Posted on 09/04/2004 4:39:59 PM PDT by L.N. Smithee
ATLANTA (CNN) -- Not everyone is enchanted with NASA's plan to send a 77 year- old astronaut-turned-politician into space this fall.
In fact, the news conference last January at which NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin announced that U.S. Sen. John Glenn was returning to space had barely gotten into the question-and-answer phase when the sniping began.
"There's been some suggestion that this assignment is a political payoff of some sort," an aviation reporter said to Glenn. "That your performance at the Senate hearings on campaign finance reform impressed the White House and that this is a reward for that performance, if you will."
Glenn and Goldin emphatically denied the charge. "Nothing could be further from the truth," said Glenn, a Democrat from Ohio. "I have to this day not discussed the campaign finance hearings with the president, the vice president or anyone at the White House."
[snip]
Among the critics is Rick Tomlinson, president of the Space Frontier Foundation...Tomlinson calls the Glenn mission "a PR gimmick" and "a political connivance" and he says that while there may be valid reasons for studying aging in space, there are better candidates than Glenn.
[snip]
When Alex Roland, a former NASA historian and now chairman of the Duke University history department, heard about Glenn's mission, his reaction was that it was "a joke." Nothing has happened since to change his mind.
[snip]
[NASA] depends on the president and Congress for its funding. While Goldin says President Clinton knew nothing about Glenn's selection until after Goldin had made the decision, one does not get to be the administrator of a major federal agency in Washington without having the big picture clearly in focus.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Later, it was revealed (to the best of my memory) that the only real "problem" was that Glenn had vomited on re-entry, and they cleaned him up and let him get a breather, not wanting him to look like the old man that he was.
Everytime I see Glenn on the Ohio quarter, it reminds me how mad I got listening to him obstruct the probe into the Clinton's foreign donations.
Uhhh, that was 1998, not 1988.
This was the event at which billyblythe told us about the LIST he and hillary wrote when they won the White House...billyblythe clinton blatantly told us that he and hilly sat down to make up a list of things that they wanted to do while on this gig. This was, he said, something hilly had on her list, and he was happy to be able to give it to her.
!
The fool didn't even realize how horrible theft was...he was giggling and snickering as he told the interviewer.
Ask not what you can do for your country...ask what you can get out of it.
As posted in another entry, my opinion was that John Glenn sold his soul for a space shuttle ride. He did the Devil's ( Bill Clinton) bidding, effectively preventing Bubba from being impeached.
I put Glenn on the list of disgraced Marines, along with F. Lee Baily ,Lee Harvey Oswald, and a four-weeker ( Hey, Kerry counts four weeks as a "tour") Dan Rather.
You are being a little harsh on Oswald, aren't you? LOL!!
I didn't mind seeing glenn go up in the shuttle - though, the coming-back-alive-part was kind of disappointing.
I just told TonyRo76 this funny story about John Glen: My mother was a second grade teacher when John Glen took his ride into space. The school, even back then, was modern enough to have televisions in the classrooms for the students to watch important events. After watching the launch, she gave her students an assignment to write what happened.
To this day, she's held onto the paper of one cute little red headed girl named Chrissy. She wrote, "Today I saw John Glen shit into space."
Chrissy nailed it.
Hey. Knock it off. It is that kind of trash talk that makes us look like.....pssssph.,..cough.....BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! :))
To the moon, Alice.
One of these days.
ALTHOUGH, the part about him cleaning up his tossed-cookies makes me feel a little bit better... I can imagine the rest of the flight crew were put the penalty-of-execution for telling anyone about it. :)
Thankyou for the best laugh I've had all day.
(Sure makes a change from the Russian massacre/Chechen Rebel threads. I gotta stop reading those, I can't stop crying.)
Living in this PC era, isn't it amazing that at one time you could joke about wife-battering on national television?
Speaking of which: I watched Blade Runner (1982) for the very first time on TV recently, and remembered how when it was first released, its depiction of Los Angeles circa 2019 was hailed by critics as the new industry standard for a futuristic movie. But while watching the job interview scene just minutes into the flick, I was snapped back into awareness that this is a movie from over twenty years ago. Why? Because in the office where the job interview of an replicant takes place, the guy behind the desk is smoking!
"WHAT? You haven't been able to smoke in an L.A. office since the turn-of-the-century!"
The kid was a few decades early, and chose the wrong orifice. Otherwise, excellent work!
Glenn is an anti-hero ... just another disgusting democratic worm with not even a reasonable facade of character. Unreal how he got away with covering Clinton's treason ... then got his payback in full view of everyone ... and the lamestream media never even noticed.
Just the convoluted suggestion of a possible payoff by Rupert Murdoch through a six-figure book deal was enough to loosen Newt Gingrich's hold on the Speaker chair, and he didn't even get anything out of it. Meanwhile, Senator Hilliary gets multi-millions for her ghostwritten schtuff, and everyone says, "Well, you go, girl!"
Not to nitpick too much, but John Glenn's first flight took place on February 20, 1962. Nope, I don't remember it. I was two weeks shy of my first birthday. The moon landings are seared - SEARED! into my memory, though. Watching them on our old black & white Motorola TV made me the space history geek I am today.
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