What would it take to bring Jon Snow back? (Spoiler alert for GoT fans.)
Death is not a binary state, as I’ve written in the past.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
The Late Jumpers On The Trump Train
I agree with Jonah: I’m not going to abandon my principles just because he is “a winner”:
The “people have spoken” is not some abracadabra phrase that can change my opinions, never mind my convictions. If “the people” vote that I must hate dogs, I’m not going to start hating dogs. If a plurality of Republican primary voters tells me I have to like blue cheese, I’m not going to start liking blue cheese. And even if 99.99 percent of Americans tell me that I should shed my opinions of Donald Trump, I’m not going to do that either. New facts or some new argument — in theory — could make me change my mind. But crowds, mobs, twitter trolls, bullying hacks, eye-rolling apparatchiks – or even voters can’t just because they all shout at once. Why? Because I am not a politician.
There is no quantity of inevitability about Trump as the nominee that will win my support for such a disaster.
— Apostle To Morons (@Rand_Simberg) May 4, 2016
[Update later morning]
Why #NeverTrump remains relevant. Yes, it wasn’t about denying him the nomination, per se. It’s about preserving what few limited-government principles the party had left.
[Late-morning update]
Five reasons Cruz shouldn’t have dropped out.
I was surprised. When I heard that late deciders had been going for Cruz, I saw it as a good sign going forward. I can only think that his CA donors told him to give it up.
Green Energy
How the greens killed it.
If you claim to be concerned about climate change, and don’t support nuclear energy, you have some other agenda.
Let’s Make Her President!
Getting Humans On Mars
Will SpaceX do it before NASA does?
That would be the way to bet, absent some dramatic change in attitude on the Hill.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Speaking of which, one of a very long series of essays (including a lot of history) on why SpaceX will settle Mars. Because it’s a priority for Elon Musk, but not for the federal government.
Also, more and more people in the media are starting to notice the absurdity of SLS. Plus Garver unchained. Plus, thoughts on the program from a (smart) layman.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here is the Space News op-ed from Lori, with a lot of interesting history of the transition in 2009.
Trump Versus Clinton
The latest Rasmussen. Put me with “someone else” (particularly given that I don’t vote in a swing state).
As I’ve been saying on Twitter for months, my concern with a Trump/Clinton match up isn’t that Clinton will win, but that one of them will, and both are terrible. I’d like to see a poll with some specific names (e.g., Cruz, Ryan, Mattis, Gary Johnson) as “other.”
Losing Weight And Keeping It Off
The amount of unconscious junk science in this NYT article is staggering.
Note the underlying assumption: that calorie counting is useful, that burning calories (i.e., exercise) is useful, and that the type of calories you consume is irrelevant. And it’s all about the weight (they didn’t mention BMI, but I’ll bet they were measuring it). Did any of them do strength training? Because exchanging muscle for fat will increase metabolism.
Regulating Low Earth Orbit And Beyond
OSTP is recommending it be given to the FAA. I disagree, and will have a piece about this soon.
Climate Hustle
The documentary will be seeable in movie theaters tonight (not sure why they can’t get it distributed more than that).
A roundup of reviews and thoughts from Judith Curry.
Why Trump Is Worse
…than any previous Republican nominee (discounting the fact that he’s not really a Republican):
We know, from his deeds, words, and even his pronouncements in this campaign, that Trump offers nothing to conservatives – worse than nothing, he would evict us from any position within our own party. He gets his foreign policy ideas from Michael Moore and Code Pink (or worse yet, from Vladimir Putin); his abortion views are grounded in his sympathy with Planned Parenthood; he supports socialized medicine in the form of single-payer healthcare, higher taxes, more government spending, and Herbert Hoover’s trade policy. He’s never met a bailout or a crony-capitalist deal he didn’t like, or a Democrat he wouldn’t donate to. He’s astonishingly ignorant, emotionally unstable, and wholly incapable of saying no to Democrats. Trump is a spoiled, entitled rich kid who shows not the slightest understanding of the American way of up-by-the booststraps striving to better yourself; in Trump’s world, the rich get richer by having the right friends, and everybody else is a serf who needs the government to protect them from foreign competition.
Let’s compare Trump to some of the prior Republican presidential losers, and I’ll throw in Rudy and Newt for good measure since I’ve written on this site in their defense before…
RTWT.
[Update a while later]
In short: yes, you can find an example of many of Trump’s flaws in prior Republican presidential candidates. But not one of those candidates combined the total package of Trump: the unfitness to be Commander-in-Chief; the total lack of accomplishments, sacrifices or even efforts over his lifetime for any cause we believe in, combined with repeated efforts to assist the other team; the manifest lack of political principle, personal character or demonstrated political character; the ignorance; the catnip for white supremacists; the toxic effect on the brand of both the party and its ideas.
A vote for Trump, even in the general election, is a suicide note for the Republican Party and the conservative movement. I will never vote for Hillary Clinton, but I cannot in good conscience ever give aid and comfort to Donald Trump and the poison he represents.
That’s my current attitude. I don’t know whom I’ll vote for — it will depend on what I see on the ballot.