NASA’s $349 million monument to its drift
Ugh.
And naturally, because the article mentioned the Tea Party, it’s somehow the Tea Party’s fault. Sure, Republican officials appear to hold much of the blame in this, but WaPo appears to have guessed correctly that its loyal readership/cult would snap up the bait and blame it all on the Goldsteins-of-the-hour. (Silly me – I was so surprised at how even-handed the description of the Tea Party was that it was only when I got to the comments that I realized it was just a setup to show that the Tea Party is a bunch of hypocrites taking government money while demanding lower spending.)
Funny that any one of those Republican-bashing commenters would, in a different context, demand that we give more money to NASA, not realizing that given the realities of politics “more money” often means boondoggles of this sort rather than more Voyagers or more Hubbles or more Curiosities or more of the R&D-type projects that can potentially spawn useful new technology.