Jacob Weisberg writes about the illiberal, Lou-Dobbs Democrats:
For some reason, economic nationalists never seem to complain about job-killing Dutch or Irish competition. The targets of their anger are consistently China and Mexico, with occasionally whacks at Dubai, Oman, Peru, and Vietnam.
…Economic nationalism is not unique to Democrats
If I were the administration, I’d try to talk Joe Lieberman into becoming Secretary of Defense, and then replacing him with an appointee by Connecticut’s Republican governor. Lieberman probably made a deal with Reid and Pelosi that he wouldn’t switch parties, but I’ll bet he didn’t promise to serve out his term.
Jon Goff has a good overview of the alternatives to ESAS, with commentary. Read the comments, also, particularly regarding propellant delivery. I am getting more and more intrigued by Lockheed Martin’s approach, and starting to think they’re really serious.
And not enough words. Virginia makes a point that I was vaguely feeling on election day about PJM coverage:
Personally, I hated the PJM election coverage, because I don’t want to have to watch video online. I want to read, and PJM offered way too little written material. But with the right technology, video is much easier to provide–especially if you don’t care about shaky-cam production.
I want to read, too. Given a choice between watching a video (or even listening to audio) of people saying stuff, and reading a transcript, give me the transcript every time, unless there’s some particular reason to want to parse tone/expression, etc.
Save the video for things that need video (rocket launches, explosions, bikini contests, etc.) and give me text for more straightforward information.
I don’t take in and retain information that well through my ears. I always preferred to read the textbook to listening to a professor lecture. The baud rate is just too low. Similarly, whenever (say) Glenn links to something that looks (sounds?) interesting, and it turns out to be a podcast or video, there’s always this resistance to click, or wait for the words to dribble out, whereas if it’s to text, I eagerly read it. I don’t have time to listen to someone tell me something when I can read it much faster.
I hope that as voice recognition gets better, we’ll get more and better instant transcripts of talking-head stuff.
…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.