I’m sorry, but it’s either to the point that Republicans are absolute bald faced liars, or they are total morons. Right now on Drudge we have this:
A quick click and you are taken to this:
Now, here’s some real Obama outsourcing.
This morning, Kazakhstan time, the next mission to the International Space Station successfully blasted off carrying the usual trio — a Russian commander, an astronaut from the international community and an American in a seat rented by NASA since the retirement of the last U.S. space shuttle a year ago this month.
That’s on Investors Business Daily, a far cry from the “liberal” media. Reading the comments you can also tell that they aren’t much in the liberal column either.
So was it Obama who killed the shuttle program and cause this? Well let’s look a little bit at the history. On January 14, 2004, the President gave a speech, “New Vision for Space Exploration Program.” In it, this President said:
To meet this goal, we will return the Space Shuttle to flight as soon as possible, consistent with safety concerns and the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. The Shuttle’s chief purpose over the next several years will be to help finish assembly of the International Space Station. In 2010, the Space Shuttle — after nearly 30 years of duty — will be retired from service.
Now to those of us with a little bit of intelligence we know that in January of 2004 the President was George W. Bush. Barack Obama wasn’t even a Senator yet and this was 8 months before his now infamous speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. I’m sure Republicans will quickly say that I’m just “blaming Bush” with this, but the fact is Bush was President and Bush decided this.
Of course the President doesn’t have the final say in this stuff. For something like this to happen, Congress must also act, and act they did. In 2005 the Space Shuttles budget was cut. This happened during the 108th and 109th sessions of Congress. It also turns out that during those two sessions of Congress, Republicans controlled both chambers.
So the big killing spree of the Space Shuttle program happened when Republicans controlled the entire federal government. And now we got the right claiming that the fact we don’t have a space shuttle program and have to use Russia to hold up to our obligations of the ISS is Obama’s fault? Talk about a stretch beyond all proportions.
But this is nothing new. Last year when the shuttle program officially ended, a year after what Bush planned, Republicans tried blaming President Obama for killing it. I bet you didn’t know someone in the Illinois State Senate had so much power that they could kill the biggest program that Nasa has. Well apparently he did, since it was George Bush and the Republican ran Congress that started digging the grave.
Nice stretch guys, but this story is going to have to be filed under science fiction. And what is really happening isn’t outsourcing anyways. It’s just called getting by. Right now private contractors are working on our next space vehicle and that is capitalism in action, but I guess that is also something the right is against now.