So...criticize the agency for improving success rates, streamlining and reducing budgets, introducing private industry to reduce costs and meeting agressive timelines. Good thinking budget minded politician!

Earth sciences budget increased 41%? What percentage of the total budget is it now? Is it now larger than the money allocated for space exploration or is it still a small percentage of the total NASA pie? Not a misleading chart at all. Of course, charts is book learnin' and learnin' is what them elitist socialist do!

Go home to Canada senator, you're a tool.

Yeah, one of "things that actually happen" myths.

I know you don't hold with that fancy book learnin', but we call them "facts".

Well, at first Matt sounded like a bit of a nerd, not the kind of guy I'd want to vote for. I mean, who needs all that book learnin' when you've been out on a farm, am I right?

But... sounds like the guy knows how to throw a party. So maybe he's not such a nerd.

Matt, you have my vote. Or you would, if I lived there. Hope you win buddy, anyone slagging you simply because you're educated has to be a grade A moron.

@blankfist, I'm glad you see fascism in the tea party now.

I'm against them, as I always have been.

I don't see how reasoning with them is possible -- they live in a world that operates on its own facts, and have for years now.

I've tried several times to point out that you and I should be on the same side -- against the tea party -- but usually you've been cheering them on, because they've been calling Obama and Democrats Nazis.

Still, I'll take another ally, even at this late hour.

As for the elitist smugness, think that's all in the eye of the beholder. I think conservatives have always acted out of a sort of ignorant smugness -- that gut "common sense" is always superior to those of us with book learnin' who use big fancy words (like Keynesian).

Personally, I think it's amazing that an ideology that valorizes the elites in our society has somehow painted the ideology of egalitarianism as being somehow "elitist". It's another amazing feat of up-is-downism propaganda.

It's also more of the cult of victimization that fuels fascism at work -- if someone points out that your deeply held preconceptions are based on faulty reasoning or incorrect facts, you can just tell yourself it's another pointy-headed socialist disrespecting you, and when we put those traitors into camps, they'll be made to see the error of their ways...

You don't ask a cripple about his favorite swimming stroke, and you don't ask Sarah Palin about anything requirin' any book learnin'! This is just the liberal media playin' gotcha politics!

I always knew those pointy-headed scienticians with their fancy diplomas and fancy book learnin' were wrong.

We are all paid and played....the insight from researchers and lab-brats must come from folks like gluonium and god love em, they enjoy it, and are wired for the work.....

Toxins are toxins, small doses a or large, and if you are in a risk group for contracting whatevrthefk, of course, get the vaccine...or become aware, and un-risky...and for crissakes, worry about cancer before it is understood???

the issue here, mandatory: Immediate red flags arise....
follow the money to it not being spent efficiently, and lining pockets from the top down...

change the motivation, the pardigm ,and suddenly you have cures for disease, longevity systems, free energy, etc.....What disease is the most deleterious to mankind??? Lack of Knowledge....that ain,t book learnin' either...It is, perhaps, remembering how to flourish by living right...back to basics.