Remember when the future was all about robots? They’d be doing everything. Now we’re in the future (2010), and they are like nowhere except for small ones that vacuum. When will our robot renaissance come?

So, as much as I’d like to make fun of a towel-folding robot, at least it is a robot; we can’t look a gift horse in the mouth at this point. And just think: If we made it bigger, and instead of a towel gave it our enemies, it would be a mangle bot. That’s pretty cool, at least.

Obama told a fundraiser that members of the Tea Party should thank him for cutting taxes. I kinda get this idea that if you want to find out what Obama really thinks, you need to go to a fundraiser — not that what he thinks is particularly enlightening. I’m not sure where he thinks he cut taxes, but I know where he’s raised them. If there was anyone who thought there was anything to Obama’s pledge not raise taxes on people who earn under $250,000, he should spend the rest of the Obama administration punching himself in the junk.

Still, looking at the rapidly rising deficits, this year is kinda the calm before the storm in terms of taxes. Maybe we can take some time to point out some good things Obama has done this year and where our fears may have been overblown.

GOOD THINGS OBAMA HAS DONE

* Obama hasn’t literally collapsed the country.

* No one has nuked us yet.

* He may have bowed, but he’s yet to surrender to any dictator.

* Obama hasn’t accidentally burnt down the White House.

* He hasn’t spent half his term with a bucket stuck on his head.

* He hasn’t yet left Iraq in complete chaos.

* He hasn’t revealed himself to be a Muslim sleeper-agent set on destroying the country. (Then again, I guess that would be a more logical explanation for a lot of his actions.)

* He hasn’t traded our sovereignty for magic beans.

This isn’t all to say Obama has done a good job, but it’s just to help us keep perspective and realize he could be a lot worse. So yay for that not happening.

We’ll see how we feel again in a year.

In Obama’s new space plans, we’re going to skip landing on the moon again, instead land on an asteroid, and then, in the 2030s, land on Mars.

Yeah, I don’t seen any of that happening (except for the skipping landing on the moon again part). We just have no motivation to really get out there in space and take risks. A hundred years ago, we had to show the Soviets we owned space, and that’s how we got to the moon on a giant rocket that no one expected to work. So what’s going to motivate us to explore space now?

Oh. Maybe Obama does have that covered. His horrible plans and huge deficits should make Earth unlivable. We’ll have no choice but to try to escape to space and set up some uber-libertarian colony on Mars which first rule will be: “No Obamas.”

The hope is eventually private companies will take over space exploration motivated by profit instead of… well, whatever motivates NASA today, if anything. But with the creeping socialism here on Earth, you may have to escape into space to have a private company.

So that’s how we get motivated to get back to space: Make Earth unlivable. Obamas doing his part, and I’m going to pollute more.