The conservatism of Obama

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Without Moon landings NASA is but a shadow of its former self.

*shrug* I actually know people who work for NASA, and they are mostly pretty frustrated with their internal administration.

I don't know anyone who works for any large organization, public sector or private sector, who doesn't bemoan the internal, bureaucratic, administration. And if said person worked their a long time, favorable perceptions of the past might just be nostalgia induced by growing old.

Also doesn't mean it isn't true.

I'll grant that NASA Ames seems to not be a waste of space, but my friend at GSFC talks like he's been spinning his wheels for 10 years.

National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

^Another instance of Obama's radical right position on civil liberties.

Which is why I generally prefer something a little more intersubjectively verifiable than "a friend says".

Trust me, I know a guy who knows a guy who's second cousin is an expert on this stuff.

*shrug* fine.

So, we are reduced to a choice between the usual thieves, thugs, and vermin OR a pack of emptyheaded zealots?


Son of a b***h, I can't emigrate soon enough...

what do you mean by various symbolic issues?

You're missing the point. It's not about what the Teaparty wants or their particular politics, it's how they've gone about influencing the GOP establishment that's important. It's a roadmap for how to force change on the major parties; primary challenges and a real threat to take votes elsewhere or sit out an election even if it hands the race to the opposition unless demands are met.

More moon missions would be idiotic. If we pumped enough money into it, we could ship people back and forth from the moon for entertainment, but here is the thing: we wouldn't learn anything new from it, and there would be nothing to accomplish by it except to needlessly jeopardize the lives of some of our best blood.

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-04-15/politics/obama.space_1_space-investments-constellation-program-international-space-station?_s=PM:POLITICS

Which is a fact. Working on the propulsive technology to GET US THERE and figuring out WHERE TO GO is a lot more important in the long-run than carting people back and forth to the moon. In case you haven't noticed, the ball of gas that we are orbiting around presently has some fairly unpredictable chemistry. That's WITH yellow dwarfs being one of the more tame types of gas-balls out there. If suddenly our solar system were rendered uninhabitable, god knows how, we would need to have the means to GET THE HELL OUT. It may be an alien concept to some people, but some of us see the search for other planets as "the search for Plan B." It's insurance.

Frankly, space exploration has seen some of the most exciting developments in history lately. For the first time, we have been able to make educated guesses about what kinds of planets might be whirling around distant stars, all thanks to steadily increasing precision in our observations. The "search for the Goldilocks planet" is bringing us closer than we have ever been to having a real, substantial chance of sending someone off into deep space and have somewhere that might be worthwhile to go.

I don't know if there is any record of him actually saying this, but the fact of the matter is that hauling crap to and from Earth is a waste of government money because it's crap that has BEEN DONE. The POINT HAS BEEN MADE. It is the place of private industry to polish the stuff that the GOVERNMENT does as an expensive stunt. Things like moon missions and missions to Mars are in the category of "proof of concept," which is almost never economical within anyone's lifetime. The building of the transcontinental railroad was a catastrophic economic failure if you wanted to see gain from it within the lifetimes of the people who built it, but THAT IS WHY WE HAVE GOVERNMENT.

Yeah, but it really helps to have the backing of a couple Koch brothers.

What do they have to do with anything? Other than being a liberal dog-whistle of course, since the left needed their own version of George Soros to blame for funding their opposition. Did you know that they gave the ACLU twenty million dollars to fight the PATRIOT act? I mean what a bunch of jerks, trying to fight repressive laws that don't even effect their business interests. Didn't stop other chapters of the ACLU from later denouncing them when it became politically expedient to do so. Or my personal favorite, Soros funded groups protesting the Kochs' think tank meeting railing against meddling billionaires...

You mean political jihad and a fanatical unwillingness to compromise on anything (see payroll tax cut)?

Compromise is an essential part of a healthy political process.

The straw that broke the camel's back and pushed the South into secession and rebellion was the fact that Abraham Lincoln could be elected president in spite of the fact that he did not even appear on the ballot in nine southern states.



If we are to the point, again, where political success is defined by one faction disenfranchising all others... like I said, I can't emigrate soon enough.

You need to learn human reasoning is seriously flawed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

You think I need to watch a youtube video to learn that? Knowing that people don't reason well doesn't make me any more accepting of faulty logic, it just makes me more resigned to living with it. Hence why I don't put huge amounts of effort into trying to convince people of things anymore, but rather argue for my own enjoyment.