Let’s celebrate the founding of the People’s “Republic” of China on the White House lawn. Somehow, I don’t think this would happen in a Bush administration. Though I can see it in a Clinton administration, considering how much they donated to the campaigns.
What next? Celebrating half a century of Fidel’s revolucion? Maybe we can have a Pol Pot Day.
…and redefining “profits.”
Joe Biden has been acting president.
Director Panetta, if you can’t get a guy who accuses your agency of profiting off 9/11 out of this administration, you probably ought to resign.
What does it say about this administration that it had no problem hiring this guy in the first place, let alone that he still has his job?
And yes, he’s clearly lying.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Proof that he’s lying.
Unemployment is at a 26-year high. But it’s the smallest decline in payrolls in a year, so it has that going for it.
Clark Lindsey has the T of C.
It could forestall another ice age. Fire up the SUVs.
Because I know how much my commenters love posts like this…
Though actually, I prefer the phrase “glacial advance” to “ice age,” because we never really left the ice age. We’re just in a (brief — it’s only been a few thousand years) interglacial. The earth has been cool for a long time.
This should tip an election. If it doesn’t it’s a good indication of what’s wrong with this nation.
…not a democracy. Some people apparently need continual reminding.
There’s a long comment over at NASA Watch that pretty much sums up how we got to where we are today:
Let me tell you how NASA works. Engineers in the hallways lament that they can’t believe we are designing a rocket and spacecraft this way….with very little redundancy in critical systems, no weight margin, severely restricted capabilities from what we initially wanted out of the system. And then these same engineers enter the meeting room and none will jump on the table and beat their fists and tell others what they *really* think. All of the design reviews come off swimmingly because everyone is drinking the kool-aid. You end up with a “forward work” chart a mile long but everyone smiles and exits stage left.
In a nutshell you have tremendous group-think within NASA. Why do they behave this way? I will give you a hint….its because they don’t want to rock the boat and they all want to collect their paycheck with a minimum of fuss and they all want to be promoted on schedule – many, many people think that “everything will just work itself out”.
So the answer to the initial question is that in the 1960s the people designing the hardware had real world experience building missles and they were not afraid to speak up and be heard – and they had leaders who were experts in their field – who knew what they were doing.
Today, none of the Cx leaders have any such experience. All of that experience died years ago when those people retired.
And it’s allowed to be this way, because space isn’t important. All that’s important are the jobs.