Author Archives: John Wallenfeldt

Arson fire under investigation at Dayton’s former home | StarTribune.com

How Republicans here deal with competing views on balancing the budget: they set fire to the governor’s old house.

Yes, he doesn’t even live there anymore. Not only is it not constructive, it targets the wrong people. Classic GOP reactionary violence.

Further reporting shows that three fires were set, presumably by the same asshat(s). Nice.

The Inspiration Gap And The Shuttle’s Last Launch

In the end, too much may be made of this, but, yes, losing a manned space program is going to put a dent in our nation’s general inspiration to do great things.

We already have a political party that won’t fix school, roads, bridges, power grids, etc. They also hate and fear science in general, from teaching biology in schools to denying federal funds for stem cell research, alternative energy, better trains, and so on and so on.

So, yeah, this is one more nail in a coffin being fashioned by folks who fear change. This also makes them fear innovation, creativity, and, more importantly, progress.

Half of this nation routinely votes for this mentality to rule our daily lives. I live in a state currently shut down because this notion has taken over the state legislature. Your state is probably next if not there already.

Want to reinspire America? Don’t fret about lost shuttle missions. Pick people who want our nation to learn, innovate, gamble on the future, and achieve greatness again. The other guys just want to pollute the environment enough to force the Rapture to happen.

Which side do YOU want to be on?

Last flight of the Space Shuttle: a 30-year retrospective

I know there are a lot of these articles out there, but one look at the shuttle’s legacy, both good and bad.

Frankly, if not for Vietnam and the Nixon admin pushing to keep manned flight in the public eye, we’d probably have done the whole Moon and Mars base thing by now. That’s not even really a criticism, just how things went.

Oh well, maybe we can thing bigger than how not to pay taxes and still get government benefits. But we’re going to need to change a lot of the dialog to do it.