Upside Down in (Getting to) Space

Everyone knows that the Space Shuttles are headed for the Elephant's Graveyard.  They are a little long in the tusk, after all, and can't get us to Mars.

The Big O has a new plan that does not include returning military personnel to the Moon.  Been there, done that.  Repeatedly and using light bulbs and dials.  TBO wants to go to Mars, despite that fact that we now know the Moon has scads of water that would support daily showers even the French wouldn't turn down.

The Moon is too close for TBO.  Earth orbit is for Iranians and their frightening Space Worms.  TBO has vision and sees farther than Sarah Palin with binoculars, all the way to other planets.  And, apparently, did not see "Invasion from Mars", which would keep anyone away from that rust-colored rock, or any movie theater.

But that is not the upside down part.

Republicans set an agenda decades ago of privatizing everything the government does, including war.  In Iraq, George III privatized military trucking; cafeteria supply; diplomat security; boozing on duty and stealing someone else's AK-47's.  Blackwater and Haliburton subsidiaries were running everything so well they were too drunk to hit half the civilians they shot at and electrocuted soaped-up soldiers in their own showers.  Oh, and not the bad soldiers.

That soapy shower thing probably set European hygiene back to the 1990's.

And embarrassment?  Blackwater changed its bad-ass Yankee name to the almost Chinese Xe.  Really, it did.

At home, the Republicans tried like crazy to achieve their dream goal, pursued since Ronald Regan last sold Borax:  Privatizing Social Security.  They had Bear Sterns, Lehman's, Merrill Lynch and AIG all lined up to multiply your Golden Age Retirement Nest Egg faster a CEO's private jet could get to DC for a bailout.  The GOP argued persuasively that Wall Street could do better investing your retirement in mortgage-backed derivatives than the Federal government could by simply borrowing from the Social Security No-Trust Fund to spend on... whatever the Democrats send money on.

Sadly, the Republicans could not quite get Social Security privatized and look what happened to Lehman's whole company and, worse, to Merrill-BoA's bonuses.

So how is it that the Republicans are painfully adjusting their panties over TBO's shuttle replacement program?  TBO wants to privatize Earth orbiting for humans, by getting private industry to take over both space station relays and low-g tourism that you don't have to be Warren Buffet to book.  Isn't that a Republican agenda?

Apparently, not.  According to Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, privatizing will destroy a great Federal program.  Like there are any, in Republican flinty eyes.  She claims that TBO's approach would leave us dependent on the Russian mob to get supplies of Twinkies to the International Space Station.  No way, she says, can American private enterprise match the Russians.

Huh?  We're talking the Russians.  These are the same dupes that an ex-soap hawker-turned-President scared to death back when the Bangles used only their hands to "Walk Like an Egyptian".

So, Kay, be honest:  American business, the geniuses behind the Segway, Nano-dollars, self-cleaning windows and Alice In Wonderland-3D, can't invent a better rocket launcher than the Russians?

It is a sorry day for all of us who claim (for the moment) to be proud Republicans.  We are going to give up Our Most Compelling Issue, Privatizing absolutely everything, and hand it over to a former Socialist and petulantly orate about losing out to what used to be the Soviet Union?

Wake up, Republicans!  Privatize space!  If God created it, we can Privatize it!

Get Xe!  They'd kill to do it.