Food is a fuel, of course, though we don’t think of it that way. But now that transportation is competing for it, it’s having dire effects on everyone, but particularly the poor, largely as a result of idiotic government policies. This should be a good issue for John McCain, if he only understood economics.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Why Obama’s Polls Are Cratering
He’s a flake:
I’m using the term in its generally accepted sense. A flake is not only a screwup, but someone who truly excels in making bizarre errors and creating incredibly convoluted disasters. A flake is a “fool with energy”, as the Russian proverb puts it. (“A fool is a terrible thing to have around, but a fool with energy is a nightmare”.)
I’ve long been on record as believing that Obama cannot win (nor, at this point, could Hillary). Nothing has happened to cause me to alter that view.
[Update late morning]
Here’s the latest tea leaf that the vice-president pick will be Evan Bayh. If they were smart, they’d put him at the top of the ticket–it would give them a lot better shot.
[Another update a few minutes later]
Some folks over at DU are starting to get worried: “What is Obama doing wrong?”
Nothing, of course. It’s our fault, because we’re racists. It couldn’t have anything to do with his left-wing politics, inexperience and flakiness.
A lot of the commenters are whistling past the graveyard.
[Update a few minutes later]
A leftist sees the future:
All that Obama audacity of arrogance from the smiling, glib politician finally died the death it so richly deserved. Too many pundits will blame his loss on his blackness and racist voters. But the larger truth is that sufficient voters saw through the many lies and deceptions. Obama always had a hard time giving a simple, short straight answer to tough questions. He was always mentally calculating exactly how to game his answers so that he would achieve all the benefits he had his eyes on. He was simply too damn presumptuous and too smart for his own good. In the end, Americans do not want the smartest person in the presidency or endless nuancing. They want someone they can easily understand and trust, despite their skepticism. There were many reasons not to trust the calculating Obama to do anything he promised to do or, for some people, to fear he might.
As Lincoln said, some of the people, some of the time, but not all of them all of the time.
[Update just before noon]
How low do the polls have to go before the superdelegates have second thoughts? Keep the popcorn handy for next week, when Hillary!’s name is put in nomination, and the demonstrations begin.
Good News
Tom Ridge won’t be McCain’s pick for VP candidate.
Punitive Liberalism
Roger Kimball, on Barack Obama’s politics of envy and “fairness.”
[Update a while later]
Like father, like son:
How high should the tax rates be? “Theoretically,” he wrote, “there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.” Yes, you read it: a 100% tax rate is fine. Obama Sr. continued, ” It is a fallacy to say there is a limit (to tax rates), and it is a fallacy to rely mainly on individual free enterprise to get the savings.” Free enterprise — bad. (He was discussing future government economic development.)
This is one of the things that I find most disturbing about Obama. He doesn’t believe that tax policy should be based on revenue. He thinks it should be based on “fairness.” As he said in that debate, he’s fine with less revenue as long as he can punish success.
Our Screwed-Up Space Policy
You know, the more I think about this, the more I think it should always have been a no brainer.
The first rule of wing walking is to not let go of the airplane with one hand until you have a firm new grip with the other. It’s pretty simple: don’t shut down the Shuttle until you have a replacement in place (and preferably redundantly).
The only reason we’re undertaking such a dumb policy is because of the panic after the loss of Columbia causing a desire to end the program ASAP, and an unwillingness to pay what it cost to fund the new development at the same time we were continuing to spend billions annually on keeping the Shuttle going. The notion that we can take the savings from ending the Shuttle to develop the new systems seems appealing, but it essentially guarantees a “gap.”
And it’s all a result of the fact that space isn’t important. Is there any other government activity where we arbitrarily assign a budget number to it, and then demand that its endeavors fit within that budget? But that’s the way Congress has always viewed NASA–that there’s a certain level of spending that’s politically acceptable, and no more. If space were important, we’d do what we did in Apollo–establish a goal, and then provide the funding necessary to achieve it. But it’s not, other than for pork and prestige. It’s important that we have a space program, but it’s not at all important that it accomplish anything of value. Until that attitude changes, we’re unlikely to get sensible policy.
McCain’s Space Advice
Well, now we know what the “space experts” told John McCain yesterday up in Titusville.
As I noted in my piece at PJM, the options aren’t very pretty. The lowest risk course is to continue Shuttle past 2010, but to keep this option open, they have to take some immediate actions to keep production open on consumables, such as ETs. As I’ve noted before, it’s ironic that they’re shutting the system down just as they’ve finally wrung most of the bugs out of it. It still remains horrifically expensive, of course, but no more so than Ares/Orion, and it has a lot more capability. I think that the “recertification” issue is a red herring. Just because the CAIB recommended it doesn’t mean that it makes any sense, since no one knows what it really means. Nothing magical happens in 2010 that makes it suddenly unsafe to fly. That date was chosen as the earliest one that they could retire and still complete ISS, not on the basis that anything was worn or wearing out. They could just continue to fly, and do periodic inspections.
I found it interesting, but not surprising, that Lafitte recommended an acceleration of Ares. It would be more in his company’s interest to just give up on it and use Atlas, but I suspect that would be too politically incorrect to say with reporters around. He has to live with Mike Griffin for at least another few months.
What would I do if I were king? I’d stop buying Soyuz, and keep the Shuttle flying, I’d abandon Ares/Orion, and provide huge incentives to the private sector by establishing prop depots and paying good money for prop delivery. That would require more money than people want to spend, but we’d get a lot more robust transportation infrastructure, ready to go to either the moon or Mars (or other destinations) at a lot lower mission cost than NASA’s current plans. It’s what we would do if space were really important. But of course, it’s not, so we won’t.
McCain’s Space Response?
I’d like to know who those “twenty hand-picked space experts” are. Unfortunately, I’ll bet that one of them is Walt Cunningham. But at least he won’t be the only one.
It’s That Time Of The Week Again
Lileks takes on Keillor. Again.
Every column now ends with on-marching truth. But what’s this thing about the rich and privileged saying it’s not a great country? I hear more distaste and dismay about America from one Senator than the other; I hear more disdain from cosseted movie stars than I hear from ordinary folk; I hear more grumpy, costive old burbling about the dark hole into which America has fallen from a rich and privileged Old Scout than I hear from, say, middle-class bloggers who get 40 hits a day but happen to love the actual country we have as opposed to the theoretical variant which Keillor believes is right around the corner. Next week: an attack, probably, on the smug, self-righteous rich and privileged, who think America’s just great. At least we know how that one will end: truth, marching, et cetera.
I think that Keillor has attained that unblessed state that no one dare edit him. Thankfully, we have Lileks.
Ignorance Of America
Frequent commenter “Fletcher Christian” is a poster child for this phenomenon. And as one of the commenters at Glenn’s post notes, the BBC is largely responsible.
An Attack By The Real Fascists
Over at Amy Alkon’s place.