Sooooo…

We cannot send our own astronauts to the International Space Station, let alone bring them home, and we’re at the mercy of the Russians for transportation, but we’re on the outs with the Russians over their meddling in Ukraine, and these KGB graduates just managed to blow up another of their (unmanned) Proton-M rockets.  You wanna entrust your fellow-citizen astronauts to them?    

The only silver lining in this farce is the glaring light focused on the multiple failures of a feckless Administration and dysfunctional Congress.  We have “pressed the reset button” with a Third World autocrat who cannot and will not guarantee us reliable space transportation, let alone work with us for international peace and freedom.  We have starved our space program and other intelligent discretionary spending initiatives, such as infrastructure, air traffic control, and our national parks, as “too expensive” while failing to address the entitlements metastasis.   We have rearranged the deck chairs in the healthcare industry with a grandiose “reform” program, but simultaneously demonized risk-taking innovators.  We are more worried about abortion, gays, and immigrants “taking jobs” than we are about actually encouraging job creators. When are we going to get mad enough to force our elected officials to shed ideology in favor of things that work?