Could a Republican be about to take the seat of Gerri Ferraro and Chuckie Schumer? It’s about Israel, and gay marriage.
Albany is run by the Dems, and if they lose that seat, they may just redistrict it out of existence (something they were considering after Weiner imploded anyway). But psychologically, such a perceived referendum on the White House won’t bode well for the election next year and traditional Jewish support for both Obama and Democrats in general.
…there is none. And as Michael Ledeen reminds us, events in Libya, Syria, Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan are not unrelated — they are all battles in a much larger war, the one that replaced the Cold War in pitting totalitarians against the liberal West.
…are bunk.
With regard to stinkum in general, I don’t have a very good sense of smell, so if I can smell a woman’s perfume when I’m not in close proximity, she’s definitely wearing too much.
Frank J.: “Obama inherited his problems from Bush, and being a good steward, he’s preserved his inheritance for future generations.”
So, the Aerospace Industries Association has issued a position paper for a strategy on human space exploration, but it’s pretty unspecific about what the actual policy should be:
Developing this recommended path forward will not be easy; to that end, AIA encourages this Independent Study on Human Exploration of Space to address in detail:
• Near term human exploration milestones including robotic precursors. The lack of proximate exploration activity now could severely hinder our future exploration capability.
• Mission-oriented technology priorities that tie development of needed enabling technologies to milestones on our track toward eventual Mars exploration.
• Integration of science and technology missions with a parallel human exploration strategy. Exploration, science, and technology must progress hand in hand.
• The implementation, within fiscal constraint guidance, of societal and national goals stated as Key Objectives in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010.
• Path forward options if fiscal constraints change.
One good thing — there’s no mention whatsoever of heavy lift. The only way defenders of it will find it is to call it a “mission-oriented technology” or “needed enabling technology” for Mars. But it’s a hard case to make, if orbital storage and transfer of propellant is deployed.
Is anyone out there familiar with Nuxeo?
Good riddance. We should celebrate such a rare event — a less obtrusive government, and a victory for the First Amendment.
I’m compensating for the fact that criminals don’t obey gun laws, myself. Not to mention that some of them might be jealous of the size of my…you know.
I find this story kind of incredible. The hotel itself seems feasible enough, but how in the world do they expect to get the cost down to less than $200,000 per person? And the comments are hilariously clueless. I particularly liked this one:
As much as I would love to go to space, I think it would get very boring after about 5 min of looking out the tiny window. you would be seeing the same view for 5 days, and who seriously is going to look out of the window the whole time? the rest of the time you’re spending it in cramped quarters. I really feel humans do not belong in outer space.
“Feel” is the operative word here. This is clearly a person who doesn’t do much in the way of real thinking.
No, it isn’t Islam — it’s Marxism.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems related, somehow. How is Warren Buffett like the Pope? They’re both completely clueless about how economies work:
The great advantage of competition in markets is that it exhausts all gains from trade, which thus allows individuals to attain higher levels of welfare. These win/win propositions may not reach the perfect endpoint, but they will avoid the woes that are now consuming once prosperous economies. Understanding the win/win concept would have taken the Pope away from his false condemnation of markets. It might have led him to examine more closely Spain’s profligate policies, where high guaranteed public benefits and extensive workplace regulation have led to an unholy mix of soaring public debt and an unemployment rate of 20 percent. It is a tragic irony that papal economics mimic those of the Church’s socialist opponents. The Pope’s powerful but misdirected words will only complicate the task of meaningful fiscal and regulatory reform in Spain and the rest of Europe. False claims for social justice come at a very high price.
A similarly harsh verdict must be rendered on Warren Buffett, whose much discussed editorial in the New York Times foolishly condemns the very economic system that allowed him to flourish as an extraordinary investor. Rhetorically, Buffett’s editorial reads like the confession of a man who got away with putting his hand in the cookie jar. He starts by insisting that in difficult times the principle of “equal sacrifice” should guide collective deliberations. In good autobiographical fashion, he then admits that the current tax system has allowed him to get away with paying just under $7 million in taxes this past year, which works out to be 17.4 percent of his $40 million personal income.
In Buffett’s utopian world, higher taxes, including higher capital gains taxes, magically generate the revenues needed to eliminate the current massive deficit. For this bold proposition, we have Buffett’s personal assurance that he has never seen capital gains rates that approach 40 percent “scare off” large or small investors. This is a simple case of sampling error, for those people who are scared off by high capital gains taxes don’t beat a path to his doorway in the first place. It would have been better if Buffett had addressed the “lock-in effect” with respect to capital gains. People only pay capital gains when they sell their stock. Accordingly, investors are highly sensitive to the capital gains rate, because why sell if the net proceeds from the sale are so small that they more than negate a higher rate of return from a shrunken capital base?
On this logic, lower capital gains rates generate more tax revenue for the federal government.
Of course, according to the president, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is “fairness.”