That NASA screwed up the engineering of some of new hardware didn't help. That NASA could only look at and award to the normal fat-cat defense contractors didn't help either.

The combination of the two and NASA's own problems are all quite deadly when it comes to this administration.

Amazingly hope for American humans in space will now rely on Republicans and the US private sector, assuming we just don't try to contract it out to other countries (and lose yet another technology base).

Just as amazing is a lack of understanding by the liberals and environmentalists that the destruction of human space flight dooms the long term prospects for robotic exploration; which is a key tool to understanding the environment and natural resources on Earth. When the over all size of NASA is reduced, it's ability to innovate across programs is gone and the technology stales over time.

Finally, you could assume that even the environmentalists could start to see the only viable long term solution to maintaining Earth's ecosystem is expansion to other worlds, but clearly they don't have that kind of vision.

Recently heard someone describe Gore as a industrialist. This struck me odd, but come to think about it, he is little different then the robber baron industrialists of the 19th century. He is positioned to make tens of millions off the backs of the poor and middle class.

Besides, AGW is everywhere. My kid's elementary text books, the Disney Channel, the movies... everywhere. It will take a decade to remove all this stuff and a generation to de-learn it.

Scientists and engineers are trying to emulate that trick by designing materials that could constitute the next-next (or next-next-next) generation of stealth. Some of their ideas sound like they sprang from the imaginations of Gene Roddenberry or J.K. Rowling, with phrases like “cloaking device” and “invisibility carpet” popping up as frequently in academic papers as in television scripts and books for kids. Other ideas are more realistic, as researchers devise ways to change an aircraft’s color and blur its outline, confusing the bad guys enough to make them shoot in the wrong direction.

Yeah, and the last step ladder I bought had about 12 of these warnings on it and ladders don't even move.

In the meantime, thousands of lost jobs, lost homes, busted up families, children forced in to lesser quality schools, reduced standard of living for everyone, prolonged recession if not complete depression and a massive increase in the misery rate.

It was a poor, poor, poor example of the joke US society has become that the media (already massively basised for this piece of crap) could only focus on the death of a odd-ball has been pop star instead of the very serious joke going in Washington that is going to help bankrupt this country and destroy the lives of our children.

Although I'll wait for someone to claim it is George Bush's fought... after he was video'ed falling off one.

Not all that 17% goes to CEOs, there are salaries for many jobs, and that advertising creates jobs too. Government doesn't create new jobs or new wealth, it can't. I guess "fair" might be the day you or I reach the point that some young kid decides we are of no value and should be put down.

I'd love to hear more examples of the government running things efficiently. Katrina? The Big Dig? Highways and bridges to no-where? Iraq? Mogadishu? (to be fair), Challenger? Columbia? If you are a bit right minded and at least honest, here is a good list, including documentation about waste in the Medicare program.