…with sex.
It’s the oldest advertising gimmick in the book.
Back From Missouri
But not back home, yet. I’m in Orlando, and may be here the rest of the week, for the Space Investment Summit tomorrow and the ISDC after that.
“Pathological Dishonesty”
Instapundit explains the insane Obama rationale for nationalizing health care.
Is Obama Another Jimmy Carter?
After Obama assumed office in January, whatever hesitation that existed in North Korea’s policy-making circles regarding the likely response of U.S. administration has disappeared, and its leadership now feels it can defy the U.S. and the international community with impunity.
A series of actions taken by the Obama administration have created an impression in Iran, the “Af-Pak” region, China and North Korea that Obama does not have the political will to retaliate decisively to acts that are detrimental to U.S. interests, and to international peace and security.
Among such actions, one could cite: the soft policy toward Iran: the reluctance to articulate strongly U.S. determination to support the security interests of Israel; the ambivalent attitude toward Pakistan despite its continued support to anti-India terrorist groups and its ineffective action against the sanctuaries of Al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistani territory; its silence on the question of the violation of the human rights of the Burmese people and the continued illegal detention of Aung San Suu Kyi by the military regime in Myanmar; and its silence on the Tibetan issue.
I’m afraid it could be a lot worse.
[Early evening update]
More thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson:
Fate, chance, luck, and more will contribute to the outcome of any presidential action — unpredictable, of course, but in the cruel game of assessing presidential decision-making, no grounds for excuse.
Moreover, both these problems not only antedated Obama, but antedated Bush as well, yet they cannot be massaged with “reset” button and a “Bush did it,” nor by soaring “hope and change” rhetoric. Neither Ahmadinejad nor Kim Jong-il care a whit about Obama’s landmark advance to the presidency, or his sober and judicious efforts to show rational concern for their own predicaments; instead, they calibrate only the degree to which Obama poses an obstacle to their regional ambitions, whether they be rational or not.
As David Pryce-Jones notes, the more sincere he is, the more naive he seems.
Debunking Durbin
I didn’t watch, but reportedly Newt dismantled Dick Durbin on Meet the Press yesterday on the subject of the disingenuity (if not outright mendacity) of the Obama administration claims to be breaking from the Bush administration on military commissions and Guantanamo. Andy McCarthy makes him into rubble today.
2. Durbin’s “right of counsel” claim is a joke — and one you’d think Democrats would be too embarrassed to keep repeating given the number of Obama administration lawyers who, along with their former firms, spent the last eight years volunteering their services to America’s enemies. Under the Bush commission system, the terrorists already had U.S. taxpayer-funded military lawyers and were, in addition, permitted to retain private counsel — and there was no shortage of American private lawyers (such as several at Attorney General Eric Holder’s firm) who have taken up these cases. If there’s anything these terrorists have gotten plenty of, it’s top-flight legal representation.
3. The claim that “in seven years in Guantanamo there were exactly three [detainees] who were convicted by military commissions” is another screamer. The main reason for delay in the commissions process has been the aforementioned legion of volunteer American defense attorneys who ground the system to a halt by various court challenges. At the end of this legal barrage, the only real change in the commissions was a formal one — they are now authorized by Congress rather than by presidential directive (as Bush, like FDR, had used). As a practical matter (and Obama is all about being practical, right?), they operate exactly the same way. Moreover, the current delay — now in its fifth month, with several more months to go — is because President Obama himself stopped the pending commissions against 21 terrorists (when trial was imminent in several of them) so he could first “study” them and, now, propose these illusory “changes.
There’s a lot more. These people must think that we’re as stupid as they are.
The China Analogy, Redux
Here is a post comparing the voyages of Zheng He to the modern US space program. Arthur Kantrowitz is the first that I’m aware of to make this comparison, back in the seventies.
I think that it’s an interesting analogy, but not in the way they intend, and I wrote about it a few years ago at Fox News:
…some have argued that in essentially turning our backs on the cosmos after the rapid success of Apollo, in favor of welfare programs and pork, our own politicians have given us a similar failure of vision.
But that draws the wrong conclusion. The fact was that Zheng He’s journeys were a failure. They sent out vast amounts of the nation’s treasure with which to impress the heathens and gain tribute and the appropriate respect (just as is the goal for the current Chinese space activities). But when trade occurred at all, the ships often came back with items that were perceived to be of less value than what had been sent out to the ports. The trade was not profitable — it was draining vital resources. The bureaucrats were right.
The Chinese suffered a failure of expansionary will 600 years ago because they were doing it for the wrong reasons. And I suspect that the current leadership is similar to Zheng He in their outlook. His missions were for national prestige — not the generation of wealth — as, apparently, are the current Chinese space plans.
As was America’s Apollo program.
Space will not be settled by governments, whether Chinese, Russian, or American. It will be settled by the people who want to go, and seek their own opportunities, and dreams. Governments can help, and if the Chinese government can navigate the difficulties I describe above, and actually eventually get to the Moon, that might be one way of helping, not just the Chinese, but as the article states, all who want to go. But I suspect that there will be private activities that beat them to it, and we cannot, and should not, count on Beijing.
We will know that things are moving forward seriously in space when, in addition to remote-sensing and communications satellites, there are activities going on in space, involving humans in space, that bring more value back than is put into them. Unfortunately, communist governments (which China’s remains, despite propaganda to the contrary) are not notable for their value-added activities, and I don’t think that the present Beijing regime is that far removed from its predecessors, either in the Ming Dynasty, or the Mao Dynasty.
But I hope they’ll prove me wrong.
I continue to so hope.
Autophagy And Cellular Senescence
Some encouraging thoughts.
More Bolden Commentary
There’s a story at the LA Times. Not much new, but I thought that this was worth a comment:
Logsdon said he believed the skepticism about Obama’s support for manned flight was “misguided” from the first. The comment about taking money from NASA was made by a junior campaign aide, he said.
I’m disappointed in Professor Logsdon. His own comment is more than “misguided.” It’s disingenuous, and in fact false, though I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and just assume that he’s unfamiliar with what actually happened, and was told this by someone else (though he should be following it closely, being a premier expert on space policy and all…).
It wasn’t merely a “comment” from a “junior campaign aide.” He says this as though it was just an aside on background. No. It was the official position in a white paper at the campaign web site. Jeff Foust described the history of the Obama space-policy shifts, and their ongoing nebulosity, back in August.
If Senator Obama didn’t pay any attention to it at the time (we know how much trouble he has getting good help) and he’s since reversed it (and he seems to have) that’s great, but I see no point in whitewashing the history of what happened. It was an area of legitimate concern for space (or at least NASA) enthusiasts at the time, and it does provide legitimate cause to question how deep his enthusiasm is now. His supporters might claim that he had a road-to-Damascus moment, and now talks about how excited he was by Apollo growing up in Hawaii, but he was talking about that prior to the “funding education by delaying Constellation” time period as well.
I remain an agnostic on the degree of support of this president for either space, or NASA. Only the future will tell.
“We Closed A City Here”
The last holdouts from Buick North:
When Buick City was at its peak production in the mid-1980s, G.M. had 80,000 workers spread across the city. Now it is down to about 5,000, a number that could fall more in a bankruptcy.
My brother is one of the survivors, but who knows for how long?
The Stupidity And Insanity
…of gun buybacks.
It’s quite frightening that these people are not only political leaders, but law-enforcement personnel.