Joe Sestak’s lead is rapidly dwindling in the Pennsylvania Senate race. With 72 percent of the votes counted, his margin is down to fewer than 6,000 votes. At this rate, as votes straggle in from rural counties, one might expect that Toomey will soon be in the lead. But with only 29 percent still being reported from suburban Montgomery county, where Democrats hope their strength will be reflected, both sides are holding their breath.
Contentions
0 Responses to “LIVE BLOG: Pennsylvania”
May 2013
-
Articles
-
"My Negro Problem-and Ours" at 50
Norman Podhoretz -
Gay Marriage, the Court, and Federalism
Tara Helfman -
The Spirit of '75?
Algis ValiunasAn audacious, and wrong, argument about the American Revolution.
Fiction
-
Onto a Good Thing
Joseph Epstein
Politics & Ideas
-
The Bureaucrat-Driven Life
Heather Wilhelm -
The Making of an Education Reformer
Sohrab Ahmari -
Bork's Watergate
James Rosen -
Dear Prudence
Paul O. Carrese -
Whose Accomplishments?
Mona Charen
Culture & Civilization
-
The Parenting Trap
Dana Mack -
George Saunders, Anti-Minimalist
Fernanda Moore -
A Chekhov in Training
Terry Teachout -
What Ailes the Liberal Media?
Andrew Ferguson
John Podhoretz
-
Taking Obama's Foreign Policy Seriously
John Podhoretz
Threat Assessment
-
More Genocide Threats from Iran
Jonathan S. Tobin
Letters
-
Denying Jewish Peoplehood-and Reality
Our ReadersResponses to Robert S. Wistrich's "The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism"
-
Gun Laws, Crime, and Freedom
Our ReadersResponses to Benjamin Domenech's "The Truth About Mass Shootings and Gun Control"
-
Don't Confuse Principle and Pose
Our ReadersResponses to Matthew Continetti's "Poseur Politics in the Era of Obama"
-
Jews and Sports
Our Readers
Enter Laughing
-
Get Our Free Newsletter
It’s hell being broke.
#1 — Quite so.
It’s worse having the wrong priorities.
RCAR, On the Right, and Dave, this is a question of priorities. The Chinese government has fewer resoruces than we do and yet is doing more in space.
North Korea and Iran are out to get us—here on earth. We don’t know how to face enemies with no instinct of self-preservation. There are no enemies in outer space, although I recognize that some of our earthly enemies may attack us via space.
Gordon,
Wasn’t Bush basically laughed out of the building when he proposed expanded space programs? I seem to recall everyone in congress basically told him to take a hike. Didn’t Pelosi say something like “We’re spending too much in Iraq as it is, now is not the time for a new space initiative?”
#4 — But Hu Jintao and his enforcers are free to dispose of those resources however they see fit. There is no meaningful accountability or consent so far as the people are concerned. So that is really not an apples-to-apples comparison.
I agree America *could* be doing more with its space program, and I think it would be in the national interest if we did so. But among the public, I really do not sense any great demand for it.
Well, if it keeps their hands off Tawain, let China muck around up there.
Kidding aside, you have a point. Actually, I look to your writing at some length one of these days about India.
I think that we should root for almost any political, military, economic advance India makes. Such advances are hardly at our expense, except if one is spellbound by protectionist myths.
India is, after all, an important counterweight to China. But just how inclined is India to project its power.? I forget where I read it, but one India expert said that India is not historically inclined to do so.
GOrdon/ “The Chinese government has fewer resoruces than we do and yet is doing more in space.”
I want us to be #1 in Space, but debt isn’t resources. We can borrow more $s than China,but China has 3Trillion American $ in the bank,and they own the bank. And they don’t have the problems of an open society with an election. If Bush were to talk about reviving the space program while a 100,000 new pink slips go out this week,there might be trouble.
Dave is right (as is Gordon), our issue here has been priorities. But the invalid competition is not from national security, it’s from entitlements and pork spending.
Forget space: we don’t even repave our streets. On the other hand, we spend billions each year on public schools that — at annually increasing expense — turn out illiterate, innumerate incompetents. We mandate state medical assistance to the middle class, and then gasp when the middle class takes advantage of it, and sends the costs of state-funded medical care spiraling. We are $50 trillion in debt for unfunded entitlements, which represent over 90% of the national debt.
Going to Mars, or even remaining capable of launching folks and stuff into space, is among the first things that will go by the wayside when debt piles up. Space exploration should be a higher priority, since it has national security implications. Anyone who trusts China and Russia not to militarize space is, I’m sorry, an idiot. But since we never planned to make a military advantage of going to the moon, or going to Mars, our citizens consider the connection second-order and tenuous.
In the final analysis, this is one of those things Democrats will be lauded for spending a lot of money on, and Republicans derided. Period. Thus the role of politics in exploration and science.
it is sad, but the truth is NASA has become a bloated, risk-averse government bureaucracy just like every other one. The most telling confirmation of this is NASA’s return to the moon plan, which will take longer and cost more (in constant dollars) than it cost us to go there in the first place.
Remember, the Apollo program, which began in 1962 with John Kennedy’s rather non-chalant decision race the USSR to the moon, started literally from scratch. Everything pretty much had to be discovered from first principles. And most of this was done through manual calculations, with very little computer assistance–just lots of smart guys with slide rules, sharp pencils and miles of brown butcher paper.
Today, with more than forty years of space flight experience behind us, with highly sophisticated computer-aided design and manufacturing capabilities and 6-DOF modeling, should be able to return to the moon at a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time for us to get there in the first place. Instead, NASA dithers endlessly, because that is what bureaucracies do. Need another depressing confirmation of NASA’s chronic incapacity? When we do go back, we will be using almost exactly the same technology we used to get there in the first place. That’s right–in half a century of rocketry, nobody can come up with a better idea than liquid bi-propellant rockets with payload fractions of less than 5%. Not that this is anything about which to complain–the Chinese are using recycled Russian space technology first seen on Vostok 1. They just have a greater will to get there than we do.
So, what is the solution? I think the best thing would be privatizing the whole effort. Cut NASA back to what its predecessor NACA was–a straight R&D lab developing cutting edge technology that it would then license to the private sector. To incentivize the race to the moon, have the U.S. government agree to give a fifty year unlimited lease for all mineral and economic rights on lunar soil–mining, tourism, energy extraction, whatever. Maybe raise some private cash to sweeten the pot–say a billion dollars to the first team to put a permanent settlement on the moon?
Let loose the commercial imagination of the American entrepreneur, and I guarantee we will be back on the moon long before the Chinese or the Indians figure out how to do trans-lunar insertion orbits.
Stuart Koehl Says:”Let loose the commercial imagination of the American entrepreneur”
I think you’re a few decades late. Whatever we would discover “out there” should belong to the US/not a company. An example: Genetic Engineering Companies were hugely unregulated,and these idiots ended up believing that they owned the Genes they were manipulating,even if they were in my body/meaning they owned me. I think the Nation should be the boss in these giant projects/let the corporations be sub-contractors,they’ll make plenty of $ without owning the show.
“”"”"”In just about the time it takes to say “Neil Armstrong,” we will become a second-ranked space power,”"”"”"
Our potential ace in the hole are the private space companies, particularly SpaceX. By the middle of the next decade, America’s private sector “space program” will become the fourth player behind the U.S. government, Russia, and the EU. That’s correct, India would come in fifth, and the EU may end up fourht itself, supplanted by the likes of SpaceX. By contracting the bulk of it’s small and intermediate launches to SpaceX and any competitors that company may have, NASA could cut it’s launch costs by several hundred of million a year. SpaceX and other companies could cut costs for commercial launches by as much as half, thus pulling away business from the EU’s ESA, and even the supposedly inexpensive Russian launchers.
“”"”"”I think you’re a few decades late. Whatever we would discover “out there” should belong to the US/not a company. “”"”"”"”
Nope. Koehl has the right idea because he understands how human nature works. Also, there is a vast difference between someone supposedly “owning your body” and someone exploiting extraterrestrial resources that use only a tiny fraction of the surface and subsurface of places like the Moon.
Your prescription for government-run efforts only, with contractors doing their bidding, is exactly why space exploration and development is colossally expensive.
Hopefully Biden will weigh in on this: I can just guess what that gaffe machine will say next:
“Mark my words. The Indians are up on the moon building a 7-11. The Chinese are building a laundromat. And those sneaky Japs are building camreas and cars that are stealing american j-o-b-s.”
#5: “There are no enemies in outer space,”
Our defence from our terrestrial enemies vitally depends on
Space Support for Terrestrial Military Operations.
Graham, thanks for the info. I know Congress is not an especially space-friendly territory. That’s also part of the problem.
On the right, you write: “But among the public, I really do not sense any great demand for it.” I agree that is a correct assessment of our predicament.
Stuart Rose, India at this moment is still looking inward, tackling large internal problems. As you know, I root for democracies, so I am a big fan of India.
Thanks for the suggestion. I should devote more attention to the subcontinent.
I agree with Mr. Chang: the Bush administration
has been dangerously derelict on space exploration. So have previous
administration.
Our inability to access the ISS without Russia’s
help is, in itself, not a big loss – because the ISS itself is a useless
(but immensely expensive) project, whose main significance is
as a hidden subsidy for Russia.
This inability is only important as a measure of our falling behind.
I agree with Stuart Koehl’s criticism of NASA. As for his recipe,
privatizing the whole effort, there’s a chicken-and-egg
problem: one needs a critical mass of demand to develop affordable
space systems; and they are not affordable enough to generate
sufficient demand. Sooner or later, the problem might solve itself,
but “later” may not be good enough from a strategic point of view.
There are 3 main incentives for conquering space:
research; profit; defense. Why shouldn’t all three be
harnessed simultaneously? Then there will be useful
synergy between them.
RCAR, the reserves of the Chinese central government–now about $2 trillion–are balanced by debt on the books of the government.
I agree with your pink-slips comment. When one thing goes wrong in a society, everything else eventually manages to go wrong as well. Bush created or aggravated most of the problems he faces. Therefore, I am not about to let him off easy.
Typo correction: “previous administrations.”
Stuart Koehl, I like the idea of letting entrepreneurs loose. I don’t know exactly how to do that, but this general approach seems sound.
Gordon @23
Maybe providing the clean alternative energy idea to entrepreneurs as incentives to invest in space program, assuming the helium-3 fuel thing is not a complete hoax.
Gordon @19, “India at this moment is still looking inward, tackling large internal problems. As you know, I root for democracies, so I am a big fan of India”
India may continue to be an inward-looking nation as long as their strong Hinduism religious tradition exists. I believe Lenin once said the shortest path from Moscow to Paris (to spread communism) is through Beijing and Calcutta (correct me if someone knows the exact quote). Communism found its way to China because the vast disparity of rich and poor provides fertile soil for that; but communism never wins sympathy among poor Indians who are the majority in their society, they seem accepting inequality as Karma.
JLiu,
Is there any country in the world with dirtier air than China? Democracy is good for the air, because people can organize, and because citizens can sue the government. If people had had the right to sue the government, and if snooping reporters had gone around looking for scandals, the schools in Sichuan would have been strong enough to withstand the earthquake.
Is there any country in the world that loves capitalism more than China? Marxism teaches that nothing matters but economics. China loves capitalism as only a Marxist can love an economic system.
George Jochnowitz,
I don’t have any problem with democracy but really believe all nations should find a form of democracy that best suite their culture and tradition. As to “is there any country in the world with dirtier air than China?” Yes, technically Nepal has the highest lung diseases incidents per capita in the world but it’s due to their indoor pollution, China might be the world champion for outdoor pollution. Although Marxism is still taught in Chinese school but I don’t believe younger generation give a damn of it; it’s easier to find a Marxist in Berkeley than in Beijing.
JLiu,
China found a form of democracy that suited its tradition in 1989. During Beijing Spring, crime dropped; accidents dropped. There may well be more Marxists per capita in Berkeley than in China, but they don’t have the power to impose thought control. I suppose if Berkeley were an independent country, its citizens too would behave like the Communist Party.
Marx said that “national differences and antagonisms between peoples are every day more and more vanishing.” He was wrong. He said that the value of a product is the value of the raw materials plus the value of labor. He was wrong; such a product is worthless if nobody wants it. He said that there had been no merchants in ancient times. He was wrong; he had never heard of the Silk Road.
Marx was wrong about everything.
JLiu, thanks for comment #24. I’ll take a look.
JLiu, about your interesting comment 25, I suspect even Karma-believing Indians may soon question the growing disparities.
America will become a second-ranked space power ?
Come on, Gordon. China’s air force cant even secure southern sea, for god sake. There is at least 50 years gap.
Wahaha, glad to have you back in this forum. In two years when we will not be able to put a monkey into space and China can put humans up three at a time, the assessment will be correct. As for the Chinese air force, that’s an entirely different story.