For the record, I want to commend NASA on its willingness to send astronauts out when they still have an unknown problem with the EMU. Fixing the ISS justifies the risk.
Is Safety Stifling Space Development?
In which I’m interviewed by Popular Mechanics about the book. Which can be purchased on the button over to the leftright.
[Update a few minutes later]
I’d forgotten that it was on the right in the new template.
Coal Versus Eco-Bullies
It has to engage in an all-out, unapologetic war.
Yes, call them out for the unscientific ideologues that they are.
The EPA On Trial
An amicus brief has been filed against the agency. Bottom line: the purpose of the Clean Air Act was to deal with local air-quality issues, not mythical global ones. The SCOTUS’s previous ruling was a terrible one, based on what can now be seen to be junk science.
Stifling Climate Dissent
How Reddit has discredited itself with censorship.
Fighting A Fire With Kerosene
Somehow, this situation seems like a metaphor for Democrat policies.
The “Benefits” Of ObamaCare
The U.S. Supreme Court held that the Congress exceeded its authority by “mandating” the purchase of health insurance, but it saved the law by construing the mandate as a tax on being uninsured. Being surprised that the uninsured would object to such a tax is like being surprised that yacht owners would object to George H.W. Bush’s luxury tax on yachts.
In short, what ObamaCare means to the uninsured who were not uninsurable is higher prices for a product they already were disinclined to buy, along with a punitive tax on not buying it. That seems more like a mugging than a benefit.
How many of the uninsured lack insurance because of pre-existing conditions? It’s hard to know, but it would appear the proportion is not high. A September Kaiser Family Foundation study reported that “the high cost of insurance is the main reason why people go without coverage.” It includes a pie chart with the following breakdown of reasons for lacking insurance: Insurance not affordable, 31.6%; lost job, 29.4%; other, 17.4%; no offer, 11.2%; aged out/left school, 8.8%; no need, 1.5%.
Arguably the problem of the uninsurable was a market failure that justified government intervention of some sort. If ObamaCare’s architects had approached the matter intelligently, they would have conducted research to identify the extent of that precise problem and carefully targeted their response. Government is quite capable of implementing even modest programs disastrously, but the hubris of demanding “comprehensive reform” gave us a law that had to be marketed via massive consumer fraud, and that harms almost everyone it affects.
The next time this clown circus approaches any policy issue intelligently will be the first.
Another ObamaCare Court Case
Could this be the one that kills it?
The Gun Control Movement
…and its inherent dishonesty.
Accepting The Settlements
…is the sine qua non of any serious peace agreement in Israel:
The Irish no longer care. They are neither Catholic nor nationalistic. The IRA thugs of 1970 came from four-child families. Today the Irish have fewer than two children on average. Let the matter simmer for another twenty years, and the Palestinian Arabs will look more like the Irish of 1996 than the Irish of 1970. At that point, the “narrative” will change, because no one will care about the old “narrative.”
In the meantime the Israeli settlers have built a garden and a workshop where before there were bare rocks, and thriving communities that are integral parts of Israeli society. It takes longer to get crosstown in Manhattan in traffic than it does to drive from the center of Tel Aviv to Ariel, the largest town in Samaria. This is yet another accomplishment of Jewish ingenuity and industriousness, and it is (or should be) an inspiring example to all who hope for a better life for the peoples of the Middle East. We will know that the Palestinians want peace when they admire rather than abhor this effort.
As science progresses, so also peace will come to that region, funeral by funeral.
[Update a while later]
Related: The daily lies about Israel.