All posts by Rand Simberg

Maybe He’d Be More Comfortable Working For Dan Goldin’s NASA

Apparently there are still a few unrepentent socialists left in the former Soviet Union. Cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev isn’t very happy about this new-fangled free-enterprise Russian space program, in which people can travel into space by simply (horrors!) paying money.

It is a frightening trend; why, if this keeps up, it might eventually lead to free enterprise in that last proud bastion of socialist manned space programs–the USA.

[Thanks to Jim Bennett for the link]

Maybe He’d Be More Comfortable Working For Dan Goldin’s NASA

Apparently there are still a few unrepentent socialists left in the former Soviet Union. Cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev isn’t very happy about this new-fangled free-enterprise Russian space program, in which people can travel into space by simply (horrors!) paying money.

It is a frightening trend; why, if this keeps up, it might eventually lead to free enterprise in that last proud bastion of socialist manned space programs–the USA.

[Thanks to Jim Bennett for the link]

Maybe He’d Be More Comfortable Working For Dan Goldin’s NASA

Apparently there are still a few unrepentent socialists left in the former Soviet Union. Cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev isn’t very happy about this new-fangled free-enterprise Russian space program, in which people can travel into space by simply (horrors!) paying money.

It is a frightening trend; why, if this keeps up, it might eventually lead to free enterprise in that last proud bastion of socialist manned space programs–the USA.

[Thanks to Jim Bennett for the link]

Our Friends The Iranians

Financial Times informs us that some of the mullahs aren’t happy with a US presence in Afghanistan, and view Karzai as “an American stooge.”

Well, I’m wondering why we should care if a bunch of Islamofascists are unhappy.

So, they don’t find our presence acceptable? Well, we don’t find flying airplanes into our inhabited skyscrapers acceptable either, and they’d better realize that we’ll stay there as long as we think we need to in order to prevent future recurrences. And if there’s a split developing within the Iranian power structure, as this article implies, we need to encourage it.

Money Doesn’t Corrupt

Watching bits and pieces of Hannity and Colmes again tonight (it was up against a Simpsons rerun that I’ve seen many times…), and they had Lanny Davis on. He was, of all things, defending the Bush Administration (at least insofar as he thought there was no evidence that they’d done anything wrong) and was urging them to come clean on the “energy task force.”

My take is that he knows he was running interference for a criminal scoundrel in the past, he has at least the vestiges of a conscience, and that he hopes, by appearing to be “consistent” that he will somehow redeem himself.

Of course, he’s not being consistent, because in the case of the Clinton Administration, almost without failure, there was almost always a “quo” to match every “quid.” The only excuse that the Clintonistas could put forth was that yes, there was a quid, and yes, there was a quo, but we must understand that Bill Clinton was such a noble and ethical creature, that it was madness to connect the dots and think that there was therefore a “quid pro quo.”

(Quick translation for those who are Latin challenged: “quid” means “this,” “quo” means “that,” and “pro” means “for”…)

The uphill struggle that the Democrats face in making this into a Republican scandal is that while there are “quids” to both parties, there are no recent “quo”s, and to the degree that they exist at all, they only came from Democrats…

Lanny also said something toward the end that simply reinforced Glenn Reynold’s recent Fox News editorial. Lanny said, “We must pass campaign reform to end the corruption caused by all this money.”

No, Lanny, it’s not the money that causes all the corruption. Lord Acton had it right when he said it, and it remains right today.

Power corrupts.

Money Doesn’t Corrupt

Watching bits and pieces of Hannity and Colmes again tonight (it was up against a Simpsons rerun that I’ve seen many times…), and they had Lanny Davis on. He was, of all things, defending the Bush Administration (at least insofar as he thought there was no evidence that they’d done anything wrong) and was urging them to come clean on the “energy task force.”

My take is that he knows he was running interference for a criminal scoundrel in the past, he has at least the vestiges of a conscience, and that he hopes, by appearing to be “consistent” that he will somehow redeem himself.

Of course, he’s not being consistent, because in the case of the Clinton Administration, almost without failure, there was almost always a “quo” to match every “quid.” The only excuse that the Clintonistas could put forth was that yes, there was a quid, and yes, there was a quo, but we must understand that Bill Clinton was such a noble and ethical creature, that it was madness to connect the dots and think that there was therefore a “quid pro quo.”

(Quick translation for those who are Latin challenged: “quid” means “this,” “quo” means “that,” and “pro” means “for”…)

The uphill struggle that the Democrats face in making this into a Republican scandal is that while there are “quids” to both parties, there are no recent “quo”s, and to the degree that they exist at all, they only came from Democrats…

Lanny also said something toward the end that simply reinforced Glenn Reynold’s recent Fox News editorial. Lanny said, “We must pass campaign reform to end the corruption caused by all this money.”

No, Lanny, it’s not the money that causes all the corruption. Lord Acton had it right when he said it, and it remains right today.

Power corrupts.

Money Doesn’t Corrupt

Watching bits and pieces of Hannity and Colmes again tonight (it was up against a Simpsons rerun that I’ve seen many times…), and they had Lanny Davis on. He was, of all things, defending the Bush Administration (at least insofar as he thought there was no evidence that they’d done anything wrong) and was urging them to come clean on the “energy task force.”

My take is that he knows he was running interference for a criminal scoundrel in the past, he has at least the vestiges of a conscience, and that he hopes, by appearing to be “consistent” that he will somehow redeem himself.

Of course, he’s not being consistent, because in the case of the Clinton Administration, almost without failure, there was almost always a “quo” to match every “quid.” The only excuse that the Clintonistas could put forth was that yes, there was a quid, and yes, there was a quo, but we must understand that Bill Clinton was such a noble and ethical creature, that it was madness to connect the dots and think that there was therefore a “quid pro quo.”

(Quick translation for those who are Latin challenged: “quid” means “this,” “quo” means “that,” and “pro” means “for”…)

The uphill struggle that the Democrats face in making this into a Republican scandal is that while there are “quids” to both parties, there are no recent “quo”s, and to the degree that they exist at all, they only came from Democrats…

Lanny also said something toward the end that simply reinforced Glenn Reynold’s recent Fox News editorial. Lanny said, “We must pass campaign reform to end the corruption caused by all this money.”

No, Lanny, it’s not the money that causes all the corruption. Lord Acton had it right when he said it, and it remains right today.

Power corrupts.