Flutterby™! : Buying votes

Okay, I'm way disturbed. Unlike most of my fellow geeks I'm not a big fan of pouring more money into the gaping maw that is publicly funded manned space flight. So maybe it's just me, but when I read that Bush is running trial balloons about funding a manned Mars mission, I think "wow, could his machine be any more crass?". First there's the $400 billion payout to the AARP constituency, next the "please please please give me the Latino vote" ploy (which will hopefully backfire, unless he can find a way to get the illegal immigrants as registered voters... anyone else expect that the Republicans will suddenly resurrect the "motor voter" initiative they worked so hard to scratch?). It's almost like he expects that Diebold might not be up to the task this November.