Learnin' is the Devil
dem pro fessers doin all the sciencin and the vaccinatin gonna bring the devil down on us
Save us Donald!
Congress ctrl-Zs bulk of proposed cuts to NASA science
NASA's budget battle took another turn this week as the US House and Senate Appropriations Committees released text rejecting proposed cuts to the space agency. The "joint explanatory statement" [PDF] is a little light on detail, but restores most of NASA's science budget. The FY2026 Request was $3.9 billion, down from the …
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Tuesday 6th January 2026 14:34 GMT Bebu sa Ware
windows ctrl-z or a unix ctrl-z?
I too was wondering CP/M EOF or default Unix tty suspend binding (which sends SIGTSTP to the process group) .
If only Congress could find the testicular fortitude to send SIGSTOP, SIGQUIT or SIGTERM to the whole miserable administration. Signal #9 is too much to ask for I suppose.
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Wednesday 7th January 2026 06:31 GMT DS999
Re: Stall tactics
Trump just floated canceling the elections, complaining that if he mentioned canceling the elections the "fake news" will call him a dictator. Actually the very definition of dictator would call him a dictator, but this mention of canceling elections fits his pattern. First he treats it as something he wouldn't do, then he seriously proposes it, then he does it and dares the courts to stop him.
Not really sure that he could cancel them even if he announced it, since the federal government doesn't run elections. If he got some red states like Texas to go along with it then they'd have fewer congressmen and be worse off, so maybe in a perverse way I kind of want him to try it...
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Tuesday 6th January 2026 14:15 GMT alain williams
There would be plenty of budget available for NASA ...
if the USA spent less $$ invading or bombing other countries or supporting genocide. But, I suppose, senators like bringing military spend budget to their state.
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Tuesday 6th January 2026 14:35 GMT JohnSheeran
Re: There would be plenty of budget available for NASA ...
They favor military spending because our constitution allows them to do that. Feeding, clothing or educating aren't really things that our constitution intended for them to do. You can argue (or downvote me) but our country's structure was intended for those things to be a state-by-state kind of thing. You can even disagree if that's they way it should be done but that was the intent.
Also, Senator's were originally intended to be representatives for the state governments. Up until 1913 and the 17th Amendment, Senators were intended to be elected by state legislators in accordance with Article I, section 3 of the constitution.
So, this is way too many words to say that the US government is operating way outside of the original scope but, sadly, military spending was directly in that scope. (Even though I don't really agree with that particular monster either)
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Tuesday 6th January 2026 16:47 GMT Gary Stewart
Re: There would be plenty of budget available for NASA ...
To provide for the general welfare? I know it's in the preamble but the preamble is a statement of the purpose, philosophy, and intent, of a document. If the states fail to do this, as they have and continue do it would then fall on the federal government to uphold this principle. Feeding and education not only provide for the general welfare they are directly responsible for the world leading economic powerhouse the US became and for at least the near future still is. And in most states it is illegal to be naked in public.
While the original intent of the constitution was to grant state governments a great deal of power in deciding how they were run over time it became obvious that some of that power had to be overridden by the federal government to fix serious problems created by the states. There are numerous examples of this with the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 17th amendments passed to correct these problems. The 17th amendment took away the ability of state legislators to appoint federal senators and gave the citizens of the states the responsibility of voting for the senators that would represent them. While this did reduce the power of the state's governments I would argue that it simply moved that power to the state's citizens and I don't think this is a bad thing. All of these are excellent examples of why a mechanism for to fix problems in the original constitution was included and the difficulty of getting one passed (by 2/3rds voter in both houses of congress and states) helps insure that for the most part at least that these changes are truly necessary.
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Thursday 8th January 2026 15:48 GMT JohnSheeran
Re: There would be plenty of budget available for NASA ...
I can't argue your points. They are valid. I'm just saying that the federal government is generally way more interested in protecting the country via the so-called 'military industrial complex" because that part doesn't whine and complain about it (as much anyway). When it comes to education/healthcare/welfare, no answer seems to satisfy the citizens of the US.
I find a certain irony in the senator election amendment however. If the citizens of a state elected the government in that state, are we saying that the choices of their elected government need to be directly circumvented because that elected government isn't acting in their interests? (Apparently so but it's still a funny idea if you think about it)
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Tuesday 6th January 2026 20:30 GMT the spectacularly refined chap
Re: There would be plenty of budget available for NASA ...
They favor military spending because our constitution allows them to do that. Feeding, clothing or educating aren't really things that our constitution intended for them to do.
The US Founding Fathers were against the establishment of a standing army, indeed they observed that most coups against established civil power either originated in or are contingent on the military. This is why there is a constitutional bar on defence appropriations for more than two years at a time, but not for any other form of spending - the government can raise an army as needed, but it wasn't intended to be on an ongoing basis.
It is also where those second amendment rights to arms come from. In a country without a regular army the ability to raise a militia for the protection of the state becomes a sensible safeguard. It was not as frequently portrayed for protection from the state, which is the goal of all the other clauses in the constitution.
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Wednesday 7th January 2026 02:24 GMT Gary Stewart
Re: There would be plenty of budget available for NASA ...
"It was not as frequently portrayed for protection from the state"
Article 1 section 8 of the US Constitution: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.
These duties are now performed by the National Guard and in some cases the US military. Somehow the Constitutional definition of a militia's duties and the inclusion of "A well regulated Militia" in the Second Amendment are always missed by the extreme 2nd Amendment advocates and unfortunately by numerous Supine Court decisions. Given the current level of US military spending it is ironic that one of the main original objections to a standing army was having to fund it. I am always amazed by people that claim that the US military is or was ever "week" given the spending levels over the past 70+ years and the fact that this spending has been for many many years more than the next 8 to 10 countries COMBINED. With most of those "other" countries being until recently at least allies. If the US military is not strong then the graft and corruption in the US military is staggering which has been brought up and immediately ignored on many occasions probably originally in Eisenhower's "Military Industrial Complex" speech and more recently by DOGE.
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Thursday 8th January 2026 15:52 GMT JohnSheeran
Re: There would be plenty of budget available for NASA ...
While I won't really comment one way or another on the intentions of the "founding fathers" (I wasn't there so I only know what I've read/heard), I don't know that I truly agree with the statement around the 2nd amendment and the militia on the grounds that your characterization means that it's a complete outlier from the rest of the BoR in intent.
Historically (or so I've been told), the ruling governments limited access/rights to things like weaponry to prevent uprisings and to maintain control over the populace. Using that premise, the purpose of the 2nd amendment was a direct reflection of stating that the populace has the foundational rights to defense. This isn't the time/place to expand that argument because I know there are so many people that love to interpret these things according to what they already believe.
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Wednesday 7th January 2026 14:20 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: There would be plenty of budget available for NASA ...
>Funny how many senators prefer military spending to feeding, clothing or educating their constituents
Obviously true communism will only be achieved in the USA when everyone is in the military and so receives free food, housing, college and healthcare
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Tuesday 6th January 2026 15:01 GMT Gene Cash
Business as usual
This is the same old same old.
It's not a Trump thing, Congress just ALWAYS does the opposite of what the president wants with NASA appropriations. If he'd doubled the budget, they would have cut it by 75%
NASA's a political football they can kick in the president's face without major repercussions.
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Tuesday 6th January 2026 15:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Business as usual
It's a _____________ thing when _____________ proposes massive budget cuts to NASA, the National Science Foundation, research universities, national laboratories, international collaborations, etc.
Trump happens to be the most guilty party in anti-science cuts over the past decade. So it's a Trump thing.
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Wednesday 7th January 2026 00:44 GMT that one in the corner
Why does this sound like a threat?
> One way or another, we're going to make sure the Johnson Space Center gets their historic spacecraft right where it belongs.
"Fresh from a Moon mission, a craft that took astronauts up then returned on autopilot, delivering rock samples, straight down from orbit and delivered to Johnson at Mach-you-wouldn't-believe-it"
Biting the hand that feeds IT
