That’s what John McCain is. One of the reasons it’s hard to get enthused about him. I suspect that Palin might be a little better.
[Update a while later]
Both presidential candidates are completely economically incoherent.
No surprise, since they’re both economic ignorami. Though in Obama’s case it’s worse, because he thinks that he understands economics, and much of what he knows for damned sure is wrong.
This is the Beltway/MSM definition of a “compromise”: giving the Dems everything they want.
I hope that John McCain (or even Sarah Palin) urge Bush to veto the sham energy bill, and explain why.
That Nancy Pelosi is an ignorant, arrogant moron?
She’s going to let the anchor that is Charlie Rangell drag her party to defeat this fall, and she’ll lose her job.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Ads like this.
There are actually a lot of reasons. The only thing that could save him will be ACORN vote fraud in Philly. And that will depend on who Ed Rendell really wants to win. He is a Hillary! supporter, after all…
Gays for Palin? Why not? As the article notes, Alaska is a pretty libertarian, live-and-let-live place. I wonder if a lot of lesbians think that she’s hot?
And of course, this goes against the hysterical stereotype of her in the minds of the left as an extreme “right-wing” social conservative.
Donna Brazile says that if The One doesn’t win, it will be because we didn’t deserve him:
“He has had some moments where he seems unsure of his own voice,” Brazile said, “but I still think he can pull this off.”
And if he doesn’t?
“If he doesn’t, then Obama didn’t lose,” she said. “The country just wasn’t ready.”
Well, she’s right, in a way. And we should be thankful that we haven’t deteriorated as a nation to the point at which we were.
I’d put it a little differently, though. It won’t be Obama losing so much as the nation winning.
It’s not just between Mike Griffin and OMB (and the White House?). Now (not that it’s anything new) there is a lot of infighting between JSC and Marshall over Orion and Ares:
Design issues for any new vehicle are to be expected, and correctly represented by the often-used comment of ‘if there weren’t problems, we wouldn’t need engineers.’ However, Orion’s short life on the drawing board has been an unhappy childhood.
The vast majority of Orion’s design changes have been driven by Ares I’s shortcomings – via performance and mass issues – to ably inject the vehicle into orbit. The fact that the Ares I now has several thousand pounds of reserve mass properties negates the suffering it has brought on the vehicle it is designed to serve.
Those penalties Orion had to endure could be seen at the very start of its design process, when the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) reduced in size by 0.5 meters in diameter, soon followed by Orion having its Service Module stripped down in size and mass by around 50 percent.
‘Mass savings’ would become one of the most repeated terms surrounding the Orion project.
One of the problems that the program had (like many) were caused by the intrinsic concept of the Shaft itself. If you’re designing an all-new rocket, it is a “rubber” vehicle in that one can size stages to whatever is necessary to optimize it. But in their determination to use an SRB as a first stage, they put an artificial constraint on vehicle performance. When it was discovered that the four-segment motor wouldn’t work, they went to a different upper stage engine. When this didn’t work, they went to five segments (which meant that it was a whole new engine).
During Apollo, von Braun took requirements from the people designing the mission hardware, and then added a huge margin to it (fifty percent, IIRC), because he didn’t believe them. As it turned out, they ended up needing almost all of the vehicle performance to get to the moon.
This program never had anything like that kind of margin, and now, at PDR 0.5, it’s already almost gone. So now they’re rolling the requirements back on to the Orion, demanding that the payload make up for performance loss by cutting weight, while also (probably, next year) requiring that it add systems to mitigate the fact that the vehicle is going to shake them like a Sherwin Williams machine. This will result in further loss of margin, redundancy and safety.
This is not a typical development path of a successful program. It is emblematic of one about to augur in.
…damned lies, and campaign hyperbole:
…we’ve all heard the self-serving myth that pits helpless, meek, high-minded, issue-oriented Democrats against mendacious and mean Republicans, who not only detest America — especially children and small vulnerable creatures — but will lie and cheat to keep all oppressed.
The facts betray a more equitable story. And it starts with Sarah Palin’s assertion that she said “thanks, but no thanks” to the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” and opposed earmarks. This is an elastic political truth.
Technically, she did stop the project after initially supporting it. She has taken earmarks — even lobbied for them while mayor of Wasilla. As governor, though, Palin also vetoed over 300 wasteful projects and made an attempt to reform the process. Her record on earmarks is mixed, but by any measure, it’s far superior to either Democratic candidate.
Moreover, if this Palin claim can be classified as an untruth, Obama can be called a “liar” just as easily.
Take, if you will, the foundational assertion of Obama’s entire campaign that he is the candidate of post-partisan change. Obama, meanwhile, voted with fellow Democrats 96 percent of the time in Washington. And the bipartisan achievement he most often cites, an ethics reform bill, was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate.
Unanimous: “. . . being in complete harmony or accord.”
So, then, “Unity” should be referred to as a poetic truth.
And when much of the media acts as if it is personally offended by a questionable McCain ad accusing Obama of voting for a bill that would have provided sex education to kindergartners, you feel the pain. It was, indeed, a massive stretch.
It reminds me of the Obama ad that accuses McCain of having “voted to cut education funding” and “proposed” the abolishment of the Department of Education despite neither being true. Not much anger at that one. Just a lot of talk about the media’s responsibility to keep candidates honest. And absolutely, journalists have a responsibility to put every single candidate through the wringer.
Every candidate.
Something for the latest desperate anonymous moron that continues to drive by in comments with its pathetic shrieks of “Liar, liar!” to keep in mind.
To get past the gatekeepers.
I put up a(n admittedly semi-snarky) comment at Keith Cowing’s place yesterday, and he chose not to publish it (his comments section is moderated) for whatever reason. His blog, his call.
It was in response to “NASAAstronomer’s” comment that:
…if McCain and Palin win, we’ll be teaching creationism in our science classes, so how likely is it that space science will get funded?
My (unpublished until now) response:
Yes.
Right. I’m sure that will be one of their first acts, to mandate the teaching of creationism in science classes.
Can you explain to me how that works exactly? Will it be an executive order, or what?
This kind of Palin derangement is amazing. Lileks noticed it, too:
Here’s your Sarah Palin overreaction of the day. Presumably she took out the entrails, dried them, and used them to lynch librarians. It’s really obvious, isn’t it? She wants to kill Lady Liberty and all she represents. The plane is included in the picture because she personally shoots polar bears from above, like she’s GOD OR SOMETHING. The comments have the usual reasoned evaluations – she’s a PSYCHO, a LUNATIC. That picture is so sad and so true.
I don’t know if anyone’s stated the obvious yet, but this might be the first time people have become unhinged in advance over a vice-presidential candidate. Not to say some aren’t painting McCain as something the devil blurted out in a distracted moment during his daily conference call with Cheney, but a Veep? It took a while for people to believe that Cheney commissioned private snuff films with runaways dressed up to resemble a portion of the Bill of Rights, but Palin is She-Wolf of the Tundra right off the bat. And god help us she can use email, which means she will control the government. The most Spy ever did with Quayle was stick him in a dunce hat. By the time we reach the election Oliphant will probably draw Palin sodomizing by an oil derrick with guns for arms. I have to confess: I think Palin is an interesting politician, but the people she’s driving batty are much more fascinating.
Imagine twelve years of this.
Yes.
Well, we’ve survived eight years of BDS. I suspect that we’ll pull through a swamp of PDS.
The press refuses to cover Biden’s potential gaffes:
…as Air Joe flew from Wilmington to Charlotte Sunday, the only reporters onboard were off-air reporters from the five television networks and correspondents from NBC and Politico. There was only one camera crew. The back of the plane, reserved for press, sat totally deserted.
Heh. As Geraghty notes, the McCain campaign should complain.