Is the scandal finally about to explode?
If so, it’s way overdue. Everyone who’s ever handled classified material knows that they’d be sporting orange after all this, if they had some last name other than “Clinton.”
Category Archives: Political Commentary
No, Senator McCain
The Delta is not a way to replace RD-180s.
I can’t figure out if McCain is stupid, venal, or both.
Hillary And The Aliens
She seems to be into the UFO conspiracy theories. Nadia Drake responds.
Let’s make her president!
(And remember, the Democrats are the Party of Science™)
Dick Shelby
It is theoretically conceivable that there have been chairs of the Senate budget committee more damaging to the future of spaceflight than him, but I don’t want to do the necessary research to determine it, and the thought itself is pretty frightening.
Kudos to Eric Berger for continuing to cover this like almost no one else in the media.
[Late-evening update]
Bad link, fixed now. Sorry!
Trump’s Tax Returns
Yes, this is an amazing story in an already amazing election season:
A friend of Donald Trump’s recently approached him to suggest that he will eventually have to release his tax returns, as every presidential nominee has for decades. The friend told Trump that he should do it before the GOP convention to ensure everyone can process what’s in the returns and help make any revelations “old news” by November. If Trump didn’t do that, he was warned, the odds of politicized leaks from his returns were high, citing several examples from the Obama era, including the illegal leaking of some of Romney’s tax information by the IRS in 2012.
“What will you do if the returns come out as part of an October surprise?” Trump was asked. Trump pondered the question and replied, “I’ll say they aren’t mine.” That stunning answer is the essence of Donald Trump. “It’s exactly what I’d expect him to say,” Fox Business’s Charlie Gasparino, who has known Trump for decades, told me. But while Donald Trump has made a life out of bluffing his way past problems and cavalier comments, it’s harder to succeed doing that at the presidential level.
Trump may be inching up in polls now, but one sharp wrong turn could send him spinning off the road. A political party that nominates Trump without seeing his tax returns could be committing political suicide and endangering dozens of down-ballot GOP candidates. Even Superman met his match with kryptonite.
People keep saying that, but…
The Latest Book Review
Roger Launius has reviewed it over at Quest, but for subscribers only (I think it will become available when the next issue comes out). It was interesting, in that it was more of a good summary, with no value judgments, though in an email he did say it was “thought provoking.” And he had no criticism of facts or history, so that’s a good thing. It may be the first “peer reviewed” review I’ve gotten. FWIW
Presidential Politics And Space
This piece seems sort of clueless about how space policy works:
While 65,000 people have signed a petition asking NASA to send the Republican front-runner into space and leave him there, it looks far more likely that Trump will be in the position to decide how much money the agency will receive.
No, as they note earlier, it is Congress who decides how much money the agency receives. All the president can do is make a request.
It rather looks like Trump plans to continue Obama’s alleged gutting of the agency, and if that happens, the Mars mission would be in serious jeopardy.
Pro tip: With regard to this, and their later comment about Sanders, there is no “Mars mission,” and NASA’s inability to get to Mars has little to nothing to do with how much money it receives.
And they act as though Hillary maintaining the status quo would be a good thing.
Feh.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here‘s a smarter (not hard! But it is worth a read) from Stephen Smith on Elon’s Mars threats to maintaining SLS pork, with bonus commentary on the schizophrenia of planetary protection.
Against Trump
In light of comments at this post, interesting to note Ross Douthat’s conservative case against him this weekend.
The Iran “Deal”
Their foreign-policy guru is apparently proud of the number of lies they told to shove it through.
[Late-afternoon update]
.@JRubinBlogger It's like Lincoln's 'Team of Rivals', except with more grad poetry school dropouts and campaign van drivers.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 5, 2016
[Friday-morning update]
More thoughts from Ace:
So where is the media on this? This is not an accusation; this is an admission by Ben Rhodes as well as some of the key players in his shop. Who named themselves — they’re not anonymous. They admitted these things.
So we have lies, schemes to deceive, willing stooges in the media eager to transmit those lies (as they have no expertise of their own to offer, except what the failed novelist Ben Rhodes puts in their heads), and all over an inarguably major subject — foreign policy, and specifically, the nukes Obama gave Iran.
Where.
The F**k.
Is the Media?
As usual — covering up for their dirty-dealing colleagues.
As noted, follow Tom Nichols on Twitter for a good analysis.
And note the bottom line from Lee Smith:
For the last seven years the American public has been living through a postmodern narrative crafted by an extremely gifted and unspeakably cynical political operative whose job is to wage digital information campaigns designed to dismantle a several-decade old security architecture while lying about the nature of the Iranian regime. No wonder Americans feel less safe–they are.
Yup.
White House flunky taunts press as servile lapdogs for fawning coverage. Only @DPRK_News forthrightly criticizes gangster Obama government.
— DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) May 6, 2016
[Bumped]
[Update a while later]
Well, over at Foreign Policy, Thomas Ricks certainly doesn’t pull any punches, beginning with the headline.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The meanest thing you can do is compare someone to Holden Caulfield, the worst character in American fiction.
— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) May 6, 2016
[Update a few minutes later]
Meet the flim-flam man behind Obama’s foreign-policy initiatives.
Trump’s National Finance Chair
…is a Hillary Clinton donor who has worked for George Soros.
But don’t call him a Democrat!