Tag: politics

A Few Words In Praise of Fear

9:47 pm

A few words in praise of fear. Key quote:

In Washington and in statehouses around the country, the reality of the pending Fiscal Armageddon is starting to seep into the thick skulls of the elected class. Jerry Brown pronounced himself “shocked” once he got a good peek at California’s balance sheet. Off the record, politicians of both parties are starting to concede that a lot of the old ideological disputes at now moot, because there simply isn’t any money. It’s not a question of whether there are going to be deep cuts and fundamental restructuring, but when and how much. [emphasis mine]

The lack of money affects NASA’s future as much as anything. The future of space does not lie in government funding, no matter what people tell you.

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DeMint wants to have the omnibus read

9:34 am

Maybe this might stop the spending: Republican Senator Jim DeMint wants the Senate to read the entire 1900-plus omnibus budget bill before anyone votes on it. Key quote

The reading could take 40 hours, some news outlets estimate. Last year, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., forced the reading of an 800-page amendment on the Senate floor. The reading ended when Sanders, who had proposed the amendment, came to the floor to withdraw it.

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Boeing Submits Proposal for 2nd Round of NASA Commercial Crew Development Program

9:47 am

In competition with the Orbital/Virgin Galactic proposal I mentioned yesterday, Boeing has submitted its own proposal to provide crew and cargo ferrying service to ISS.

Considering the federal budget debt and the political winds for reducing that debt, I have great doubts the subsidies for these proposals will ever arrive. Nonetheless, with the end of the shuttle program and nothing to replace it, the United States has a serious need for a system to get crew and cargo into space. And in a free society, fulfilling that need means profits, which is why these proposals are beginning to appear, and will get built, regardless of whether Congress funds them up front or later buys the services.

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American flag banned from condo complex

12:29 pm

American flag banned from condo complex. Key quote:

The 16 or so units are all alike. Beige with white trim and white mailboxes lined up ever so neatly along the main access road. And that, Coombs was told at a condo meeting, is how it shall stay.

With the obvious exceptions, of course.

A quick trip through the development this week showed that some of the condo owners like big wreaths. Some like small ones. Some like bows on their doors or garland on their banisters. Some like welcome signs on their porches and some don’t. Individuality is allowed for flowers in the summer, Coombs said. But there shall be no flags, and it says so right in the condo bylaws.

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Kyoto Protocol is dead, long live the climate fund

8:52 am

It appears the climate meeting in Cancun has ended without much success. Unable to get an renewal of the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, the diplomats instead agreed to create a $100 billion “Green Climate Fund” that is mostly funded by the First World nations but is mostly distributed by the Third World. See the notes at 10:45 am on this blog and at 12:20 am on this blog. Key quote:

[The fund] will have 25 members of developing countries on its board, compared to only 15 for developed countries. This gives developing countries a much stronger role. The World Bank is a trustee.

The real question is whether the new Congress in the U.S. will appropriate any money at all to this scam.

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Court to rule on ObamaCare constitutionality Monday

11:16 pm

Court to rule on the constitutionality of ObamaCare on Monday. Key quote:

Normally, all comprehensive laws contain a boilerplate severance clause: it says that if any portion of the law is found to be unconstitutional, that portion is severed from the rest of the law — that is, the rest of the law stands. But ObamaCare contains no severance clause. Virginia is asserting that if it prevails on its substantive claims, the whole law is unconstitutional. (If Virginia does not prevail, any one of the twenty-plus legal challenges have the same severance argument available.)

This really isn’t the best way to get rid of this idiotic law, but we should also take any bone we can get.

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