We're going to the Moon (in 2020)!

Lockeed Martin won a multi-billion dollar contract from NASA to build the next space shuttle. It's actually less of a shuttle and more of AN EXACT CLONE OF THE APPOLLO SHIP. Except instead of carrying THREE people, Orion will carry SIX. That's right, forty years and billions of dollars later, NASA has doubled it's carrying capacity.

But this is the greatest news of all:

"Orion is expected to make its first manned flight by 2014, four years after NASA's three operating shuttles are retired. NASA said it hopes for a moon landing by 2020."

Read that over carefully and think about it. Astronauts first landed on the moon in 1969. It's now 2006 and our big goal is to replicate what folks did back when computers consisted of levers and pulleys.

What are they going to do up there, anyway?

Unless they're preparing for a space invasion that I don't know about (maybe Battlestar Gallactica is on it's way?) I don't see the need to hang out on that lifeless rock.

This is all happening at the same time that Republicans are defunding programs that actually help people. Also, they steal food from children.

Seriously. I just saw Conrad Burns steal a juicebox from a small African-American child. He picked the kid up, threw him on the ground, grabbed the Capri Sun and yelled "Get a job!" Then he hopped into a limo and drove away...but only after throwing a pipebomb at a group of firefighters.

Man, that guy's a menace.