Category Archives: Political Commentary

Trump’s NASA Proposal

Loren Grush has the details.

This is just a proposal; as she notes, Culberson is likely to restore the Europa lander. And in general, the White House proposes, and Congress disposes. What really matters is what gets appropriated.

Shared Risk

No, that’s not how insurance works. The word “insurance” has lost all meaning in the context of the health-care debate.

But this raises another issue. I’ve been seeing stories that insurance companies are factoring “climate change” into their premiums. These people have real skin in the climate game, and I’m wondering if they’re taking the “climate scientists” too seriously, and creating a market opportunity for an insurer who doesn’t buy the nonsense?

A Coup Is In Progress

But I beg to differ with Mr. Hinderaker; it’s not a “liberal” coup, but a leftist one.

[Update a few minutes later]

Could someone inform the federal judiciary that Jihadis are Muslims?

Like Charles Cooke, I don’t agree with the policy, but this ruling was lawless.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The courts in Hawaii and the 9th circuit have essentially stripped the president of his powers. It will take SCOTUS to restore. And funny how these people never mind the tyrannical and actually lawless behavior of Barack Obama.

[Update a while later]

Grandstanding judicial supremacy must end. Basically, the ruling was based on mind reading, and feelings.

If You Lose Your Health Insurance

Are you really worse off?

The word “insurance” has lost all meaning when it comes to health care, and the continual confusion and conflation of the two lies at the root of much of the problem. Crazy idea: I want a health savings account to deal with normal medical expenses, and insurance for catastrophes. You know, the way insurance used to be until it got screwed up by wage controls during the war and union negotiators.

The Planetary Society

Entirely not unexpectedly, they have some terrible suggestions for Trump and NASA:

  1. Maintain the exploration of Mars as the organizing principle for NASA’s human spaceflight program
  2. Direct NASA to plan an executable, affordable path for sending humans to Mars orbit by 2033
  3. Expand NASA’s highly successful science portfolio
  4. Continue to grow and support the commercial space industry
  5. Initiate annual five percent increases to NASA’s budget for five years

The only good one is the fourth. Here are mine:

  1. Make the continuous reduction of the cost of space activities the organizing principle for NASA’s human spaceflight program
  2. Direct NASA to end development of its own launch systems and to start to procure propellant in LEO to enable trips beyond
  3. Expand NASA’s science portfolio with data purchases
  4. Continue to grow and support the commercial space industry
  5. Direct funding from SLS/Orion to support 1-4

The Trouble With Barry

Yes, he should be investigated:

There have been weak presidents, deluded presidents, and harmful presidents before him, but never has there been anyone as sinister or questionable as Obama, not excluding even the malefic Jimmy Carter or the sleazy Bill Clinton. What J. R. Dunn writing in American Thinker has said of Hillary, “the most repellent and corrupt American presidential candidate since Aaron Burr,” is equally true, in my estimation, of Barack Obama. Meanwhile, it is Trump who faces a barrage of threats, calls for impeachment and acts of disobedience that would have been more explicable if levied against Obama for his historic deceptions and malfeasances. Under the pestilential reign of Obama, and indeed years of Democratic incumbency, the shining city on the hill has become a murky city in the swamp.

The trouble with Barry is not only that he refuses to go away, materializing like Harry where he has no business being, or that he enjoys, à la Hitchcock, making cameo appearances in whatever political film he happens to be directing at the moment. All this would be perfectly acceptable, even agreeable, were he a benign presence or if he had Hitchcock’s talent for deadpan humor and high entertainment rather than a penchant for malice and misconduct.

He seems determined to outdo Jimmy Carter as our worst former President.