8 thoughts on “Life, Liberty, And the Pursuit Of Happiness”
I have a bridge to sell anyone on the political right think they have any change of winning the House of Representatives this fall when to do so means winning a lot of seat in places like California and New York. The GOP had it’s shot between 2016 and 2018 and they blew out. To use an Aerospace analogy conservatives need to start thinking about shifting from an Andy Beal/Laura Montgomery view of the world to an Elon Musk view. What do I mean by that. Andy wanted to build a “private” space program without any government interference i.e no ITAR rules, no FAA launch licenses, no desire any interest in having anything to do with NASA or the DOD. Andy thought his political connections with the Texas GOP would help brute force his way into space but it turned that the Texas GOP is far more interested in NASA JSC pork. Andy basically had little to show for his effort other than a testing facility in McGregor, TX that he was able to hand down to Elon.
Elon on the other hand despite his own libertarian leanings and knowing that NASA historically doesn’t like private competition knew he had to pick his spots and as such comply with FAA/ITAR rules AND find a foot in the door of NASA through COTS then use that initial seed to expand far beyond anything NASA and Mike Griffin intended or desired with COTS. So if Conservatives want to chance of having success in the “culture” wars they need to start being more Elon and less Andy Beal(and finding ways to pick their spots with political left akin to the Elon-Lori Garver alliance).
**Why did I bring up Laura Montgomery. Well Laura seems to be a nice enough lady she has this doctrinaire libertarian view that we should go back to the pre 1984 era and that back then private space was as legal as it is today just without any FAA “red tape.” Even better without FAA licensing that govt would have no means impose the OST on private actors. While I respect the principal as a practical matter the private space sector without the 1984 Commercial Space Launch Act is uninvestable(in particular the 84 act clarifies how ITAR existing long before 1984 applies to private launches). Now one can shake the fists and say all the private investors in commercial space are really corporatist socialists but those are simply the facts on the ground. I also happen to disagree with Laura under non-delegation doctrine that Congress instead of the executive branch should be more involved launch licensing. Congress is the last body you want micromanaging commercial space. Hence my original point that a GOP sweep this fall just ain’t going to happen and Conservative need to wake up and realize this.
You clearly don’t understand Laura’s point of view. She has no problems with the CSLA.
This is probably better to discuss on another post some other time re: Laura. I will point out that Gwynne Shotwell is on record as wanting new legislation both domestically in the US and internationally in terms of settling people on Mars and not wanting to rely only on the existing legislative structure. As I heard her put it SpaceX does NOT want to be the “government” for Mars and wants some other entity to do that job(I actually think there are some interesting models on earth such as Svalbard and Treaty ports but that is a whole different subject)
Which to a broader point I don’t necessarily want to suppose who Shotwell is supporting for President but if you watch enough of her talks it starts to get pretty obvious it is not the current occupant(joking about sending certain unnamed individuals in a “one way” rocket to Mars in front of an obviously left wing audience) which in turn I think has to call in question some of other comments as to who is best for the job of President on this post. Also my comments about the GOP winning suburban areas and suburban women in places like the South Bay suburbs of LA County(where Gwynne lives).
You also pretty clearly don’t understand the current political climate, especially in suburbia. The years 2018 – 2020 haven’t remotely resembled the years 2016 – 2018 politically. And 2018 wasn’t a Presidential election year.
I know a lot of people here used to at least live in the South Bay area of LA County(i.e. Redondo Beach, Torrance, Manhattan Beach). Currently this area despite being GOP 20 or 30 years ago is represented by a fairly left wing Democrat named Ted Lieu. How exactly is the GOP going to win back this seat? Then extrapolate this to the rest of California. What has happened in the past two years to make this possible?
I actually heard a GOP politician from Manhattan Beach actually once suggest the solution to Los Angeles’ problems was to break the city up into smaller sized more municipalities akin to the size of Inglewood, Downey or Hawthorne(a Libertarian proposition I would tend to support). When I brought up this idea to a Trump supporting former LAPD cop he was aghast at the idea off “breaking” up his beloved LAPD and went on and on about how everyone says the LAPD is so corrupt but if you want to see “real corruption and lack of accountability” you need to check-out Inglewood, Hawthorne, or Downey city halls. Being someone interest in space I had a great comeback that a big part of the work that got the first man on the moon happened in Downey and a lot of the work to get the first man or woman on Mars is happening in Hawthorne notwithstanding the “corruption” and lack of accountability at their respective city halls.
I consider this the perfect contradiction between Libertarianism and Trumpism.
I still do live in the South Bay – about two miles as the crow flies from the SpaceX Hawthorne Mothership as it happens.
With a district that includes the People’s Republic of Santa Monica, Ted Lieu has a safe seat and so, unfortunately, in all probability, does my, and SpaceX’s, own Congresscritter, Maxine Waters. So it goes.
So what? CA’s 2021 Congressional delegation will still be majority-Dem, but I see no reason to assume there will be any sweep-out of the current Republican minority of said delegation and a bit of take-back is certainly possible. Extrapolating nationwide based on local politics in a particularly blue subset of the Greater L.A. area is a Pauline Kael-ish mug’s game.
As for the nameless GOP-er from Manhattan Beach, you have seen first-hand why the Republican Party doesn’t amount to much in the South Bay. Break one fabulously corrupt Demo-dominated city government into a whole bunch of smaller ones as bad or worse? – yeah, that’s the ticket. /s
As for your “comeback,” Downey, at the time of the Apollo program, was not a pesthole of Dem corruption nor was the state of CA as a whole. That came later, after Jerry Brown’s first two terms and the standing up of government employee unions in the state.
And whatever penny-ante corruption may be afoot in Hawthorne, it isn’t going to touch SpaceX. SpaceX has been attacked in earnest by U.S. Congressmen and Senators. SpaceX won all those rounds.
Any pipsqueak city councilman looking to squeeze baksheesh out of SpaceX is going to disappear, politically, at the next election. If he’s particularly persistent, he might even disappear physically. It’s not generally a good idea to try extorting a guy who, among other things, digs big tunnels for a living.
There are plenty of contradictions between Libertarianism and Trumpism. That’s one of the reasons I used to be a Libertarian and now am not. The differences mostly favor the Trump side of the divide – especially the selective use of tariffs, or merely the threat of tariffs, to advance the national interest in non-trivial ways.
As the election draws closer, I think it will become more and more apparent that Trump will get his second term, the Republicans will take back the House and likely boost their Senate margin a bit, and that the ethnic voting blocs the Dems have long relied upon will be exhibiting some significant cracks.
The Dems, of course, will probably try one of their “October Surprise” ploys – a practice now so venerable as to be no surprise at all. This time around, though, I think the Trump administration will have a few October Surprises of its own.
People back in the 1980s I think would have laughed at the idea that the South Bay was a “particularly blue” area of Greater LA. Trump might very well get a second term but I think Trump supporters are dreaming if they think they can take the House which means in the aftermath of Trump victory if one comes the next four year look like the next two. You might see an odd Democrat lose re-election someone like Kendra Horn but overall not much change.
My theory on the House is you don’t really have “shy” voters who don’t want to tell pollsters who they are voting for in the same way you have with Trump. So the polling results as compiled by places like the Cook Political Report showing a pretty bad result for the GOP I tend to think are pretty accurate.
I think that Mister Smyth is right in saying that the Republican party has no chance of taking back the House. It isn’t because they couldn’t do it easily, however. It’s because they aren’t running any candidates. I live in Virginia, and this year, just as in 2018, the Republicans aren’t running any candidates in key races. None.
The Republican party doesn’t deserve to take anything.
I have a bridge to sell anyone on the political right think they have any change of winning the House of Representatives this fall when to do so means winning a lot of seat in places like California and New York. The GOP had it’s shot between 2016 and 2018 and they blew out. To use an Aerospace analogy conservatives need to start thinking about shifting from an Andy Beal/Laura Montgomery view of the world to an Elon Musk view. What do I mean by that. Andy wanted to build a “private” space program without any government interference i.e no ITAR rules, no FAA launch licenses, no desire any interest in having anything to do with NASA or the DOD. Andy thought his political connections with the Texas GOP would help brute force his way into space but it turned that the Texas GOP is far more interested in NASA JSC pork. Andy basically had little to show for his effort other than a testing facility in McGregor, TX that he was able to hand down to Elon.
Elon on the other hand despite his own libertarian leanings and knowing that NASA historically doesn’t like private competition knew he had to pick his spots and as such comply with FAA/ITAR rules AND find a foot in the door of NASA through COTS then use that initial seed to expand far beyond anything NASA and Mike Griffin intended or desired with COTS. So if Conservatives want to chance of having success in the “culture” wars they need to start being more Elon and less Andy Beal(and finding ways to pick their spots with political left akin to the Elon-Lori Garver alliance).
**Why did I bring up Laura Montgomery. Well Laura seems to be a nice enough lady she has this doctrinaire libertarian view that we should go back to the pre 1984 era and that back then private space was as legal as it is today just without any FAA “red tape.” Even better without FAA licensing that govt would have no means impose the OST on private actors. While I respect the principal as a practical matter the private space sector without the 1984 Commercial Space Launch Act is uninvestable(in particular the 84 act clarifies how ITAR existing long before 1984 applies to private launches). Now one can shake the fists and say all the private investors in commercial space are really corporatist socialists but those are simply the facts on the ground. I also happen to disagree with Laura under non-delegation doctrine that Congress instead of the executive branch should be more involved launch licensing. Congress is the last body you want micromanaging commercial space. Hence my original point that a GOP sweep this fall just ain’t going to happen and Conservative need to wake up and realize this.
You clearly don’t understand Laura’s point of view. She has no problems with the CSLA.
This is probably better to discuss on another post some other time re: Laura. I will point out that Gwynne Shotwell is on record as wanting new legislation both domestically in the US and internationally in terms of settling people on Mars and not wanting to rely only on the existing legislative structure. As I heard her put it SpaceX does NOT want to be the “government” for Mars and wants some other entity to do that job(I actually think there are some interesting models on earth such as Svalbard and Treaty ports but that is a whole different subject)
Which to a broader point I don’t necessarily want to suppose who Shotwell is supporting for President but if you watch enough of her talks it starts to get pretty obvious it is not the current occupant(joking about sending certain unnamed individuals in a “one way” rocket to Mars in front of an obviously left wing audience) which in turn I think has to call in question some of other comments as to who is best for the job of President on this post. Also my comments about the GOP winning suburban areas and suburban women in places like the South Bay suburbs of LA County(where Gwynne lives).
You also pretty clearly don’t understand the current political climate, especially in suburbia. The years 2018 – 2020 haven’t remotely resembled the years 2016 – 2018 politically. And 2018 wasn’t a Presidential election year.
I know a lot of people here used to at least live in the South Bay area of LA County(i.e. Redondo Beach, Torrance, Manhattan Beach). Currently this area despite being GOP 20 or 30 years ago is represented by a fairly left wing Democrat named Ted Lieu. How exactly is the GOP going to win back this seat? Then extrapolate this to the rest of California. What has happened in the past two years to make this possible?
I actually heard a GOP politician from Manhattan Beach actually once suggest the solution to Los Angeles’ problems was to break the city up into smaller sized more municipalities akin to the size of Inglewood, Downey or Hawthorne(a Libertarian proposition I would tend to support). When I brought up this idea to a Trump supporting former LAPD cop he was aghast at the idea off “breaking” up his beloved LAPD and went on and on about how everyone says the LAPD is so corrupt but if you want to see “real corruption and lack of accountability” you need to check-out Inglewood, Hawthorne, or Downey city halls. Being someone interest in space I had a great comeback that a big part of the work that got the first man on the moon happened in Downey and a lot of the work to get the first man or woman on Mars is happening in Hawthorne notwithstanding the “corruption” and lack of accountability at their respective city halls.
I consider this the perfect contradiction between Libertarianism and Trumpism.
I still do live in the South Bay – about two miles as the crow flies from the SpaceX Hawthorne Mothership as it happens.
With a district that includes the People’s Republic of Santa Monica, Ted Lieu has a safe seat and so, unfortunately, in all probability, does my, and SpaceX’s, own Congresscritter, Maxine Waters. So it goes.
So what? CA’s 2021 Congressional delegation will still be majority-Dem, but I see no reason to assume there will be any sweep-out of the current Republican minority of said delegation and a bit of take-back is certainly possible. Extrapolating nationwide based on local politics in a particularly blue subset of the Greater L.A. area is a Pauline Kael-ish mug’s game.
As for the nameless GOP-er from Manhattan Beach, you have seen first-hand why the Republican Party doesn’t amount to much in the South Bay. Break one fabulously corrupt Demo-dominated city government into a whole bunch of smaller ones as bad or worse? – yeah, that’s the ticket. /s
As for your “comeback,” Downey, at the time of the Apollo program, was not a pesthole of Dem corruption nor was the state of CA as a whole. That came later, after Jerry Brown’s first two terms and the standing up of government employee unions in the state.
And whatever penny-ante corruption may be afoot in Hawthorne, it isn’t going to touch SpaceX. SpaceX has been attacked in earnest by U.S. Congressmen and Senators. SpaceX won all those rounds.
Any pipsqueak city councilman looking to squeeze baksheesh out of SpaceX is going to disappear, politically, at the next election. If he’s particularly persistent, he might even disappear physically. It’s not generally a good idea to try extorting a guy who, among other things, digs big tunnels for a living.
There are plenty of contradictions between Libertarianism and Trumpism. That’s one of the reasons I used to be a Libertarian and now am not. The differences mostly favor the Trump side of the divide – especially the selective use of tariffs, or merely the threat of tariffs, to advance the national interest in non-trivial ways.
As the election draws closer, I think it will become more and more apparent that Trump will get his second term, the Republicans will take back the House and likely boost their Senate margin a bit, and that the ethnic voting blocs the Dems have long relied upon will be exhibiting some significant cracks.
The Dems, of course, will probably try one of their “October Surprise” ploys – a practice now so venerable as to be no surprise at all. This time around, though, I think the Trump administration will have a few October Surprises of its own.
People back in the 1980s I think would have laughed at the idea that the South Bay was a “particularly blue” area of Greater LA. Trump might very well get a second term but I think Trump supporters are dreaming if they think they can take the House which means in the aftermath of Trump victory if one comes the next four year look like the next two. You might see an odd Democrat lose re-election someone like Kendra Horn but overall not much change.
My theory on the House is you don’t really have “shy” voters who don’t want to tell pollsters who they are voting for in the same way you have with Trump. So the polling results as compiled by places like the Cook Political Report showing a pretty bad result for the GOP I tend to think are pretty accurate.
https://cookpolitical.com/ratings
I think that Mister Smyth is right in saying that the Republican party has no chance of taking back the House. It isn’t because they couldn’t do it easily, however. It’s because they aren’t running any candidates. I live in Virginia, and this year, just as in 2018, the Republicans aren’t running any candidates in key races. None.
The Republican party doesn’t deserve to take anything.