Well, This Sucks

Via Witchvox comes a story that shows precisely how wrong-headed the Bush junta is:

"NASA is canceling or delaying a number of satellites designed to give scientists critical information on the earth's changing climate and environment.

The space agency has shelved a $200 million satellite mission headed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor that was designed to measure soil moisture -- a key factor in helping scientists understand the impact of global warming and predict droughts and floods. The Deep Space Climate Observatory, intended to observe climate factors such as solar radiation, ozone, clouds, and water vapor more comprehensively than existing satellites, also has been canceled.

And in its 2007 budget, NASA proposes significant delays in a global precipitation measuring mission to help with weather predictions, as well as the launch of a satellite designed to increase the timeliness and accuracy of severe weather forecasts and improve climate models.

The changes come as NASA prioritizes its budget to pay for completion of the International Space Station and the return of astronauts to the moon by 2020 -- a goal set by President Bush that promises a more distant and arguably less practical scientific payoff. Ultimately, scientists say, the delays and cancellations could make hurricane predictions less accurate, create gaps in long-term monitoring of weather, and result in less clarity about the earth's hydrological systems, which play an integral part in climate change."

We've got money to to professionally frame and display ghoulish pictures of dead terroritst. We've got money for an illegal and insane war. We've got money to build permanent bases in a country we're supposedly going to leave soon. We've got so much money that we can give rich people huge tax cuts and provide oil companies with billions of dollars in handouts. We've got money for a Star Wars program that will never work. We've got money to hand over audit-free to Haliburton. But NASA doesn't have money to help predict hurricanes or learn about climate change.

I've got an idea. What about if we stay the fuck off the Moon, which is sacred ground to me as a Wiccan, and spend our money on these needed satellites?