To Insanity and Beyond!

Goodtime Charlie's been on another long hiatus… What could be so important as to draw him back to the keyboard?

Glad you asked! I just wanted to make sure that all of you fine readers—yes, all two of you—are doing what you can to get Newt Gingrich elected President. No, I haven't taken leave of my senses, I'm just really excited at the prospect of moving to America's fifty-first state.

In case you missed it, Newt is now quite literally promising the moon if he gets elected. In a speech given in Florida on Jan. 25, 2012, he pledged that by the end of his second term (how's that for confidence), "we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American." He went on to remind his audience that he had once introduced a "Northwest Ordinance for Space" and said that, "when we get—I think the number was 13,000—when we have 13,000 Americans living on the Moon they can petition to become a state. And here’s the difference between romantics and so-called practical people. I wanted every young American to say to themselves: I could be one of those 13,000."

Per aspera ad astra

I'm hardly young any more (as my children perpetually remind me), and I will be less so in 2020, but sign me up anyway. I can think of nowhere I'd rather be than hurtling through space on a freezing cold rock living in one of a series of airtight boxes connected by tubes. I imagine it wouldn't be much different than living in Minneapolis. I could pretend to be a giant hamster! And I could finally catch up on my reading.

The whole proposition seems perfectly practical to me. It can't possibly cost very much, or be particularly hard, to get all those people, food, medical supplies, building materials etc. etc. across a quarter of a million miles of open space. Plus, we have all kinds of money that's currently being wasted on infrastructure, healthcare, defense, education, social security and other frivolous nonsense that we could invest in this instead. Or we could hit up China again. You just have to keep in mind the benefits we would get in return, which would be, umm, science and stuff, and it would be really cool.

My hat's off to you, Newt! Keep those great ideas coming!