Congress

Police vs. NASA

Last week I noted an Iowa newspaper column that attempted to pit NASA against funding for drug enforcement measures. Sunday’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review featured a letter to the editor in a similar vein:

I don’t understand their decision not to transfer funds from a space program to a program that provides grants to state and local law enforcement agencies (HR 2862)!

Let’s see. Explore Mars and the moon, again, … or be sure our citizens are safe and those who protect them from terrorists and criminals have all the equipment and personnel required to serve that need.

Hmmm. Tough one.

Again, another false choice: one can fund both NASA and law enforcement, if so desired. Will these arguments gain traction over time and threaten NASA funding, or will the agency will become immune to them?

39 comments to Police vs. NASA

  • Kevin Davis

    In all fairness I don’t think the federal government should local law enforcement agencies period..

  • Generally, people who think like this think that the federal government would, in a just and ideal world, fund everything worth funding (which doesn’t include sending humans to other orbs). And the greedy rich would have to come up with the money to pay for it.

  • Rand’s comment is a familiar hardline Republican refrain: “Everyone who is against my priorities is for big government.” It’s a way to parlay frugality into spending envy and spending hypocrisy. In this case, the letter-writer didn’t say anything about the “greedy rich” or “funding everything”. Ad hominem speculations about what she really thinks — whether or not they are true — are a poor response to her words.

    For that matter, my comment to Jeff is that these “spend on X versus spend on Y” discussions have become a distraction. NASA isn’t spending free money and its projects either stand on their merits or they don’t. The real question is why the government is so committed to human spaceflight when most taxpayers are bored with it, at least the government-funded kind. Maybe they still like it in theory, but in practice the novelty has worn off.

    I will grant that Burt Rutan is doing something new (sort of) and he did excite the public well enough. And he isn’t spending government funds either. So obviously he should just be free to go about his business. Maybe one day the novelty will wear off for him too, or maybe a fatal accident will end his endeavor; but either way it’s just up to him.

    Anyway the real political space news today is not this obscure letter to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, but the fact that NASA is falling short of its self-imposed safety goals. This is part of what makes human spaceflight so boring these days. The particular safety goals in question seem illogical; they seem like overprotection against yesterday’s accident. If that is what they are, then they only deepen the conflict between timeliness and genuine safety in the space shuttle program. Yet NASA is so politically exposed that it must flounder with this apparent millstone.

  • The reason there are people that see NASA as a frivolous money-sink is because of an issue discussed here before and in Zubrin’s article “Getting Space Exploration Right”.

    The problem seems to be lack of a goal by NASA. Zubrin calls this its “Constituency Driven” approach, meaning they are trying to fund alot of small technologies that might someday possibly be usefull in future missions. This is in contrast to the Apollo program’s “Destination Driven” approach that landed several men on the moon and enjoyed immense poblic support. (This idea is discussed in much greater detail on my blog, but I mention it here to give background to my next point.)

    So as I see it, there isn’t alot of support for NASA funding because it is being spread so thin to alot of things that it seems like NASA is not making any progress in any one area. People don’t see the progress NASA has made as worth while enough to justify the cost, and until the see some real results, NASA will not be immune to such illinformed threats.

    How do we get results? As Bob Zubrin suggests, go to Mars, and FAST and that is all. Have a destination. Whether or not this will boost confidence in NASA funding or merely provide a short term fix, I don’t know.

  • I agree that NASA is beset by conflicting priorities, but it is just not true that NASA is not making progress in any area. It is not true that it “seems like it” either. The space telescopes, the robots on Mars, Cassini, and Deep Impact are all progress. They all look like progress too; they are all popular with the public. It’s only the space shuttle and the space station that march in circles and look bad.

    So while it makes sense to remake NASA, you should not make the mistake of punishing success and rewarding failure. If you think that NASA is just plain overfunded, it might make sense to punish success and failure together. Punishing success and rewarding failure serves no national interest at all.

    Unfortunately, Tom DeLay redrew his own district so that it serves his interests.

  • “The real question is why the government is so committed to human spaceflight when most taxpayers are bored with it, at least the government-funded kind.”

    Yes that is the real question. Why does the US spend ten times what, say, Europe does on spaceflight? I answered that question in my last article for ISR.

    Rightly or wrongly, American’s have never given up the idea of “frontier,” and that is still a powerful motivator for what may be a small but very important minority. Whether measured by military “space dominance” or the relentless return of plans for civilian expeditions to Mars, the idea of colonizing the Solar System is extremely important to American ideology. Many, perhaps most, Americans may no longer believe that ideology (though I think the popularity of space-oriented popular science fiction films argues otherwise), but many of the people who are driving our culture forward do. Whether it “Space Cadet” in his message above, people driving around the wilderness in off-road vehicles, Sierra Club hikers in the High Sierra, Mr. Allen paying someone to build his boyhood dream spaceship, Mr. Doom literally building a spaceship in his garage in Texas, NASA employees building the Space Station, or Pentagon planners making sure no one else has control of the “high orbits,” scratch the surface and the motivation is the same — to physically explore new territory. This is why your arguments against human spaceflight will fail, Greg. Maybe automated spaceflight is more productive scientifically (though I don’t think so), but that is not why we are doing spaceflight. If you succeed in killing the Space Station, et al, you won’t get some sort of scientific nirvana of automated Solar System exploration. Most likely, you will get nothing, or something close to it.

    However, I do agree with you about safety. The safety demands on the Shuttle program are ridiculous. The safest thing to do is never fly. We will not colonize the many worlds of the Solar System without casualties any more than the Polynesians colonized the islands of the Pacific without many casualties. If we are going to insist on guaranteed rescue “during all phases of flight” we might as well give up right now and save everyone a lot of heartbreak and money.

    — Donald

  • I’m not looking for any “scientific nirvana”. I respect science. Any government project that is sold as science should be genuine and respectable. The space station is sold as science, but it is a Potemkin version that no one should respect.

  • I agree that the Space Station should not be sold mostly as science — but that is in no way the same as saying nothing is being accomplished on the Space Station.

    Lying about what the SS is for is wrong. But, scientists’ refusal to accept that the SS is doing many useful, albeit mostly non-scientific, things, is just as wrong.

    — Donald

  • Ok Greg, I conceed the point, there are some programs that are making progress and enjoy public support (those rovers, I love ‘em!). Shuttle and Space Station, those are the real problems. That’s why I say pour money into those, get the Station built and operating at its intended optimum, and fly a few missions to the moon and mars with large return. And as Donald says, try not to spend too much time worrying about safety (aerospace engineers are used to designing with low factors of safety, almost everyone else is not). Then maybe support for NASA’s goals will grow and protect its funding.

    Unfortunatly, doing things this way also means many smaller longer term projects will need to be put on hold, which will have a big impact on jobs and the economy due to cuts and layoffs. Is there a way around this, short of increasing the budget? We want to avoid ‘punishing success and rewarding failure’, though that seems like what we are doing by cancelling smaller programs to make way for Mars and ISS. There are many companies that have the right idea, developing technologies privately, but will this be enough?

    Greg, why should no one respect the ISS? As it was originally intended, can’t you see that it would be a worthy outpost to invest in? Granted it doesn’t seem so now due to recent setbacks, but if it could be completed soon, would you not want to see it used for all its intended purposes?

  • “will have a big impact on jobs and the economy due to cuts and layoffs.”

    I don’t see why. Is it really going to take less people on the ground to send a human mission to Mars than it does to run the rovers? While certain applications may get curtailed, there should be a net increase in employment and economic activity, even if nothing economically useful results from building a lunar base and going to Mars.

    — Donald

  • Ok, good point, and I hope that’s exactly what does happen.

  • Cecil Trotter

    Kuperberg: “The space telescopes, the robots on Mars, Cassini, and Deep Impact are all progress.”

    Not really, certainly not the sort of progress we need. Your list of “progressive” space programs are for the most part scientific only in nature. Not that I don’t support scientific research, but what practical use is a more perfect understanding of the structure of the Horsehead nebula? Or of Saturns rings? A lake on Titan? A hole knocked in a comet?

    Robots on Mars, that is a bit more useful in the short term.

    I can’t understand why those who see no use for people actually living, working, exploring, mining in space instead support endeavors that offer no practical use to the people of this planet, but serve only to satisfy our curiosity. Which is not a bad thing, but it isn’t the only thing.

  • >>Ok, good point, and I hope that’s exactly what does happen.

    You know, thinking about it again, I don’t know why I said that. We should be worried about losing jobs if NASA were to concentrate on a Mars or Moon mission.

    Think of it this way: Right now, the way things are being run by NASA, there are multiple contractors working on each project NASA doles out money too. So, correct me if I’m wrong, from these contractors, who are mostly non-government employees, there are thousands of people working for these companies that rely on the government/NASA contract for thier job to exist. Assuming the ground crew for a mission to Mars, from developement to execution, would be all government employees, there would potentially be many independent contractors out of a big chunk of business and thousands of people out of work. Should we not worry about this happening?

    I am assuming there would not be alot of subcontractors working for NASA to execute a mission. I also assume the total mission personel will not nearly equal what is presently being utilized, but I don’t really know much about now such an endevor would be conducted so I am doubtful I got much of it right. I just didn’t want to concede my point so easily.

  • Cecil: Projects like the Hubble Space Telescope have succeeded in exactly the way that their advocates said that they would succeed. If you think that this kind of progress is overfunded, then as I said, it’s valid to punish success and failure together.

    The space shuttle, on the other hand, has failed in exactly the way that its advocates said that it would succeed. Nixon said that it would be routine and economical, and Reagan said that it is routine and economical; but it isn’t. So if you cut space science but retain the space shuttle, you’re punishing success and rewarding failure.

    I agree that space science is mainly what you call “curiosity”. Most people want to know why the Earth exists. Geology across the solar system (with projects such as Deep Impact) is important for answering that question. But I agree that in some sense it has no “practical” value.

    But this is not true of NASA’s other research. Aeronautics has practical value, and so does earth science. For example, understanding climate change is not just curiosity, it could also in the long term protect the value of trillions of dollars of real estate. It might also help prevent the extinction of species, possibly including homo sapiens.

    Again, if you think that NASA as a whole is overfunded, that is at least consistent. But there is no sense in robbing Simon to pay Judas.

  • “Projects like the Hubble Space Telescope have succeeded in exactly the way that their advocates said that they would succeed.”

    But, Greg, the HST is a part of the human space program, indeed, it is part of the “failed” Shuttle program. If HST weren’t a great success of that program, we would not now be arguing about whether to send astronauts on the Shuttle to repair the damned thing.

    In fact, HST defeats all of your arguments. What even I would argue is the single most productive scientific instrument of our time is so productive precisely because it is a permanent, human-tended observatory, rather like the Space Station. The James Webb ST is, in many ways, a step backward, as its relatively short life span and rapidly escalating costs make clear. (If it comes to cost almost as much to orbit a temporary automated telescope as it does to orbit a semi-permanent human-tended telescope, why would you do the former?)

    Arguably one of the greatest failures of the Space Station program was failing to build it in the same plane as HST, so that the latter could support the former, while also reducing costs. In the end, we had to choose between HST and befriending the Russians and we chose the latter. I am not prepared to argue that was the wrong choice.

    They way forward is to place the next permanent observatory near our next base in space, on the lunar farside which is protected from Earthlight and, for now, radio noise. Even better would be to develop the transportation to reach the NGST’s orbit from the Space Station and make it into a permanent facility like HST. This mission has essentially the same propulsion requirements as that required to land on Earth’s moon or to enter orbit around Mars.

    So, you see, developing a Solar System transportation system — the goal of the Constellation project — need not be as scientifically useless (even beyond minor issues like Lunar and Martian geology and dating) as you seem to think.

    — Donald

  • Cecil Trotter

    Kuperberg: “Nixon said that it would be routine and economical, and Reagan said that it is routine and economical;”

    Gee, I didn’t know Nixon and Reagan were NASA engineers.

    I think the above snip at two Republican Presidents (conveniently leaving out Carter/Clinton) reveals a little of your agenda. In your world anything that comes of a Republican administration must be bad.

  • “Kuperberg: “Nixon said that it would be routine and economical, and Reagan said that it is routine and economical;”

    In your world anything that comes of a Republican administration must be bad.”

    …and 100% accurate/informed, too ;)

  • Well, the Space Station was a Republican project (in the same way that Apollo was a Democratic project and killed by a Republican), and the Republicans should take their share of the responsibility for its failings. Clinton certainly did no worse a job of managing the project (and Gore found a political reason for it to survive) than the Republican Presidents. Mismanagement of the Space Station project seems to have been a truly bipartisan exercise!

    — Donald

  • Cecil: It doesn’t take a degree in engineering to see that the space shuttle is neither routine nor economical. It was at least plausible when Nixon said it. When Reagan said it, it was just plainly false. Some of Reagan’s advisors told him as much, but Reagan was distracted by happier words from NASA officials.

    I looked for an equally idiotic description of the space shuttle from Jimmy Carter, but in vain. Even so, I agree that in some ways Carter bears even greater responsibility for the fiasco that is the space shuttle than either Nixon or Reagan. Unlike Nixon or Reagan, Carter is a trained engineer, so he should have known better. And I believe that he did know better. But, perhaps to protect his reputation for honesty, Carter said very little about the space shuttle.

  • Edward Wright

    > Zubrin calls this its “Constituency Driven” approach, meaning they are trying
    > to fund alot of small technologies that might someday possibly be usefull in
    > future missions. This is in contrast to the Apollo program’s “Destination
    > Driven” approach that landed several men on the moon and enjoyed immense
    > poblic support.

    There lies Zubrin’s fallacy. If his thesis were true, the public never would have permitted Apollo to be cancelled. They would have insisted that the “destination driven” program proceed to the next destination — but they didn’t.

    What drove Apollo was not the destination; it was a Cold War constintuency that wanted to land a man on the Moon before the Russians. When that was done, the constituency vanished and the public was no longer willing to bear the cost.

    There’s no Cold War today (despite the efforts of some space advocates to invent one with China). Maintaining public support for space programs requires a constituency, not just a destination, whether Zubrin likes it or not.

    Even if Zubrin’s “destination driven” approach did work, would you really be satisifed with the outcome? Do you want our descendents to looked back on us a thousand years from now and see all we accomplished in space was “landed several men on Mars”?

  • Very interesting points, Edward, that will require some thought on my part.

    While China does not guarantee a space race anytime soon — and I agree with you, that is a gift horse we would want to examine very closely — one thing China does do for us is guarantee that the United States will not completely abandon human spaceflight. Over the long haul, if China continues her successes, we may see Japan and India investing in human spaceflight for geopoligical reasons.

    In an historical sense, this is all to the good. The more nations that are interested in, and capable of, human spaceflight, the more likely it is that, at some point, one or more of them will find a reason to go to the planets. There is no reason that China could not lead the way. Historically, authoritarian regimes have done a good job of initially opening a frontier (Russia, Spain), though relatively free societies — or at least diverse trading-oriented cultures (Britain) — have often done the staying put and true colonization. The other model is essentially religious motivation(Spain later on, the Soviet Union demonstrating the supposed superiority of Communism).

    I see no reason for any of that to be different on the new frontier. It is not be hard to immagine the Chinese doing it for essentially religious-ideological reasons.

    (Interesting trick question: ask someone who doesn’t know, who was the second nation to develop the difficult technology of high-energy rocketry. No one ever guesses the truth. Never underestimate the Chinese.)

    — Donald

  • Cecil Trotter

    Robertson: “Well, the Space Station was a Republican project, and the Republicans should take their share of the responsibility for its failings. Clinton certainly did no worse a job of managing the project (and Gore found a political reason for it to survive) than the Republican Presidents.”

    Yes it was a Republican who initiated the idea, but no hardware was designed, built or launched under Reagan or Bush Sr. So who took Space Station Freedom (which already had international partners) and made it a works program for Russian scientists? Given the choice of the station not surviving or becoming what it has become I would prefer it’s death, so I can give Gore no credit for his “saving” it. And ISS still didn’t prevent Russian scientists from working with Iran, so it even failed at that.

  • Mike Puckett

    “Well, the Space Station was a Republican project (in the same way that Apollo was a Democratic project and killed by a Republican)”

    Johnson was at least as culpable as Nixon in nixing the Apollo Program. It was Johnson who shut down the Saturn V production line. I suggest you check out the Space Review this week and last for more info.

  • Mike Puckett

    BTW Kevin Davis nocked it out of the park. 95% of funding of law enforcement should be at the local and state level.

  • Edward Wright

    > one thing China does do for us is guarantee that the United States will
    > not completely abandon human spaceflight.

    How does China do that? Do you think Burt Rutan and everyone else working on human spaceflight in the US would give up, if China wasn’t around?

    > The more nations that are interested in, and capable of, human spaceflight,
    > the more likely it is that, at some point, one or more of them will find a
    > reason to go to the planets.

    Do you assume spaceflight is only of interest to nations, and not individuals?

    I don’t think the Chinese invention of fireworks rockets is very relevent. The Chinese also invented kites, but that doesn’t mean they control the airplane industry.

  • Sam Dinkin

    In theory, NASA’s last dollar has to stand up to comparison with the last dollar spent on every single other program in the federal budget and every single tax and fee. We need to argue for the benefits of the frontier and colonization and all of the other benefits.

    By 2016, China will have a bigger economy than ours and perhaps they will be more grandiose in their struggle to touch infinity.

  • Rand’s comment is a familiar hardline Republican refrain: “Everyone who is against my priorities is for big government.”

    As is often the case, Greg mischaractizes both me and what I wrote. Not being a Republican, I can’t speak to that part, but it’s not my refrain. My refrain is that everyone (or at least most people) who think that Washington should be funding local police is for big government. I think it’s a pretty safe generalization.

  • I didn’t say that you are Republican, only that you repeated a familiar Republican refrian. Which you did.

    And it’s not just a Republican refrain, it’s a refrain of all people who think that they favor limited government, but actually don’t. Washington hands down many demands on state and local police departments. The demands are not going to go away; in fact they have only grown with the war on terrorism. If the demands don’t come with any funding, they are then unfunded mandates. Only a hypocrite would consider unfunded mandates to count as small government.

    Besides, HR 2862 carries little money compared to what the US spends in support of local police departments in Iraq. If grants to American police departments is big government, the occupation of Iraq is really big government. Which in fact it is, despite the backing of so many people who think that they favor limited government.

    Anyway, none of this is space policy. NASA should be defended on its merits, not by digressions about police departments and big government.

  • Edward: “Do you think Burt Rutan and everyone else working on human spaceflight in the US would give up, if China wasn’t around?”

    Of course not, but Burt Rutan is not going to be doing deep spaceflight any time soon. Much as I value and support the X-Prize, Mr. Rutan, and all they have done, there is a very, very big leap between what Mr. Rutan has achieved and inter-Solar System trade. The latter is not going to happen in our lifetimes without a lot of government help.

    Also, you missed the point regarding China. China (not France or Russia) was the second nation on Earth to master the extremely difficult technology LOX / H2 rocketry. (We take it forgranted today, but mastering it was a long, hard struggle even for the United States.) If you are going to the planets with chemical rockets, high-energy propellants are a prerequisit. Sure, some of the engineers who did it were trained in the United States, but the fact remains that the Chinese, at a time that they were little more than a two-bit starving third-world “god-king” empire, achieved what many Western powers could not. (Also, I live in San Francisco and I see the almost literally super-human work that Chinese people are willing to do to compete and succeed around me every day.) I repeat, never underestimate the Chinese, in spaceflight or anything else.

    All, I believe I have accepted that screwing up the Space Station was a bipartisan exercise. As I recall it, a good share of the pointless redesigns that spent vast sums without developing any hardware happened during Reagan’s watch. The project and its mismanagement has always had strong Republican support in Congress, even when Mr Clinton was in power. It is in no way fair to bland the Space Station’s disasterous development solely on the Clinton Administration.

    Cecil, as I’ve argued before, I strongly disagree with you regarding the Space Station. It doesn’t matter how it was done, but it is critical to our goals that it be and stay up there as a market. The fact is, Mr. Gore discovered a sustainable political reason for it to exist.

    In this, I think you are viewing the world rather like Greg — if the Space Station only went away, there would be enough money for X or Y favorite program. Politics doesn’t work that way. If the Space Station had died, the Shuttle would have petered out long before Mr. Bush had his post-Columbia epiphony. The Bush Administration’s insite was dependent on our having a human space program — in a very real sense, it was dependent on the loss of Columbia and her crew. If we hadn’t been flying the Shuttle, that accident wouldn’t have happended, and the spaceflight world today would be a very different place (and probably a lot closer to what Greg wants than what you and I want).

    Today, if the Space Station were not flying, there would be much less pressure to adapt private launch vehicles to fly cargo. It is that pressure — to keep the Space Station supplied — that is and will drive commercial launch vehicle development in the foreseeable future.

    So, to sum up, if we want to live in Greg’s play-pen world of clockwork spacecraft obtaining knowledge only for knowledge’s sake, by all means, kill the Space Station.

    — Donald

  • Actually, I misspoke at the end of my last post. Greg wouldn’t get his world either. There might be a few automated applications spacecraft, and the military space program would continue in some form, but the vast sums the United States spends on automated science missions to the planets is politically tied to the rest of the government space program. Without the Space Station for the pro-space exploration ideologues in Congress to latch on to, and for the scientific community ride the coat tails of, it is a safe bet that a lot of the space science funding would also peter out.

    — Donald

  • So many people here like to pontificate on what I want and what I think. I don’t think that if the space station died, there would be enough money for X or Y. There would simply be that much less money for science projects, as the space station is still portrayed and funded, that scientists don’t want.

    Why can’t Congress take “no” for an answer?

  • Because, ‘no’ isn’t the answer Congress wants. Congress is made up of Americans, who were a part of our shared colonial culture and history. While many of them probably don’t believe it is really possible, and many others couldn’t care less, a slim voting majority always has believed in the dream of human colonies amongst the planets. Listen carefully to the bipartisan pro-Space Station rhetoric from the 1980s to date, and under all the “science,” “cell separation,” and “spinoffs” bullshit, it always boils down to “Americans must be in space to stay.”

    I agree with you that the Space Station should have been sold for what it really was — and probably would have garnered greater support if it had been. Where I disagree with you is the perceived lack of other value in the project, and that “science” per se should be the primary goal of the civilian government space program, rather than an important secondary goal.

    — Donald

  • But I never said that science should be the only goal of NASA. I have no objection to industry or military projects at NASA.

    There is a reason NASA sells the space station as science. They can’t think of anything for astronauts to do in space other than (a) keep themselves alive, and (b) run science experiments. And not for lack of trying. They imposed the space shuttle on the Pentagon, until eventually the Pentagon shook it off. They tried to sell space shuttle capacity, but they could only do it at a big loss. They talk about space colonization, but they don’t actually plan any. Science, that is to say Potemkin science, is the only end mission left.

    You may think that reason (a) stands by itself, but neither Congress nor NASA is satisfied with it. So I think that your political calculation is wrong. I think that if the veneer of science were truly stripped away from human spaceflight at NASA, even Congress would no longer bother.

  • Greg: “I think that your political calculation is wrong. I think that if the veneer of science were truly stripped away from human spaceflight at NASA, even Congress would no longer bother.”

    I have nothing more to add that I haven’t already said, so, all I can say is, I disagree. One way or the other, history will tell us who is right.

  • I think Greg is only half right, the congress people can see some value to space develpoment beyond science. Its that they don’t think they can sell NASA/Space to the public with nothing else but science.

    So we should sell the public on the other benefits of space. Particular those intrests with some political pull. Which (Shameles plug warning) is the goal of the book I have begun writing: Two Shades of Green. I figure I’m about a month from the first draft of the first chapter.

  • Only a hypocrite would consider unfunded mandates to count as small government.

    I must have missed the part where I stated my support for unfunded mandates, Greg. Do you have any other amusing delusions about me?

    I am definitely a small-government proponent (thought that doesn’t mean, your polemics aside, that I don’t think that the government is responsible for national defense, nor need it).

  • I must have missed the part where I stated my support for unfunded mandates, Greg.

    I never said that you personally did support them.

    I am definitely a small-government proponent (thought that doesn’t mean, your polemics aside, that I don’t think that the government is responsible for national defense, nor need it).

    Good for you.

    Now, are any of these ad hominem characterizations necessary?

  • They are not “ad hominem characterizations.” (You need to go look up what the phrase means, in the context of debating.)

    You made statements in response to my comments from which most reasonable people would infer that you were talking about me. I was simply responding, and pointing out that they are false.

  • Cecil Trotter

    Simberg: “You made statements in response to my comments from which most reasonable people would infer that you were talking about me.”

    Kuperberg probably doesn’t think I qualify as “reasonable people” but his starting his post with the words “Rand’s comment is a..” certainly made me think he was talking about you. ;-)

    At any rate, he was (by his own definition at least) the first to make an “ad hominem characterization” so I find it ironic that he’d accuse anyone else of the same.