Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Canadian Kangaroos

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Andrew Coyne is live blogging the “Human Rights” Commission star chamber for Mark Steyn and MacLeans. He’s hoping that his magazine will lose:

Don’t tell my employers, but I’m sort of hoping we lose this case. If we win–that is, if the tribunal finds we did not, by publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book, expose Muslims to hatred and contempt, or whatever the legalese is–then the whole clanking business rolls on, the stronger for having shown how “reasonable” it can be. Whereas if we lose, and fight on appeal, and challenge the whole legal basis for these inquisitions, then something important will be achieved.

I liked this:

Oh God: they’re talking about who they’ll be calling on Friday. Five days in a windowless room. If that’s not a human rights violation…

And this comment on the Orwellian nature of the law:

Under Section 7.1, he continues, innocent intent is not a defence, nor is truth, nor is fair comment or the public interest, nor is good faith or responsible journalism.

Or in other words, there is no defence.

It’s a good read, so far.

[Update about half an hour later]

Some thoughts from Mark Steyn:

The Canadian Islamic Congress lawyer says that freedom of speech is a “red herring”. If it were, it would be on the endangered species list.

Political Commentary

You Can Take The Man Out Of The Leftist Church

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But you can’t take the leftism out of the man:

Obama shared Wright’s rejection of black “assimilation.” Obama also shared Wright’s suspicion of the traditional American ethos of individual self-improvement and the pursuit of “middle-classness.” In common with Wright, Obama had deep misgivings about America’s criminal justice system. And with the exception of their direct attacks on whites, Obama largely approved of his preacher-friends’ fiery rhetoric. Obama’s goal was not to repudiate religious radicalism but to channel its fervor into an effective and permanent activist organization. How do we know all this? We know it because Obama himself has told us.

Stanley Kurtz has been doing the research on Obama’s past, and his beliefs, that the mainstream media hasn’t, and mostly doesn’t want you to know.

Political Commentary, Science And Society

Hurricane Season Begins

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Jeff Masters has a rundown on the prospects for early-season hurricanes. Summary: not so much. The water’s too cool and the wind shear too high. Probably not much serious before August. I found this particularly interesting (I hadn’t previously been aware of it):

It’s not just the SSTs [Sea Surface Temperatures–rs] that are important for hurricanes, it’s also the total amount of heat in the ocean to a depth of about 150 meters. Hurricanes stir up water from down deep due to their high winds, so a shallow layer of warm water isn’t as beneficial to a hurricane as a deep one. The Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential (TCHP, Figure 3) is a measure of this total heat content. A high TCHP over 80 is very beneficial to rapid intensification. As we can see, the heat energy available in the tropical Atlantic has declined steadily since 2005, when the highest SSTs ever measured in the tropical Atlantic occurred. I expect that the TCHP will continue to remain well below 2005 levels this year, so we should not see any intense hurricanes in July, like we saw that year.

A lot of the Warm Mongers were saying (ignorantly) that 2005 was the beginning of a trend of more and more intense hurricanes, brought on by You Know What. Well, with the current cooling going on, so much for that.

[Update a few minutes later]

I should add that my understanding of the current thinking on the subject of warming and hurricanes is that there will actually be fewer hurricanes forming in a warmer world, because there will be more wind shear that prevents them from doing so. On the other hand, if they do manage to get it together, they will be more intense, due to warmer ocean waters.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Splitter?

With Al Qaeda on the ropes, in Iraq (a central front by their own definition) and elsewhere, is Sayyid Imam al-Sharif becoming the hirabist movement’s equivalent of Trotsky?

A key point from the Journal editorial:

Zawahiri himself last month repeated his claim that the country “is now the most important arena in which our Muslim nation is waging the battle against the forces of the Crusader-Zionist campaign.” So it’s all the more significant that on this crucial battleground, al Qaeda has been decimated by the surge of U.S. forces into Baghdad. The surge, in turn, gave confidence to the Sunni tribes that this was a fight they could win. For Zawahiri, losing the battles you say you need to win is not a way to collect new recruits. …

[I]t is the surge, and the destruction of al Qaeda in Iraq , that has helped to demoralize al Qaeda around the world. Nothing would more embolden Zawahiri now than a U.S. retreat from Iraq, which al Qaeda would see as the U.S. version of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan.

That should be required reading for the Obama campaign. If we had followed his advice, we’d already have such an emboldened Al Qaeda. But they seem to be in denial:

…if Obama fails to “capitalize”-to take advantage of circumstances his opponent helped create and he opposed-is he guilty of only excessive pessimism? Or has he proven himself to be inflexible, unmoved by new facts, unwilling to admit error and divorced from reality? Hmmm, seems like someone said similar things about George W. Bush.

It does seem ironic.

[h/t to Cliff May for the Journal piece]

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s not just Al Qaeda on the run in Iraq. The Mahdi Army and its Iranian allies aren’t have a good time, either:

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Iraqi Army interdicting Iranian operations in the South
By Bill RoggioJune 1, 2008 10:48 PM

Click to view larger interactive map of southern Iraq.

Iraqi and Coalition forces press operations against the Mahdi Army in Baghdad and Basrah despite the cease-fire signed with the Mahdi Army in Sadr City. The Iraqi Army has expanded its operations in Basrah province to the east just along the Iranian border, while 11 Mahdi Army fighters have been captured during operations in Baghdad over the past 24 hours.

Iraqi soldiers and police, backed by US and British advisers, have expanded Operation Knights’ Assault to the eastern town of Abu Al Khasib, in a region east of Basrah on the Iranian border. A brigade from the 1st Iraqi Army Division, backed by a battalion from 14th Iraqi Army Division and two Iraqi National Police battalions conducted operations along the border over the past two days. One suspect was detained and 52 AK-47 assault rifles and one submachine gun were found during the sweep.

Abu Al Khasib is on Highway 6 at the border crossing with Iran at Shalamcheh. The Iranian city of Shalamcheh is the main forward operating base for the Ramazan Corps’s southernmost command. The Ramazan Corps is the Qods Force command assigned to direct operations inside Iraq. Weapons, fighters, and cash smuggled across the border into Basrah would pass through Abu Al Khasib.

The Iraqi Army has been expanding its operations along the Iranian supply routes in the South during the month of May. After clearing the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-backed militias from Basrah, operations have expanded into Az Zubayr and Al Qurnah.

It’s still five months to go until the election, with a lot more potential progress to come. I can imagine the anti-Obama ads, contrasting the (undeniable, at that point) progress in Iraq with video of the evacuations from the embassy roof in Saigon. It could be a repeat of either McGovern, or Carter in 1980.

[Update a little while later]

Victor Davis Hanson has some related observations:

How odd (or to be expected) that suddenly intelligence agencies, analysts, journalists, and terrorists themselves are attesting that al-Qaeda is in near ruins, that ideologically radical Islam is losing its appeal, and that terrorist incidents against Americans at home and abroad outside the war zones are at an all-time low–and yet few associate the radical change in fortune in Iraq as a contributory cause to our success.

Actually, given the pervasive bias in the media on this subject, it’s to be expected, not odd at all.

[Early afternoon update]

The Taliban is on the ropes in Afghanistan, too.

Political Commentary

Too Late, I Think

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Apparently, Barack and Michelle Obama are going to quit their church, which has provided him so much spiritual nourishment over the years, and provided so much needed guidance to their young children in “black liberation theology.” Apparently, they only just discovered that people have been saying…ummmmmmmm…controversial, yes, that’s the word…controversial things from the pulpit there, to the cheers of the parishioners.

Must be that new politics we’ve heard so much about.

Political Commentary, Space

Externships

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Jon Goff has some thoughts about outsourcing NASA employees to private industry.

It’s an interesting concept, and not to discourage him from out-of-the-box thinking, but it has several flaws, more than one of which is almost certainly fatal.

Where would they work? Senator Shelby is not going to countenance a program that ships a Huntsville employee off to Mojave (and there are a lot of NASA employees who don’t want to move to Mojave). It’s not just the jobs that are important, but where they are. So it may necessitate moving the company to places like Huntsville to take advantage of it, even though it may be a terrible location from most other standpoints (e.g., flight test). In addition, a lot of the jobs that Congress wants to save aren’t just NASA civil servants–more, probably many more of them are contractors. How does that work? Does Boeing send you an extern and get reimbursed by NASA? How do you work out proprietary issues (among others)? How do you ensure that they send you the best employees, and not the ones they were going to lay off?

Also, there will be a huge discontinuity with skill matches. The current Shuttle work force, for the most part, knows very little about vehicle development, and what they know about vehicle operations, from the standpoint of a low-cost launch provider, is mostly wrong. Also, while a lot of people work for NASA because they’re excited about space, many there do so because they like the civil service protections and pensions. They don’t necessarily want to work the long hours often demanded of a startup, and they come from an employment culture that may be quite incompatible with the fixed-price private sector. I won’t say any more than that, but this is one of the reasons that the Aldridge Commission’s recommendation to convert the NASA centers to FFRDCs went over like a lead blimp.

And how would one qualify to get these “government resources” and how many would you get? As many as you ask for? After all, if the product is free (and contra the paragraph above, desirable) surely demand will exceed supply. How will you allocate the supply. It won’t happen on price, obviously, so some other solution will have to be developed. Would a company “bid” for an extern (and would they be able to bid on a specific person, or would they have to take pot luck?) by putting some kind of proposal to demonstrate how worthy their cause and their use of her will be? Who will be the equivalent of a source selection board for such a process? Can the current acquisition regulations even accommodate something like this? I know that this currently occurs for a few individuals, where it is mutually agreed, but I’m not sure that it would work for an entire work force.

Just a few thoughts, off the top of my head.

Political Commentary, Space

John Adams Must Be Smiling

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This post, linked by Glenn from the ISDC, reminds me of this post I wrote when this blog was only four months old. It’s not that long, so I’ll repeat. It was titled (as shown over in the left sidebar) “Why This Blog Bores People With Space Stuff”:

As a follow up to today’s rant over our “allies” in Europe, over at USS Clueless, Steven den Beste has an excellent disquisition on the fundamental differences between Europe and the U.S. They don’t, and cannot, understand that the U.S. exists and thrives because it is the UnEurope, that it was built by people who left Europe (and other places) because they wanted freedom.

I say this not to offer simply a pale imitation of Steven’s disquisition (which is the best I could do, at least tonight), but to explain why I spend so much time talking about space policy here. It’s not (just) because I’m a space nut, or because I used to do it for a living, and so have some knowledge to disseminate. It’s because it’s important to me, and it should be important to everyone who is concerned about dynamism and liberty.

And the reason that it’s important is because there may be a time in the future, perhaps not even the distant future, when the U.S. will no longer be a haven for those who seek sanctuary from oppressive government. The trends over the past several decades are not always encouraging, and as at least a social insurance policy, we may need a new frontier into which freedom can expand.

Half a millenium ago, Europe discovered a New World. Unfortunately for its inhabitants (who had discovered it previously), the Europeans had superior technology and social structures that allowed them to conquer it.

Now, in the last couple hundred years, we have discovered how vast our universe is, and in the last couple decades, we have discovered how rich in resources it is, given will and technology. As did the eastern seaboard of the present U.S. in the late eighteenth century, it offers mankind a fertile petri dish for new societal arrangements and experiments, and ultimately, an isolated frontier from which we will be able to escape from possible future terrestrial disasters, whether of natural or human origin.

If, as many unfortunately in this country seem to wish, freedom is constricted in the U.S., the last earthly abode of true libertarian principles, it may offer an ultimate safety valve for those of us who wish to continue the dream of the founders of this nation, sans slavery or native Americans–we can found it without the flawed circumstances of 1787.

That is why space, and particularly free-enterprise space, is important.

Political Commentary, Space

China In Space

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Glenn Reynolds has filed his first report from the ISDC, on the status of the Chinese space program. Or to be more accurate, the status of our knowledge of the Chinese space program.

I’m long on record as being concerned about the Chinese in space, when it comes to the military, and sanguine when it comes to them going to the moon. I remain that way. As Glenn notes, when it comes to manned space, they’re simply recapitulating what we did in the sixties, except much more slowly.