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9/12/05 Mitchell Daily Republic:America is succeeding in the fight against terrorism, and South Dakotans have played a strong role in that fight, said U.S. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., while speaking during Sunday?s Sept. 11 Memorial Service in Mitchell. The memorial...

Today's FARK headline: Today's "I'll never drink again" story brought to you by Denver, where man on painkillers, who hadn't slept for two days because of tooth abscess, decides to have a few beers and go four-wheeling at night in...

This is shaping up to be a great college football season. Notre Dame takes out Michigan. Iowa State up-ends Iowa for the Cy-Hawk Trophy. Next up: Horns and Ohio State. If things keep playing out this way, I'll be back...

Republicans frequently claim that the Democrats enjoy a sympathetic Press, which is true, but probably not the main problem. The problem is that Democrats are just better at playing the public perception game. Right now pundits and politicians are vociferously...

Here is some more truth that Chad Schudlt can?t handle: Kofi Annan is sitting there presiding over the absolute worst scandal in world history. The Volker Commission is pretty much establishing he was asleep at the wheel (story), and nobody,...

Rush Limbaugh points out that some Republicans become weak kneed when confronted with the media scandal:We just heard from the office of Florida Senator Mel Martinez. The American Spectator is reporting today in their Prowler column the following story. With...

Start-up Firm Building New Space Capsule System

No links to this YET - but the October issue of Popular Science reports on a firm called T/Space which is developing, with NASA backing, and some project collaboration with Rutan's Scaled Composites, a capsule system called the CXV or Crew Transfer Vehicle capable of carrying three or four astronauts to low Earth orbit, and returning for a wet landing, like the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo had.

The launcher is an aircraft launched propane & liquid oxygen rocket. The whole emphasis has been on economy and simplicity of design - and seems to be making some real progress - possibly having things ready to go b\y '08 or '09 - an unheard of timeline for NASA projects.

Best of all, this will be privately owned/operated, flying as contractors to NASA, or whoever else wants/needs to get to orbit. Meanwhile, NASA is proceeding with its plans for vehicles to replace the shuttles also apparently based on a larger, more advanced capsule design for personnel, and a heavy lift cargo launcher, for well, cargo. NASA doesn;t plan to be ready to fly before 2012 at best, so the T/Space CVX could fill a gap to help keep the International Space Station in business until then.

The folks at T/Space emphasize that they are NOT building a shuttle replacement - but perhaps a modern replacement for the truly antiquated Soyuz technology.

This is truly good news - the US must maintain an effective capability for space, if for no other reason, to prevent a default ceding of the ultimate high ground to China, Russia, or whoever else goes after it.

A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

H/T to a former Navy shipmate for this article e-mailed to me. He offered it without comment, and if you check it out, you'll see that it speaks for itself. (by the way, he's in the Houston area, a lot closer to the action than the Chief is up in South Dakota.)

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists?myself included?did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

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