Category Archives: Political Commentary

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.

Political Commentary

Change!

23 Comments

I guess that dissent is no longer the highest form of patriotism:

”The Secret Service called and said they were at my house,” Harrison said.

After talking to his attorney, Harrison went home where he met the Secret Service.

”When I was on my way there, the Secret Service called me and said they weren’t going to ransack my house or anything … they just wanted to (walk through the house) and make sure I wasn’t a part of any hate groups.”

I suspect that it won’t be long until people who don’t go along with the party line are part of a “hate group” by definition.

[Update a while later]

The ever-expanding definition of “hate speech.”

Whenever I hear anyone use the phrase, I automatically cease to take them seriously. The word “hate” has become as devalued as “racist.”

Business, Economics, Philosophy, Political Commentary

The Liberaltarian Discussion

8 Comments

…continues, with thoughts from Ilya Somin. And this continues to make me crazy:

In a strange way, the Bush record of massive expansions of government has also shifted the goalposts for liberal Democrats. They seem to assume that anything Bush and the Republicans did must have been “laissez faire” (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) and that the current Democratic agenda represents a needed course relative to failed free market policies rather than a continuation of Bush-era trends of greatly increased government spending and regulation.

I continue to be both appalled and dismayed at this inability of the Democrats to recognize (or to be honest about their recognition) that the last eight years bore no resemblance to free markets, or laissez-faire. We overspend, and overregulate, and when it goes south, it gets blamed on tax cuts and underregulation. Madness.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Randy Barnett follows up.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Here’s What I Mean By “Misleading And Deceitful”

41 Comments

From today’s Journal:

In a passage from his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” he sounds like a Republican complaining about the stimulus. “Genuine bipartisanship,” he wrote, “assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained — by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate — to negotiate in good faith.

“If these conditions do not hold — if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so — the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this ‘compromise’ of being ‘obstructionist.’

“For the minority party in such circumstances, ‘bipartisanship’ comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being ‘moderate’ or ‘centrist.'”

Sound familiar?

The hypocrisy kind of makes me sick. As do the people who remain willfully blind to it. Because he’s going to bring “hope.” And “change.”

[Update early afternoon]

A steady stream of whoppers.