Abbreviated pundit round-up: Mars on an austerity budget?

^{Visual source: Newseum}

Los Angeles Times Editorial Board:

Even NASA's ardent backers concede that the government has to start tightening its belt, and that giving the agency more money means giving some other program less. But the United States can't afford to risk its technological leadership in space exploration, or squander the gains that could come from firsthand knowledge of Mars.

It's worth noting that the administration proposed to keep NASA's overall budget at about the same level in the coming year as it was in fiscal 2012. But the agency has been plagued by cost overruns inside and out of the Mars program (the Curiosity project is expected to cost 50% more than initially estimated), and it's been forced by Congress to fund projects of uncertain value, such as a massive new rocket that has yet to be assigned a specific destination. The congressional meddling is an irritant, but the cost overruns are like a cancer eating the agency from within.

Senators John McCain, Lindsay O. Graham and Joe Lieberman say the U.S. should provide weapons, intelligence, training and some airborne sorties to support the Syrian rebels:

America's disengagement from this conflict carries growing costs ' for the Syrian people and for U.S. interests.

Because we have refused to provide the rebels the assistance that would tip the military balance decisively against Assad, the United States is increasingly seen across the Middle East as acquiescing to the continued slaughter of Arab and Muslim civilians. This reluctance to lead will, we fear ' like our failure to stop the slaughter of the Kurds and Shiites under Saddam Hussein in Iraq or of the Tutsis in Rwanda ' haunt our nation for years to come.

Romney tilting against wind tax credit:

Is Mitt Romney trying to blow it?

That's the question that came to mind last week as his campaign repeatedly asserted his opposition to an extension of the production tax credit for wind energy.

Robert Koehler:

We wrecked Iraq, we pulled out, we redeployed in Anaheim.

This ain't working, guys ' I mean, firing rubber bullets into anguished crowds, siccing attack dogs on moms and children. I mean, inventing enemies, going to war, unleashing state-of-the-art firepower in all directions and eventually losing, but not before we've inflicted maximum suffering on the innocent and magnified the original problem tenfold.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wonders, after multiple Olympics victories, whether anyone thinks Britain is too multicultural:

Jesus! More multicultural crap! More bleedin' foreigners winning our medals! Even cheering with indecent enthusiasm for Team GB! Who the hell do they think they are? And what the hell happened to this great nation? Tory MP Aidan Burley, an immigrant from New Zealand, dissed Danny Boyle's inclusive opening ceremony in a tweet. By now he must be spitting his (probably whitened) teeth. So too the risible journos who've been whinging about "plastic Brits" in the team, an obnoxious term invented for competitors not born in the UK. Like the South African Zola Budd, a white athlete who, during Apartheid, was given British nationality so she could run for Britain. The Daily Mail made it all happen for that "plastic Brit". But today intolerant right-wingers question the motives of non-indigenous sportspeople and are furious they have been chosen to represent the UK.

Golden Saturday must have been a bit awkward for this awkward squad. Mixed feelings must have curdled the patriotic juices when Mo Farah, born in Somalia, won the 10,000 metres, hugged his daughter and pregnant light-skinned wife. And when he pronounced himself the proudest of flag wavers. Or when Jessica Ennis, the daughter of a black father and a white mother, wept as she received her gold while 80,000 fans cheered and belted out the National Anthem.

Eugene Robinson:

There has been far too little discussion of the moral calculus involved in using flying robots as tools of assassination. At the very least, the whole thing should leave us uneasy. Collateral damage'the killing of innocents'can be minimized but not eliminated. And even if only 'bad' people are killed, this isn't war as we've traditionally understood it. Drone attacks are more like state-sponsored homicide.

Jenna Woginrich says it's wrong to use scarce corn crops for ethanol:

The cable news reports, with their panning scenes of acre upon acre of dead corn, are even worse. It looks like the setting of a post-apocalypse movie, not the breadbasket of a nation created by farmers. The few corn crops that are actually surviving are so rare that on Monday, prices sky rocketed to an all-time high of $8.20 a bushel, and counting.

There's a US government mandate that our unleaded fuel going into vehicles has to be approximately 13% ethanol. Regardless of supply, that currently remains the law. Which means if you are feeding hogs or steers, you'd better start stepping up to the bidding war for what remains ' because the factories turning that same field corn into ethanol are not only buying it up, they are legally required to do so. And now a country lousy with corn is debating where to direct this year's humble harvest: should the corn go into the SUV, or the burgers its passengers are waiting for?

Derek Thompson:

"In January 2001, Bill Clinton's final month in office, 132.4 million Americans were employed," Jim Tankersley writes. "Eleven years and six months later, that number has grown all the way to 133 million."

Since the turn of the Millennium, the U.S. economy added more than 30 million working-age people, but total jobs grew by only 600,000. That's a lost decade.

And it's come after two lost recoveries.

Jessica Valenti:

There may be a bit of head-shaking over young girls going to drastic measures to feel beautiful, but we never seem to question the idea that feeling beautiful is a worthy goal in the first place. We should tell girls the truth: 'Beautiful' is bullshit, a standard created to make women into good consumers, too busy wallowing in self-loathing to notice that we're second class citizens.

Girls don't need more self-esteem or feel-good mantras about loving themselves'what they need is a serious dose of righteous anger. But instead of teaching young women to recognize and utilize their very justifiable rage, we tell them to smile and love themselves.