msg wrote:

snip
Obama has been absolutely silent on space and has no real interest
in nuclear technology

snip

I withdraw this statement, as I have not done any real research other
than reading reports of what was on the campaign's website; in fact
Obama is on record as not a friend of NASA -- see:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1100/1

Obama’s modest proposal: no hue, no cry?
by Greg Zsidisin
Monday, April 7, 2008

[Editor’s Note: This is part 1 of a three-part article.]

If elected President, Senator Barack Obama plans to delay Project
Constellation for at least five years, putting the saved money into
a new $10-billion-a-year education program that would, in essence,
nationalize early-education for children under five years old to
prepare them for the rigors of kindergarten and beyond.

Why single out the space budget to cut for this program? “NASA is
no longer associated with inspiration,” Obama told a campaign rally
audience in March. The silence from space advocacy groups in response
to this policy, made public in November, has been deafening. As I have
discovered in recent weeks, Obama is personally adamant about this
approach, if the details of its implementation remain hazy.

Attacking the space program, as poorly funded as it is, and singling
out a very important discovery program such as this, to me is
unconscionable, while sabre rattling about Iran's nuclear program
and heading into a bigger morass in Afghanistan. So much for the
waves of grass-roots populism that purportedly put him in office -
it reeks of the techno-hatred of the hippie movement, and yet it
was technology willingly exploited by the masses, with cell-phones
growing from their ears and fat pipes to the 'Net that they so
willingly have co-opted, that comprise the tools credited with giving
his campaign the edge.

Michael