Congress wonders why NASA is sending “50 or more” employees to a conference in Italy.
Congress asks NASA why it is sending “50 or more” employees to a conference in Italy.
Tag: budget
The long term credit rating of the United States was lowered today by Standard and Poors.
The day of reckoning looms: The long term credit rating of the United States was lowered today by Standard and Poors.
The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics. More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.
Ryan’s speech
If you depend on the conservative commentary about Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech yesterday at the Republican convention to find out how he did, you would have no doubt that this was the greatest and most effective speech since Genesis. To quote just one report:
Paul Ryan’s speech, in two words? Nailed it. Everything that I like (and surmise that others will like as he becomes more and more familiar to them) about Paul Ryan was on perfect display during his half hour-ish on stage. He was intelligent without being intimidating; he was stern and serious but still optimistic and even funny; and he hinted at his wonkiness without getting into jargon and maintained his approachability. But the most beautiful thing about Paul Ryan as the potential vice president of the United States is his uncanny knack for breaking through populist myths and shrill leftist attacks and instead communicating the merits of free-market economics and small government, all without being shrill or polarizing.
Because I’m not spending a lot of time watching these conventions, mostly because they really are nothing more than public relations events staged by both parties, I didn’t see the speech live. After reading reports like the one above, however, I decided late last night to go to youtube and dig up Ryan’s speech and see this amazing performance for myself.
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It’s the ideology, stupid.
It’s easy to forget, but Republicans swept the 2010 midterms not through a sweeping indictment of Obama’s economic stewardship, but by hammering Congressional Democrats over their support of the president’s health care law, the stimulus and Democrats’ pursuit of a cap-and-trade energy policy. Running on a firmly ideological agenda, House Republicans picked up 63 House seats – a larger pickup for Republicans than in any election since 1946.
What’s remarkable is that all the fundamental indicators from that historic moment have hardly changed – and in some ways, have worsened for the president. The 2010 midterm NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed 32 percent believing the country was headed in the wrong direction; their latest poll shows that “right track” number exactly the same, with even more believing the country was on the wrong track. Obama’s job approval in the October before the midterm was at 47 percent; it’s only inched upwards to 48 percent in the most recent survey. [emphasis mine]
2010 wasn’t a fluke, it was a trend. And running on the “ideology” of fiscal responsibility, a balanced federal budget, and a smaller federal government does not seem to me to be very ideological. Rather, it is simple common sense, which is why it worked in 2010 and will work again in November.
Romney, the Republicans, and Space
The Republican Party, as part of their national convention taking place in Florida this week, yesterday released their party platform for the upcoming election campaign.
Normally, I don’t waste my time with party platforms. No one really reads it, and no president ever follows it. Granted, it can give you a general sense of where a party and candidate is headed philosophically, but this is politics. If you think philosophy is their number one priority then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.
However, this document is helpful to us, at least when it comes to the nation’s space effort, as it actually devotes one entire (though short) section on the subject. Considering how vague Mitt Romney has been on what he will do with NASA and space, and how schizophrenic the Republicans in Congress have been, any hint on how they might approach this particular program should they win the election is helpful.
Here is the entire statement of the Republican party platform on the subject of space exploration:
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More rumors about a year-long mission on ISS
The possibility that NASA might finally agree with Russia’s repeated request to fly a year-long mission to ISS grew stronger this morning with two stories:
- NASA gets set for yearlong stints on space station
- A year on the ISS: Good for tourists – and science
The first, by James Oberg, digs into the underworld of NASA politics to find that plans might very well be more advanced than NASA is letting on:
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The war on children
Romney’s energy policy proposal announced today would redirect science funding towards basic research.
Mitt Romney’s energy policy proposal, announced today, would redirect science funding towards basic research, according to this mostly positive analysis from the generally liberal journal Science.
Personally I’d like to get the federal government out of all this. Let the private market decide where the money should be spent for research. Moreover, we still have that federal debt to pay off. Where will Romney get the money?
A thank you letter to President Obama.
The Congressional Budget Office yesterday projected this year’s deficit will be $1.1 trillion dollars, making it the fourth year in a row that the deficit has broken the trillion dollar ceiling
The day of reckoning looms: The Congressional Budget Office yesterday projected this year’s deficit to be $1.1 trillion dollars, making it the fourth year in a row that the deficit has broken the trillion dollar ceiling.
In the entire history of the U.S. the deficit never exceeded one trillion dollars, until Barack Obama became president. In fact, it never came close until Obama arrived.
NASA can put a man on the Moon and a rover on Mars, but somehow it can’t comply with a Freedom of Information document request.
NASA can put a man on the Moon and a rover on Mars, but somehow it can’t comply with a Freedom of Information document request.
The request was an attempt by a newspaper to find out if NASA officials have been partying extravagantly at conferences, like officials in GSA. That NASA can’t provide the documents suggests that something stinks somewhere.
The modern leftwing disconnect from reality.
The modern leftwing disconnect from reality.
[L]ast week a man called Floyd Corkins shot another man called Leo Johnson, the security guard at the Family Research Council, a “conservative” group, according to the muted media coverage, or a “hate group,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, who spray that term around like champagne on a NASCAR podium. Mr. Corkins, an “LGBT volunteer,” told his victim, “I don’t like your politics.” In his backpack, he had one box of ammunition and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches. Had he had one Chick-fil-A sandwich and 15 boxes of ammunition, he might have done more damage. Or then again perhaps not, given that, as bloggers Kathy Shaidle and “the Phantom” pointed out, he reached his target and then started “monologuing,” as they say in The Incredibles….
I’m not blaming Floyd Corkins’s actions on the bullying twerps at the Southern Poverty Law Center or those thug Democrat mayors who tried to run Chick-fil-A out of Boston and Chicago. But I do think he’s the apotheosis of narcissistic leftist myopia. He symbolizes that exhaustion of the other possibilities — the dwindling down of latter-day liberalism to ever more self-indulgent distractions from the hard truths of a broke and ruined landscape. Our elites have sunk into a boutique decadence of moral preening entirely disconnected from reality: A non-homophobic chicken in every pot, an abortifacient dispenser in every Catholic university, a high-speed-rail corridor between every two bankrupt California municipalities.
Read the whole thing. Steyn once again notes the bankruptcy of modern liberalism and the Democratic Party, which — unless the American public rejects it — will lead to the bankruptcy of our country and probably the world.