Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, Science And Society

You Don’t Say…

12 Comments

What would we do without psychologists?

“This is just the first study which was focused on the idea that men of a certain age view sex as a highly desirable goal, and if you present them with a provocative woman, then that will tend to prime goal-related responses,” she told CNN.

Just the first? Obviously, this needs much more research. I hope that adequate billions from Porculus will fund this vital area of study. After all, we never before had any idea whatsoever that men might be attracted to semi-naked women.

[Update a few minutes later]

Mark Steyn has further thoughts.

Political Commentary

Forget Liberaltarianism

What is the common ground between libertarians and conservatives? Looks like a reasonable list to me.

[Update a while later]

OK, we can’t get away from it. Jonah Goldberg on the perverse irony of liberaltaranism:

It is a sign of how profoundly statist a moment we are in that there’s this tempestuous debate — in a teapot to be sure — over whether libertarians, historically the purest of the sane anti-statists, should leave the nominally anti-statist party (the Right) in order to join the proudly statist party (the Left), when just about everyone agrees the net result of such a defection would be to make the anti-statist party significantly more statist. The only debate is whethere libertarians would make the statist party even marginally less statist or whether they would be rolled. And so far, the shaky consensus seems to be that the libertarians would get little to nothing for their defection while the country would (by libertarian standards) lose a great deal.

Of course, I’ve been opposed to this for years.

Political Commentary

Time For A Tea Party?

16 Comments

This isn’t a scientific poll, but I think that there are a lot of angry people out there, particularly when the “stimulus” includes welfare and job retraining for millionaires, and Rasmussen reports that there aren’t very many people who approve the latest mortgage bailout. I know I’m one of them. Here’s an interview with the latter-day Samuel Adams (though I’m sure that there are many other Sons of Liberty, as there were then). I don’t really want to wait until July, though (though I understand that it’s kind of cold in Lake Michigan this time of year).

I think that there’s going to be a big backlash against this, and the polls would indicate it as well. As Jim Bennett notes:

The Ghost Shirt Democrats are doing their dance, but the vast herds of union-member Democrat-voting buffalo will never return to the plains, and [the] magic ghost shirts will not turn the ballots of angry voters into water [in] 2010 and 2012. Of course, the Republicans could still blow it, but even if they do, the Democrats have shown in a few short weeks that they have no idea how to govern the country, just to loot it. They will be replaced, if not by Republicans, then by somebody else.

We can only hope. And if the Republicans don’t get their act together, I hope that the answer is “somebody else.” I could use a real change, for the first time in my life, that results in less government, not more.

[Update a few minutes later]

Santelli/Kudlow 2010! (From comments)

We could do a lot worse, and always do.

[Update again a couple minutes later]

What are we going to demand? I haven’t really thought about it, but if we had the tea party today, I’d demand that Congress and the president rescind Porculus in toto, and come up with something that we are actually allowed to see and debate before anyone votes on it. Preferably in multiple bills, as the Founders intended.

[Update at 8 PM Pacific]

From my keyboard to their ears:

“I would like to say tonight that if the American people will let the Republicans back in charge, the 60% of this bill that won’t be spent until after the next election, we’ll cut it off and let it go to the Americans.”

Obviously, at this point, that’s the change that I’m waiting for. I might even vote Republican.

Political Commentary

Infrastructure Change!

6 Comments

Apparently, Barack Obama is Bush III:

The economic stimulus signed by President Barack Obama will spread billions of dollars across the country to spruce up aging roads and bridges. But there’s not a dime specifically dedicated to fixing leftover damage from Hurricane Katrina.

And there’s no outrage about it.

Democrats who routinely criticized President George W. Bush for not sending more money to the Gulf Coast appear to be giving Obama the benefit of the doubt in his first major spending initiative. Even the Gulf’s fiercest advocates say they’re happy with the stimulus package, and their states have enough money for now to address their needs.

I guess that Barack Obama hates black people.

Political Commentary, Space

The National Environmental And Energy Administration

3 Comments

Jeff Foust talked to Neal Lane last weekend, who remains as misguided and illogical as ever:

“People don’t care about going back to the Moon and there’s no rationale for going back to the Moon. I would really like to see NASA go forward in a big way and have a larger and more exciting space program. But right now there’s not the support for it, and NASA’s flailing.”

That’s why, he said, he and Abbey decided that NASA would be better advised to focus on “solving the energy problem” and build public support for the agency that could be leveraged for other missions in the future. “If we keep blowing all our money on Constellation there will be nothing left,” he said. “Our hope was to put something out there that would actually be good for NASA, helpful, and give it a solid foundation to build from again until the American people get excited again about space exploration.”

He seems to be stuck in a mindless false choice between continuing with Constellation as is, or forgetting about space (other than his asteroid plans, which would require much of Constellation, other than the lunar lander, at least functionally). If NASA isn’t going to do space, there’s not much reason for it to exist. We already have government agencies responsible for energy and the environment, and there’s no reason to think that NASA personnel have any unique expertise in these areas. What would be the point of redirecting the agency in a direction that has little do with its charter or experience when it would simply be redundant? This is policy foolishness.

Lane said he hasn’t gotten any feedback from the Obama Administration about the study, but he believes that the administration will change course from the current exploration architecture. “I think it’s clear since Mike [Griffin] left that they don’t intend to go down the same road,” he said. “If you were going to just continue, why not keep him in, right?”

Wrong. Or rather, right, but not because they won’t stay the course in terms of goals. There are many ways to have a robust (and even much more robust) space program besides Constellation. Changing course can mean changing how we’re doing things, not changing the fact that NASA is going to do manned spaceflight.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Fighting The False “Consensus”

9 Comments

Frank Tipler on the tendency of the global warm-mongers to argue from authority rather than from the science:

…why did Halsey believe the meteorologists against the evidence of his own eyes? The report of the Board of Inquiry on the disaster answers that question. Halsey simply accepted the authority of his chief meteorologist, against his own experience. The report listed the “qualifications of this “expert” — his degrees, the numerous courses on climate studies he had taken, his years flying over hurricanes. But in contrast to Bryson’s successful forecasts, two of which I have described above, not one correct forecast was mentioned by the Court of Inquiry! I find this extraordinary. Imagine picking an admiral on the basis of the prestige of an officer’s education. Halsey himself had two famous victories, the Battle of Guadalcanal and the Battle of Leyte Gulf. I admire Halsey immensely, but he was wrong to give any weight at all to mere academic credentials, rather than performance credentials like his own. For true scientists, one knows the achievements, not the academic credentials. Albert Einstein discovered relativity (everyone knows E = mc2), he discovered the photon, and he discovered gravitational waves. But where did Einstein go to school? Who cares?

Not me.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Throwing Good Money After Bad

Iain Murray says the new mortgage plan won’t work. Why would it?

[Update late morning]

More thoughts from Tim Oren:

There’s no way to resolve the rates on offer from the ‘bad money’ with those needed by rational, market driven ‘good money’ investors. The result is the good money will stay home. Home, in this case, mostly being China or the Middle East. The fraction of federally originated loans, already at 35 percent, is going to keep on rising, and it will done with more fiat money cranked out by the Feds.

The politicians are trying to reinflate the housing market. Their irresponsible behavior is instead likely to leave that market deflated by driving out the good money, while debasing the currency and piling up debt for the productive and future generations.

Just as in the thirties, all of these ad hoc, arbitrary panic measures are going to cause a lot more damage than simply letting the market work. Because the “Change” administration is deathly afraid of change.

Economics, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

The Laughter Is Over

3 Comments

The Washington Post has an obituary for Tom Rogers. I didn’t know that he was having kidney failure. I wonder how he was holding out otherwise? How bad was his heart condition? Could he have lived several more years with a transplant?

I’m always frustrated when I hear of people dying of kidney failure, regardless of age, because it would be needless for many to do so, if only the free market was allowed to work (as in many other things). People who support the current regulations in the name of “medical ethics” are consigning thousands to needless death each year. And if he could have held out for a few more years, we might get to the point at which we can grow new ones from stem cells.

Anyway, this will be his legacy:

In a 2005 interview with Today’s Engineer, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, he recalled delivering a talk on civilians traveling in space and afterward finding his wife in tears.

He asked her why she was crying. “Because I can’t stand so many people laughing at you,” she said.

Well, because he was willing to accept having people laugh at him, for years, a lot of the laughter has died down, and it’s finally becoming a real business, and likely to be the one that finally opens up space for the rest of us. And I hope that Estelle, in her understandable grief, is proud of him now. She certainly should be.

[Update about 9:30 AM Pacific]

Rich Coleman has info on the memorial service via email:

Memorial services are being held Saturday – Feb. 21 at 1 P.M. at the
Vantage House in Columbia, MD. The address: 5440 Vantage Point Road,
Columbia, MD 21044.

I’m planning to attend the services, all are welcome, please let me
know if you plan to attend as well.

If I was still back there, I would.

[Update mid morning]

Leonard David weighs in over at NASA Watch:

In my near 30 years of jail time in Washington, D.C., Tom was an anchor for me. We had many morning meetings at the Cosmos Club – and I savor to this day his words of wisdom on space, and in particular space tourism.

In fact, I recall one memorable morning gabfest when Tom got so animated, swinging his arms wildly to make a point, that he knocked his own glasses off – sending them off into near space and forcing me into retrieval action.

That gusto was infectious…and spirited me onward.

Secondly, Tom was “there and on call” – a stalwart voice for space tourism when it was – quite literally – a giggle factor folly. His voice of trust, experience, and reason made the idea of space tourism not only compelling, but matter-of-fact. He was ahead of the power curve…and we ALL owe him a debt of gratitude for carrying the torch early on.

Thirdly, I remember Tom as one hell of a story-teller. He would launch into a treatise on some tangent of a factoid, so much so, that the listener might fall into a catatonic state – yet the saga would come full circle with the recipient of Tom’s words of wisdom invoking the “ah ha…I got it” response.

Tom Rogers was a true visionary – and thank god I retrieved his glasses that day at the Cosmos Club.

He was pretty far-sighted without them.