Hubris and Nemesis

The US Space Force is NOT a joke?

Posted on January 20, 2020January 20, 2020 by Mike

Saying it doesn’t make it so, I’m afraid.

Last month, not long before boarding a plane to Mar-a-Lago for Christmas, President Donald Trump signed legislation that created the newest military branch in the United States in more than 70 years: the Space Force.

The new Space Force instead exists inside the Department of the Air Force, in an arrangement similar to that of the Marine Corps and the Navy, which both operate under the Department of the Navy. There will be no secretary of space: As space-ops chief, (General Jay) Raymond now holds the organization’s highest position. The law also stipulates that the Space Force must be built from existing personnel in the Air Force, and does not have the authority to hire new people. The Space Force has simply absorbed the Air Force unit that focuses on space operations, the Air Force Space Command, which was established in 1982. Its members will remain Air Force officers, but those with space-related roles will become Space Force officers in the next year and a half.

Uh oh— with the Space Force under USAF purview instead of being a Space Navy, pretty much the entire output of every SF/space opera writer since Heinlein just went kaput. I bet David Weber, for one, just about had himself a mild stroke when he heard the news.

The prospect of a Space Force has been hazy since Trump first mentioned it, mostly because the proposal seemed to be a passing thought. “I was saying it the other day—’cause we’re doing a tremendous amount of work in space—I said, ‘Maybe we need a new force. We’ll call it the Space Force,’” Trump said back in 2018, to an audience of marines. “And I was not really serious. And then I said, ‘What a great idea. Maybe we’ll have to do that.’”

Your biggest official mistake so far, Mr Preznit sir, maybe even an unforgivable one. Why the obvious and totally spectacular name—Star Fleet, dammit!—didn’t occur to you is beyond my ken. Star Fleet already has the uniforms, rank structure, mission profile, and a cool logo ready to go.

On the other hand, though, maybe Trump prefers to wait for the United Federation of Planets to come into existence for that, perhaps as a matter of good taste. But such deference isn’t necessary according to the Star Trek canon itself, for cryin’ out loud:

Starfleet predates the Federation, having originally been an Earth organization, as shown by the television series Star Trek: Enterprise.

So there. Onwards.

The immediate future of the Space Force involves a lot of paperwork and a dash of symbolism, rather than new uniforms and fight songs. Raymond will join the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military officials who advise the president directly, and the service must come up with and submit an organization plan to Congress in February.

While the Space Force is now official, a slight disconnect in reality remains.

I’d say so, yeah, only a goodish bit more than merely “slight.” How could it be otherwise, when the sad shell of the once-great NASA now lacks the hardware and wherewithal to boost humans into high Earth orbit anymore, and American astronauts are reduced to begging a lift to the ISS from the Russians, Indians, Chinese, Ethiopians, or whatever other third-rater out there might have a working rocket handy?

Jeez, even the Air Farce’s mainstay atmospheric platforms are creaky, leaky, and geriatric at fifty to seventy years young, while our supposedly latest and greatest design is looking like more of an albatross (or an apteryx) than an eagle. And just how do we regain our national mojo as doughty explorers of the Final Frontier when we’ve become such trembling ninnies about safety and risk-avoidance that we wet ourselves in fright at the thought of letting our kids play outside?

Maybe the creation of a Space Force with no readily usable spacefaring vehicles at hand could turn out to be a boost for nascent private outfits like SpaceX, and a lift to the spirits for those of us cake-eating civilians who still care about these things. But I can’t help but feel it’s a mildly embarrassing bit of hubris as well. Who knows, maybe we’ll live up to it someday. If we don’t, it’s a dead cert that somebody else will.

Predictable as the sunrise

Posted on January 13, 2020January 14, 2020 by Mike

In an otherwise good piece, Roger Kimball whiffs bigly on one important thing:

The disaster of Flight 752 took place in the context of the liquidation of the terrorist mass-murderer Qasem Soleimani last week by the United States on the order of President Donald Trump. But that courageous and far-seeing act itself took place in the context of Iran’s decades-long assault on American and, more broadly, on Western institutions that promote a culture of tolerance and religious freedom.

The fact that many U.S. news outlets and Democratic politicians instantly coalesced around Soleimani as a “revered” military leader tells us what great inroads Stockholm Syndrome has made among American elites.

Sorry, Rog, it does no such thing. What it actually tells us is just how low those treasonous blackguards are willing to stoop to attach themselves to true, real-world evil if they think they might somehow grub some cheap political points from it; how reflexively they will always side with America’s enemies, no matter what; how deeply, deeply desperate they are to somehow hold onto power and position by attacking Trump; and how there can be no more fitting, just, or accurate a condemnation of them than to simply name them as traitors, the unabashed enemies of this country.

Last week, Donald Trump eliminated one of Iran’s most potent emissaries of death and destruction. All the beautiful people huddled together and wailed that Trump had just “destabilized” the Middle East (had it been stable beforehand?), that his “unilateral” action was illegal, counterproductive, immature, that, ultimately, he may have started World War III.

That was then. Now it looks as though he may have sparked the great unraveling of theocratic totalitarian control in Iran. And this just in: the Iranians apparently have just arrested the British ambassador. Arrested. In civilized countries, if there is an issue with a diplomat, one expels him. In civilized countries. But this is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Someday, the world will stand back and applaud Trump for his canny and farseeing statesmanship. I do not assert that that recognition is coming any time soon. But come it will.

Most likely, yeah. But not from the Treasoncrats and Enemedia—not unless and until they can use Trump as a weapon for dishonestly smearing some future candidate as the new Second Coming Of Literally Hitler, they won’t.

Update! Schlichter calls ’em out.

You spent the last three years babbling like idiots about “traitors” and “treachery.” Well, head docs call that “projection.” You are siding with the enemy in a war against the United States. And yeah, Iran has been at war with the United States for 40 years, ever since your peanut-farming, half-wit fellow Dem handed over the keys to the country to a bunch of Seventh Century Pennywises. The least you could do is show a little respect to the people trying to clean up your party’s mess.

Your party’s latest triumph is blaming Donald Trump because these drooling morons shot down a passenger airliner the night they launched missiles at our American soldiers. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you sick? Are you stupid? Are you huffing that funny powder you found in Hunter Biden’s medicine cabinet? What would ever have possessed you to start making excuses for people trying to kill Americans?

It’s nothing new for them. After all, it was, what, like two days after 9/11 before they all started preachifying in their oh-so-superior way that we had that coming too? They can’t help themselves; it’s who they are, it’s what they do. They’ve been this way for far too long already, and couldn’t stop now if they tried. Go ahead and ask the scorpion not to sting the frog while you’re at it, you’ll end up with the same result.

STOP THE PRESSES

Posted on January 12, 2020January 12, 2020 by Mike

AOC is (gulp) right?

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has already topped the fundraising charts in her short time in Congress, but the liberal darling won’t donate a cent of her millions to Democrats’ House campaign organization — a position that has rankled some of her colleagues, Fox News has learned.

Instead, Ocasio-Cortez is building her own fundraising operation for fellow progressive candidates to bypass the official Democratic Party infrastructure. Already, she’s actively funding primary challengers to oust certain Democratic colleagues.

“Sometimes the question comes: ‘Do you want to be in a majority or do you want to be in the minority?’” Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., told Fox News, when asked about AOC’s stance. “And do you want to be part of a team?”

Another Democrat was less diplomatic: “Deadbeat Cortez should pay her bills,” complained the Democratic source. “She’s always whining about people paying their fair share and here she is leaving her friends with the bill.”

Their gripe is that Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t given any money to the DCCC, the party arm with the sole job of electing Democrats to the House. Records obtained by Fox News show the New York Democrat has failed to pay any of her $250,000 in “dues” to the DCCC.

Her goose egg of a contribution is no accident. Ocasio-Cortez says she has beef with the DCCC and she’ll withhold her money in protest of how the Democratic Party won’t back insurgent progressive primary candidates, like herself, in the name of protecting incumbents.

Sandy from Westchester has, incredibly enough, come up with a reasonably smart strategy for promoting her communist ideals. It’s a bold move she’s making, particularly for a newly-elected rookie: she’s rejecting the crusty establishment to build a less-compromised, more radical organization, one she can control herself. Her end-run around thw world’s sleaziest, most dishonest political party is nothing less than a direct challenge to its powerful puppeteers, backroom deal-makers, and geriatric career campaigners whose commitment to hard-Left principles she considers to be much too soft.

Know what, though? I wouldn’t at all mind seeing a similar trend develop in the GOP, frankly. But there’s always risk involved in trying to force real change on any corrupt, ruthless, and firmly entrenched organization:

The problem is that progressives like AOC and the Squad want the benefit of the broad party apparatus and name recognition without having to worry about appealing to a broad section of voters, which has been the primary concern of Pelosi and other members of leadership. They are well aware that around half of Democrats describe themselves as moderates or conservatives. And those voters are overrepresented in a lot of the Trump 2016 voting, Democrat 2018 voting districts which are key to the current House majority.

AOC doesn’t seem to particularly care about that. Nor does she care about the optics of which voters she would want to boot out of the tent in order to achieve her aims. Just as in DeMint’s case, where he was arguing for the priorities of conservative primary voters taking precedence over the general election gaming of the consultant-donor class, AOC wants the progressive activist core – 42 percent of the party – to drive Congressional selection. That requires ignoring the priorities of general election moderate voters.

But unfortunately for AOC, that’s a lot of voters. “CNN data guru Harry Enten observes, contra the conventional wisdom, moderates and conservatives still make up roughly half of Democratic voters, while only 19 to 25 percent consider themselves “very liberal.” Moreover, “Millennials and Generation Z voters (roughly those younger than 40)… made up just about 29% of all Democratic voters in the 2018 midterm, per Catalist [a firm that maintains a voter database for Democratic and progressive causes].” Voters over fifty constituted 56 percent of Democratic voters in 2018.”

So this raises the obvious question: who does AOC not want in the tent? Older voters, working class men, and voters of color all skew more moderate within the Democratic coalition – they also favor Biden, who AOC doesn’t even think belongs in her progressive party.

Actually, she isn’t entirely wrong about that either. Her full statement made an unflattering-by-her-lights comparison between Greasy Gropey Joe’s hackish and incompetent maneuvering, his willingness to make deals with the Republican devil when he must, which does indeed make him a “moderate” when stacked up against, say, European politicians, for whom “conservative” shakes out as “slightly less radically Left than Stalin or Marx. VERY slightly.” If Toothy McBigtits can pull off either remaking the Democrat-Socialist Party in the AOC mold or replacing it outright, the resultant dog’s breakfast of hard-left fanaticism will indeed have no place for an old-fashioned horse-trader like Uncle Gropey in it.

If AOC sticks her neck out too far with her purity purge, though, she may learn that those old-guard powerbrokers still have plenty of dirty tricks up their sleeves yet—and that they didn’t gain and hold onto power for so long by being easy marks for every wet-behind-the-ears Young Turk to come down the pike toting more ambition and ego than intelligence.

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