Of course, Wikipedia can always use more editors. Why don’t you volunteer your services? That would actually serve a useful purpose.

Yes, now there’s a useful source on politics and ideology.

No attacks intended at all, much less “overzealous ones”. You can take your argument about definitions for right- and left-leaning up with Wikipedia, for one. Political pundits and ideologues have warped many senses of reality, I guess, including the contributors to that resource.

“My point is that political landscapes aren’t as divisive and mindlessly destructive as your comment suggests.”

Sorry, what comment was that? I made no such comment. I agree with your assessment of political landscapes completely. Talk about warped senses of reality …

I’d go back and reread the exchange if I were you. I was just being skeptical about a characterization of NASA as “leaning” one way or the other politically. The “belittling comments and overreaching generalizations” may have been there, but weren’t coming from me. I tried to make my statement politically neutral.

You make good points, but using them to argue with what I said is a little silly.

Politics in this country is not rational, and so I take issue with you comparing it to ‘collaboration and mutual understanding’, since that demonstrably does not exist anymore with regards to politics in the United States, and is more in the realm of science and rational approaches to understanding of the type that produces technically feasible results.

“it’s hard to pin a commitment to conservative Christian and traditional family values and support for a free-market system label on NASA, isn’t it. That’s what “right-leaning” means to me”

If this is what “right-leaning” means to you, then you have allowed political pundits and ideologues to warp your sense of reality. Don’t kid yourself into pigeonholing an entire political wing into an entire class of people into unthoughtfully misguided zealots. I think you would find far more common ground with these people you misunderstand, if you too more time to grasp their arguments, rather than jumping to overreaching erroneous conclusions.

Consider how many conservative districts DO NOT have space related interests within their constituency. For instance, an agricultural district in a southern state (or midwestern for that matter) would very likely have absolutely no direct interest in paying more taxes to support an industry that doesn’t help create jobs in their area. They have to be accountable to their constituents who are suffering from a bad economy, who are needing lower taxes and asking their representatives to scale back government spending and avoid unnecessary spending. This doesn’t undercut the importance of programs like NASA, nor does it display a complete lack of support or interest in the program, but rather faces the political and economic reality that in tough times some program spending is more difficult to justify.

Now before you go into a tirade into spending such a district might approve (ie defense spending), consider how many of the members of our armed forces come from these districts, and how many defense jobs might be located within these districts. This of course is not an all inclusive list of spending they might find support for, but is simply an example of how politics really works.

My point is that political landscapes aren’t as divisive and mindlessly destructive as your comment suggests. Take political commentary with a grain of salt and realize both sides have an interest in shaping your political views and impressions of “the other side”. Don’t be so careless as to believe all the propaganda and political undermining that goes on in our news outlets and media. Careful research shows that republicans and democrats share similar goals, just different approaches to reaching those goals. I suggest avoided belittling comments and overreaching generalizations, as they are rarely productive and serve no political/national interest in the long run. We need more collaboration and mutual understanding, and less unneeded divisions and assaults on each other’s views and beliefs.

“If you want ‘X’ goal achieved,then we will need ‘Y’ in order to do it.” Just as, say, the DoD would. With Apollo, Congress did not try to specify the mission architecture.

The problem with SLS is Congress going on to say; “Oh, and this is exactly how you’re going to do it.”

Whatever ‘it’ happens to be, in that particular case where the means is more important to Congress than the unspecified applications, policies and goals…

That’s probably a fair assessment as the House is going to block all things Obama. But if ‘free drift’ follows the flow of current events through the midterms, Obama’s space agenda is done. Hard to see th House changing hands given the gerrymandering situation or the Senate holding Demo seats in the next cycle. Bolden all but concedes he can’t convince Congress to fund Project Lasso for Obama nor grant him ‘a win’ for financing CC. Look to the next administration. One way or the other, HRC will address it– she at least has an interest in space. Obama does not and there’s no political plus to pushing in in the second term. Unless, of course, another ‘Sputnik moment’ materializes in the East.