The Great White North, where boys will be boys, and the sheep are nervous.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Expelled
Defecting From The Left
Norm Geras says that he didn’t leave the left–the left left him.
Not Any Old Marxist
Mickey Kaus says that Obama, like himself, is a vulgar Marxist.
Feel-Good Disaster
Virginia Postrel writes about the economic ignorance of the global warm-mongers, a group that unfortunately includes all three presidential candidates. I just hope that Phil Gramm or someone can get McCain to come to his senses on the issue once he’s actually in office.
The connection between higher prices for energy and reduced carbon dioxide emissions may not have hit the national consciousness yet, but the LAT’s Margo Roosevelt reports that California utilities–and eventually their customers–are beginning to realize this isn’t just a symbolic issue.
…The DWP, to whom I pay my electric bills, wants out of the carbon dioxide caps. It apparently thinks the law shouldn’t apply to socialist enterprises.
Isn’t that always the way? The laws are for “the little people.”
Impatience
In the comments section of a post public support for the space program over at Space Politics, a twenty something asks a damed good question:
Those who support the current lunar program often forget the opportunity costs. There are better ways to spend the same money on developing space. I’m 24 – with the current Constellation program plan, I’ll be in my mid 30s by the time we get back to the moon. If we operate the system for a decade or two after that, as is likely, all I can expect in my career is to see 4 people land on the moon twice a year. That is not exciting – nor is it worth the money. Maybe by the time I retire we’ll be looking at another “next generation system”.
What’s the point of any of this for someone my age?
Well, it’s been more than a couple decades since I was twenty something, but it seems like there’s even less point for someone my age. Why in the world does Mike Griffin think that anyone, other than those getting a paycheck from it, are going to be inspired by such a trivial goals?
Of course, as usual, we heard the typical chorus of “space is hard, and it will take a long time, and you’re doing it for your grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, or great-great-great…grandchildren.”
But it doesn’t have to be this way. There was nothing inevitable about ESAS, and it isn’t written in granite that government space programs must do the least possible with the greatest amount of money, and the money invested provide such a poor return in either output or future capability on which to build. It is likely that this will be the case, but it’s not inevitable. As I’ve said many times, we won’t have a sensible government space program until space (that is, actual progress in space, not jobs in certain districts) becomes politically important. The last time that occurred was in the 1960s, and even then, it wasn’t politically important to have sustainable progress–only a specific space achievement (and that only because it had almost arbitrarily become a technological gladiatorial arena).
Anyway, Jon Goff followed up with a good comment, and then a blog post on the subject:
If our current approach to space development was actually putting in place the technology and infrastructure needed to make our civilization a spacefaring one, I’d be a lot more willing to support it. Wise investments in the future are a good thing, but NASA’s current approach is not a wise investment in the future. It’s aging hipsters trying to relive the glory days of their youth at my generation’s expense.
Patience is only a virtue when you’re headed in the right direction and doing the right thing. If Constellation was truly (as Marburger put it) making future operations cheaper, safer, and more capable, then I’d be all for patiently seeing it out.
While Constellation might possibly put some people on the moon, it won’t actually put us any closer to routine, affordable, and sustainable exploration and development. I have no problem with a long hard road, just so long as its the right one.
Unfortunately, it comes back to the fact that we never have had that serious national debate about space, and why we have a space program, that we so badly need (and despite his wishy-washy words now, I doubt that it will happen in an Obama administration, either). As the Chesire Cat said, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.
Who’s Bitter?
Mark Steyn has some trenchant thoughts on guns, God and American exceptionalism:
Sen. Obama’s remarks about poor dumb, bitter rural losers “clinging to” guns and God certainly testify to the instinctive snobbery of a big segment of the political class. But we shouldn’t let it go by merely deploring coastal condescension toward the knuckledraggers. No, what Michelle Malkin calls Crackerquiddick (quite rightly – it’s more than just another dreary “-gate”) is not just snobbish nor even merely wrongheaded. It’s an attack on two of the critical advantages the United States holds over most of the rest of the Western world. In the other G7 developed nations, nobody clings to God ‘n’ guns. The guns got taken away, and the Europeans gave up on churchgoing once they embraced Big Government as the new religion.
How’s that working out? Compared with America, France and Germany have been more or less economically stagnant for the past quarter-century, living permanently with unemployment rates significantly higher than in the United States.
Has it made them any less “bitter,” as Obama characterizes those Pennsylvanian crackers? No. In my book “America Alone,” just out in paperback and available in all good bookstores – you’ll find it in Borders propping up the wonky rear leg of the display table for the smash new CD “Michelle Obama And The San Francisco Macchiato Chorus Sing “I Pinned My Pink Slip To The Gun Rack Of My Pick-Up,’ ‘My Dog Done Died, My Wife Jus’ Left Me, And Michael Dukakis Is Strangely Reluctant To Run Again,’ Plus ‘I Swung By The Economic Development Zone Business Park But The Only Two Occupied Rental Units Were Both Evangelical Churches’ And Other Embittered Appalachian Favorites.”
Where was I? Oh, yes. In my book “America Alone,” I note a global survey on optimism: 61 percent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 percent of the French, 15 percent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least “bitter” people in the developed world. Secular, gun-free big-government Europe doesn’t seem to have done anything for people’s happiness.
Read (as usual) the whole thing.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I don’t think this is unrelated:
I am going to take a bold step in a brand new direction and offer the notion that working class Americans aren’t idiots. People who wonder where the Democratic vision of prosperity through higher taxes and stricter regulation would take us need look no further than Europe. And I will echo Michelle Obama by saying that in my adult lifetime I have never been proud of Europe’s ability to create jobs or absorb immigrants.
Nor have I. Perhaps the Obamas are, though.
Who’s Bitter?
Mark Steyn has some trenchant thoughts on guns, God and American exceptionalism:
Sen. Obama’s remarks about poor dumb, bitter rural losers “clinging to” guns and God certainly testify to the instinctive snobbery of a big segment of the political class. But we shouldn’t let it go by merely deploring coastal condescension toward the knuckledraggers. No, what Michelle Malkin calls Crackerquiddick (quite rightly – it’s more than just another dreary “-gate”) is not just snobbish nor even merely wrongheaded. It’s an attack on two of the critical advantages the United States holds over most of the rest of the Western world. In the other G7 developed nations, nobody clings to God ‘n’ guns. The guns got taken away, and the Europeans gave up on churchgoing once they embraced Big Government as the new religion.
How’s that working out? Compared with America, France and Germany have been more or less economically stagnant for the past quarter-century, living permanently with unemployment rates significantly higher than in the United States.
Has it made them any less “bitter,” as Obama characterizes those Pennsylvanian crackers? No. In my book “America Alone,” just out in paperback and available in all good bookstores – you’ll find it in Borders propping up the wonky rear leg of the display table for the smash new CD “Michelle Obama And The San Francisco Macchiato Chorus Sing “I Pinned My Pink Slip To The Gun Rack Of My Pick-Up,’ ‘My Dog Done Died, My Wife Jus’ Left Me, And Michael Dukakis Is Strangely Reluctant To Run Again,’ Plus ‘I Swung By The Economic Development Zone Business Park But The Only Two Occupied Rental Units Were Both Evangelical Churches’ And Other Embittered Appalachian Favorites.”
Where was I? Oh, yes. In my book “America Alone,” I note a global survey on optimism: 61 percent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 percent of the French, 15 percent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least “bitter” people in the developed world. Secular, gun-free big-government Europe doesn’t seem to have done anything for people’s happiness.
Read (as usual) the whole thing.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I don’t think this is unrelated:
I am going to take a bold step in a brand new direction and offer the notion that working class Americans aren’t idiots. People who wonder where the Democratic vision of prosperity through higher taxes and stricter regulation would take us need look no further than Europe. And I will echo Michelle Obama by saying that in my adult lifetime I have never been proud of Europe’s ability to create jobs or absorb immigrants.
Nor have I. Perhaps the Obamas are, though.
Who’s Bitter?
Mark Steyn has some trenchant thoughts on guns, God and American exceptionalism:
Sen. Obama’s remarks about poor dumb, bitter rural losers “clinging to” guns and God certainly testify to the instinctive snobbery of a big segment of the political class. But we shouldn’t let it go by merely deploring coastal condescension toward the knuckledraggers. No, what Michelle Malkin calls Crackerquiddick (quite rightly – it’s more than just another dreary “-gate”) is not just snobbish nor even merely wrongheaded. It’s an attack on two of the critical advantages the United States holds over most of the rest of the Western world. In the other G7 developed nations, nobody clings to God ‘n’ guns. The guns got taken away, and the Europeans gave up on churchgoing once they embraced Big Government as the new religion.
How’s that working out? Compared with America, France and Germany have been more or less economically stagnant for the past quarter-century, living permanently with unemployment rates significantly higher than in the United States.
Has it made them any less “bitter,” as Obama characterizes those Pennsylvanian crackers? No. In my book “America Alone,” just out in paperback and available in all good bookstores – you’ll find it in Borders propping up the wonky rear leg of the display table for the smash new CD “Michelle Obama And The San Francisco Macchiato Chorus Sing “I Pinned My Pink Slip To The Gun Rack Of My Pick-Up,’ ‘My Dog Done Died, My Wife Jus’ Left Me, And Michael Dukakis Is Strangely Reluctant To Run Again,’ Plus ‘I Swung By The Economic Development Zone Business Park But The Only Two Occupied Rental Units Were Both Evangelical Churches’ And Other Embittered Appalachian Favorites.”
Where was I? Oh, yes. In my book “America Alone,” I note a global survey on optimism: 61 percent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 percent of the French, 15 percent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least “bitter” people in the developed world. Secular, gun-free big-government Europe doesn’t seem to have done anything for people’s happiness.
Read (as usual) the whole thing.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I don’t think this is unrelated:
I am going to take a bold step in a brand new direction and offer the notion that working class Americans aren’t idiots. People who wonder where the Democratic vision of prosperity through higher taxes and stricter regulation would take us need look no further than Europe. And I will echo Michelle Obama by saying that in my adult lifetime I have never been proud of Europe’s ability to create jobs or absorb immigrants.
Nor have I. Perhaps the Obamas are, though.
Fidel Castro
Sometimes, you just have to think that these people’s brains are broken.