Monthly Archives: July 2013
Jail – the Liberal Paradise?
My friend Nola “Fanny” Guay is ticked off this morning. Someone sent her this poster by email:
“I hate it when people send stuff like this around that just isn’t true,” she said.
Me, too.
Especially when the truth is worse.
No liberal really wants to put the rest of us in jail. Not really. Not even the farthest green protester whose mantra is that the Earth would be sooooo much better without humans.
The poster should read,
The working poor, those hardworking people who couldn’t make enough to live in the nineteenth century were called the deserving poor.
Those first public housing residents were carefully screened. Only employed families with two parents were allowed. Alcoholics and those with social problems were banned.
There were other similar efforts but Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the first permanent, federally funded housing in the United States. His 1933 New Deal program, the National Industrial Recovery Act, directed the Public Works Administration to undertake the “construction, reconstruction, alteration, or repair under public regulation or control of low-cost housing and slum-clearance projects…” Liberal program.
Harry Truman’s Fair Deal dramatically expanded the role of the federal government in public and private housing with the Housing Act of 1949. Liberal program.
All the discontent with “Urban Renewal” led to Lyndon Johnson’s Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965. Liberal program.
Over those years the rules morphed from allowing only employed families and banning addicts to, in many cases, banning employed families and recruiting addicts. Poor, but maybe not so deserving. Still, the ways of keeping the poor, poor, do match the liberal mantra:
- Each resident is exactly the same as everyone else.
- Meals are provided free, along with exercise equipment, library services, television, and more.
- Free healthcare is to be available on site.
- Weapons are forbidden even for self-defense.
Now that I’ve done my Liberal pounding for the day, it is worth noting that the Conservative Banker approach to public housing is simpler: “indenture ’em with a mortgage.”
Join us next week when we wonder why under Obamacare (“Free healthcare is to be available to everyone”), a Key West family with insurance received two denial letters this past week for their 2-year old son’s Lymphoma treatment.
Wordless Wednesday
Liftoff
It was never a sure thing with the leaden skies and incipient rain and lightning so when we went Red for upper level wind conditions, we were all worried.
The hold was short and the United Launch Alliance Atlas V with the second MUOS satellite aboard lifted off at 9:00 a.m., 44 years after Apollo 11 passed behind the Moon and fired its engine to enter lunar orbit. This was my first in-person launch. WOW, what a birthday present!
“The U.S. Navy’s Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) is a next-generation narrowband tactical satellite communications system designed to significantly improve ground communications for U.S. forces on the move. MUOS will provide military users more communications capability over existing systems, including simultaneous voice, video and data – similar to the capabilities experienced today with smart phones.
“MUOS satellites are equipped with a Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) payload that provides a 16-fold increase in transmission throughput over the current Ultra High Frequency (UHF) satellite system. Each MUOS satellite also includes a legacy UHF payload that is fully compatible with the current UHF Follow-on system and legacy terminals. This dual-payload design ensures a smooth transition to the cutting-edge WCDMA technology while the UFO system is phased out.”
The United Launch Alliance (a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing) has three expendable launch systems: Delta II, Delta IV and the Atlas V. These vehicles have carried payloads such as weather, telecommunications and national security satellites, as well as deep space and interplanetary exploration missions for more than 50 years.
The Atlas family isn’t quite the ground pounder that the Saturn V was but it was still enough to lift John Glenn into the first American orbit.
And pound the ground it did.
More than 300 Atlas launches have been conducted from Cape Canaveral and 285 more from Vandenberg.
Once upon a time, not so many years ago, we huddled around our television sets and watched every launch.
I drove down to South Puffin from North Florida last night through a bodacious thunderstorm that stalled all flights out of Orlando and knocked out the Internet and the cash registers at the gas station I sheltered in. They couldn’t even take cash for gas.
I drove through Christmas and then stopped at Sebring. That fabled 3.7 mile, paved road course hosts the 12 hours of Sebring endurance race as well as the Chumpcar World Series, the SCCA Turkeytrot, the American LeMans, and dozens more races each year. It is one of the busiest year-round circuits in North America and held an event I missed this weekend. Still, I drove around, got directions from a very nice airport security fellow, and found my way to the SCCA compound. They welcomed me, even though I forgot to bring beer.
Then they invited me to come back up and flag.
Pretty darned good weekend!
Click here for the good launch photos.
Wordless