December 28, 2017 Page 3 Politically Speaking One Man’s Opinion Another Man’s Opinion Nobody Should Be Shocked by Trump’s, Ambassador’s U.N. Antics By Cristian Vasquez When United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, on behalf of President Trump, warned that Washington would take action against the countries that voted to reject the President’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the criticism came from all angles. From anger to indignation, the United States was condemned for not only moving the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, but for Haley’s vindictive tone against the nations that voted against the move. Here’s the thing: Since when is a UN vote binding? Does it really matter, for the purposes of what the United States wants, that the UN opposed our position? Yes, this makes for horrible diplomacy and it is a direct contradiction to the spirit and purpose for being a member of the UN. However, for the people kicking and screaming about this bully tactic, why all the noise? It’s not the first time our leaders imposed their will on the world regardless of UN sentiment. Let’s not forget about the decision by President George Bush to invade Iraq despite opposition from the UN and from some of our nation’s strongest allies. Years before President Bush’s debacle, President Bill Clinton and his administration--despite knowing about the massacre occurring in Rwanda in 1994--dragged their feet to act and prevent this atrocity despite the willingness of the UN to intervene. More recently President Obama decided to bomb Syria despite a UN Charter that military force should not be used unless in self-defense, or if the Security Council approves the attack. I accept it’s rude, unacceptable and childish to go around threatening people, or countries, that disagree with you. But to my friends on the left looking for any reason to attack Number 45, remember that the actions of this administration mirror those of his predecessors. The UN has been treated like a yellow traffic light by every president. Each administration will for the most part respect its symbolism- -but when in a rush, they’ll bypass rules in order to obtain the end goal. So what’s the outcry really about? Are people mad that our country picks and chooses when to cooperate with the UN—or because it’s done by a president they don’t like? Democrats are making the same mistake they committed back 2004 when they were so busy bashing President Bush at every opportunity that they never developed a solid platform- -nor nominate a great candidate--and we were stuck with John Kerry and Bush in the general election. Democrats need to end that fixation to bash President Trump and get to work finding an ideal candidate for the White House and developing an agenda that will fix the damage caused by 45 at home and abroad. The way that Haley behaved in the UN is unacceptable, but sadly it is not exclusive to just this administration. Furthermore, it would be tragic if the Democrats gave President Trump another four years simply because all they did was spend their time pointing fingers and complaining. • We’ve Reached Armageddon Yet Again, According to Resistance By Duane Plank “Armageddon!” screamed southpaw Nancy Pelosi, the Cali Senator and Minority Leader of the House when she got wind of the details of the recently passed tax cut Mr. Trump adroitly guided through Congress. The world, she ranted, is sure to end because there will be tax breaks for most Americans, including…yup, the wealthy donor class. The very wealthy Pelosi pontificated that the little guy got hosed again, and the lefties all opened their resist Trump playbook, parroting DNC talking points, fanning out to saturate lib-friendly media outposts like CNN and MSNBC with their lock-step blatherings. A practiced master of understatement, the sardonic Pelosi thundered that “the tax bill that the Republicans put forth is probably one of the worst bills in the history of the United States of America!” Truth be told, the American tax system has been considered a sadistic joke for a very long time. A killer corporate tax on business entities strangling those trying to run a successful business and create jobs for legal American workers. Burdensome taxes forced many companies to move assets, profits and jobs out of the good old U.S. of A. Trump’s tax plan shaves the corporate tax rate from the astronomical rate of 35 percent to a more manageable 21. Middle-class families, as well as those hovering on the lower end of the money-making spectrum, will also catch a break. Yes, the wealthy types should also benefit. A win, win, win, right? Unless you’re an entrenched lefty on the tax and spend side. Those who think they are more adept at spending your money than you are are howling about the trillions, they surmise, the tax cut will add to the already unconscionable national debt. How have the entrenched bureaucrats been doing with your money? Frittering it away on idiotic boondoggles, bullet trains going nowhere, taking your money and gleefully flushing it as they graze at the bureaucratic trough. Yeah, bureaucrats are always the smartest folks in the room, right? As he celebrated his first major legislative victory, Trump crowed that “we are bringing the entrepreneur back into this country. Ultimately, what does it mean? It means jobs, jobs, jobs.” After the final passing of the plan last week, bucks-up corporations like AT&T, Boeing and the scallywag cheaters at Wells Fargo floated the notion that they would reward employees with bonuses, with the AT&T folks claiming they would gift 200,000 employees with $1,000 bonuses. As 2017 fades into the gloaming, the capstone is put on one of the most vitriolic years in American politics. Starting with the coronation of Trump, who stunned nearly everyone with his stomping of the somnambulant Queen Hillary. That event forced the leftists to search for an answer to why the chosen one tanked. Within hours, Dems and their bosom buddies in the mainstream media started concocting a yarn that it was the Russians, and mastermind “Rasputin Putin,” who delivered the Trump electoral victory. More than a year later, after wasting millions our tax dollars, they still have a “nothing burger” on collusion. Happy New Year! • NASA Selects Concept Finalists for Comet, Saturn Moon Missions Based on a Press Release from NASA, Provided by Bob Eklund NASA has selected two finalist concepts for a robotic mission planned to launch in the mid- 2020s: a comet sample return mission and a drone-like rotorcraft that would explore potential landing sites on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The agency announced the concepts December 20, following an extensive and competitive peer review process. The concepts were chosen from 12 proposals submitted in April under a New Frontiers program announcement of opportunity. “This is a giant leap forward in developing our next bold mission of science discovery,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “These are tantalizing investigations that seek to answer some of the biggest questions in our solar system today.” THE FINALISTS Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR) The CAESAR mission seeks to return a sample from 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a comet that was successfully explored by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, to determine its origin and history. Led by Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, CAESAR would be managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Dragonfly Dragonfly is a drone-like rotorcraft that would explore the prebiotic chemistry and habitability of dozens of sites on Saturn’s moon Titan, an ocean world in our solar system. Elizabeth Turtle from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, is the lead investigator, with APL providing project management. The CAESAR and Dragonfly missions will receive funding through the end of 2018 to further develop and mature their concepts. NASA plans to select one of these investigations in the spring of 2019 to continue on to subsequent mission phases. The selected mission will be the fourth in NASA’s New Frontiers portfolio, a series of principal investigator-led planetary science investigations that fall under a development cost cap of approximately $850 million. Its predecessors are the New Horizons mission to Pluto and a Kuiper Belt object known as 2014 MU69, the Juno mission to Jupiter, and OSIRIS-REx, which will rendezvous with and return a sample of the asteroid Bennu. NASA also announced the selection of two mission concepts that will receive technology development funds to prepare them for future mission competitions. The Concepts Selected for Technology Finance Development Enceladus Life Signatures and Habitability (ELSAH). The ELSAH mission concept will receive funds to develop cost-effective techniques that limit spacecraft contamination and thereby enable life detection measurements on costcapped missions. The principal investigator is Chris McKay of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and the managing NASA center is Goddard. Venus In situ Composition Investigations (VICI). Led by Lori Glaze at Goddard, the VICI mission concept will further develop the Venus Element and Mineralogy Camera to operate under the harsh conditions on Venus. The instrument uses lasers on a lander to measure the mineralogy and elemental composition of rocks on the surface of Venus. The call for concepts was limited to six mission themes: comet surface sample return, lunar south pole-Aitken Basin sample return, ocean worlds (Titan and/or Enceladus), Saturn probe, Trojan asteroid tour and rendezvous, and Venus in situ explorer. New Frontiers Program investigations address NASA’s planetary science objectives as described in the 2014 NASA Strategic Plan and the 2014 NASA Science Plan. The program is managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office (https://planetarymissions.nasa.gov) at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Planetary Science Division in Washington. • Solar system image courtesy of NASA.gov
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