Eric Berger says he’s likely to be approved as NASA administrator.
[Thursday-morning update]
Buzz Aldrin and Greg Autry: It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to run NASA.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Trump’s Art Of The Deal
Thoughts from Jonah Goldberg, with which I completely agree:
I am coming around to the position that the vast bulk of punditry in defense of Donald Trump is little different from hepatoscopy, chiromancy, tasseography, and other “sciences” that imbue essentially random phenomena with deep and prophetic significance (this is not to say that orbistry, the practice of explaining everything weird in this crazy world, is not 100 percent correct).
Let’s just look at the past week. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to “immediately terminate” the DACA program if elected. In June, he flipped and said it would stay in place. Going into this week, the White House signaled that it would get rid of the program. On Tuesday, Trump’s attorney general came out and declared that the program was unconstitutional. And, in a move I praised, Trump said that he would give the task of dealing with the issue to Congress. But, after watching negative TV coverage and bristling at Barack Obama’s criticism, Trump flopped. In a tweet, Trump suggested he wants Congress to legalize the program, not get rid of it. And if Congress failed, he might have to “revisit” the issue, implying that Trump might use the same unconstitutional measures Obama used.
Now, in fairness to Trump, he’s always been torn on the issue, and rightly so. Deporting the “Dreamers” is a terrible idea. But the position of most immigration hawks has always been that we should trade some form of amnesty in exchange for serious border-security measures and/or implementation of E-verify or similar steps.
So, let’s consider instead the other big news this week. President Trump threw Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and the House Freedom Caucus under the bus to cut a deal with “Chuck and Nancy” on a short-term extension of the debt ceiling. Wait, scratch that. He didn’t “cut a deal” with the Democrats, he simply took their first offer in exchange for . . . nothing. He took a “deal” to get Harvey relief passed despite the fact that Harvey relief would have passed anyway. This was not The Art of the Deal. It was — to borrow a phrase from Seth Mandel — The Art of the Kneel.
Trump kicked the can to December, when his leverage will be weaker, apparently in a glandular act of spite against McConnell and Ryan. John Boehner was hounded out of office by tea-party types for even considering cutting far better debt-ceiling deals with Barack Obama. In both of these cases, the response from legions of Trumpers was rapturous approval of his genius and/or his willingness to punish McConnell and Ryan.
It’s almost as though his vaunted ability to do deals is highly overrated.
Also, read on for a devastating critique of Rachel Maddow’s misleading history of the Wilson administration.
Global Warming
…may be happening more slowly than the models predicted.
You don’t say. But those of us who were appropriately skeptical about the models at the time were called “deniers” and worse.
[via Iain Murray]
[Update a few minutes later]
Tim Ball: Climate models can’t even approximate reality. The hubris of these people who think they can model climate with any confidence whatsoever is astounding.
Freedom Of Expression
Mr. Phillips, 61, grew emotional as he talked about the case.
“I have no problem serving anybody — gay, straight, Muslim, Hindu,” he said. “Everybody that comes in my door is welcome here, and any of the products I normally sell I’m glad to sell to anybody.”
But a custom-made wedding cake is another matter, he said.
“Because of my faith, I believe the Bible teaches clearly that it’s a man and a woman,” he said. Making a cake to celebrate something different, he said, “causes me to use the talents that I have to create an artistic expression that violates that faith.”
Mr. Mullins and Mr. Craig, speaking in the kitchen in their Denver home, rejected the distinctions Mr. Phillips drew.
“Our story is about us being turned away and discriminated against by a public business,” said Mr. Mullins, 33, an office manager, poet, musician and photographer.
Who would want to have a wedding cake provided under legal duress? It’s totalitarian.
A Private Chinese Space Company
…wants to emulate SpaceX. I take this much more seriously than anything the Chinese government claims to plan.
The “Dreamers”
Roger Simon says they shoud stay, but never vote.
I had a slightly different take on it several years ago. The vote should be a privilege to be earned, not automatically granted.
1913
It, and the Wilson administration, was the beginning of the end of the Republic. I would love (at a minimum) to repeal both the 16th and 17 Amendments.
Whistleblower Or Wrongdoer?
Jonathan Turley: The White House is right about Comey’s potential criminality.
Whatever respect I’d ever harbored for Comey has evaporated over the past year and a half.
Huma
New emails reveal that she mishandled classified information much more than we previously knew.
This is my shocked face.
[Update mid morning]
As I’ve noted before, the Democrats’ tolerance of the Clinton’s corruption was the final straw for me with them in the 90s. And it continues.
Jeff Sessions
So Trump called him an idiot, and told him to quit? Well, he is, and he should. But why does he still have his job? For someone who became famous in part for publicly firing people, Trump sure seems to have a hard time actually doing it.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Speaking of idiots, Joe Biden is saying that people who support due process under the law are just like Nazis. Right.