Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

Impatience

4 Comments

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.

Political Commentary, Popular Culture

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.

Political Commentary, Popular Culture

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.

Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Who’s Bitter?

13 Comments

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.

Education, General Science, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Darwin And Hitler

38 Comments

Derb has some thoughts:

As so often with creationist material, I’m not sure what the point is. Darwin’s great contribution to human knowledge, his theory of the origin of species, is either true, or it’s not. Is David saying: “When taken up by evil people, the theory had evil consequences. Therefore the theory must be false”? Is he asserting, in other words, that a true theory about the world could not possibly have evil consequence, no matter who picked it up and played with it, with no matter how little real understanding? Does David think that true facts cannot possibly be used for malign purposes? If that is what David is asserting, it seems to me an awfully hard proposition to defend. It is a true fact that E = mc2, and the Iranians are right at this moment using that true fact to construct nuclear weapons. If they succeed, and use their weapons for horrible purposes, will that invalidate the Special Theory of Relativity?

If David does not think that Darwin’s explanation for the origin of species is correct, let him give us his reasons; or better yet, an alternative explanation that we can test by observation. That a wicked man invoked Darwin’s name as an excuse to do wicked things tells us nothing, nada, zero, zippo, zilch about the truth content of Darwin’s ideas.

I always have to scratch my head at conservatives who are perfectly comfortable with Adam Smith’s invisible hand when it comes to markets, but can’t get their heads around the concept of emergent properties in the development of life. And of course, the opposite is true for liberalsfascists.

[Evening update]

Jonah Goldberg has more defense of Darwin (and Einstein). Bottom line, with which I agree:

Nazism was reactionary in that it sought to repackage tribal values under the guise of modern concepts. So was Communism. So are all the statist and collectivism isms. The only truly new and radical political revolution is the Lockean one. But, hey, I’ve got a book on all this stuff.

He does indeed.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Busted

1 Comment

It will be interesting to see how how NBC (and Dan Abrams) respond to this:

As a matter of fact, I had other things to occupy my time in the White House in 2002 rather than “structuring” a campaign for an Alabama gubernatorial candidate, calling people to raise money for his race, and going through the arduous task of “putting together a strategy.” And I certainly didn’t meet with anyone at the Justice Department or either of the two U.S. Attorneys in Alabama about investigating or indicting Siegelman. My involvement in the campaign was to approve a request that the President appear at a Riley campaign fundraising event, one of several score fundraising events the President did that election cycle.

It boils down to this: as a journalist, do you feel you have a responsibility to dig into the claims made by your guests, seek out evidence and come to a professional judgment as to the real facts? Or do you feel if a charge is breathtaking enough, thoroughly checking it out isn’t a necessity?

I know you might be concerned that asking these questions could restrict your ability to make sensational charges on the air, but don’t you think you have a responsibility to provide even a shred of supporting evidence before sullying the journalistic reputations of MSNBC and NBC?

People used to believe journalists were searching for the truth. But your cable show increasingly seems to be focused on wishful thinking, hoping something is one way and diminishing the search for facts and evidence in favor of repeating your fondest desires.

So what else is new?

History, Political Commentary

The Fascists Lose In Italy–Again

5 Comments

Jonah Goldberg’s book has provided a clearer, better-focused lens through which to view the world. For instance, it now becomes clear that the recent Italian political earthquake was a victory for the true, classical liberal right, and a major defeat for a resurgence of the smiley-faced fascism that has held much of Europe in its grip for the past decades, despite the defeat of the more virulent forms of it in World War II. Here are the values that won, and lost:

The election campaign itself was the most rigorously fought in Italy since its liberation from Fascist rule in 1944. Berlusconi, often portrayed by the media as something of a clown if not a conjurer of tricks, put the case for a market-based capitalist and democratic system in simple but powerful terms.

His rival, former Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni, leader of the new Democratic Party, succeeded in putting forward the case for a social-democratic system, with the state playing the central role as a distributor of wealth and welfare.

Berlusconi spoke of discipline, family values, hard work and individual generosity. Veltroni countered with his talk of solidarity, sharing and collective compassion.

Text coloration mine. All of the red rhetoric could have come right out of Benito Mussolini’s playbook. The green stuff is “right wing.”

With this defeat, and the complete political demise of one of the oldest and most extreme fascist movements–the Communist Party–perhaps the Italians have finally laid the old socialist to rest.