Peter Hodges

I truthfully can’t answer that question.

Biden is everything Obama isn’t. Is Obama admitting that he couldn’t do the job now? Or is this a sop to the people who thought that he couldn’t do the job, but in reality, he always could? I’m not sure where his head is.

Given that I’m under informed on this issue, I’ll pass the ball to a couple of you regular guys. Was this a smart move? Does this harm Obama’s appeal as a Washington outsider? Does Biden’s moderate record hurt McCain’s campaign for President?

Obama in January.

Obama in August.

In January, it was kosher to pull money from the space program to fund schools in the inner city. After all, he had to distinguish himself from his fellow Democrats by appealing to the one demographic most likely to give him an edge in the elections–inner cities.

Quoted from the January position paper:

Obama will support the development of this vital new platform to ensure that the United States’ reliance on foreign space capabilities is limited to the minimum possible time period.

In the wake of nationalistic pride generated by the Chinese hosting the Olympics, the issue of the space race has once again come to the forefront. China’s spoken intent is to put a man back on the moon by 2020. The USA performed the same feat with less advanced technology, going from space in 1959 to a moon landing in 1969. With China’s resource and technology base, isn’t it fair to assume a moon landing within twelve years?

Quote from the August position paper:

Speeding the Next-Generation Vehicle: Obama will expedite the development of the Shuttle’s successor systems for carrying Americans to space so we can minimize the gap. This will be difficult; underfunding by the Bush administration has left NASA with limited flexibility to accelerate the development of the new systems.

Obama accuses the Bush administration of underfunding the space program. To make that statement truly accurate, say: “Bush and the Democratically controlled Congress have hamstrung the space program with successive budget cuts.” I find it odd that Obama accuses Bush of that, when he was going to do the same thing, as illustrated in this education plan [emphasis mine]:

Barack Obama’s early education and K-12 plan package costs about $18 billion per year.  He will maintain fiscal responsibility and prevent an increase in the deficit by offsetting cuts and revenue sources in other parts of the government.  The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years, using purchase cards and negotiating power of the government to reduce costs of standardized procurement, auctioning surplus federal property, and reducing the erroneous payments identified by the Government Accountability Office, and closing the CEO pay deductibility loophole.  The rest of the plan will be funded using a small portion of the savings associated with fighting the war in Iraq.

Which is it? Are we expediting the new crew vehicle for the space program, or are we delaying it five years in the name of an education program?

Now that Obama is mainstream, language that touches even tangentially on Welfare is going to be a sore sport for swing voters in typically red states. Obama must do something to counter the Chinese ambitions for their own space program, so he releases a slightly modified position paper. 

Neither one of these position papers amounts to anything more than arm waving. How is Mr. Obama going to expedite the new crew vehicle? Can he promise the American public that our space infrastructure won’t rot away while we funnel money into enabling the poor to stay poor? What will he say when our skilled aeronautical engineers and technicians are laid off from NASA, and they find themselves paid high salaries in China, Japan, and Russia?

Quite frankly, our lack of manned space delivery systems couldn’t come at a worse time.  Who knew that we would be hitch hiking to LEO in a Russian space capsule that uses forty year old technology?

First of all, these will be posted by Kate, even though I (Pete) wrote it. Damn all Wordpress upgrades, anyway.

West Helena, Arkansas is under martial law. Well, not really. But they do have a 24-hour curfew in effect to curb rampant violence in their town. Police officers are reportedly carrying all types of great murder machine hardware, including M-16s, shotguns, and night vision scopes. Is this one of those cases when I should haul out the old “those who trade security…” quote? Based on what I’ve heard of the situation here, I think not. The police are doing what they can to restore order, and I applaud the steps they’re taking to do so. Contrariwise, if this is a power play by the city council and the reports of violence are exaggerated, they should be removed from office for gross misuse of power. I suppose history (and the media) will be the judge here.

Is China cheating in the olympics? The right-leaning American Thinker blog thinks that they are. My wife, a massive fan of women’s gymnastics, pointed out that despite the age of the competitors, they did at least possess the skill set to win a gold medal. Whether the smaller size/weight of the Chinese gymnasts is a factor (particularly on the beam competition) is a fairly moot point now. Other allegations by other countries are starting to hit the mainstream media. Who can say how this end up for China?

Ain’t It Cool News recently pulled a negative review of the upcoming Clone Wars animated Star Wars movie at the demands of Lucasfilm. Say what you will about journalistic integrity (something I’ve said before in regards to reviews from AICN), the review sounds extremely passionate. I was not alone among my friends and cohorts in having high expectations for the movie. Seeing that a true fan thinks so little of it makes feel like Jar Jar Binks just punted me in the nut bag.

Last is our token space advocacy story. It appears that solar systems analogous to ours are somewhat rare, with a high incidence of gas giants in close orbit around their suns.This calls into question our current theories on planetary formation and provides interesting speculation on whether or not worlds depicted in science fiction (Yavin 4 in Star Wars or Allen Steel’s Coyote) could readily exist. I’d be interested to know if Kepler’s law still holds up in the wake of all these discoveries.

Lightsaber chopsticks. No, really.

Tyson replaces Labor Day with a Muslim religious holiday. In a recent union negotiation, Tyson, the ubiqitous packagers of poultry products, granted their workers at a plant in Tennessee a Muslim religious holiday in exchange for Labor Day. My natural bias leads me to be outraged here, but the argument could be made that the western world is typically off for Christmas. I want to rant and rave against this, but I just can’t. *sigh*

Here is a case of the punishment not fitting the crime. San Francisco wants to fine residents $1000 for not sorting their trash. Recycling is a necessary component of good stewardship of our resources, but this takes it a little too far. This is another example of the “nanny” government exerting its influence over us.

Kate, a self-professed reformed MMO addict, provides her reflections on re-entering the fold as a casual gamer. First with Age of Conan, and second with World of Warcraft, she’s exploring her rekindled love for the genre. She also has an interesting perspective on the current state of the PC Game market, in which developers are pushed to release games before they’re ready.

SpaceX fails to get its rocket into orbit. I’m very optimistic about the future of this company, but I’d like to see them get their quality control issues under wraps long enough for a successful launch. Elon Musk, the original owner of PayPal (who reported sold it for around $1.5 billion to eBay), has used his money as capital to get the company “off the groud.” (Pun intended). According to the article above, he had this to say after the launch:

In Mr. Musk’s statement, he insisted that the company will not be deterred and still has strong support from its backers. “SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward,” he said, and added that the fourth flight, currently scheduled to take place in the fourth quarter of the year, and fifth flights are being prepared, and that he has given the go-ahead “to begin fabrication of flight 6.”

And, he added, “We are in very good financial basis here. We have the resolve, we have the financial base, and we have the expertise” to identify the problem and go forward. “There should be no question about that.” In a version of the statement distributed to employees, Mr. Musk said that the company “recently accepted a significant investment” that, along with the company’s current cash reserves, will ensure that “we will have more than sufficient funding on hand to continue launching” the Falcon 1 and the larger Falcon 9 vehicles.

Here’s hoping!

No. Not that kind of rap.

Rapper Ludacris has written some urban poetry (I don’t dignify any rap with the notion that it’s music) about Obama. In it, he makes a few inflammatory remarks.

Full text/lyrics here.

I have a  couple of curious observations about this phenomenon.

1. The article’s headline is “Ludacris Releases Song Attacking Hillary Clinton,” but there is an equally abhorrent attack on John McCain. Funny how that didn’t make the headline.
2. The rapper rhymes president and (ir)relevant twice in the same song. I thought rappers were supposed to be creative!
3. He should get a job at Fox News. He’s fair and balanced enough to bash Jesse Jackson.
4. Did this guy not learn how to spell? I don’t find the name Ludacris to be clever–I think it glorifies a lack of education. But then again, I am a right-of-center white guy.
5. The appeal to get everyone out to vote is interesting, but the call to vote is drawn not on issues, but on racial lines. This is a huge mistake. Anytime a subset of our culture identifies itself independently of our nation, I expect trouble to follow.

Will this hurt Obama’s campaign? Probably not. I would never have known about this had I not gotten the link from four different people. It doesn’t really change my opinion on Obama, because I could care less what a wannabe-thug says about him. I’ve evaluated Obama on the issues and decided that I can’t stand behind him as a candidate for that reason alone. Hopefully others will feel the same and not count the actions of this guy against Obama.

Is this urban poetry offensive? I’d have to say…maybe? I don’t mind the verbiage toward Hillary Clinton (name calling is nothing new), but the wish for a severe, debilitating condition on John McCain is a little over the top. I would have preferred if he’d called McCain “the old bastard.” At least that way, he’s in the same league as Hillary.

Am I up in arms over this? No. Should I be? No. At the end of the day, these are the ramblings of someone not important enough to influence the way that the majority of mainstream society thinks. I’ve never bought into the politically correct mentality, even when I can use it in an instance such as this to eviscerate someone who should be clinging to its tenets.

When I opened the call for advertisements, I’ve received some interesting email asking me to advertise for Senator John McCain.

I suppose I look like a likely person to vote for McCain, right? I’m obviously anti-Obama for very concrete reasons that I’ve covered in other posts. Couple that with some of my views that skew me right-of-center, and you immediately assume that I’ll vote straight-ticket Republican.

Wrong.

This isn’t to say that I won’t vote for McCain in the general election, but to do so is sort of like being presented with the choice to be sacked by the Huns or the Mongols. No matter who you pick, you’ve got a dose of buggery in your future.

I’ve even voted Democrat before. Once, I voted Independent.

For me to publicly endorse a candidate requires me to believe fervently in them and to back them loyally against their opposition. Finding a candidate that has the same twisted world view that I do is well-nigh impossible, so the likelihood of me endorsing anyone is astonishingly slim. This may mean that I’m turning down potential advertising revenue in the near future, but I’m okay with that. 

I’m not trying to be an elitist by saying this. I’m merely trying to say that my vote will not elect the candidate that I want. Hopefully, it’ll just elect the best of a bad lot.

Global warming gives you kidney stones. All this time I thought it was oxalate in tea and cola that did it. Let’s be real for a second, even if we do live in the Feminized Nanny States of America. We are all responsible for our own actions. Do you know what that means? It means that because I drink too much Dr. Pepper (when I’m naughty) and Coke Zero (when I’m nice), I am destined to have kidney stones. Do I have a right to complain when this happens? No. (Well, maybe a little; enough, at least, to get some sympathy from the wife.) But it’s still my fault. I can’t blame it on global warming. I can’t sue Dr. Pepper or Coca-Cola.

Denver, the mile high city, once again makes news. This time, it isn’t a singer taking it upon herself to modify the national anthem, it’s the city police department and the safety council voting to outlaw pipes and chains in the hands of demonstrators. If your thought at the first was the same as mine, then maybe you’re thinking that it’s not a bad idea. Demonstrations are okay, provided they remain peaceful. However, weighted pipe and chain are not used as weapons. Upon further research, I discovered they are used to make a sleeping dragon, which is a device designed to make it difficult to arrest and remove protesters. An earlier draft of the ordinance endeavored to remove gas masks and bulletproof vests. That’s one thing I have a real problem with. If you want to know why, click this link.

The People’s Democratic Progressive Republic of Massachusetts is at it again. *sigh*

Could the International Space Station be used as a space craft? Color me doubtful, but it’s at least worth a feasibility study. One thing I do agree with the author about is the fact that we’ve wasted too much time playing in the cradle. It’s time to move outward. This could be an elegant solution, like using the interior of the first stage of a Saturn V booster as the first Skylab station.