democrats are opposed. Republican support for repeal is up eight points from a week ago, while Democratic opposition is down seven.
Not a good trend for the Donkeys. But as is general with such trends, it’s good for the country.
The Maturing NewSpace Industry
Jeff Foust has a report on the past weekend’s conference, over at The Space Review this morning.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s another report on the conference, from Doug Messier.
An Interesting Fear
I often have a sense that opponents of the new policy fear it not because they are afraid that private enterprise isn’t up to the job, but because they are afraid that it is. Here’s an example of what I mean, over in comments at the Lori Garver interview:
Simply speaking the reset button has been hit again and once more our astronauts are left standing on the pad with no ship to take them to where no man has gone before. We will one day get back to the moon, but my only fear is that the landing will be covered live by a CNN crew who landed on the last Virgin Galactic flight.
This is an interesting comment, and I’d like to understand more. First, what does the commenter mean by “we”? Does he (or she) mean the nation? Does he mean NASA? Does he mean literally himself and others?
And does he fear it because it is a non-American company? Or because it’s a private company?
If he means that his fear is that NASA will get to the moon, but be (as I’ve noted in the past) greeted by the concierge at the Lunar Hilton, why does he “fear” it? Do any of my readers have such a fear? If so, why? Do you think it a rational fear (in the sense that it is actually something to be feared, independent of how likely it is to occur)?
Why Health Care Is Not A Right
Ed Morrissey explains. But people who don’t understand, or care about the Constitution (like this Congressman who is apparently in perpetual violation of his oath of office) won’t get it. And I liked the question about whether sex is a human right. If I was asking that question of a clueless attractive female, I’d follow up with, “Then you’ll have sex with me, right? Let’s go find a room.” And if/when she refused, I’d accuse her of violating my human rights. Or she’d have sex with me. So it would be win-win.
More Ignorance
A point that Jim Muncy (or Henry Vanderbilt, or both) made last night in the wrap-up session was that he have to keep stamping down this nonsense that the new policy is the end of human spaceflight. Unfortunately, it’s like whack-a-mole. Here’s the latest, over at American Thinker:
America’s subsequent triumph in space, as the first and only nation to land men on the moon and safely return them, is the greatest achievement of the 20th century. So it makes perverted sense for Obama to destroy our pride in this matchless accomplishment and stage our humiliation before the world. America, which once deployed masterly innovation, commitment and daring to vanquish the Soviets in space, is now deliberately stranding seven astronauts in orbit with no way home except to hitch a ride from the Russians. We’ve surrendered the New Frontier.
The symbolism is breathtaking. From now on, whenever we remember with pride the courage and sacrifice of the Mercury astronauts, or Neil Armstrong taking “One small step for a man, one giant step for mankind,” or Jim Lovell and the crew of Apollo 13 calmly tinkering with duct tape to repair their capsule, we’ll quickly deflate with the afterthought: “Oh yeah. Now the Russians do that. We don’t.” There will always be a punchline, an asterisk, an anti-climactic stain at the end of the story.
Hey, lady? News flash. That was the Bush administration policy. And with that plan, we were not only going to be without a means to get to the space station before 2017 (and likely later), but at that point in time, we wouldn’t even have a space station. So if you’re going to complain about “surrender in space,” you’re six years late, and blaming the wrong guy.
Decapitation
When I saw this on the news this morning, the first word that came to my mind was “Katyn.” Apparently, the same thing happened to Arthur Chrenkoff and Richard Ferndandez.
When I heard it went down in bad weather, it also made me think of this, which to me remains suspicious. Given the nature of the reporting on that one, I’m disinclined to trust any early reporting on this event.
[Update a few minutes later]
I should note that I wrote this before hearing that they had been on their way to commemorate the massacre, and linked the other two pieces based on headlines only. So the resonance is even stronger than I had realized. This will be a very unsettling event for eastern Europe. It should be for western Europe as well, but it probably won’t.
Well, Here’s A Stupid Article
On several levels. I don’t have time to adequately critique it right now, because I’m about to be on another conference panel, but briefly, ignoring the foolish hysteria (we were in the same position from early 2003 to late 2005), one would never know from this article that the decision to end the Shuttle program was made over six years ago. We had a different president then. His name wasn’t “Obama.”
An Interview With The Deputy Administrator
I have some questions for Lori Garver, and answers, over at Popular Mechanics.
[Saturday morning update]
I should clarify the nature and history of this.
Some people have accused me of throwing her softballs.
Guilty as charged, mostly (though be aware that PM edited some of my questions, though not, of course, her answers). I am unapologetic. And I am pleased to have nauseated Mark Whittington (if I really did, given as he is to hyperbolic exaggeration). That, to me, is always a sign that I’ve done something good.
I make no pretense to be a “journalist,” at least in the hypocritical journalism school sense, nor do I make any pretense of objectivity, at least on this subject. I do, however, unlike many of the hysterical critics of the new policy, adhere to reality. I support this policy, and have never tried to hide that. While it’s not perfect, I think that it’s far better than anything that has come before, going all the way back to the beginning of the space age. While Lori and I have often had our (friendly) differences, I think that she has been unfairly beaten up and slandered for the past few weeks (if not longer) and my purpose was to elicit her views, on the record, and put them into a widely-read popular venue. Not to mention get a little money.
As for the issue as to whether I “let her get away with” things, it should be understood that this wasn’t a back and forth, with follow up. I wanted to do that, but PAO said to submit a list of questions, and she would answer them. I could have followed up on this result, but that would likely have delayed publication for more weeks (it was about a month between when I submitted, and when I received these answers). I thought that it was more important to get this out there now, when I had it, prior to the upcoming event on Thursday, than to delay it further.
[Late evening update]
I just realized (I missed it when I first saw the piece on line) that I get a little overedited. In the phrase, “Can you talk about how much curvature in the wake we’ve seen over the past ten years to provide some context for where we are now relative to the “golden years”…it was submitted as “Goldin years” (i.e., a reference to the administrator when she was an AA). The PM editors probably missed the reference, and thought that I’d just misspelled it. I’m trying to get it fixed.