Thursday Mashup (1/5/12)

This story in today’s Bucks County Courier Times tells us the following…

As a real estate developer, Robert Loughery focused on transforming vacant properties from blighted to bustling.

On Wednesday, he pledged to try something quite similar with all of Bucks County.

The 41-year-old founder of the Keystone Development Group was named chairman of the Bucks County commissioners after a unanimous vote from its three-member board.

I mean, it might as well have been unanimous, since Dem Commissioner Diane Marseglia would have been outvoted anyway. And of course I didn’t expect Loughery and Charley (“I Have A Semi-Open Mind”) Martin to name Diane chairman anyway; as much as I would have liked to have seen that, it would have gone against the wishes of the voters after all.

But what really gets me about this story is this…

Charley Martin was named vice chairman of the commissioners Wednesday over objections from minority board member Diane Marseglia.

The lone Democrat on the board, Marseglia had nominated herself to be vice chairman. She called on Loughery and Martin to support her in the spirit of nonpartisanship.

Marseglia’s predecessor as minority commissioner, Sandra Miller, was never named chairwoman or vice chairwoman during several terms of office as county commissioner.

“But things are supposed to be different now,” said Marseglia.

Typically petty and stupid from Loughery and Martin (take a bow once more, all you Dems and independent voters who thought it was too much trouble to vote for Det Ansinn last November).

Update 1/6/12: Gee, it must be worse than I thought for Mikey The Beloved's press service to actually take notice (here).

Next, I give you Cal Thomas, who is a busy wingnut these days; here, he’s blaming President Obama for ending Dubya’s NASA Constellation program, which would include a return trip to the moon presumably to launch further space exploration.

As noted here, though, Obama canceled those plans in February 2010, which would have cost taxpayers $100 billion by 2020. Instead, he called for spending $6 billion over five years to focus on research and commercial development of rockets, robotics and other space-related technology.

On top of that, NASA (in the form of the so-called Augustine Commission) said it would require $50 billion more than that hundred billion over 10 years just to get to where we had planned to go under Constellation.

I think the excerpt from the Forbes article linked to here sums it up pretty well…

It comes down to money.

NASA is sacrificing the shuttles, according to the program manager, so it can get out of low-Earth orbit and get to points beyond. The first stop under Obama's plan is an asteroid by 2025; next comes Mars in the mid-2030s.

Private companies have been tapped to take over cargo hauls and astronaut rides to the space station, which is expected to carry on for at least another decade. The first commercial supply run is expected late this year, with Space Exploration Technologies Corp. launching its own rocket and spacecraft from Cape Canaveral.

Nary a day goes by without yours truly hearing about the supposed evils of “big gumint.” Well then, let our glorious private sector do a little better job of stepping up when it comes to space exploration instead.

Continuing, J.D. Mullane is lamenting here the fact that an ad campaign is apparently necessary to remind parents to make sure their kids practice good dietary habits. Which, to me, is another example of Mullane trying to have it both ways.

You see, as noted here…

…the Affordable Care Act provides $25 million in funding for the Childhood Obesity Demonstration Project, which was established through the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) legislation signed by President Obama. The Secretary of Health and Human Services will award grants to develop a comprehensive and systematic model for reducing childhood obesity.

And as noted in this post from 2009, who was one of this area’s biggest whiners and complainers about “ObamaCare”?

You see, in J.D.’s imaginary, ‘50s-black-and-white-TV version of this country, people always do the right thing (or else Joe McCarthy will get you), liberals are beaten into submission, and everyone is following the career of that handsome, well-spoken actor from California and his commercials for General Electric. You know, that Ronald Reagan fellow.

And as J.D. reminded us here, everyone is well dressed at all times when speaking to politicians…uh huh.

Finally, I give you some true hilarity from Jack Kelly here, claiming that Obama is laying the groundwork for defeat in Afghanistan, more or less, using Yusuf al-Qaradawi of the Muslim Brotherhood for (supposedly) trying to broker peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan…

In 2003, he issued a fatwa calling for the killing of U.S. troops in Iraq. When the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca opposed the killing of civilians, Mr. al-Qaradawi criticized him. Yet the Obama administration considers Mr. al-Qaradawi to be a “moderate.”

I’m not going to go back and research every possible inflammatory piece of rhetoric al-Qaradawi might have actually said. What I will point out, though, is that, as noted here, al-Qaradawi also denounced the World Trade Center attacks, and he also supported the U.S. military in 2001 with a fatwa here.

Am I going to argue that al-Qaradawi isn’t a “bad apple” from time to time? No (and if he does anything worse than spout bilious rhetoric from time to time, please let me know, OK?). All I’m saying is that we’re foolish to apply some kind of a litmus test to every individual we may hope to use for our benefit without looking at it from some sort of a cost/benefit perspective, that’s all (after all, Dubya and his pals did that for Quaddafi, didn’t they? And I’m not aware of any complaints from Kelly about that...and as noted here, Kelly is a serial misinformer on other topics also).

Of course, it’s ridiculous to assume that Kelly knows anything about war and that area of the world anyway based on this.