…but I can sympathize with Montgomery Burns, who famously said, “Ironic, isn’t it Smithers? This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That’s democracy for you!”
Smithers: You are noble and poetic in defeat, sir.
…but I can sympathize with Montgomery Burns, who famously said, “Ironic, isn’t it Smithers? This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That’s democracy for you!”
Smithers: You are noble and poetic in defeat, sir.
…but I can sympathize with Montgomery Burns, who famously said, “Ironic, isn’t it Smithers? This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That’s democracy for you!”
Smithers: You are noble and poetic in defeat, sir.
So, I was flying from Dallas to Denver this morning, reading the WSJ, and looking over the new committee assignments, and I noticed that Rep. James Oberstar (he who would have us overregulate the fledgling space passenger business, perhaps fatally) will be taking over the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. I wondered if he was planning to take another run at that, now that he’s in the majority, instead of minority.
Now that I have Internet access again, I see that Jeff Foust already indicates that he just might have such plans.
If it happens, the main effect, I think, will be to chase people overseas, perhaps to Australia. We’ll still get there, but it won’t happen in the US.
The other issues that aren’t mentioned in Jeff’s post are the fate of Centennial Challenges and COTS under a Democrat Congress. I can see them preserving VSE/ESAS because of the jobs in Houston et al, but it’s not obvious that prizes and commercial activities will continue to be supported by the Dems. They were by the Republicans due to White House pressure (at least in the case of COTS), but the White House won’t have as much influence (to put it mildly) over the new budgetary sheriff in town, barring veto threats.
I’ve got an old laptop that has some data on it that I need (or at least desire) for my trip. I haven’t used it in a year or so. I just tried to boot it up, and it seems to load Windows, but when I hit ctrl-alt-del to log in to W2K, as it prompts me, nothing happens.
The shift lock key lights up the light, so at least that part of the keyboard is working. Does anyone know what the problem might be, or if there’s some way around the three-finger salute to boot into Windows? My only other option (assuming that I don’t have a serious keyboard problem) is to boot into Linux, and then try to mount the Windows drive. If I have to do that, I’ll have to give up, because I have too many other things to do tonight. Though I guess I could throw the machine in the suitcase and try to figure it out when I get there.
[Update on Wednesday night, in Laramie]
OK, booted into Linux. Or rather, attempted to boot into Linux. When I type “root,” it comes out “rt.” No “o.” No lots of keys. Probably bad contacts from lack of use. I might try hooking up a USB keyboard tomorrow, at least to get the data off it. I suspect that if I wanted to invest the effort, I could open it up and get things good again with some contact cleaner.
I’m leaving warm and flat south Florida for cold and mountainous Laramie, Wyoming in the morning. It will be a nice change, but blogging may be insubstantial.
If the Republicans lose tonight, they’ll have gotten what they deserved. I hope that at least they’ll do some soul searching.
Unfortunately, the Democrats will have gotten what they didn’t and don’t deserve–political power, in wartime.
We really need a new party.
N. Z. Bear (where does he find the time to program this stuff?) has set up a very readable page to track election results as they come in.
According to the betting at Tradesports, the Republicans have a 66-69% chance of retaining the Senate, which is down from a few days ago.
Yet the Democrats are ahead in all of Tradesports
Greg Mankiw has some thoughts. I don’t believe that high voter turnout is an intrinsically desirable goal, which is why I’m opposed to “motor voter” and other means designed to increase participation. If people aren’t willing to do a little work for their franchise, they don’t deserve it, as far as I’m concerned. The goal should be informed votes, with quality, not quantity. Of course, that wouldn’t work out well for the Dems.