By Barack Obama. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t lend itself well to a thirty-second ad.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Off To The Movies
I very rarely see a movie in a theater. I’d say it averages once or twice a year (though we did see Dark Knight a couple months ago–the last one before that was The Astronaut Farmer). But tonight Patricia and I are going out to see American Carol to boost its opening weekend ratings (plus, it looks like it should be pretty funny, and I think we can all use a good laugh right now, given current events). At this point, I’m all about promoting and encouraging alternate media/viewpoints, particularly from Hollywood. I may or may not review it tomorrow.
[Monday morning update]
Meh.
It was entertaining, and a good story, but not roll-in-the-aisles funny, at least for us. Of course, I’ve never been that big a Zucker/slapstick fan (e.g., I’ve never even seen any of the Naked Gun series). It’s not the sort of flick that I would normally want to see in a theater, but I was happy to help boost the first weekend ratings. Of course, unlike the previous ones, there are some emotionally affecting moments in this one (quickly broken up, of course, by more crude slapstick).
So if you want to support this sort of politically incorrect movie (always a noble goal, in my opinion), spend a couple hours and spend the ten bucks. You’ll have a good time, but don’t expect too much.
[Note: this post has been bumped to the top, new stuff below]
Obama’s Space Pro-Activity
The Obama campaign seems to have gotten way out front of the McCain campaign on space. The problem is that, like its domestic policy in general, McCain doesn’t seem to have a coherent policy with regard to civil space. He’s going to freeze discretionary, which includes NASA, and whether NASA will be exempt seems to depend on which campaign aide you ask. And regardless of how much money is spent, the campaign is equally vague on how it is spent, and what the near-term and long-term goals of the expenditure are. On top of that, the McCain campaign has lumped in the new Obama proposal to increase the NASA budget by two billion with a lot of so-called liberal spending proposals. As Jeff Foust notes, it’s a little mind blowing, politically.
Obama, after having gotten off on the wrong foot with the initial idiotic proposal to delay Constellation to provide funds for education, seems to have actually gotten inside McCain’s OODA loop on this issue. The McCain campaign really needs a smart political adviser in this area (as Obama apparently has now with Lori Garver, who seems to successfully jumped ship from Hillary’s campaign), but there’s no evidence that they’ve come up with one yet.
Of course, it’s not an issue on which the election will hang, probably not even in Florida.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s a little more at NASA Watch. It seems to be a disconnect between the McCain campaign and the RNC. Which, of course, doesn’t make it any better, or excuse it.
[Another update a few minutes later]
Well, this would seem to clarify the McCain position:
Perhaps more important were McCain’s remarks on Wednesday that only the Pentagon and veterans would see a budget increase in his administration because of the high price the proposed economic bail out. Everything else – including, presumably, NASA — will be frozen or cut. Several space advocates in Florida and Washington DC expect the worst.
As I said, it isn’t clear that space will be a key issue, even in Florida. But if the McCain campaign position is that the budget is going to be frozen, they should at least put forth a description of how they expect, and will require, NASA’s priorities to change to accommodate it. So far, there’s zero evidence that they’ve even given the matter any thought.
Seven Apollos
Alan Boyle has come up with a new set of science-project-based monetary units to get our heads around the costs of the bailout.
This sort of thing provides support for the politically naive argument for more money for one’s pet project, e.g., “we could do seven Apollos for the cost of one Iraq war–surely we can afford at least one.” But federal budget dollars aren’t fungible, and the political importance of various choices isn’t necessarily consistent, either, due to the vagaries of how these decisions are made. Note also that, at the time, getting to the moon in a hurry was important for reasons having little or nothing do to with space. It’s unreasonable to expect those particular political stars to align again.
Not to mention the fact that because we were in a hurry, we chose an architecture and path that was economically and politically unsustainable. Just as NASA’s current path is, which is no surprise, considering that they chose to recapitulate Apollo, rather than building an incremental affordable infrastructure that would provide the basis for true spacefaring.
Dear Leader
There’s a new Obama music video up.
Say It Ain’t So, “O” (Part Two)
Illegal fundraising by the Obama campaign? Who would have thought?
I wonder how much of that foreign money comes from oil wealth.
Mrs. Grievance
I guess that being overambitious, and impatient with your current position isn’t confined to Barack Obama. He and Michelle were made for each other:
At big firms, much of the work that falls to young associates involves detail and tedium. There were all sorts of arcane but important rules about what could and could not be said or done in product advertisements, and in the marketing group, all the associates, not just the new ones, reviewed scripts for TV commercials to make sure they conformed. As far as associate work goes, it could have been worse — “Advertising is a little sexier than spending a full year reading depositions in an antitrust law suit or reviewing documents for a big merger,” says White — but it was monotonous and relatively low-level.
Too monotonous for Michelle, who, White says, complained that the work he gave her was unsatisfactory. He says he gave her the Coors beer ads, which he considered one of the more glamorous assignments they had. Even then, he says, “she at one point went over my head and complained [to human resources] that I wasn’t giving her enough interesting stuff, and the person came down to my office and said, ‘Basically she’s complaining that she’s being treated like she’s a second-year associate,’ and we agreed that she was a second-year associate. I had eight or nine other associates, and I couldn’t start treating one of them a lot better.”
White says he talked to Michelle about her expectations, but the problem could not be resolved because the work was what it was. He is not sure any work he had would have satisfied her. “I couldn’t give her something that would meet her sense of ambition to change the world.”
She and Barack are going to make us work. Arbeit macht frei.
Even Deeper In The Tank
The New York Times continues to act as the propaganda arm of the Obama campaign:
Steve Diamond has made a powerful case that, whoever first suggested Obama’s name, Ayers must surely have had a major role in his final selection. Diamond has now revealed that the Times consulted him extensively for this article and has seen his important documentary evidence. Yet we get no inkling in the piece of Diamond’s key points, or the documents that back it up. (I’ve made a similar argument myself, based largely on my viewing of many of the same documents presented by Diamond.) How can an article that gives only one side of the story be fair? Instead of offering both sides of the argument and letting readers decide, the Times simply spoon-feeds its readers the Obama camp line.
The Times also ignores the fact that I’ve published a detailed statement from the Obama camp on the relationship between Ayers and Obama at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. (See “Obama’s Challenge.”) Maybe that’s because attention to that statement would force them to acknowledge and report on my detailed reply.
Yup. Wouldn’t fit the narrative.
[Mid afternoon update]
Instapundit has a roundup of links discussing this.
The Chinese Space Program Has Come A Long Way
Heh.
[From Bruce Webster, via email]
Presidential Stock Market Response to VP Debate
Obama is still trading as a 2-1 favorite on Intrade after the debate and has even moved up a point since yesterday’s close to 66 cents (for a security that pays one dollar if he wins) as of press time. But Palin has earned her stripes. The “Palin to be withdrawn from the ticket” security has dropped from ten cents yesterday to 4 which is a penny less than “Biden to be withdrawn from the ticket”. My opinion? Palin’s the best of the four and should have been thrown to the media wolves so they could patronize her and have it backfire, so she could continue framing the debate, and so she could dominate the late-night talk shows and comedy shows. It’s not too late for her to make a circuit of the late night TV shows. Parody is a high form of praise. CNN reported that she did less than five interviews to Biden’s 100+. I don’t see McCain changing that now. I hope she runs in 2012 and if necessary 2016.