Is there any amount of money that this thing could cost that would cause you to say, “OK, it’s not worth it”? Because to listen to them defend it, you’d sure think that the answer is “no.” That the only important thing is that it’s “safe,” and to hell with the cost.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Congratulations LaserMotive
It looks like they just won almost a million dollars in the power beaming contest.
I sure hope that the administration will request a lot more money for Centennial Challenges, and Congress grant it. Tomorrow’s award of the NGLLC prizes at the Rayburn Building would be a good opportunity to make the point that, dollar for dollar, they put to shame anything else that NASA is doing, Constellation most of all.
They Couldn’t Have Found Anyone With More Expertise
If this is true, whoever sets up lectures at Harvard had his sense of irony removed at birth:
HARVARD UNIVERSITY EDMOND J. SAFRA FOUNDATION CENTER FOR ETHICS
Eliot Spitzer, former Governor and Attorney General of New York, will deliver a public lecture as part of the 2009/10 Labs Lectures on the Question of Institutional Corruption.
Truly amazing.
Declaring Victory
…over at DumpDede.com.
More Augustine Thoughts
Dennis Wingo says that NASA doesn’t need more money, it just needswhat NASA needs is a better architectural approach. I agree. But that’s doesn’t keep the jobs in the right places.
Despite my initial misreading of it, though, I even think that it’s possible to do it without the extra three billion. And it had better be, because I doubt if they’re going to get it.
Defending Free Markets
One of the things that I do miss about living in Florida for the past five years was the occasional (but in retrospect, not often enough) opportunity to get together with Bob and Lou Poole for dinner (they lived about twenty-five miles away). Here are his thoughts on the influence of Ayn Rand.
A Deathblow
…to Obamacare. Couldn’t happen soon enough, but maybe it did.
I think that historians will note that the high-water mark of the Obama presidency, at least in terms of trying to ram his radical agenda through in the wake of his election victory, will be the cap’n’tax bill that passed the House in the spring. From here on out, he won’t even have enough support from the Blue Dogs to attempt to commit political suicide with the rest. They know now that he can’t save them. And as Rush said yesterday (I caught ten minutes of him on the way to a client’s office), Nancy Pelosi doesn’t care if they lose their elections, as long as she doesn’t lose her majority. She’d rather have a thin majority of faithful cadres than a bigger one of ideologically suspect and unreliable moderates. So they had better realize that their loyalty is to their own voters, particularly in the so-called “Red” states (I never fail to be amazed at how the media has managed to foist that color on Republicans, when it’s so much more appropriate to the other party — I could swear it used to be the other way around in the nineties), and not to either the White House or their leadership.
As for NY-23, I think that there are several lessons there, but one of them is that if the Republicans want to win, they have to put up good candidates. Face it, Hoffman was a pretty geeky guy, and the Democrat was a Blue Dog, and not a bad fit for the district. It’s actually better for the Republicans to have him in place now, when he won’t have much time to develop his incumbency, and can come up with a better (i.e., not a “Republican” to the left of him, or dweeby carpet bagger with no political experience) candidate next fall. If they hadn’t been idiots, they would have come up with a better candidate in the first place, but considering what a Charlie Foxtrot the thing was, it’s pretty amazing that they came as close to beating Owens as they did. The Republican establishment had better pay close attention, and draw the right lessons.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Just in case Dick Morris is wrong, and we need to put a wooden stake through its heart, get to Washington tomorrow if you can.
Our Ursine Allies
But the president is spurning them, natch:
Barack Obama has announced that he is withdrawing from all existing treaties and security arrangements with the ursine community. Explaining his sharp break with the Bush administration’s policy of supporting overseas bear operations, president Obama said “bears are still our valued allies, but we can no longer pursue the arrogant policy of unilaterally supporting one member of the animal kingdom over another.”
He added, “Of course I believe in bear-exceptionalism, just as I believe in badger exceptionalism and tree sloth exceptionalism. But the days of a pecking order in the animal kingdom, with top of the food-chain predators and disrespected bottom-of-the-food-chain prey, are over.”
Some animals are more equal than others.
Free Speech
…on the cheap. Some members of the press corps are truly pathetic.
The Problem With A Close Race In New Jersey
As Hugh Hewitt wrote a few years ago, if it’s not close, they can’t cheat.