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NASA to Unveil Plans to Send 4 Astronauts to Moon in 2018

NASA briefed senior White House officials Wednesday on its plan to spend $100 billion and the next 12 years building the spacecraft and rockets it needs to put humans back on the Moon by 2018. The U.S. space agency now expects to roll out its lunar exploration plan to key Congressional committees on Friday and to the broader public through a news conference on Monday.

Phew! It's about time. The only concern the Chief has about this is why take so long to get back there, when we did it for the first time in less than a decade - well, I guess it is NASA, after all.

SD War College: *ALERT* Save the state GOP from taking a step backwards!...

Virgin plans oil refinery

The highly successful independent entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson has apparently once again decided that there is a need that is not being met, so he has resolved to go into the refining business. If he does this with his usual competance and panache, he'll pull it off and introduce an outside bit of competition to the established oil companies and cartel.

Think you are upset about high gas prices? Maverick British entrepreneur Richard Branson is so furious he wants to build his own oil refinery...."If we don't start now to get more refineries built then fuel prices could literally rocket to $US100-$US200 (per barrel of oil) and the world economy would come to a grinding halt," Branson said in an interview on financial news network CNBC overnight.

He should know about rocketing a bit, from being involved in the private spaceflight venture Virgin Galactic. The Chief has of course heard of virgin pressed olive oil, so why not Virgin Oil?

Good news from the Washington Post:The U.S. military pulled hundreds of troops out of the southern city of Najaf on Tuesday, transferring security duties to Iraqi forces and sticking to a schedule that the United States hopes will allow the...

From the Times-Picayune: BATON ROUGE - Mayor Ray Nagin pledged Monday that he and other citizens of New Orleans rather than state and national officials would be the lead planners in rebuilding the Crescent City, even as the town copes...

Here's an interesting tidbit from Bob Williams in the Wall Street Journal:Conservative blogosphere hurricane relief $1,115,369 http://www.truthlaidbear.com/blogleaderboard.php Liberal blogosphere hurricane relief $161,047 http://www.dropcash.com/campaign/hurricanerelief/liberal_blogs_for_hurricane_relief In comparison, the Liberal blogs had raised over $451,888 for Paul Hackett's race in Ohio: http://www.actblue.com/list/hackett...

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.

Jesus, now this has to be seen to be believed: Finnis Shelnutt, real estate developer, stock broker, bar owner, former brother-in-law of Webb Hubbell and Gennifer Flowers' current husband. Now he's livin' in N.O. and crazy talkin'. [Found it at...

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