[TMWNN]

>* USAID shutdowns

The rest of the world is not entitled to unlimited American funds for all time.

>* DOE downsizing (ie. killing education)

Canada doesn't even have a federal-level education department. Is Canada filled with uneducated morons?

>As for the spacex contracts: a cheaper price only helps if it actually leads to less spending. Since the US cannot risk spacex being the only access to space, it cannot cut funding to ULA contracts. Therefore spacex is more expensive, despite the cheaper sticker price.

The mind boggles at this "logic".

The desire for having multiple launchers is not because "the US cannot risk spacex being the only access to space", but because the US got badly burned by putting all its rocket eggs into one space shuttle basket.

If SpaceX didn't exist, and the US government used ULA and Blue Origin for all its launches, the US would be paying far more than it is now. Don't believe me? Biden's NASA administrator Bill Nelson quoted a member of the Joint Chiefs as telling him that SpaceX had saved the US government $40 billion for just launching military payloads <https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/06/05/did-spacex-really-...>.

On the civilian side, SpaceX saved NASA $2 billion for just one payload, Europa Clipper <https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/a-year-from-launch-the...>, so who knows how many billions more from other launches.

The above is purely a cost analysis, and doesn't even cover SpaceX allowing the US to no longer being dependent on Russia for sending people into space, as was the case from 2011 to 2020.

[spwa4]

Thanks for making this comment. I can not imagine a stronger endorsement that mr. Musk and SpaceX/Tesler are responsible for all these things, that neither company is really a positive for the US.

Btw: if you're going to be racist, don't you have a problem with the fact that mr. Musk ... is not an American? I mean that is the one thing I'll credit Musk with: making Trump suck his ** in front of conservative "we hate immigrants" voters, on the white house lawn exposes the hypocrisy of MAGA and GOP voters better than even throwing a nuclear bomb on Breitbart could.

[csallen]

> Btw: if you're going to be racist

I lean pretty far left myself. But this kind of comment is why I think the left keeps losing.

The person you're engaging with is presenting rational arguments and logic in good faith, and instead of engaging and disagreeing and presenting your own counterarguments, you're just labeling them a racist.

This is not persuasive to anyone. In fact, it massively hurts your case, as readers assume you simply don't have any good reasons to support you. And I'd say it goes even further, and hurts "the left" as a whole, as people are conditioned to view that movement as in support of silencing conversation. Fewer than 20% of the population wants to live in a world where legitimate discussion might have you branded as a racist, homophobe, sexist, fascist, etc.

And not only that, it completely weakens the word. If you use the word "racist" to describe pretty much anyone who disagrees with you, then suddenly it applies to the vast majority of people, at which point it (by definition) no longer describes behavior that society finds unacceptable. Then it loses all power to cause anyone to actually reflect on themselves, or to take it seriously when the charge is levied against others.

I highly recommend reserving these words for the specific and rare times where they actually apply.

[rapsey]

How is he rasist?