Liberal Repercussion

The news about NASA's abandonment of Hubble is just plain disturbing. While our IDIOT pResident may have the ability to suggest the direction of NASA, he has no PROFESSIONAL business doing so. The Hubble is advancing math theory, astrophysics and our knowledge of ourselves. Is that so difficult to understand and appreciate. This redirection of funds is occurring WHY? Because W wants to invade the moon, or strip mine it or turn it into a penal colony or something. I guess there must be oil on Mars. I have no idea what these people must be thinking. Even the Hubble cannot see the depth of Bush's bottomless stupidity.

posted by Rei Toei @ 2:49 p.m.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/science/17HUBB.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

January 17, 2004
NASA Cancels Trip to Supply Hubble, Sealing Early Doom
By DENNIS OVERBYE

avor those cosmic postcards while you can. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration decreed an early death yesterday to one of its flagship missions and most celebrated successes, the Hubble Space Telescope.

In a midday meeting at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., two days after President Bush ordered NASA to redirect its resources toward human exploration of the Moon and Mars, the agency's administrator, Sean O'Keefe, told the managers of the space telescope that there would be no more shuttle visits to maintain it.

A visit by astronauts to install a couple of the telescope's scientific instruments and replace the gyroscopes and batteries had been planned for next year. Without any more visits, the telescope, the crown jewel of astronomy for 10 years, will probably die in orbit sometime in 2007, depending on when its batteries or gyroscopes fail for good.

"It could die tomorrow, it could last to 2011," said Dr. Steven Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Institute on the Johns Hopkins University campus in Baltimore. Dr. Beckwith said he and his colleagues were devastated.

At a news conference last night, Dr. John M. Grunsfeld, the agency's chief scientist and an astronaut who has been to the Hubble two times, called the the telescope the "best marriage of human spaceflight and science."

"It is a sad day that we have to announce this," Dr. Grunsfeld added.

As the news flashed around the world by e-mail, other astronomers joined the Hubble team in their shock. Dr. David N. Spergel, an astronomer at Princeton and a member of a committee that advises NASA on space science, called it a "double whammy" for astronomy. Not only was a telescope being lost, but $200 million worth of instruments that had been built to be added in the later shuttle mission will also be left on the ground, Dr. Spergel said.

Dr. Garth Illingworth, an astronomer at the University of California at Santa Cruz who is also on the advisory committee, said, "I think this is a mistake," noting that the Hubble was still doing work at the forefront of science.

Dr. Tod Lauer, of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories in Tucson, said, "This is a pretty nasty turn of events, coming immediately on the heels of `W's' endorsement of space exploration."

The demise of the Hubble will leave astronomers with no foreseeable prospect of a telescope in space operating primarily at visible wavelengths. The announcement also precludes hopes that astronomers had of using the Hubble in tandem with the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launching in 2011 and which is being designed for infrared wavelengths, to study galaxies at the far reaches of time.

posted by Rei Toei @ 2:40 p.m.

Bush handed my friend and 2000 co-workers their pink slips today ...with the annoucment of the retirement of the shuttle program

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/7711665.htm

posted by Rei Toei @ 9:49 p.m.

From a December 2003 report from the Army War College

The author examines three features of the war on terrorism as currently defined and conducted: (1) the administration's postulation of the terrorist threat, (2) the scope and feasibility of U.S. war aims, and (3) the war's political, fiscal, and military sustainability. He believes that the war on terrorism--as opposed to the campaign against al-Qaeda--lacks strategic clarity, embraces unrealistic objectives, and may not be sustainable over the long haul. He calls for downsizing the scope of the war on terrorism to reflect concrete U.S. security interests and the limits of American military power.

posted by Rei Toei @ 5:11 p.m.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=564&u=/nm/20040112/ts_nm/bush_oneill_dc_9&printer=1


By Jonathan Nicholson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury requested a probe on Monday of how a possibly secret document appeared in a televised interview of Paul O'Neill, as a book criticizing the Bush administration that uses material supplied by the ex-Treasury secretary hits the stores.


In the book about his term as Treasury chief, O'Neill, who left the job in December 2002 in a shake-up of President Bush (news - web sites)'s economic team, criticized White House policies and provided author Ron Suskind with thousands of administration documents.


O'Neill said the Bush administration had been looking for a justification to oust President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) since early 2001, long before the Sept. 11 attacks that year.


Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols did not specify the topic of the specific document that led to the decision to ask the Inspector General's office to look into it.


"It's based on the (CBS program) '60 Minutes' segment, and I'll be even more clear -- the document as shown on '60 Minutes' that said 'secret,"' Nichols told reporters at a weekly briefing.


He said the probe will focus on how possibly classified information appeared on a television interview as one of O'Neill's papers.


According to a summary of the segment on CBS's web site, Suskind said one of the briefing materials O'Neill had included a paper marked "secret" that was titled "Plan for post-Saddam Ira

"We're asking them to simply look into the '60 Minutes' segment and then take appropriate steps, if necessary," Nichols said. However, he said the legal threshold for asking for an inquiry was "very low."

posted by Rei Toei @ 7:14 p.m.

When Republicans fight, it isn't a pretty sight. Quackenbush may be onto something about the water rights. There is a cadre of people who have been attempting to make water a commodity in Texas for a long time.

Something else intrigues me. "Tell Mr. Pickens I'll be his huckleberry". Sort of an unusual phrase. A year ago, the bartcop chat room had a persistent troll named SpiderMBA who used that phrase repeatedly.

SpiderMBA got his ass kicked in debates at least 3 times in chat. The last time was by a bot. LOL


Maybe all Republicans talk like that... it may be a buzz phrase with them. Sort of stupid, really.... the meaning seems somewhat obscure. Is he suggesting a raft trip down the Mississippi? Doubt that.


January 09, 2004
Why Texas politics are just different
It's not just that we're a state in which a Republican candidate can get into a pissing contest with an oil tycoon. It's that they do it in public that makes this state so special.



To say Dallas oilman T. Boone Pickens and state Senate candidate Jesse Quackenbush disagree on water rights is an understatement.

After Quackenbush — an Amarillo attorney and restaurateur — commented in the Odessa American newspaper about Pickens' attempt to sell Panhandle water, Pickens' attorney fired off a letter threatening a libel lawsuit.

Quackenbush, who considers the tone of the letter "threatening," is refusing to be muzzled.

"Tell Mr. Pickens I'll be his huckleberry. Please let him know that if I'm elected to represent the 31st District, the only water he'll leave the Panhandle with will be the urine I leave on his pant leg," Quackenbush wrote to Pickens' attorney, James A. Besselman, also of Amarillo. The letter is dated Jan. 5.



See what I mean? You can't buy this kind of entertainment anywhere else. I will of course prefer to see the Democrat, Elaine King Miller, win this race, but if it has to be a Republican (and it almost assuredly will), I'll be rooting for Quackenbush. May I suggest now that his Official Senate Nickname be Huckleberry Hound?

Jokes aside, the article is pretty interesting in its own right. Here's the nub of the dispute:



Quackenbush is making water rights a theme in his campaign and name-dropped Pickens in the newspaper story.

"The rapidly approaching special election should be about issues, not the popularity contest it's turning into," Quackenbush told the American. "T. Boone Pickens is closer than ever to stealing and auctioning off the 31st District's limited water supply."

In a letter to Quackenbush from Besselman dated Dec. 23, Besselman wrote that the water underlying Pickens' ranch and the ranches of a separate landowner group belong to them "as a matter of law."

Besselman also wrote that Pickens has put forth a "viable solution to the state's impending water crisis that should be debated as a public policy issue."

"Your public statement that Mr. Pickens is going to 'steal' water that somehow belongs to the 31st District's water supply is a libelous misstatement that is offensive to Mr. Pickens and appears to be a blatant mischaracterization and untruth published by you to gain some advantage in your election efforts," Besselman wrote.

"We view this known untruth and malicious lie, to further your own political ambition, to be a very serious error of judgment."

The letter stated it was Quackenbush's only reminder to never again refer to Pickens in any further "untrue fashion" about his proposed use or sale of his water.

"To do so will assuredly cause you to be a defendant in a libel lawsuit, and I can promise you that your time will be saturated with the prosecution of that case," the letter states.

Quackenbush said he doesn't agree with water being sold for profit and transported to other areas. He equated it to the sale and transportation of oxygen. He said he is trying to protect the interests of farmers in the 31st District, which goes from the Panhandle through counties along the New Mexico border to the Permian Basin. It includes Amarillo, Midland and Odessa.

"We don't think water should be treated as a commodity," Quackenbush said. "The people in the Panhandle do not understand the commodity that's about to be taken away from them."



Water rights are a big deal, and as more people move into and are born into the West and Southwest, you'll see a lot more of this kind of dispute, if perhaps with a bit less color. I believe Quackenbush is on the right side of this issue for the same reason that I believe development should be strictly controlled in the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone. I hope whoever wins this Senate seat will see it Quackenbush's way.

Posted by Charles Kuffner at January 09, 2004 11:52 AM to The great state of Texas

posted by Rei Toei @ 8:54 p.m.

The thing with politicians is
I wouldn't have suspicions
If I saw their worst positions
And their Ugly Underneath
But after all the voting
Suck away the sugar coating
Now they've had you and they're gloating
Boy it's Ugly Underneath

posted by Rei Toei @ 12:54 a.m.