Leave it to Ann Coulter: “Arlen Specter just switched to the Dead Party.”
De mortuis nil nisi bonum, so having nothing good to say, I have no comment.
The Soft Bigotry
…of low expectations:
Nothing works to destroy self-esteem quite like telling a black child he will be held to a far lower standard than whites, Asians, or Hispanics. Recognition that poverty plays a role in lower test scores is one thing; codifying that difference by telling students that you are expected to underachieve compared to other children is tantamount to surrender. The problem is too large and too complex to solve so we will hide our failure by simply dumbing down the standards by which we judge our own progress.
The bigotry actually isn’t all that soft.
Baumgartner Bleg
Does anyone know what regulatory hoops Red Bull Stratos had to jump through to do the flight, other than getting the air space from the FSDO?
The Madrid Train Bombings
Are the Benghazi attacks the equivalent for Barack Obama?
They should be.
Gerard Van Der Leun
Happy Rebirthday!
Baumgartner
…is about to jump. He’s almost to altitude. Here’s a live link. He just beat Kittinger’s altitude record on his way to his ultimate altitude.
[Update a while after the successful dive and landing]
Here’s the Gray Lady’s take:
“It was harder than I expected,” Mr. Baumgarter said after returning by helicopter to mission control in Roswell. “Trust me, when you stand up there on top of the world, you become so humble. It’s not about breaking records anymore. It’s not about getting scientific data. It’s all about coming home.”
I’m going to have to add this to my space safety paper. No one in the government was responsible for regulating his safety to jump from a balloon. Why would they do it for him to jump from a rocket?
[Update a few minutes later]
An interesting coincidence (it has to be that, because he wanted to do it earlier this week). The first supersonic flight of a human in a suit took place on the 65th anniversary of the first controlled supersonic flight of an aircraft. And he’s going to do it again with an F-15 to commemorate it.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Talk about one giant leap for a man.
Only In LA
“Politicized Benghazi”
…distracts from Big Bird. A must-read from Mark Steyn:
“There’s only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane.”
She’s right! The United States is the first nation in history whose democracy has evolved to the point where its leader is provided with a wide-body transatlantic jet in order to campaign on the vital issue of public funding for sock puppets. Sure, Caligula put his horse in the Senate, but it was a real horse. At Ohio State University, the rapper will.i.am introduced the President by playing the Sesame Street theme tune, which, oddly enough, seems more apt presidential walk-on music for the Obama era than “Hail To The Chief.”
I can’t figure out who’s the bigger embarrassment to the Dems, Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz, or Stephanie Cutter.
Hillary’s Bus
Will this Obama/Biden message of “We killed Osama but they forgot to remind us about the blowback” really carry them past the election? The buck stops where?
I suspect that Mitt will make this a (to use a Bidenism) big effing deal during the debates.
[Update a couple minutes later]
More Hillary bus thoughts at PJMedia.
That Hit Piece On SpaceX
I critique it, over at PJMedia.