Newt Gingrich drew a standing room only crowd to a hotel ballroom in the Space Coast town of Cocoa. The doors were shut after about 700 people arrived, a crowd so large that many stood behind the TV cameras, laughing as an emcee told the crowd to take a seat.
Gingrich gave a speech heavy on space — and light on politics (but for some bashing of bureaucrats) — acknowledging at the outset to being a space geek: "I'm old enough that I used to read missiles and rockets magazine," he said. He mentioned Romney just once, to say that Romney has poked fun at him for dreaming big about space.
He pledged to be a president who would deliver "relentless pressure to be faster ... more innovative" in the space industry.
"By the end of my second term," he said to laughter and cheers. "We will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American."
"Does that mean I'm a visionary? You betcha," he said to applause.
He noted he was "attacked the other night for being grandiose," and that the Wright Brothers dreaming of winged flight were grandiose, as was John F. Kennedy for wanting to get a man on the moon.
"Americans are instinctively grandiose," he said to applause.
The 13,000 colonists will all be one percenters and they will establish their colony on the moon for one purpose and one purpose only -- the Special Olympics for Twits.
The gravity being about half what it is on Earth, the colonists will hold their own athletic contests in which each will beat the pants off any Earth-bound record, thus getting into the Guiness Book of World Records and winnng all kinds of Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals.
They will return to Earth from time to time to scold the 99% for our laziness, our willingness to accept free government handouts, our resignation in the face of the Democrats' efforts to redistribute wealth. "Get Up Off Your Behinds!" will be their motto. (The designated State Gas will be helium.)
They will claim that nobody deserves any government help, that it's already a level playing field although, pressed, they may grudgingly admit to a slight difference in pounds per square inch from one playing field to another.
They'll run a candidate for president after they become a state. He will be unable to read and write. He will believe that the principal ethic of Buddhism is "Every Man For Himself." But he will promote his own ignorance as evidence that, despite his having graduated from Harvard after 20 years in residence, he is not a member of the elite. His chief claim to fame will be having used an ordinary driver to put a golf ball into permanent orbit around the moon.
Posted by: Robert Maxwell | January 26, 2012 at 08:08 AM