Bush, the man who has driven the US into near-bankruptcy and the dollar into an international collapse, while overextending US resources to the breaking point in Iraq and Afghanistan, the man who couldn't successfully engineer a manned mission to eat turkey in Baghdad, now wants to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a grandiose scheme to conquer the moon and Mars. Why?

Here are eleven reasons (besides searching for relatives) I can think off just offhand (tongue firmly in cheek):

1. If he can divert the public's attention into space, maybe they won't notice how badly he has f-cked everything up on Earth.

2. In his never-ending quest to be likened to a real president (he's tried parallels to everyone from Lincoln to FDR to Reagan), Bush is hoping maybe someone will imagine he is like JFK, who inspired the US to set their sights for the moon. Of course that was back when America had the money to spend on such projects. And the only similarity between Bush and JFK is that they both had ruthless fathers.

3. With US corporations losing global clients left and right here on Earth due to Bush's exploitve, offensive policies, Bush figures he should now offer his corporate friends rights to set up shop on the moon or Mars - no pesky other nations to have to accommodate by behaving with integrity. Part of the plan, according to numerous reports from would-be "space speculators" is to conduct mining operations and set up garish tourist stations. What would be next? Gigantic neon signs across the face of the full moon that spell out DRINK COKE or VIAGRA?

4. He thinks all those out-of-work technical folks will get all excited, imagining that they will now have insured work for the next decades. Sorry, techies, but most of the hardware and software for any space missions will likely be manufactured in India or southeast Asia because NASA will, within the next year or so, be privatized. Do you really think these corporations will pay you $80,000 a year when they can get four Indian PhDs for the same price?

5. The intelligence/creativity level of the remaining Bush PR team (those dumb and self-disrespecting enough to stay on) is at an all-time low. "Bush Goes to Mars" is the best scheme they could come up with, having burnt themselves out with the "Turkey in Baghdad" bit.

6. Billy Graham and Pat Robertson found something in Revelation they think is a prophesy that Armageddon will actually take place on Mars, not in Iraq, as earlier believed.

7. Orrin Hatch confided to Bush that he believes God lives on Mars, not Kolob (the "cosmic planet" of Mormon scripture).

8. Unable to set up concentration camps for liberals and/or non-white, non-Protestant people here on Earth without pissing too many people off, Bush hopes to ship all his enemies to Camp Luna.

9. Bush found that bankrupting the American government was harder than he thought it would be and figured financing a mission to Mars would do the trick.

10. Bush knows he won't be reelected and is desperately trawling for some accomplishment that will be so dazzling that future generations will not remember him just as "That evil bastard."

11. Dick Cheney had a vision that there was oil on the moon.


As for the rest of us, I bet there's just one good reason we can all think of for getting a manned spacecraft to Mars, preferrably one-way:

Send Bush.




POSTCRIPT (added 1/10)

I was asked by someone today: Why not reach for the stars? What would be wrong with humanity living on Mars? Here is my response:

I find nothing romantically idealistic about humanity "reaching for the stars" when they refuse to take care of the planet they are already living on.

The idea of "escaping to elsewhere" is what has always encouraged humankind to abandon their responsibilities to the place where they are, whether it iit is a North American forest that is clear cut and abandoned by a wood products company for "better pickings" in Indonesia, an inner city left to rot by people fleeing to the suburbs to start the cycle all over, or oil companies looking to ANWR for new and easy oil.

Just what will we prove by spending billions to go to Mars? That we don't care enough about Planet Earth to invest the same money in taking care of the environment or human suffering? That we have run out of "free places" (the real meaning of the word "frontier") to exploit here on Earth? That we believe that a handful of people with sufficient cash to finance such a venture should be allowed to take control of the very moon in the sky (so to speak) with the other 6 billion or so humans never having a say?

What it will prove is nothing to be proud of.