The Moon: The 51st State?

Suggestions that the Moon be made the 51st state are about as scary as a Clinton being the next UN Secretary General.

I'd imagine that if that ever happened, no one would settle there - legally at least. Getting a Green Card aint as easy as some people down south seem to believe. My guess is no one would emigrate, or the same thing would happen on the moon that's happening in the good ol' USofA now: massive illegal immigration.

Papal Exagerations...

Spin. It's a lovely business. The media can't get enough of it. It helps sell newspapers from the stands. It puts cashey money into people pockets - and it sure does help put food on the table.

For the unscrupulous, which is pretty much every darned mogul in the media business today, integrity and honesty are things of the past.

Apparently especially so when it comes to the environment and the pope.

"Benedict has been on an eco-friendly campaign of late, presiding most recently over a pro-environment youth rally in the central Italian shrine town of Loreto. In addition, the Vatican has installed photovoltaic cells on the roof of its main auditorium to convert sunlight into electricity and has joined a reforestation project aimed at offsetting its CO2 emissions."

Oh really?

Seems to me there's a might bit of contradiction going on at the Vatican of late.

Now I'm not trying to suggest the Pope is contradicting himself... Just that the media is.

First the claim that the Pope was addressing a "pro-evironment youth rally" is ridiculous. This notice posted before the event paints a different view of that rally:

"The Pope will be meeting the Italian young people in Loreto, Italy next Summer from the 28th of August till the 2nd of September. Being a unique occassion, the Italians are extending the invitation to other young Europeans and Mediterraneans to enrich the Catholic Italian young people with new experiences and aquaitances. Translation in English will be available. This event is sponsored by the Italian Episcopal Conference including flights, food, lodging and pilgrim's bag. You are only required to pay Lm 35 contribution payable to KDZ."

That's right Batman, no mention of enviro-nothing.

If that wasn't enough check out the Vatican Information Services take on the rally:

VATICAN CITY, SEP 1, 2007 (VIS) - Shortly after 4 p.m. today, the Pope departed by helicopter from the pontifical residence at Castelgandolfo bound for the Italian shrine of Loreto where he presided at a national meeting of young people concluding the first year of the "Agora" of Italian youth. The event is being promoted by the Italian Episcopal Conference.

Further the VIS claims 300,000 young people attended. Not the nearly half of million claimed by the media. This is the first time I have ever heard of a Catholic rally where the numbers of people were inflated by media sources over that of what rally organizers said there was. Usually it's the other way around.

LifeSiteNews's Phil Lawler completely debunks this Pope enviro-thon better than I can - and in particular the claim that the Vatican made itself "carbon-neutral". In Actually it was a private firm that did exactly that as a donation to the Catholic Church.

Has the Pope been talking about the environment more than usual of late? Of course he has - who isn't? But to suggest the Pope has turned "Green" is a shameless way to generate controversy by a global media machine that has no real news to report.

Monsignor Petrio's latest speech to the UN sums up the official Catholic Church's position on climate change very well:

The monsignor identified two attitudes that are particularly harmful to creation and humanity: The first is the “fundamentally reckless” approach in which people say, “we should actually exploit our world to the full, with little or no heed to the consequences, using a world view supposedly based on faith." The second approach is to treat the earth as the only good, and characterize[s] humanity as an irredeemable threat to the earth, whose population and activity need to be controlled by various drastic means."

With the latest round of Papal exagerations perpetrated by the mainstream media I'm thinking globally the world tends to the second attitude rather than the first.

The Revolution is Coming...

The revolution is coming if you'd believe the spin from the globe on the latest tax figures.

If we stopped looking at "who has what share of the pie" we would probably realize that everyone's net income in every class level has increased because overall the "pie" has increased.

Those that are more entrepreneurial get rewarded more - and that tends to be the ones already pretty smart entrepreneurial and at the top of the income scale. So what's new about that? How is that unfair?

R.I.P. General Motors

UAW has effectively signed it's own death certificate.

Robots can go to Hell

Pardon my French. But Robots can go to hell. Especially the ones that go on probes trying to win the new Google Lunar X-Prize. This prize would give $30mil to the first team that can get a robotic probe on the moon.

What use is it to the rest of us on this blue rock if a private company can land an unmanned drone on good ol' Luna? Private companies have financed probes to the great beyond before, just what is new or revolutionary about this effort?

Also, where are the friggin' passengers in this bit? None to be found. So the focus is on sending Johnny-Nine up there instead of us warm blooded people. My thinking is we should be focusing on sending eventual paying customers not robotic drones.

The original X-prize was about spurring the aerospace nerds to get going finding an affordable and safe ride to sub-orbital space and get a sub-orbital tourism market going.

Where is the market here? To take fancy pictures of the moon? NASA sells them for free.

If we were really hell bent on dealing with the technical and financial challenges of eventually going Selene's backside we would be focusing on getting cheap reliable travel to low earth orbit first. All this prize will do is encourage the nerds to make the tech we need to do short term stunts on the moon. We're putting the cart before the horse, before the driver, and it's 5 miles back on the other side of cliff where we can't see it.

This won't do a darned thing for TRUE human spaceflight. It sure won't increase anyones chances of one day affording a ticket to the moon that's for sure.

Naked Kyoto

Yet more evidence that the Liberalismos weren't 100% on the level saying that Canada could meet Kyoto.

With Goldenberg's confession earlier this year you'd figure that the enviro-nutsos out there would finally admit it: Kyoto was unrealistic.

The emperor is naked that's for sure. And he's big, fat, and ugly. The Suzukiites will have to come to grips with it eventually.

Let's Declare War on Knives

Hell it might work. I'm pretty sure that 100% of all knives used in felonies are taken from law abiding citizens.

And all knives have one purpose: to cut things. We just can't allow that. People could get cut. Just get everyone to use plastic knives to eat.

In liberal fantasy land that must make sense.

The latest youth violence crime in Toronto was not using a hand gun this time around, it was using a plain old knife.

That didn't stop Dalton McGuilty from standing up and repeating his oft stated battle cry "Let's declare war on handguns."

How in the heck that has anything to do with a teen getting stabbed is beyond me. He's also on a rant against the "Americanization of public education." You can tell right off the bat McGuilty is running low on arguments when he attacks an idea as being "American."

Honestly it's like I'm French in the 19th century trying to explain to my fellow countrymen that Brits are NOT all ruthless pigs out to get us. We have to separate propaganda in politics from reality. The brits weren't terrible bastards out to get the French. And the French weren't stinkin' pigs either.

What is McGuilty railling against? It's having metal detectors and armed guards in schools. How that is "American" is outside my intellectual capacity. What's worse is that John Not-So-Tory agrees with McGuilty.

Stop listening to the amalgamated Dalton McTory political machine. The only way to prevent these school killings from happening is to install metal detectors in schools and maybe just maybe have a couple constables around to keep a presence.

It's harsh. It's unfortunate. But it's the reality on the ground.

We either suck it up and do the right thing, or we can keep on going on blaming the "British Pigs" for all our ills.

R.I.P. Kistler

With Kistler now given the boot out of the COTS program all I can say is "that took a while," or more appropriately "finally."

It was a mystery to me as to why RPK was one of two dainty winners of the program that was going to bring the infamous alt-space community into the NASA fold. The company was in chapter 11 before as far as I knew, and with the little I do know the financial situation was never hunky doory.

Those that are saying that it's "NASA's fault" aren't being fair. Those that are implying that "NASA's blameless" sure aren't on level ground either.

Kistler was always on shaky financial ground to begin with and would have had a hard time funding anything let alone a vehicle that could ferry cargo to the ISS.

That being said NASA isn't blameless when it comes to the difficulties inherent in raising good old cashy money for this private space experiment NASA is embarking on. It has put as far as I know, as is typical, limits on foreign investment into the development of COTS vehicles. The more knowledgeable out there will be able to correct this assertion if it's wrong, but if I'm not mistaken that's how this shindig is working.

Now when I look at the only public figures I know of funding these commercial space adventures I see some foreign faces like Richard Branson. Hell even the X-Prize was funded by a foreign born family in the Ansari's. The number of non-Yankee, and non-Yankee borns involved in this drive to the stars are pretty significant.

Look, I understand the need to prevent American tech getting into the hands of terrorists and the like, but a certain amount of risk by NASA may just payoff when it comes to who can fund these COTS competitions.

Changing those rules might have changed the situation for RPK, but I doubt it. It was just a bad choice to begin with to have them as one of the two finalists for COTS funding.

Socialist Tax Cutters

When the NDP talks about tax cuts you know their has to be one huge honkin' pile of a catch. Howard Hampton's latest foray into tax cutting territory is no surprise.

If you make less than 48k you don't have to pay no stinkin' health tax no more. Hurrah for the recent grads, low skilled workers, and most generally underpaid sector of the economy. Even truck drivers can make up to 60k a year nowadays.

Fear not if you make up to 80k the NDP deems you acceptable to receive a little tax moneys back - although you pay more into the system already.

Above that? Go screw yourself you miserable bourgeoisie capitalist scum -errr- we mean law abiding successful hard working close to retirement professional...

But if you make over 150k you are a horribly greedy evil dude that needs to pay more. And major corporations deserve to pay more taxes, because their so horrible employing people and giving them jobs and such.

I used to love Robin Hood growing up. There was something romantic about someone stealing from the rich, elite, and blue blooded to give to the poor, oppressed and unfairly treated.

In the mind of a dipper that's exactly what their doing. Unfortunately when we talk about people who earn more than 80k a year we aren't talking about self serving morally decripit elites who have got to their positions through nepotism or collusion - we are talking about guys and gals who have succeeded through risk, strife, trial and merit...

If a society tells a more successful person they should pay more they send him the signal that he's a work horse to be used and abused... Kind of reminds me of the Little Red Hen.

Sponsorship Ressurection!

The Tories have to have eaten one too many acid laced beaver tails, because Josee is resurrecting the ill fated sponsorship program... You know the one that caused the former Liberal government oh-so-many problems?...

Ok. So the feds need to be involved in certain areas - I'm willing to accept that fact. But do they really need to "support local arts and heritage activities, including cultural festivals and live performances"?

If we don't fund local artsy left wingers, and drunken Rollin' Stones concerts I'm pretty sure the social fabric of Canada won't implode. I remain convinced, that no matter how much governments meddle, the culture and heritage of Canada has is and will forever be determined by Canucks themselves and not some bureaucrat in Ottawa.

Tories in Ottawa should collectively kick themselves in their own arse. This isn't a Conservative policy, and it sure wasn't something clammered for by opposition parties. It negates individual initiative and responsibility when it comes culture and heritage - and for that reason alone it's a bad move in my books.