Category Archives: Political Commentary

Wile E. Obama

Supergenius?

OK, so you’re running against a guy who for recreation (though not his) used to have his arms tied together at the wrists behind his back, and hang from them for hours, a result of which is that he can no longer raise them above his head. Or other things:

McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.

And the Obama campaign is making fun of him for not knowing how to email?

When these guys lose, there will be many reasons why.

[Update late Friday evening]

Glenn has a more. A lot more, with lots of links. This one may have legs.

[Late night update]

One more update from Jonah.

As he says, bogus as it gets.

[Late evening update]

Iowahawk (who else!) picks up on the theme. Hilarity ensues.

[Saturday morning update]

Roger Kimball wonders who is sabotaging the Obama campaign?

Hey, as I say in comments, the guy has problems finding good help. Just who we want for president.

NASA Infighting

An interview with Tom Jones on the subject, over at Popular Mechanics. Note that he doesn’t point out that no one ordered Mike Griffin to develop Ares, which is the biggest reason that Orion is delayed and that NASA doesn’t have enough funding. He also has too much faith in Orion flying before something else (particularly given the Ares problems). I’m sure we could put up a capsule on an Atlas long before 2014, whether Dragon or something else, if we made it a priority.

Staying Together For The Kids

As I’ve noted in the past, we’re going to have to decide how much ISS is worth to us. Chair Force Engineer thinks that we’re going to bite the bullet and buy more Soyuzs from the Russians:

Besides the reliance on Soyuz, there are myriad other ways in which ISS cannot survive unless the US and Russia cooperate. The various modules are too interconnected, and neither country can operate their contributions to the station without the other country playing along. It’s conceivable that Russia could afford to build Soyuz without American money, by selling the American slots to space tourists. But a Russian-led ISS would still require use of American space modules.

America and Russia are left in a situation where it’s unlikely that either will abandon the ISS, even though both nations are mired in growing mistrust. If I had to make a bet, I would say that the US and Russia will learn to grin and bear it, operating ISS jointly until 2017. When Congress looks rationally at its options, it will realize that it will have to begrudgingly buy more Soyuz if it still wants to participate in ISS.

Sometimes, I think that expecting Congress to “look rationally at its options” is asking too much. Particularly when it’s robbing money from the NASA budget to provide foreign aid to Ethiopia. Sure, why not? It’s not like NASA’s spending the money very usefully, anyway. It just proves my oft-made point that space isn’t politically important.

Anyway, as I said in my Pajamas piece, this is a policy disaster long in the making, and the chickens are finally coming home to roost. It was naive in the extreme at the end of the Cold War to assume that we and Russia would be BFFs and enter into such an inextricable long-term relationship. Now it’s like a very dysfunctional marriage that is being held together only out of concern for the children. Without ISS, the divorce would be swift, I suspect.

[Update a while later]

Speaking of apt metaphors, Clark Lindsey has one for the Ares program:

Yellow and red grades notwithstanding, it has always seemed extremely unlikely to me that Ares I would fail to fly when NASA has so many billions of dollars available to spend on it. However, since I believe the whole Ares I/V program to be a stupendous waste, if technical problems did arise that led to its cancellation, I’d consider it a boon for US space development. If the brakes fail and a huge truck starts to careen down a hill, it’s a blessing if the thing blows a tire instead and flops over into a ditch with relatively little damage to people and property. Unfortunately, it appears that Ares will keep rolling no matter what.

Actually, I wouldn’t necessarily bet on that. There may be “change” coming to NASA next year, regardless of who wins the election.

The Media Meltdown

Mark Steyn comments:

Howie [Kurtz] feels the press is being “manipulated” by the McCain campaign.

Maybe it is. A conventional launch strategy for a little-known vice-presidential nominee might have involved “manipulating” the media into running umpteen front-pagers on Sarah Palin’s amazing primary challenge of a sitting governor and getting the sob-sisters to slough off a ton of heartwarming stories about her son shipping out to Iraq.

But, if you were really savvy, you’d “manipulate” the media into a stampede of lurid drivel deriding her as a Stepford wife and a dominatrix, comparing her to Islamic fundamentalists, Pontius Pilate and porn stars, and dismissing her as a dysfunctional brood mare who can’t possibly be the biological mother of the kid she was too dumb to abort. Who knows? It’s a long shot, but if you could pull it off, a really cunning media manipulator might succeed in manipulating Howie’s buddies into spending the month after Labor Day outbidding each other in some insane Who Wants To Be An Effete Condescending Media Snob? death-match. You’d not only make the press look like bozos, but that in turn might tarnish just a little the fellow these geniuses have chosen to anoint.

I suspect that it’s just going to get worse for them, particularly when they see the generic poll for Congress.

[Update a few minutes later]

John Hinderaker has more on Howie’s anger:

I’m not sure what Obama had in mind, but I find it odd that in pages of outrage devoted to the supposed excesses of the McCain campaign, Kurtz finds no room to mention the fact that prominent Democrats (not anonymous emailers, who are much worse) have said that Governor Palin is Pontius Pilate and that her primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.

The truth is that Sarah Palin has been the object of the most vicious and concerted smear campaign in modern American history. But that fact doesn’t cause the media (or Howard Kurtz) to get mad.

It’s not too hard to diagnose why, as Kurtz correctly says, “the media are getting mad.” They’re getting mad because their candidate is losing. They’ve spent years building him up and covering for his mistakes and shortcomings, and he is such a stiff that he can’t coast across the finish line. I’d be mad too, I guess, but I think I’d have the decency not to take it out on Sarah Palin.

Not just the decency. Also the intelligence, given how badly it continues to backfire on them.

Who Would Have Imagined?

Just a month ago, many Republicans were resigned to hoping at best for the possibility of John McCain eking out a win against Obama, and not losing too much ground on the Hill. Now it looks like regaining Congress is within the realm of possibility:

The issues raised by today’s low approval ratings of Congress are reinforced by recent Gallup Poll findings that relatively few voters generally believe “most members” of Congress deserve re-election. That figure was only 36% in July, much lower than the 51% or better reading found in recent election years when the party of the sitting majority in Congress maintained power.

When the generic preference is only 3% among registered voters (not likely voters), the Donkeys are in big trouble, because registered voters almost always overstate actual support for Democrats at the polls.

McCain needs to start running hard against Pelosi and Reid. With all the nasty things that Reid has been saying about him lately, he shouldn’t have to work hard to motivate himself to do so.

It would help, of course, if Boehner and McConnell could make some noises to demonstrate that they learned their lesson from two years ago, and that they’re no longer going to be the party of pork and privilege. It’s a real shame that it looks like Stephens is going to win his primary in Alaska.

Palin Turnaround

My father, Dr. Dinkin Sr. author of Election Day: a Documentary History says that there has never been a VP who had this big an effect on the election–the most is about 5%. Further, that the last time a Party won that was behind in the polls after the second convention is 1964. Pressed he said 60-40 McCain. At intrade, McCain is trading at $0.52 for a security that pays $1 if he wins. Here’s what he’s trading at now (GMT):


If you smear lipstick on a pig, perhaps you have too much on.

Not Just The White House

These numbers over at Gallup should have the donkeys very worried.

Democrats have held a large advantage on party identification for much of 2007 and 2008. But the GOP convention — and the exposure it gave to John McCain and Sarah Palin as the Republican ticket — has encouraged a greater number of Americans to identify as Republicans, thus narrowing the Democratic advantage for the moment.

Republicans saw an even larger increase in “leaned” party identification, which is computed by adding the percentage of Americans who initially identify themselves as independents but then say they “lean” to a party to the percentage who identify with that party. Before the GOP convention, 39% of Americans said they identified with or leaned to the Republican Party, but that number has increased to 47%. Forty-eight percent now identify with or lean to the Democratic Party, down from 53% prior to the GOP convention.

This is the Palin effect, and I think that it’s undone a lot of the damage that was done to the Republican brand that resulted in the 2006 losses. I wonder if a lot of the Republican legislators who decided to retire this year are having second thoughts?

These numbers also explain why Gallup has McCain leading, while Rasmussen has the race tied. Rasmussen hasn’t adjusted his mix yet–I think that it’s based on a three-month rolling average, and the recent shift in the political tide isn’t showing up yet, and won’t until just before the election.