Space, The Final Frontier...someday

I have strong opinions. Overall, Obama will go down in history as, at best, a mediocre President. As strong as my opinions are on Obama, they are even more solid on manned space flight. To put it succinctly:

We need to go there. NOW. We should have had Lunar colonies since the 1960's, and should be establishing thriving colonies on Mars by now. The first manned missions to Titan should have launched about two years ago. The population in low to mid Earth orbit should be in the tens of thousands by now.

NASA was a mistake, born out of panic and politics. Don't get me wrong. The men and women of NASA were true heroes. My earliest memory is watching a Gemini mission. But the X-Plane pilots called Mercury "spam in a can" for good reasons. We sacrificed the amazing strides of the X-Plane missions for a quick, dirty, expensive, bureaucratic way to beat the Soviets.

Had we continued the amazing progress, a combination of military and civilian greatness, of the X-Plane series, we would have accomplished all the things in my second paragraph, and then some.  We were well on our way to reusable flight to low earth orbit in the late 1950's! Sputnik brought all that progress to a halt.

So now, here we are, with three Space Shuttle flights left. After those flights, the United States will have no capability to enter low Earth orbit, let alone go back to the Moon, Mars or anywhere else. For the forseeable future, we will be paying for rides from the people who created Sputnik all those decades ago.

This was not Barack Obama's fault. The short-sightedness of America's space program dates back 60 years. While I wanted more, much more, than what Obama proposed, the proposed plan may be the best we can do right now.  Sad, very sad, but true.

Obama has decided to fund private space industries. It's about time.  Had the decision been made to pump money in to private space flight sixty years ago, we would not be talking about a Mars trip in 2035. Men, women and children would already be there.

The key will be for the Obama administration to fund the private enterprise, and then LEAVE IT ALONE. Government meddling will only slow down whatever progress is made. It would be a change in style and philosophy for a big government liberal like Obama to actually leave anyone alone. But that's what needs to happen. If he does, the jobs lost at NASA will quickly be gained as individuals, private individuals, take the necessary steps to the planets, then the stars.

Glad That's Over:

President Barack Obama's advisers plan to remove terms such as "Islamic radicalism" from a document outlining national security strategy and will use the new version to emphasize that the U.S. does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terrorism, counterterrorism officials say.

 And here I thought those 19 hijackers were Islamic Radicals. Whew! Good thing they were just common criminals. Common criminals who killed nearly 3000 people, destroyed the World Trade Towers. It'll come as a relief to the passengers of who took down the Islamic Rad...er...terrori...er...criminals, keeping them from destroying something else...like The White House. 


Of course, those passengers are dead. Sorry, Mr. Beamer. It appears we've stopped rolling.

Selective Amnesia: Maxine Waters

She may be one of the most outrageous Representatives out there. And, apparently isn't terribly interested in truth...

Regime Change

The selective amnesia of the Left never ceases to amaze me.  When you use their words, their tactics, against them, they are shocked, appalled that anyone would say or do such a thing.

Byron York details just one example, in exquisite detail:

Apparently some people didn't get it. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews appeared deeply troubled by the word. "I've never seen language like this in the American press," he said, "referring to an elected representative government, elected in a totally fair, democratic, American election -- we will have another one in November, we'll have another one for president in a couple years -- fair, free, and wonderful democracy we have in this country…. We know that word, 'regime.' It was used by George Bush, 'regime change.' You go to war with regimes. Regimes are tyrannies. They're juntas. They're military coups. The use of the word 'regime' in American political parlance is unacceptable, and someone should tell the walrus [Limbaugh] to stop using it."
Matthews didn't stop there. "I never heard the word 'regime,' before, have you?" he said to NBC's Chuck Todd. "I don't even think Joe McCarthy ever called this government a 'regime.'"

That word was regime, as Rush Limbaugh applied it to the Obama Administration.

It appears that Matthews has suffered a major memory loss. I don't have the facilities to search for every utterance of Joe McCarthy, but a look at more recent times reveals many, many, many examples of the phrase "Bush regime." In fact, a search of the Nexis database for "Bush regime" yields 6,769 examples from January 20, 2001 to the present.

He then goes through example after example ending, of course, with Matthews himself. 

I wonder when the studies will come out "showing" the apparent organic brain damage holding left of center views appear to to cause.  

Oh, wait! The left already did those studies, "proving" their own points...if they remember it, of course.

The Echo Chamber of the Liberal Blogosphere

 I've spent a couple of weeks exploring the best of the liberal blogs.

Here's the rule when dealing with Progressives: The more they accuse the Right, the more likely it is they are doing whatever it is they accuse us of.

Great example is the link in the title of this post.

I tracked the story down through several left blogs and read the comments on each. On some of the blogs, the link to the Bloomberg Poll wasn't even mentioned. Maybe because those bloggers knew the analysis linked to the poll was a lie. More likely, the story fit what they wanted to believe, so why bother. The echo chamber the lefty bloggers have developed is staggering, and frankly sad.

I'm not going to do the work for you. Take a look at the link, and most especially the sixth paragraph.  Then look at the actual data, and decide for yourself if the analysis is accurate.

Is Barack Obama a Socialist? You May Be Surprised at My Answer

When you are hooked on politics as I am, it's easy to answer questions like the above quickly. Name a conservative talk show host, and you can be pretty sure they would answer the question with a resounding yes.

But he's not. Nor is he evil incarnate, the Anti-Christ, or the reincarnation of Lenin.

Saying such things simply makes you look crazy.  And crazy doesn't win elections.

Obama is a big government liberal. Period.

He believes government, specifically the Federal government, is the change agent needed to help individuals.

He wants more government, not less.

If you want that, vote for him.  And vote for those like him.

Government is a poor change agent. Individual initiative is a better one.

That message wins elections. Always has. Always will.

Daniel Henninger: Would the Founding Founders Love ObamaCare? - WSJ.com

Would the Founding Founders Love ObamaCare?
Some would. Most would consider it a breach of the Constitutional covenant between the Federal Government and the People. Not the first, but the latest in a century of over-reach by the Progressive movement. Daniel Henninger presents the case well.