Meanwhile, Back on Earth

Meanwhile, Back on Earth: "IN A MOVE AKIN to Dan Quayle invoking John F. Kennedy in 1988, President Bush attempted a Kennedyesque moment of his own 2 1/2 years ago when he called for a national effort to land Americans on the moon and Mars. It's not a clip they'll play on repeat in Mr. Bush's presidential library.

To few people's surprise, the president's soaring pronouncements flopped. But he still pushed NASA to carry on planning for new solar-system exploration. Now instead of just being an embarrassment for the president, Mr. Bush's astronautical ambitions are cutting deeply into NASA's budget to, among other things, monitor global climate change."

The Washington Post editorial today also notes:

According to the space agency, NASA is diverting a little over $3 billion from its science research budget over five years. Though it's not clear how much of that will come from earth science, NASA admits that the climate-monitoring funding has steadily decreased since fiscal year 2004.

While Al Gore is raising public consciousness about the environmental crisis with his great film, An Inconvenient Truth, the Bush Administration is cutting back on the research needed to better understand The Climate Crisis.

See the movie, which is already the fourth best selling documentary in history.