Category Archives: Political Commentary

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Chappaquiddick

4 Comments

Half a century later, still covering for the Kennedy’s.

The media cover up was aided by the fact that it happened during the moon landing.

[Update mid-afternoon]

Fifty years later, the media continues to whitewash Chappaqiddick.

“[The Lion of the Senate] was Kennedy’s nickname. He was like a lion, in the sense that he mated without limit and killed without remorse.”

Heh.

I disagree though, on one of his movie recommendations. There are many better documentaries of how we got to the moon than First Man, which was about Neil Armstrong, not Apollo per se. The best I’ve seen (and I saw it in IMAX at the NASM a few weeks ago) is Apollo 11. The most surprising thing about it, considering how good it is, is that it was produced by CNN. I recorded it a few days ago to watch tomorrow with friends.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society, War Commentary

The Gray Lady

19 Comments

Continues to diminish the achievement of Apollo 11.

https://twitter.com/SonnyBunch/status/1151874382098128896

[Update a couple minutes later]

Related: Apollo Shrugs.

[Late-afternoon update]

Treacher: Yeah, well, the Soviets sent women and minorities into space first.

[Friday-morning update]

More thoughts from Karol Markowicz (who was born in the Soviet Union):

Sure, Communists tortured and executed dissidents, starved their own people by the millions and operated gulags — but have you heard about their amazing space feminism and space intersectionality?

“Cosmonaut diversity was key for the Soviet message to the rest of the globe,” the writer, Sophie Pinkham, wrote. Her piece reads like something from an old issue of the Soviet newspaper Pravda boasting of the achievements of the Soviet space program.

It’s not like this is anything new from the paper.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Truth Comes Out

2 Comments

“Washington has laid all the ugly cards out on the table, and at last we have clarity.”

What a scene it presents. On the one hand is a group of people who think America is the source of all evil that should spend the rest of its historical existence atoning for the mischief it has loosed in the world. On the other hand is a group who believe that for all its faults it is the greatest country in the world and that those who want to destroy it should go back to Somalia. Whichever point of view you subscribe to (or neither) it’s hard to deny that these factions have existed for some time and are only now coming to grips in the open.

Yes.

[Update a while later]

Trump is not a racist: He’s just moving the Overton Window back to normal.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

NASA’s Next Fifty Years

11 Comments

Thoughts from Bob Zubrin:

If NASA wants to send humans to the Moon or Mars, it should not spend billions on random cost-plus infrastructure projects that supposedly might come in handy if some day there were a program to go. Instead it should just take competitive bids for delivery services. It should incentivize the development of additional systems, including rovers, habitats, life support, power units, space suits and so on, the same way.

It’s pretty clear that, whatever individuals might desire, institutionally, neither NASA or Congress care whether or not they send humans to the moon or Mars, and haven’t since 1972. I do think, though, that despite Bob’s skepticism, the entrepreneurs will get us there.