Tom Reed is touting the fact that he's now one of the 39 "Young Guns" who the National Republican Congressional Committee say will help unseat Nancy Pelosi. Since he got the "Young Gun" designation, Reed's been tweeting that Pelosi Must Go.
I've long held that the whole Pelosi fixation is just meat for the base, that people don't really care about her. But within the last few days, there's another reason why running against Pelosi isn't the smartest strategy on record: Joe Barton. If Republicans do take over the House, Barton, the man who apologized to BP, will be the head of the House committee in charge of oversight of all energy-related legislation.
Comments
Yes. I couldn't believe my ears, when I heard Joe Barton's opening comments. Tom Reed best get some "original," specific-to-this-district talking points.
Next time you are on a phone press conference please ask each candidate what they think about NASA reaching out to Muslims.
Maybe they should be reaching out to upstate New York.
There you go!!!
Elmer, I'll do that after you tell us what the NASA administrator actually said, and explain why it's a bad idea. Be sure that when you do, you explain why it's OK to do the same thing for Israel. And also be sure that you quote what he said correctly, which will require looking somewhere other than Fox News.
Has anyone else caught this give-and-take, somewhat deep in a recent profile of the Allegheny County-based candidate for the GOP nomination, as posted in the on-line "Elmira Star-Gazette"? The campaign fun has begun, lol-----though this is a bit too squabblish for me, true:
"...The district faces complex problems that can't be left to someone like Reed, who is a collections lawyer, Volk said.
" 'Good people don't grow up to be collections lawyers,' she said. 'Good people grow up to be teachers, family-owned business people, grandmothers.'
"Reed said his work with creditors is only part of his law operation that includes criminal work and general corporate counseling for municipalities. His businesses also include real estate, property development and property rental companies, he said."
Instead of depending on Elmer to quote Bolden correctly people can hear it for themsleves right form Charles Bolden when he discussed it with Al Jazerera.
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/talktojazeera/2010/07/2010711222...
NASA should be looking for the best and the brightest of Americans or people who believe in America's leadership in space exploration and share its goals. (Bolden himself says that) If they are Muslim so be it, if they are Jewish so be it. Any employee of NASA must have as its goal the success of NASA. It must never be an affirmative action social programme.
With that said it is very disapointing to see that President Obama is turning his back on NASA and turning the space program into a green jobs initiative.
I've listened to those comments and found them innocuous. Obama wants NASA to reach out to Muslims. That would be news if NASA were the type of program you're portraying. It isn't.
Astronauts are not picked only because they are the best and the brightest. They're all outstanding, of course, but there are a whole bunch of diplomatic considerations involved that lead to major foreign involvement in our space program. Lots of foreigners have flown on the space shuttle and/or to the ISS, (including, sadly, an Israeli on the fatal Columbia mission), in part for "feel good" reasons.
It's willfully ignoring facts not to note that a huge part of the NASA budget goes to the ISS, which is not much more than an International feel-good program, which astronauts from 15 different countries have visited. Astronauts get there either via the Shuttle or via Soyuz, so a lot of astronauts from non-Muslim countries (and one Muslim one -- Malaysia -- that's 1 astronaut out of 195) have used NASA resources either to get to the ISS, or once they've reached it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_International_Space_Station_visitors
This whole story was a big nothing blown up by Fox News and the rest of the usual suspects simply because the words "Obama" and "Muslim" were involved. If Obama had recommend that we make nice with, say, Singapore, it wouldn't have merited a mention. The main purpose of this nontroversy was to waste the time of Obama's press people and Democrats, and to keep the base riled up about Obama's supposed special feelings toward Muslims.
In this case, at least, it didn't work. The story came and went without making the major media outlets, because it was such a nothingburger.
Those of you who rely on Fox for news rather than today's talking point might want to take a serious look at what NASA really does and see that Fox added a bunch of misleading context, and you might want to wonder how many times they do that for other stories.
So what your are saying is that "Young Guns" are really running to be astronauts, not congressmen. Got it. I need to send this story to Hannity immediately. Thanks for the scoop.
Rotten
Are we disagreeing? I do not think so, I could have sworn I said the program takes all. It has no issue with outreach to any qualified Astronauts as long as they share their goals. That is a pretty innocuous statement in itself. Isn't that the goal of most institutions?
Are you saying a program I am portraying or Elmer is portraying? In Houston we have the "The Johnson Space Center" also who could forget "Houston we have a problem"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13 We see people of all types working in the program down here. There are many nervous engineers and scientists that are scratching their heads as to what direction Obama/Biden is pushing NASA and why? Scientist want to discover things, Engineers want to build things many wonder if that is the goal now.
I think where you have your beef is with Fox news pushing it as an Obama negative. I only saw it once on Fox it was a bottom of the hour story that was pretty factual reported by Brett Baire. Maybe Hannity picked it up, but I dont watch him or CNN/MSNBC Olberman etc opinion editorial shows. I find them all to be biased slanted propoganda and I would advise others to take them with a grain of salt.
My goal of the comment was to give you Boldens statements in his own words. To bypass FOX, MSNBC, Elmer, Rottenchester or Tiberius for that matter. I agree with you it was pretty innocuous outreach taht happens all the time
Yeah, I don't think we're disagreeing about the comments.
I understand that the engineers are nervous, because we're concentrating on unmanned spaceflight and probably cancelling the new moon/mars manned missions. I feel for anyone who may lose their job, but I think unmanned spaceflight gives us more bang for the buck at this point in time.
One more point for Down in Cuba
What I am saying is the Young Guns theme was boring nothing news and ElmerJK's irrelevant injection of NASA made this a much more interesting post. For the record I also think Tom Reed and whoever the democrats candidate (whose name I could care less about) is boring. But because I do not vote in that district anymore my opinion is just as meaningless.
No kidding. This whole race has suddenly become Dullsville, USA.
Sadly, so true....
Waiting to see if everyone gets their required signatures, if so, then it should start picking up again.
In some respects, the only truly "exciting" candidate--and then it's in part based on novelty and, as of now, unfamiliarity--is the young lady from Cuba. I wish she could get some more media coverage/traction.
I just read on the site of "The Leader" that Campini (?) didn't secure enough signatures to qualify for the Republican primary! How 'bou that?
Thanks - just posted it.