What’s not to like? Unless you’re a cost-plust contractor, of course. Or a Senator more interested in “jobs” than progress or parsimony with the taxpayers’ money.
One application not mentioned — interorbital LEO tugs. And safe haven co-orbiting facilities that would eliminate much of the need for an ISS lifeboat (though not ambulance).
Many have advocated for years that NASA shouldn’t just send the steely-eyed missile men into space, but teachers, journalists, and artists, to properly articulate the experience and make it more accessible to the public. Well, the teacher things didn’t work out so well, and they never got around to a journalist (Miles O’Brien was being considered, IIRC, prior to the Columbia loss). And they’ve never even thought much about an artist, but that’s OK, because one is going to pay his own way. Private enterprise at work.
This is the future of human spaceflight, not government employees.
[Early afternoon update]
Related thoughts from Jeff Foust.
Why Van Jones was the right man for the job:
…let’s not miss the opportunity to point out that Jones’s promotion of “green jobs” was just as dubious, if not as reviled, as his dabblings in 9/11 Trutherism. As James Pethokoukis tweeted: “having a truther in charge of green jobs is a good fit… you need a certain willing suspension of disbelief for both”
To buy into the “green jobs” scam, you must have an unshakeable faith in the ability of the government to create a viable industry from whole cloth, because there is no commercial demand for the services these green-collar workers would provide. We don’t have to guess about the future of green jobs; we can look to the ethanol industry.
They never learn.
It should be apparent by now that Communism never died. The Soviet Union died. Being a Communist, or a neocommunist, is not an intellectual anachronism at all — it is quite the fashion in the academy and our other institutions. Does Charles not realize, for example, that Obama’s friend Bill Ayers — who proudly calls himself “a small ‘c’ communist” — was in 2008 elected vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation’s largest organization of education professors and researchers? (See Sol Stern’s profile of Ayers and education, here). I’m not sure “pathetic” is the right word, but what is a perilous intellectual anachronism is the belief that the communist threat ended 18 years ago.
The Jones incident, moreover, does not indicate that “we had a communist in the U.S. government.” To the contrary, as I argued last night, we have a U.S. government in which Van Jones was quite consciously selected because his views are representative of the president who made him the “green jobs czar.” Van Jones isn’t Alger Hiss. There’s nothing covert about him. He didn’t snooker Obama into bringing him aboard. He is who he is, and that’s why Obama wanted him. Having a Communist in that job was perfect since the “green jobs” initiative is an important part of the hard Left’s agenda to use environmentalism as an additional justification for usurping command of the economy.
In fact, the death of the Soviet Union has actually been a boon for neocommunists. Now, Obama and his fellow travelers like Jones, Ayers, Wright, Klonsky, and ACORN, can spout all the same totalitarian, anti-American, central-planning ideas the hard Left has always pushed, but in the abstract — under such mushy labels as “social justice” and “green jobs.” That is, they are liberated from having to defend the Soviet Empire, which, until 1991, was a living, breathing, concrete example of how horrific these ideas are when put in practice.
Yes, the superficially attractive (to those unfamiliar with human nature or economics) but ultimately disastrous idea lives on in the academy, and now in Washington. And our wonderful media, of course, thinks it’s no big deal, or are even attracted to it, not recognizing it for what it is.
We’ve been putting the labor into the Labor Day weekend, cleaning out the garage and attic, and culling out stuff that we don’t want to take back to California. It’s typical south Florida weather (hurricane-prep weather) — hot and humid. I start dripping if I’m just standing outside the protection of the air conditioning, without even doing any work. I’ve drunk about ten glasses of water today, and it all goes out through my sweat glands, and never has time to get to my bladder.
Makes sense to me (once I put on my loon hat).
[Update on Monday morning]
If you’re only a reader of the New York Times, you still don’t know why Van Jones resigned, though you may think you do. This is shameful, and at this point, almost surreal.
Mark Steyn is the victim of shoddy reporting:
As I understand it, what we’re supposed to miss about US newspapers will be the “layers of fact-checking” and rigorous editing. In reality, a significant percentage of American newspapering is little more than provincial wannabes doing New York Times karaoke – which might have made more sense before young Sulzberger drove his paper to junk stock and into the arms of its unlikely Mexican benefactor. Meanwhile, tens of millions of real people hear Rush’s show, but any similarity between the audio and the version that appears in the “newspaper of record” is entirely coincidental.
As for my former colleague in Dublin, too many overseas “bureaus” in Washington boil down to paying someone to relocate halfway round the world, sit in an office at the National Press Building and transcribe The New York Times and Wolf Blitzer’s “Situation Room” all day long. An expensive business model.
Expensive, with a crappy product.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Related thoughts from Kaus:
I’ve been waiting for the day when a prominent pol resigns and for print MSM readers it appears to be out-of-the-blue, though everyone on the Web knows the whole story. But for WaPo’s Franke-Ruta and Kornblut, this would be that case. … In any case, more evidence that you can’t find out whats going on by reading the Times.
But you can find out things that aren’t going on, like Mark Steyn saying that Obama is like Saddam and the Dear Leader.
Right in the middle of holiday weekend. Does this mean that the story goes away with him, or will some intrepid reporter have the temerity to ask the White House on Tuesday how he got there in the first place, and how the vetting process broke down? If it did?
I think that it simply didn’t occur to these creatures like Valerie Jarrett that his viewpoints would be controversial. After all, it’s probably what they believe themselves.
[Update mid morning]
More thoughts from Maguire. And from Scott Johnson:
Jones claimed to have been the victim of a “vicious smear campaign.” Why cave in to such a campaign? In his resignation letter Jones explains: “On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.” Jones was of course “smeared” with his own words, which proved indeed to be vicious, voluminous and damning.
Jones said he had received encouragement from across the political spectrum to “stay and fight.” I doubt it, but I will concede that I had meant to urge him to stick around and defend himself.
Yes, I’ll miss him now. He was a poster child for this administration.
[Late morning update]
More thoughts from Jonah Goldberg:
Van Jones’ views are now widely known. And as far as anyone can tell reading the newspapers this morning or watching the Sunday shows, this White House and this President have nothing but praise for Jones and think he’s a fine, self-sacrificing, public servant who simply took one for the team.
I can’t think of a more succinct, discrete, example illuminating why Obama’s claims to centrism are a fraud.
It is quite striking.
[Update early afternoon]
A lot of links from Ed Driscoll: Van Goes Under The Bus. I’m sure that the president will say that this isn’t the Van that he knew.
An interesting interview with a straight-talking former head of the GAO.
…for our president. Some thoughts from that famous conservative, T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII.