Glenn speech

Kevin Willoughby wrote:

Sounds like you're asking for a friendly visit from the Secret
Service.

Idiot.



Really? My interpretation was that Mike had a sense of humor. You seem
to expect the worst of anyone who disagrees with you...


Note how the minimalist government intervention concept just went out
the window in favor of the police state?
You have the right to free speech....as long as you don't say the wrong
things, of course.
All animals are created equal- but Rand is more equal than others. :-D

Pat

OM wrote:

On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 23:43:49 -0500, Kevin Willoughby
wrote:



Really? My interpretation was that Mike had a sense of humor. You seem
to expect the worst of anyone who disagrees with you...



...Which is part of the job description over at Fox "News".


Shut up! Shut up! Shut Up!
And get me some new batteries for my vibrator! :-)

Bill
Fox News

"Gene DiGennaro" wrote in message
om...
Charles Buckley wrote in message
...
Gene DiGennaro wrote:
Herb Schaltegger wrote in message
...


The fact that he's not, and that he's spent in excess of 13 times
NASA's annual budget - over and above DoD's annual budget - to fight a
war in Iraq that cannot be justified on the basis for which it was
ostensibly fought in the first place speaks volumes.



Regardless about how anyone feels about the Iraqi war, Constellation
will have a rocky course during an on-going and expensive war. While I
support Constellation, the average man-in-the-street(or woman) will
have a hard time supporting expanded human spaceflight while we are
spending money on a war.

I feel that the Clinton administration missed an oppurtunity there in
the mid to late 90's. We had no large international war on terrorists
at the time, although there are some who say we should have had one.
Naturally after Sept 11, the nation's focus was on fighting terrorism.
I don't know if Constellation can be sold to the Average Joe right
now.


What opportunity? The general rule has been "One major project at a
time". If they had gone with the exact same schedule as Constellation,
then you would be looking at trying to fund construction of ISS at the
same time you funded a major R&D project. Throw in a working Shuttle
program and you are stuck with trying to move programs along the
lines of OSP.

Consider the following:

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...et_021223.html

It was not the War on Terrorism that was the major issue. It was
NASA. No one was willing to trust NASA running a major new project
until they showed they could do the one they had been working on
for 20 years.

Now... this is rapidly moving into the territory where it does not
matter what NASA does. When they controlled their own fates, they
failed to deliver. Now, they have to overcome that and events
far, far beyond their control.

With no war, this would still be a tough sell as NASA is not trusted
that much by the people funding this.




Point taken. Remember though that all during the 90's the forward
thinkers in NASA (not the bureaucrats) were expressly forbidden from
planning the next step. It was official NASA policy to deny that the
agency had any other manned plans than shuttle and ISS.

Yet I still think in the mid '90s the Amercican public wanted NASA to
be something more than shuttle and ISS. They were rediscovering the
heroes of Mercury and Apollo and remembering the magic of the era.
People were finally beginning to see that Apollo 11 was more important
than some drug crazed, out-of-control, self indulgent, rock concert
called Woodstock. By the mid 90's, even the heavily anti-Kennedy hard
line conservative types saw Apollo as a Cold War victory; another nail
(and an important nail) for the coffin that held the Soviet Union.

As for NASA failing to deliver, my feelings on Dan Goldin come to the
surface.I liked Dan Goldin way back in the early 90's, but now I am
understanding how he heavily damaged the agency's reputation on
Capitol Hill.


Gene DiGennaro
Baltimore, Md.

We will probably do more to open up the space frontier right in the midst
of this war than all we've done in the last thirty years put together. Of
course since NASA, the U. S. government, and every other like space agency
and government on Earth haven't done a single thing toward opening up space,
or allowing it to be opened in any way, in the last thirty or so years it
won't take much at all to "do more" (a hell of lot more).

Brad

Gene DiGennaro wrote:


Glenn's flight was OK by me and I'm a conservative type. What bothers
me more than the pretense of research was what the White House and
NASA did with the rekindled interest in human spaceflight. Think back
to the mid-90's: Hubble refit success, Pathfinder, Apollo 11 25th
anniversary, films like Apollo 13 and TV's FETTM etc. What became of
that enthusiasm? Not much. Only now do we have a plan for expanded
exploration and its future is quite uncertain.


Gene DiGennaro
Baltimore,Md.


I don't mind that they gave Glenn a ride - he was screwed out of further
rides after his flight because they didn't want the hero to die. And I
don't mind that they drummed up some thin excuse to send him.

Glenn did it when it was harder and much more dangerous to do it and he
wanted to fly more but was prevented. So they gave him a consolation ride.
It's ok with me.

Gregg

On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 23:43:49 -0500, in a place far, far away, Kevin
Willoughby made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article ,
says...
Sounds like you're asking for a friendly visit from the Secret
Service.

Idiot.

Really? My interpretation was that Mike had a sense of humor.

Yeah, my liver is showing from the hilarity.

You seem
to expect the worst of anyone who disagrees with you...

Not to me. I disagree with many people, usually amiably.

Anyway, it doesn't matter how *I* interpret it. I'm not the one
who'll be paying him a friendly visit.

On Sat, 04 Dec 2004 04:21:35 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

Really? My interpretation was that Mike had a sense of humor. You seem
to expect the worst of anyone who disagrees with you...


Note how the minimalist government intervention concept just went out
the window in favor of the police state?
You have the right to free speech....as long as you don't say the wrong
things, of course.
All animals are created equal- but Rand is more equal than others. :-D

*I* don't care what kind of idiocies he wants to spout. I was simply
pointing out the reality that there are people who get paid to do so,
when it comes to making threats against the president.

On Sat, 04 Dec 2004 04:16:18 -0600, Pat Flannery wrote:

Kevin Willoughby wrote:

You make the President sound like the mail Paris Hilton...

Continuing that postal theme- although both should be stamped out, I'll
bet Paris is easier to lick than Dubya. ;-)

I think Paris is more the peel and stick type.

Dale

Dale wrote:

Continuing that postal theme- although both should be stamped out, I'll
bet Paris is easier to lick than Dubya. ;-)



I think Paris is more the peel and stick type.


Late night deposit box?

Pat

Kieran A. Carroll wrote:
The problem is, Bush does not have the authority to provide NASA with
funding. That's within the purview of Congress, not the administration
(if I've got the details of your wacky US system straight :-) Bush's
presidential authority, as I understand it, is limited to putting in
the annual NASA budget request to Congress. So, he's *not* funding this
initiative.

You've got it partly right, but you're missing a few
critical details. The President has the ability to
veto bills, forcing congress to either change the bill
to suit the President, drop the matter, or come up with
a two thirds majority in both houses to override the
veto. This gives the President the equivalent
congressional power of dozens of representatives and
Senators, and thus the ability to force (to a substantial
though not infinite degree) congress to change budgets.

Christopher M. Jones wrote:
Kieran A. Carroll wrote:

The problem is, Bush does not have the authority to provide NASA with
funding. That's within the purview of Congress, not the administration
(if I've got the details of your wacky US system straight :-) Bush's
presidential authority, as I understand it, is limited to putting in
the annual NASA budget request to Congress. So, he's *not* funding this
initiative.


You've got it partly right, but you're missing a few
critical details. The President has the ability to
veto bills, forcing congress to either change the bill
to suit the President, drop the matter, or come up with
a two thirds majority in both houses to override the
veto. This gives the President the equivalent
congressional power of dozens of representatives and
Senators, and thus the ability to force (to a substantial
though not infinite degree) congress to change budgets.



The problem here is who gets to spin this. Would the president
be willing to veto the budgetary requests for NASA when that
budgetary request is bundled with the Veteran's Administration
budget? They come out of the same committee. ie, large increase
in VA's budget gets passed along with a NASA cut. Is the President
willing to fight this? Because, I can assure you that they would
get a 2/3 majority to pass that. No one is going to vote against
a VA budget anytime soon.

Bush has been lucky so far in that he has never had to veto something,
but if the intel bill is any indication, he does not really have
that much pull now. He won't fight for things he is ambivalent
towards and there are is enough bipartisan support to cut
large vulnerable projects like this to really be a concern now.

There are easily a dozen different ways for this to get stacked
in a such a way that the President would be very hard pressed
to follow through on a threat to veto something. And, there are
enough Republicans who were weaned on fiscal conservatism and
are now starting to assert themselves to make such an effort moot.

The threat to Bush now is from inside his party. There is a large
enough section of them that want to cut the deficit that Bush
stands a good chance of losing some of these budget fights.
Cutting the deficit is one of the major rallying points for
bipartisan action.