This ties into the posting I had about all the PC idiots who are all about " self-esteem". We now have to make Abdul and Muslims everywhere feel better about themselves......as if that was something that AMERICANS are truly concerned about right now.....let's think about this - what is most important to our nation right now - unemployment, the economy, financial crisis, terrorism, and oh yeah, that Abdul feels better about himself......WTF?
POTUS is trying to see if he can politicize the use of NASA to help Muslims feel good about themsleves....THIS is exactly what is wrong with POTUS' worldview - If the Muslim nations need to feel better about themselves, then THEY should do something about the vipers in their own midst.....and other issues that have nothing to do with SPACE and everything to do with better conduct by them on Earth.
Seeing our Nation's Space Agency used in this fashion is disgusting. NASA is not ACORN - It has a long and storied History of excellence....NOW, POTUS thinks it can become another tool in his warped PR strategy and another chapter in his " World Apology Tour" -
ARE YOU FRICKIN' KIDDING ME???
This idiot sitting in the White House needs to go - before he sets back the progress we have made over the last 50 years as a leader in Space, Technology, Exploration and Excellence - instead of the leader in all that is Politically Correct and Exceptionally Stupid.
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Former NASA chief: Muslim outreach is ‘perversion’ of NASA’s mission
By: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent Washington Examiner 07/06/10 11:55 AM EDT
Michael Griffin, who headed NASA during the last four years of the Bush administration, says the space agency’s new goal to improve relations with the Islamic world and boost Muslim self-esteem is a “perversion” of NASA’s original mission to explore space. “NASA was chartered by the 1958 Space Act to develop the arts and sciences of flight in the atmosphere and in space and to go where those technologies will allow us to go,” Griffin said in an interview Tuesday. “That’s what NASA does for the country. It is a perversion of NASA’s purpose to conduct activities in order to make the Muslim world feel good about its contributions to science and mathematics.”
Griffin calls NASA’s new mission, outlined by space agency administrator Charles Bolden in an interview with the al-Jazeera news agency, “very bad policy for NASA.” As for NASA’s core mission of space exploration, Griffin points out that it has been reaffirmed many times over the years, most recently in 2005, when a Republican Congress passed authorizing legislation, and in 2008, when a Democratic Congress did the same thing.
“NASA has been for 50 years above politics, and for 50 years, NASA has been focused by one president or another on space exploration,” Griffin says. “Some presidents have championed it more strongly than others, and it is regrettable that none have championed it as strongly as President Kennedy. But no president has thought to take NASA’s focus off of anything but space exploration until now, and it is deeply regrettable.”
Griffin says NASA has always played an important, but indirect, role in diplomacy. “I have championed the use of NASA as a powerful diplomatic and inspirational tool for U.S. policy writ large,” Griffin says. “But the way NASA achieves those goals is by doing great things. NASA does those things that make people all over the world say, ‘Wow.’ If NASA is making people say, ‘Wow,’ then they want to be part of what we do. That’s NASA’s role — it’s to do those things that make other people want to join us.”
For all his unhappiness with the new policy, Griffin says blame for the situation does not belong with NASA administrator Charles Bolden, whom Griffin calls “one of the best human beings you will find.” “When I see reports in the media excoriating Charlie for this position, that blame is misplaced,” Griffin says. “It belongs with the administration. That is where policy for NASA is set.
The NASA administrator does not set policy for NASA, the administrator carries it out.”
“This is not about personalities,” Griffin concludes. “It is about the intellectual content of the policy, which I find to be bankrupt.”
