Best Movies Ever: “The Right Stuff” or My thoughts on how to get Obama to fund the American space program again!

Yesterday I felt this compulsion to watch “The Right Stuff” the 1983 film chronicling the test flights of Chuck Yeager and first flights of the original Mercury 7 astronauts.  My friend Tom reminded me on Facebook that it was probably because it was the 25th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy!  Wow, I hadn’t put the two together but it is funny that I really wanted to watch that movie last night!

BTW, not to digress, but where were you when the Challenger exploded?  I was working out at a gym doing some cardio on a bike machine.  The gym had the radio on and suddenly there was breaking news that the Space Shuttle had exploded shortly after take off killing everyone on board.  I just sat on the bike stunned as everyone in the gym just went quite.  A mixture of horror, helplessness, and sorrow…

Anyhow, The Right Stuff… Why is it called “The Right Stuff”.  When you see what these pilots and early astronauts went through…you’ll know immediately.  The film is a snapshot into an era where America was reaching for the stars and every boy my age wanted to grow up to be an astronaut.

Scott Glen, Ed Harris, Sam Shepherd, Fred Ward, and Dennis Quaid are the flyboys whose competition and comraderie turn this film into a high octane film for men.  I must have seen The Right Stuff  20 times and every time Alan Shepherd is about to launch or Chuck Yeager is accelerating to Mach 1, I get goose bumps and giddy inside.  Fast cars, fast planes, fast rockets…yep this is a “guy night” flick.

And this all got me thinking.  President Obama recently put the axe to President Bush’s vision to see NASA go back to the moon as preparation for a manned trip to Mars.  I admit it, I’m a hypocrite because I think the President doesn’t do near enough spending cuts…but I flipped out when he cut NASA.  Why?

Because reaching to do the impossible is what makes America.  It’s in our DNA.  If we are told the boundary is “X” we’ll make it “X” + 1.  We HAVE to go…because its THERE! It’s who we are as a people!

So how do we make Obama change his mind?

We have to trick him.  We have to frame it as an issue that he and the Democrats can really sink their teeth into.  And there is nothing Democrats love more (after taxes)  then turning any completely random issue into an issue of racial and gender discrimination.  Now watch closely (but don’t try this at home, leave it for the professionals):

“President Obama do you realize that at this very moment the American flag is flying on the moon  but that only WHITE MALES have been allowed to go there.  That’s right…women, minorities, gays…ALL have been excluded from that private bastion of white male privilege we like to refer to as ‘the moon”.  


And have you seen the film footage of them there?  


Astronauts taking golf shots and driving around their private country club in that expensive moon buggy bought and paid for by the American taxpayer.  I have no doubt that while they were hidden behind those protective visors, they were secretly laughing and joking about how they don’t have affiliate  with “those people” while “up here.”.  

President Obama, this discrimination and exclusionary policy must be stopped at once! The moon must be a place where men & women of all ethnicities are able to stand tall and walk proud. (By walk I mean that ‘hopping walk’ thing the astronauts do there)  

Please Mr. President, for the sake of fairness & equality, we need you to fund NASA now!!!!