I swear, TV needs to get better

Yea, I’m hating politics more and more. It seems totally useless to me–full of contradiction, stupidity and general thoughtlessness…basically, it’s the worst of humanity wrapped up into one little package called politics. It leads to nothing but misery, conflict, war–and that’s just between ourselves.

My latest funk when it comes to politics comes from the campaign trail. The Dems have outlined their plans for the manned US space effort. Oddly enough, Clinton actually sounds the most sane in this regard, mirroring the path that NASA is progressing down as I type.

Obama, on the other hand, is the source of my beef. He suggests pitting the education system and the space effort together for money. He suggests “pausing” the space program and funneling that money towards education. WTF?!?! This is so wrong on so many levels. It’s the cart before the horse. You kill the space program to fund education? When you do that, what do you need education for? What’s going to inspire young people? What bigger inspiration for young people to continue in school, particularly striving in math and science, if not the space program?!?!?!

The space program takes up about $16 billion dollars per year…the entire budget of the United States is about $3 trillion. For those of you who aren’t all that good with math, that means that the space program takes up 0.53% of the budget. We’re exploring Mars with robots, persisting an aging and expensive shuttle program, and planning new moon and Mars efforts and a bunch more with 0.27% of the entire US budget….and that is too much for Mr. Obama.

The space program has always been in the same pile as HUD, so it has always fought an uphill battle when it comes to funding. Bloody hell, though. What’s the good with education if it’s not for the betterment of humanity? The space program is the staple of bettering of humanity. This solar system, particuarly the moon right next door, is full of resources the likes of which we may not have even thought of yet. There’s also the possibility of life on Mars–and perhaps even clues as to why we are here.

And imagine what it’d be like if we were to start pulling Helium-3 off of the moon…the energy independence we would theoretically gain. But, no. Obama wants to “pause” the space program until 2024, when China will be reportedly beginning to put landers on the moon just for that purpose. All of the education in the world won’t overcome energy dependence on China when that time comes, if we don’t have a moon program in the works by then 😛

Hence, cart before the horse–you need to have a reason for all of that “education” he seems to be touting. Flippin’ idiots.