Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, Space

Space Access Agenda

In case you haven’t been checking the web site (graphic link also over to the left), Henry Vanderbilt has updated it with the current list of speakers, and the conference starts a week from today. It’s really the best conference to go to all year if you want to find out what’s going on in the world of private space launch. I’m looking forward to seeing Henry Spencer’s awaited exposition on how we get to orbit from suborbit.

I usually miss the beginning of the conference in the afternoon, still being on the road from LA, partly because Henry has a stock discussion on general orbital mechanics and space access issues, but this will be a new talk, at the request of several people. It is a contentious issue, and it’s one that’s often thrown back at proponents of suborbit (“You need orders of magnitude more energy! It’s a distraction and a waste of time!”). I fully expect Henry to compellingly explain why it’s not, even if some skeptics will remain forever unconvinced (even after we do it).

Oh, and I’m not specifically slated to talk, but Henry has made great efforts to get me to come, so I assume that he’ll want to do something with me (perhaps on the wrap-up panel, if nothing else occurs to me in the interim).

Political Commentary, Space

Alan Stern Defends Himself

4 Comments

The comments section in this post over at Space Politics has certainly gotten lively, with an ad hominem attack on me (after which Ferris Valyn of all people rises to my defense) and Alan Stern weighing in on his New Horizons program overruns. Not to mention that he clarifies why he left NASA, and takes himself out of the administrator race (not that his name has been floated anywhere other than by some wishful thinkers).

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Heckuva Job, Timmy!

10 Comments

He managed to talk down the dollar. It’s like he doesn’t even care about it, or US sovereignty in general.

Can someone remind me again why this tax cheat (who is now in charge of the IRS) is “indispensable”?

[Thursday morning update]

More thoughts from Jim Lindgren.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

“I wish the Admin could bring back the days when Joe Biden had sole possession of the gaffe-o-matic.”

A commenter makes the point of what is so worrisome about this:

I’ve been following the currency issue for years, and repeatedly over the past 10-15 years, the Saudis, Iranians, Russians and others have been pushing for an alternative reserve currency. The prime reason is mistrust of the United States fiscal policy.Now the Chinese, our largest creditor, have joined the chorus. Frankly, the only thing saving the dollar right now is that no one trusts any of the other major currencies.

It really doesn’t matter what Yglesias says or does, the global markets are speaking. Obama and Geithner are now “welcoming’ such a discussion. Basically we are looking at the downfall of the dollar similar to that of the Pound Sterling back in the 1970’s. The sun is setting on American economic leadership unless the grown ups act responsibly. To me, this is economic treason.

And the treason is not in going along with a second reserve currency per se, but in making it seem necessary to much of the rest of the world due to insanely reckless fiscal policies that are debauching the dollar.

[Update late evening]

Welcome, Instapundit readers. I’m glad that Glenn linked this post, but it’s not the one that I sent him (which means that he looked over the rest of the site and picked it out). Anyway, you might want to do the same.

Political Commentary

Credit Where It’s Due

3 Comments

I agree, I liked this Obama comment:

Q: Yours is a rather historic presidency. And I’m just wondering whether in any of the policy debates that you’ve had within the White House, the issue of race has come up, or whether it has in the way you feel you’ve been perceived by other leaders or by the American people. Or has the last 64 days been a relatively colorblind time?

OBAMA: I think that the last 64 days has been dominated by me trying to figure out how we’re going to fix the economy. And that’s — affects black, brown and white. And, you know, obviously at the inauguration I think that there was justifiable pride on the part of the country that we had taken a step to move us beyond some of the searing legacies of racial discrimination in this country. But that lasted about a day — (laughter) — and, you know, right now the American people are judging me exactly the way I should be judged, and that is are we taking the steps to improve liquidity in the financial markets, create jobs, get businesses to reopen, keep America safe. And that’s what I’ve been spending my time thinking about.

Too bad so many of his underlings and fellow Democrats don’t agree.

General Science, Mathematics, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Freeman Dyson

9 Comments

There’s a very interesting (and long) profile over at New York Times magazine:

Dyson is well aware that “most consider me wrong about global warming.” That educated Americans tend to agree with the conclusion about global warming reached earlier this month at the International Scientific Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen (“inaction is inexcusable”) only increases Dyson’s resistance. Dyson may be an Obama-loving, Bush-loathing liberal who has spent his life opposing American wars and fighting for the protection of natural resources, but he brooks no ideology and has a withering aversion to scientific consensus. The Nobel physics laureate Steven Weinberg admires Dyson’s physics — he says he thinks the Nobel committee fleeced him by not awarding his work on quantum electrodynamics with the prize — but Weinberg parts ways with his sensibility: “I have the sense that when consensus is forming like ice hardening on a lake, Dyson will do his best to chip at the ice.”

Dyson says he doesn’t want his legacy to be defined by climate change, but his dissension from the orthodoxy of global warming is significant because of his stature and his devotion to the integrity of science. Dyson has said he believes that the truths of science are so profoundly concealed that the only thing we can really be sure of is that much of what we expect to happen won’t come to pass. In “Infinite in All Directions,” he writes that nature’s laws “make the universe as interesting as possible.” This also happens to be a fine description of Dyson’s own relationship to science. In the words of Avishai Margalit, a philosopher at the Institute for Advanced Study, “He’s a consistent reminder of another possibility.” When Dyson joins the public conversation about climate change by expressing concern about the “enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories,” these reservations come from a place of experience. Whatever else he is, Dyson is the good scientist; he asks the hard questions. He could also be a lonely prophet. Or, as he acknowledges, he could be dead wrong.

But he’s got a pretty good track record.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Restoring The First Amendment?

2 Comments

Could SCOTUS be prepared to overturn McCain-Feingold, six years late?

I hope so. Supporting it was one of Sandra Day O’Connor’s more boneheaded decisions, and I hope that replacing her with Alito makes the difference.

I’ve always thought that George Bush’s signing the thing was an impeachable offense, since he took an oath to uphold the Constitution, but freely admitted that he was signing a bill that he viewed as unconstitutional. He was supposed to do his job, not kick it upstairs to the court and hope they’d do theirs.