Bob Zubrin says that Augustine Commision was supplied with inflated cost estimates

Robert Zubrin, the author of the "Mars Direct" architecture for getting to Mars, has an opinion piece where he suggests that the Augustine Commission was supplied with inflated cost estimates by the Aerospace Corporation. I think he makes some good points though I think he goes too far in the other way in terms of his cost estimates. Still, one can't argue with some of his criticisms, for instance:

"The cost projections for all other systems are similarly bloated, or worse. A particularly nonsensical example can be seen in the Aerospace Corp's cost estimates for future ground operations. As the charts correctly note, these today amount to about $300 million per year to support the flights of the highly complex Space Shuttle. Following retirement of the Shuttle, Aerospace's cost estimates have ground operations cost triple to $900 million by 2012, and then continue to rise to $1.8 billion by 2022. This sixfold rise in ground operations cost would be difficult to explain in any case, but in the absurdity of this instance is outstanding since during the entire ten year 2012-2022 period in question, there are NO heavy lift flights at all for the ground operations to support. In other words, the Aerospace Corp's estimates have NASA's ground operations costs rising sixfold over Shuttle flight support requirements, spending $15 billion over ten years, in order to launch nothing. "

Victor Davis Hanson on Obama's -real- agenda

Victor Davis Hanson has an amazingly perspicacious article detailing what the real agenda of Obama and the far Left is. Regarding the massive spending in the "stimulus" bill, Hanson says that the real reason is to force higher tax rates and subsequent redistribution of wealth because:

"Individual compensation is now seen as arbitrary and, by extension, inherently unfair. A high income is now rationalized as having less to do with market-driven needs, acquired skills, a higher level of education, innate intelligence, inheritance, hard work, or accepting risk. Rather income is seen more as luck-driven, cruelly capricious, unfair — even immoral, in that some are rewarded arbitrarily on the basis of race, class, and gender advantages, others for their overweening greed and ambition, and still more for their quasi-criminality."

So the Libs feel they have to make things more "fair".

Regarding health care "reform":

"Instead, the notion that the state will assume control, in Canada-like fashion, and level the health-care playing field was the real concern. “They” (the few) will now have the same care as “we” (the many). Whether the result is worse or better for everyone involved is extraneous, since sameness is the overarching principle.

We can discern this same mandated egalitarianism beneath many of the administration’s recent policy initiatives. Obama is not a pragmatist, as he insisted, nor even a liberal, as charged.

Rather, he is a statist. The president believes that a select group of affluent, highly educated technocrats — cosmopolitan, noble-minded, and properly progressive — supported by a phalanx of whiz-kids fresh out of blue-chip universities with little or no experience in the marketplace, can direct our lives far better than we can ourselves. By “better” I do not mean in a fashion that, measured by disinterested criteria, makes us necessarily wealthier, happier, more productive, or freer."

Betsy Markey lets the cat out of the bag vis-a-vis the realities of Obamacare

I heard this on Hugh Hewitt's show last night. Apparently, Colorado's 4th Congressional District Congresswoman Betsy Markey let the cat out of the bag regarding the realities of the health care "reform" being pushed through the House. Speaking at an event at CSU, Markey said "There's going to be some people who are going to have to give up some things, honestly, for all of this to work" that includes Medicare recipients giving up some of their benefits. I remember all the TV commercials that Betsy Markey ran last year... she lied big time in those ads.

Playing politics with our security

Seth Leibsohn, who is Bill Bennett's sidekick on his "Morning in America" radio program has a great post at the Corner detailing how this reprehensible move to prosecute CIA officers for doing their jobs in trying to get intelligence from terrorist detainees really shows that we (or at least the Obama administration) has forgotten 9/11.

Fouad Ajami on Obama's feet of clay

Fouad Ajami has a good column that details how Obama came to power and how he isn't all that he and his supporters have made him out to be.

Great article on my favorite new band, Muse

Last year I discovered the music of Muse and I have been really, really into them since then. They have a new CD coming out in September and there's a great write-up of them and their music here.

A scary scenario for the Dems going it alone on health care legislation

Byron York has a column detailing how the Dems could go it alone on passing the Obamacare health care legislation. They have the votes... they can do it if they want, let's just hope that the American people raise a big enough ruckus that they don't...

big changes ahead for NASA?

One blogger has some ideas about where the Obama administration could be steering NASA. It would be pretty ironic if some of these suggested changes are made. NASA has for a long time been one of the most socialist type agencies in the the US. By that I mean that we've been doing all of our human spaceflight, and launching a lot of commercial payloads on government rockets. If these suggestions are true that the Obama administration might try to shift human carrying spacecraft to commercial providers then that would be a big shift and, I think, a very healthy one. It is ironic though because Obama has been racing towards socialism in so many other areas (the car industry, health care "reform", etc.). We'll see what happens...

Whole Foods CEO says Obamacare won't work

I have loads of friends who just love Whole Foods... and they're big liberals. I go there for lunch sometimes. I kind of hate going there, but maybe I should go more. It turns out their CEO wrote an editorial for the Wall St. Journal saying Obamacare wouldn't work. Good for him. Here's the link to his comments and the opinion piece.

Jonah Goldberg on why Obama-care is failing

Jonah Goldberg has a good column pointing out how ham-handed Obama and the Dems have been in this health care debate. He also points out the big double standard in the press... I like this bit:

"Imagine if President George W. Bush, in his effort to partially privatize Social Security, had insisted that the "time for talking is over." Picture, if you will, the Bush White House asking Americans to turn in their e-mails, in the pursuit of "fishy" dissent. Conjure a scenario under which then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) derided critics as "evil-mongers" the way Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recently described town hall protesters. Or if then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) had called vocal critics "un-American" the way Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) did last week, or if White House strategist Karl Rove had been Sir Spam-a-lot instead of David Axelrod."

Analysis of the Augustine Commision recommendations on human spaceflight

Rand Simberg has a good analysis of the Augustine Panel recommendations. A couple of key paragraphs...

"The good news is that for the first time a major panel of this sort has explicitly stated that the goal of having a human spaceflight program has to be for the ultimate settlement of space, and if we aren’t aiming toward that, there’s not much point. Also, for fans of sending humans to Mars, all of the options are designed with that end in mind, though probably not fast enough for them. The other good news is that the panel seems to strongly support commercial space and believes that the new policy should be much more supportive of it than NASA’s current plans. But for advocates of anything resembling the current four-year-old plan to do “Apollo on Steroids,” with new launch and crew delivery systems dubbed “Constellation,” none of the options will be pretty."

Simberg also discusses an option for private Earth-to-Low Earth Orbit transportation systems:

"... It remains a politically unpalatable one to much of the Beltway establishment, particularly on the Hill, but it’s one for which the panel started to break the ice in its specific presented options, particularly in variation “B” of Option 5: get NASA out of the earth-to-orbit launch business, which it doesn’t seem able to do affordably, and spread the work around to the U.S. commercial sector and potential international partners..."

Discussing the future of manned space exploration

There's a great discussion of the bottom-line conclusions of the Augustine panel and on the future of manned space exploration over at spacepolitics.com.

the Augustine panel speaks: no humans to Moon or Mars without more dollars

Apparently the Augustine commision report is going to say that NASA can't conduct trips to the Moon, let alone to Mars, without more money in its budget on an annual basis. That is probably right... let's see what Obama has to say to that.

As if I needed any more reasons to hate the Eagles...

As rivals of the Giants, I've always disliked the Philadelphia Eagles. Now I have a reason to actually loathe them since they've signed that disgusting piece of human garbage Michael Vick. I hope that people boycott Eagles games.

NASA to provide seed money for a "space taxi" service

I heard a snippet of this story on Rush Limbaugh's show and I think he was making fun of it, but it is a good idea. They're not providing enough money though... $50 million is a drop in the bucket for this kind of thing.

So NOW it is "un-American" to disagree with the government

The hypocrisy of the Left is simply astounding. When the Dems were out of power then they were saying things like "dissent is patriotic". Hillary Clinton gave a nails-on-the-chalkboard screeching speech saying it was the right of an American to disagree with any administration. That was then, this is now. Now Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are saying: "the disruption of "town-hall'' meetings by vocal protesters "simply un-American.'' (Quote from here) I'll tell you what is "un-American"... the takeover of the auto industry, much of the banking industry and now their attempt to take over the health care industry that is un-American!

Now Congressmen are yelling at their constituents at townhall meetings

This is a pretty amazing story. A MD goes to a townhall meeting, asks his congressman a legitimate question and the congressman blows up at the guy and accuses him of trying to "hijack" the meeting. Who the heck to these guys in Congress think they are? Our Lords and Masters? They're supposed to work for us. In November 2010, we had better remind them of that.

White House fighting back in "the Chicago way"

This is amazing, disgusting, and probably not surprising given Obama's history. White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina apparently has said (according to this Politico story):

" “If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting."

So that's the Chicago way, right? What was it that Sean Connery's character said in "The Untouchables"... "If they pull a knife, you pull a gun. If they send one of our boys to the hospital, we send one of their's to the morgue... that's the Chicago way." Not sure if that's the exact quote but its close. OK, Barack... if that's the way you want it...

Arlen Specter and Kathleen Sebelius getting the truth at a townhall meeting

This video had me cheering.

Surprise! Obama wants to eliminate private health insurance

Here's a video of Obama talking about how to eliminate private health insurance and go to a single payer system in a step-by-step process. Why am I not surprised? The only thing that surprises me is that it took this long for this video to surface.