godspeed michael collins, a pioneer. i always think about the fortitude to be an explorer, to go that far, but because of duty, to *not* land on the lunar surface. guts and selflessness.
collins was arguably the most "alone" person in humanity for the duration of the landing
when you have to take your buddies to the moon and they really need you to do it but you can't go onto the moon yourself.
“I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life,” he wrote in recreating his thoughts for his 1974 memoir, “Carrying the Fire.”
i saw buzz aldrin in person once, now the only one of the apollo 11 astronauts still alive. it was at the national book festival in dc. he drove around in a scooter and people spontaneously applauded every time he passed by. it was one of the coolest things ive ever seen.
heres a pic of buzz from the presentation he gave about going to mars
*correction: he wasnt in a scooter, i dunno why i thought he was
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When a popular Democratic president lays out his popular plans in his first address to Congress, Politico’s default position, as it always is for the mainstream media, is that this is good for Republicans.
As the press did with both Clinton and Obama, it is is so terrified of Republican blowback they can never cover a story with the idea that “this continues to coalesce public support for the Democrats and is bad news for Republicans.” Never.
This is “good news for John McCain” all over again and remember how that ended.
just wrote a story and had to change "towards" to "toward" cause i spent the first few years of primary/elementary school under the british system and that junk is encoded on my dna.
the "socialism" attacks do not work. they simply don't. they get republicans excited and in a frenzy, but they do not move the needle one iota. these guys cried wolf one time too many.
if you insist that bill clinton, al gore, john kerry, hillary clinton, barack obama and joe biden are *all* socialism, people will just tune out.
just filed a story and goddamn republicans are so good at swarming to a favorable story and pounding on it. theyre legions ahead of the dems, and this is based just on social media -- no excuse about having access to fox/radio. theyre just better at it.
gop gives dems a ton of material in this vein and they just pass it up. its not about intellectual honesty or any of that. this is literally a key component of their jobs that they dont do 99% of the time.
regular people do not sit there reading policy papers and proposal. they notice politics when there's conflict. republicans understand that creating conflict, framed from their pov, produces favorable outcomes. dems just end up hoping people figure it out.