The sun rose in the east, a dog bit a man, and Sarah Palin said something dumb. Discuss that or anything else in this open thread.
And, not to go all slobbery Jerry Lewis on you, but I can’t think of a better way to honor the Tucson victims, many of whom are alive today because of donated blood, than donating a pint yourself.
geg6
Well, in Sarah’s defense, Michelle Bachmann was getting all that juicy press for her historical numbnuttery this week. Sarah had to get back into the race. Looks like she found a way.
In other news, TPM tells me that Sharron Angle might be eyeing the GOP nod, too.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/sharron-angle-to-pursue-her-twelfth-amendment-remedies.php?ref=fpb
Tom65
nice little Tweet war between Shoq and Hamsher. Hamsher has really become the most loathsome asshole in the progosphere.
joe from Lowell
So here’s how this is going to work:
Because Sarah Palin said it, because it contradicts a point Barack Obama made, and because mean liberals made fun of her for saying it, millions of right wingers are now going to willfully, deliberately make themselves believe the notion that the Soviet Union collapsed because of the debt incurred by its space program. It will become a shibboleth, an article of faith that one must attest to in order to remain a member in good standing of the conservative movement.
Within a year, she and other Tea Party speakers will be invoking this point – “Barack Obama and the socialists don’t want to admit that the debt from the space program caused the Soviet Union to collapse” – and it will be a gigantic applause line, for no other reason than attesting to it is a way of marking oneself as belonging to the tribe.
This really is what conservatism is these days.
Punchy
I did donate a pint already. A pint of Bass, donated to my liver, during the most outstanding Almost-All-Crackers/Surf’s Up, Dood BBall game last nite. Relatedly, who names their kid “Jimmer”? And just how many millions does he lose by skippin out on the draft to do some mission in Bogota teaching kids how to pray to Jeebus and marry 17 wives?
RossInDetroit
Speaking of SP, I received the Steampunk Palin and Rogue Warrior comics in the mail today from Antarctic Press. Yes, these are clearly parodies. Clear to me, anyway. I have no idea how Tea Partiers view things.
Gin & Tonic
Another foot of snow overnight. Shoveling the driveway now entails lifting the shovel above shoulder height. Awesome.
PurpleGirl
Re Palin’s comment: As I remember it, one of the elements of the U.S.S.R.’s undoing was getting involved in an expensive, frustrating and unwinnable war in… (wait for it…) Afghanistan.
Wasn’t there a line from The Princess Bride about not getting involved in an (east) Asian land war? Maybe that should be changed to a central Asian land war.
ETA: As KO always said “That woman is an idiot.”
jeffreyw
This is not a sausage egg muffin with strawberry jam.
Poopyman
William Greider at the Nation. Nothing new that hasn’t been hashed out in the blogosphere, but nice to see it getting some play in the “legitimate” media. Discuss.
Poopyman
@Punchy:
A Duggar?
MattF
Ooooopsie, as reported by the AP.
stuckinred
You do understand that the people these idiots are talking to have no idea, nor do they care, if the shit is true or not? I remain convinced that Bush, Palin and the rest know exactly what they are doing.
RossInDetroit
Can’t donate blood any more. After 2 Red Cross donations, low blood pressure and a syncope event with serious consequences rule me out. I donate money, though.
Dave
How about a post on how the UK’s “austerity” package tanked their GDP by 0.5% in the last quarter? And how the GOP has been pushing that kind of fiscal package for the US?
This has been ignored most everywhere. A clear-cut case of how cutting spending in a weak economy makes things WORSE, not better.
EDIT – and by “tanked” I mean “contracted”. The expected growth was around 1.6%. So there was actually a 2.1% reduction in GDP over what the expectation was. That’s horrendous.
PurpleGirl
@jeffreyw: Looks good.
How is your knee feeling?
Steve
There’s a depressing number of people in the comments at TPM who think Palin had a point because the Russians really did have the first man in space. I don’t mean GOP trolls, just well-meaning dumb people.
Sure, they did put the first man in space, but there was no race to do so. I’m 40 years old and never in my life until today have I heard anyone argue that the USSR kinda sorta won the space race.
Poopyman
@MattF:
“Everything is fine folks, just … omigod … RUN FER YER LIIIIIVES!”
Allan
@Tom65: I hope Shoq wins FDL in the libel settlement. The place needs fumigating.
Loneoak
Everyone knows that Reagan’s magic Jelly Belly’s cause the collapse of the USSR.
PurpleGirl
@Poopyman: Began to read the article. I’ll finish it later. Thanks for the link, though.
Cat Lady
@MattF:
Remain Calm!
Violet
@jeffreyw:
Yum! How’s the knee feeling?
JPL
@Steve: Depends on the meaning of win.
Greta asked Sarah whether or not the media should be held accountable for the level of vile occurring today. Greta also wondered if they should be asking more questions. Yeah Greta why didn’t you ask Sarah to explain why it took twenty plus years from the original space flight for the USSR to disband. I thought most conservatives thought Reagan caused the end of communism..
RossInDetroit
@Steve:
The space race is legitimately debatable. If you define winning as putting a man on the moon we came in first. The Russians did beat us to several important milestones. I’m 51 and I recall people being legitimately concerned that the USSR would get ahead of us and militarize space.
gnomedad
Possible explanation for the “stupid race” on the right.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fisherian_runaway
Poopyman
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report release.
A snippet:
Villago Delenda Est
Austerity is just another tool in the ongoing effort to bring back feudalism.
That’s what this ultimately is all about.
Amanda in the South Bay
@RossInDetroit:
Well…
the Apollo program was several missions total, it wasn’t just putting a man on the moon *once*.
Plus, the 70s/early 80s were the golden years of planetary exploration.
Even leaving aside all *several* Apollo missions, I’m pretty sure we came out ahead overall, Yuri Gagarin to the contrary.
Citizen_X
@Punchy: I actually knew a kid in East Tennessee, growing up, named Jimmer. (So, pronounce it w/the nasal E. TN version of a southern accent: “JEE-IMM-er!“) I always took that as some sort of cracker-credit trump card. And now that there’s another one? Damn.
In good news, Archer is back, starting tonight! Think of it as like Chuck but more animated, obscene and juvenile.
Villago Delenda Est
@Steve:
Well, as someone else at TPM pointed out, the Soviets did score the first few victories in the space race that developed out of those victories. However, the overall problem is, they may have taken the first few laps of a NASCAR race, but ultimately they didn’t even cross the finish line.
Mattminus
Doesn’t she know that the Soviet Union collapsed because Reagan defeated Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev, and Gorbachev in hand to hand combat?
Gin & Tonic
Um, sorry, but it was around 30 years. I guess that’s still “twenty plus”, but still. First space flight was in 1957. Soviet Union started coming apart in the late 1980’s, arguably after the 1986 Chornobyl disaster. Berlin Wall came down in 1989.
GregB
Breaking News:
Democrats led by JFK won the Cold War.
Why does Sarah Palin hate Ronald Reagan?
SIA
Not too far OT – one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on teh web, Little Munsters @ Rumproast.
ET
This the Fox response to the rabbis ad regarding Beck….
In a statement provided to The Cutline, Joel Cheatwood, senior vice president of development for Fox News, said: “We haven’t seen the ad, but this group is a George Soros backed left-wing political organization that has been trying to engage Glenn Beck primarily for publicity purposes.”
Seriously this is how they respond? Sounds so defensive it’s painful.
BGinCHI
@gnomedad: That’s perfect.
Palin, Angle, all Fisherian Runaways of various stripes.
And for confirmation, here is the philosopher Bon Jovi:
“On the street where you live girls talk about their social lives
They’re made of lipstick, plastic and paint, a touch of sable in their eyes
All your life all you’ve asked when’s your Daddy gonna talk to you
You were living in another world tryin’ to get your message through.
No one heard a single word you said.
They should have seen it in your eyes
What was going around your head.”
elvis nixon (formerly Judas Escargot)
Read the Young Conor just now. One (IMO) dead-on comment about Gingrich’s pandering to the ethanol lobby (something to do with Iowa? Naw…). Only in America would burning the seed corn (literally!) be seen as a practical solution to anything.
Then, full swing: a comment dissing Obama’s focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) as part of the “Winz Teh Future!” push from the SOTU.
Why do so many under 30 seem to hate/resent/have contempt for the technical professions so much? Even as they swim in a sea of ever more neato toys to play with?
It’s… puzzling to me.
FlipYrWhig
I mentioned this already at Benen’s, but it’s clear to me that Palin thinks Obama was identifying with the Soviet Union and saying that we need to do the equivalent of launching Sputnik — as opposed to what he was obviously, actually saying, which was that when the Russians launched Sputnik we met the challenge with a slew of new initiatives, and we should do that again to meet our current challenges. She thinks “Sputnik moment” means “build Sputnik” rather than “respond as though someone else has just built Sputnik.” She’s an imbecile who doesn’t listen, think, or reason.
BGinCHI
@BGinCHI: Actually, I think the Bon Jovi lyrics work best for Bachmann.
Bet she loves that song.
stuckinred
@FlipYrWhig: Palin thinks
That’s a good one.
dr. bloor
I thought The Bible said that Ronald Reagan single-handedly kicked the asses of Every Single Dirty Russkie until they cried uncle and denounced communism.
RossInDetroit
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Clearly the US won the space race. But in the ’60s and ’70s it was far from certain.
The collapse of the USSR has been a boon to electronics hobbyists. They amassed vast stocks of repair parts in expectation of waging a long European war. After the USSR broke up all of those warehouses were, uh, liberated and the parts made their way onto the open market.
I build stereo amplifiers with a great Russian made vacuum tube that Telefunken developed for the V2 rocket bomb. The Russians stole the factory after WWII and made the tubes through the ’90s as military spares.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
One of the comments in the article gave a good rebuttal to her point that the Russians got there first so they won: It would be like declaring the person whose ahead in the first lap of a NASCAR race the winner.
joe from Lowell
@Steve:
And those people are right. Not only did they Soviets have the first man in space, but also the first satellite. These developments demonstrated that the Soviets’ sophistication at rocketry, and their technological accomplishments in general, were considerable, and potentially threatening. As a result, the United States put in place a feverish response of pushing science and math education, as well as government sponsorship of space, computing, and other technologies, most famously demonstrated in Kennedy’s promise to put a man on the moon.
This is all rather well-known history, actually. Those “dumb people” are right about that.
The reason Sarah Palin’s comment was stupid isn’t because she said the Soviets won the race to space; they did. Palin’s comment was stupid because she asserted that doing so caused the collapse of the Soviet Union.
FlipYrWhig
@joe from Lowell: Palin’s comment is also stupid because she believes Obama said we should emulate the Soviet Union.
ruemara
@geg6:
Oh sweet Jesus. 2012 is now the California 06 Total Recall Gubernatorial Race.
jeffreyw
@Violet:
@PurpleGirl: Knee is better bit by bit, still shaky on it, try to keep the crutches near. So far today nothing stronger than ibuprofen.
Muffin dough rising in an oiled bowl. I need to try some English muffins with these.
elvis nixon (formerly Judas Escargot)
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Apollo and Gemini were scrapped shortly after their respective missions ended, for no real reason outside of politics. (Gemini was almost taken over by USAF in the late 1960s, but the rise of cost-effective satellite photography ended that idea). And soon, the shuttle.
Meanwhile, the Russians are charging us $150mil+ per ride on the same basic Soyuz design from the 1960s (albeit with many upgrades since then).
I think the jury’s still out as to who’s ‘winning’, long term.
Hare, meet Tortoise.
EDIT: Of course, Sarah Palin is still an idiot. And wrong.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Gin & Tonic:
Sorry to hear that and glad I’m not having your problem. It’s been in the 60’s to 70’s during the day here on the south Oregon coast for the last week and a half now, with one day hitting 88 at the house here. I’ve been riding my motorcycle the whole time, hitting nice lookouts over the ocean like Cape Sebastian, Otter Point, Cape Ferrelo, Whaleshead Cove, Arch Rock, Pistol River, Rogue River and so on.
Hey, somebody has to do it! :)
Planning a ride up to Cape Blanco today with the wife, stopping somewhere along the way for a quick snack. Temps are supposed to be in the low 60’s so it should be a nice ride.
I’ll think about you poor souls while doing it. Global warming may be a problem but right now I intend to enjoy it while I can…lol! Don’t worry though, this summer will probably suck (again) since the higher inland heat means foggy days here until late summer.
Oh well… win some, lose some.
BGinCHI
@jeffreyw: No reason you couldn’t rehab by baking some cookies.
Dalex
I’d love to donate blood, but since I’m gay, I am absolutely not allowed to donate blood, despite being HIV negative and in a long term monogamous relationship.
joes527
Sputnik was a great metaphor.
When the rooskies put up Sputnik, it was a wake up call. The US of F’ing A was caught flat footed and was CLEARLY behind. We didn’t catch up instantly, but put together a national program, worked hard, and we did catch up. (and pass them (take THAT Ivan))
Pulling our head out of the sand today and looking around the world, we are again CLEARLY behind the rest of the world when it comes to energy. If we don’t put together a serious program to catch up, We are going to lag far behind the rest of the world on energy efficiency, and China is going to eat our lunch on design and manufacturing of energy efficient stuff and energy production.
The funny thing is that Palin seems to be saying that JFK was responsible for bringing down the ‘Union, and not St. Ronnie.
Mnemosyne
@joe from Lowell:
@FlipYrWhig:
I think Flip’s right — Palin thinks that the president was saying we need to emulate the Soviets and not, you know, the country that actually made it to the moon and planted its flag there.
The saddest part, of course, is that all of this happened well within Palin’s personal memory and she still got it wrong.
suzanne
I need a job. I’m sick of being a SAHM.
Citizen_X
Oh, and here’s an honest-to-Dog good thing the Teabagger’s have done: elected Rethugs who actually want to cut the defense budget!
Whether or not that’ll really happen, I don’t know, but they have actually broken the ultimate American political taboo.
joe from Lowell
@FlipYrWhig: Ha, you’re right. It seems to have totally gone over her head that he was talking about the American response to Sputnik as a model to follow.
Perhaps that’s because the American response to Sputnik featured Massive Spending on Public Education, as well as the creation of Huge Federal Bureaucracies, all of which, rather than causing a collapse, proved to be a great boon to our economy.
de stijl
I never thought that I would see in my lifetime a one-time Vice Presidential candidate and a current Presidential aspirant use phrases like “WTF” or “lamestream media” in an interview setting. She has the emotional maturity of a 14 year old.
ppcli
(Sorry to repeat a comment from an earlier thread, but it was off topic there and it’s on topic here)
Inevitable collapse? From the space program? That was a response to something Kennedy did? But, but,… I thought that the otherwise invincible Soviet Union was brought down single-handedly by Saint Ronaldus Magnus saying “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”, and giving the precursors of the Taliban stinger missiles, and running up huge deficits to increase military spending, and, and…
The Claire Boothe Luce of the Klondike (Caribou-the Luce perhaps? Naw, too clumsy. Shame.) is having a hard time keeping established wingnut mythology straight.
MattR
@de stijl: Please don’t insult 14 year olds like that.
suzanne
Oh, and supposedly Bristol Palin, in addition to polluting my fine city by moving here, is now going to be a DJ on one of the radio stations I listen to.
FUCK.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne: You’re assuming she followed the news and knew what was going on or read about it in school. I don’t know what she was doing but I doubt it was listening to newscasts or reading newspaper unless she read articles about becoming a beauty queen.
ETA: She was probably only reading the sports pages and listening to sports news.
Tsulagi
So Palin had another brainfart she let rip out of her mouth? Yeah, nothing new to see or hear. If that woman got lockjaw she’d seem a whole lot smarter.
piratedan
I think i’ve come to the opinion that Bible Spice/Caribou Barbie that the movie character she most closely resembles is Dug from Up. The one thing she picks out of the SOTU is Sputnik and she has a “Squirrel!” moment reaction to it. If only she was as smart as Dug.
FlipYrWhig
@de stijl: The whole comment really wasn’t that far from saying, “Hey, Obama, if you like Sputnik so much why dontcha marry it?”
Steve
@joe from Lowell: Oh okay. If you define the space race as the period before the US started racing, I aqree that we lost. The point remains that never in my life, until today, have I heard a single person argue that the US was not the ultimate winner of the space race.
Nerull
@Steve:
There was a race, it just wasn’t “the” race.
NASA was desperately trying to get something, anything done before the soviets. Until the Apollo program they were not doing very well.
gnomedad
@Punchy:
No, you can’t give urine.
FlipYrWhig
@ppcli: See, there I disagree. What she said was consonant with wingnut mythology: Soviet Union spends lavishly to get ahead of the USA, but it becomes unsustainable and the empire crashes and burns. (Think of the number of times you’ve heard Republican friends say that that’s how Reagan “won the Cold War” via defense spending that forced the USSR to keep up.) So her response is, “Obama wants to be like the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union was a buncha communists who overspent themselves into collapse, sounds about right to me, neener-neener, WTF?”
gnomedad
@suzanne:
Apparently, teen pregnancy is the ideal thing to have on your resume. It’s the Palin Recovery!
Nerull
@Steve: The race started the moment Sputnik was launched. The soviets had many other firsts after that. We got the big one, but that was also a pretty masterful show of goalpost moving by Kennedy.
RossInDetroit
@Steve:
That’s needlessly reductive. There was no single space race. There were exploratory satellites,, orbital telescopes, military satellites, commercial satellites, planetary exploration missions, solar system exploration missions, manned missions to the moon. That doesn’t neatly boil down to a Space Race except in the headlines.
suzanne
@gnomedad:
SERIOUSLY. I feel like I fucked up BIGTIME by waiting until I finished college and was starting my career.
Well, that, and I can dance. So I’m obviously unqualified for any well-paying job.
de stijl
This reminds me that I really need to put The Right Stuff on my Netflix queue. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen it and it’s in my all-time Top 5 fave list.
Linda Featheringill
@suzanne:
Ahhh. Boredom. A sign of recovery. :-)
ppcli
@FlipYrWhig: True – tho in my defence, wingnuts normally credit St. Ron with the foresight to outspend the Russkies with Star Wars, Muslim wildmen in Afghanistan, etc. Good to know that actually it was Kennedy who did it with the space program, and the subsequent collapse decades later was just a delayed effect.
And of course closing the mineshaft gap contributed too. /strangelove
thomas Levenson
@elvis nixon (formerly Judas Escargot): The single stupidist thing we’ve done in a long time as far as space tech goes was to scrap the Saturn V program in favor of a hugely expensive only very partially reusable, dangerous, low-earth orbit space shuttle.
We won the space race as Kennedy defined it. We then junked our winning vehicle and watched as the Soviet Union set records for manned presence in space and maintained an ongoing heavy lift capacity — something we’re now trying to recreate at enormous cost.
So yes — Palin was wrong on the facts, wrong on the concept, dumb and all that. But we still don’t have the big rocket we could surely use for something or other cool.
danimal
@FlipYrWhig: Flip, that is a brilliant deciphering of Palin. While still stupid, it fits the conservative worldview, so at least she’s consistent.
Her line of rhetoric won’t go far, because it leads to the “let’s defund NASA” type of action. And NASA is very important to Florida and Texas, states with a whole bunch of electoral votes.
Allan
Jane Hamsher just revealed devastating secrets about Shoq that are available to anyone who clicks through to read his bio. But notice the contrast between what Shoq wrote and Jane’s tweet about it:
And again, 8 hours ago Leslie Sanchez told Jane to knock it off as follows:
morzer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/27/rabbis-murdoch-fox-glenn-beck-holocaust
Four hundred rabbis, including the leaders of all the main branches of Judaism in the US, have signed an open letter calling on Rupert Murdoch to sanction the head of Fox News and one of the channel’s most famous hosts for frequent inappropriate references to the Nazis and the Holocaust.
…..
In the letter, the Jewish coalition calls on Murdoch to take action against Roger Ailes, the bombastic president of Fox News, as well as against Glenn Beck, the channel’s most notorious rightwing commentator. “We share a belief that the Holocaust, of course, can and should be discussed appropriately in the media. But that is not what we have seen at Fox News,” the letter says.
“You diminish the memory and meaning of the Holocaust when you use it to discredit any individual or organisation you disagree with. That is what Fox News has done in recent weeks.”
Beck has made innumerable references to Nazis and the Holocaust, most starkly in his hounding of Jewish financier George Soros, whom he has accused of sending Jews to the “death camps”. Soros was a teenager in Nazi-occupied Hungary and survived by hiding with a Christian family.
The advert is signed by the heads of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist affiliations within Judaism, as well as by several Orthodox Jews. It was organised by the Jewish Funds for Justice, which earlier this month demanded the dismissal of Beck.
A Fox News executive dismissed the letter, telling Reuters it was the work of a “George Soros-backed leftwing political organisation”.
RossInDetroit
@thomas Levenson:
According to a friend in the defense industry they also threw away all of the documentation. Dig very deep into that and I’ll bet you find a supporter of the Shuttle holding a match to a very large heap of paper.
joe from Lowell
@Steve:
This was Palin’s quote about “winning:” “
She wasn’t talking about “the ultimate winner,” whatever that means. She was talking about the same thing Obama was talking about, the “Sputnik Moment.” So, you still haven’t heard anyone “argue that the US was not the ultimate winner of the space race.”
joe from Lowell
@thomas Levenson: I couldn’t agree more. The Space Shuttle program was a wasteful dead end. Wasteful in terms of money, and in terms of human life.
gnomedad
Arthur C. Clarke used to ask how much air travel would cost if we threw away aircraft after one use. So I was very excited about the Shuttle. But it’s a bitch living in a gravity well this deep, and it seems it’s still cheaper to throw stuff away than to build reusable craft that can endure the stress of launch. Or, at the very least, you need to put the flying bomb you need to get into orbit behind you so that crap doesn’t fall on you on the way up. Was this all realized in advance and suppressed? I have no idea.
FlipYrWhig
@Allan: Never heard of “Shoq” before… but his views intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to his
newsletterTwitter stream.RossInDetroit
I think Tomasky’s go the right idea:
Nerull
@RossInDetroit:
Urban legend, the paperwork is all still there.
The tooling to build it, not so much.
Nerull
@gnomedad:
The shuttle’s exterior, and much of it’s design, serves one purpose.
A once around polar launch from Vandenberg AFB – the big wings are to give it sufficient reentry crossrange to come back home rather than land in the ocean somewhere – to spy on the soviets. A shuttle was never launched from Vandenberg at all, much less for that purpose.
The shuttle would be lighter, cheaper, safer, and more cost effective without that design requirement.
gnomedad
@Nerull:
Wow. Any references?
elvis nixon (formerly Judas Escargot)
@joe from Lowell:
Blame the USAF for the Shuttle’s problems: It was originally supposed to be a ‘dual use’ vehicle, upping the weight and cost requirements (NASA wanted something smaller initially). And they were, in return, supposed to help subsidize the higher costs that resulted.
By the early 1980s, USAF had bailed (Vandenberg was never even used to launch a single Shuttle), leaving the NASA to foot the bill.
EDIT: Oops, Nerull beat me to it.
Poopyman
@RossInDetroit: From the Saturn Wikipedia entry:
Nerull
“The crucial factor in the size and shape of the Shuttle Orbiter was the requirement that it be able to accommodate the largest planned commercial and classified satellites, and have the cross-range recovery range to meet the requirement for classified USAF missions for a once-around abort from a launch to a polar orbit.”
That last one is the primary reason for the large delta wing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle
http://yarchive.net/space/shuttle/shuttle_crossrange.html
If I knew where to find them I’d dig up the USAF design requirements, but I’m not sure where they are. Of course, the USAF never said why they needed polar once around capability…but there aren’t a whole lot of possibilities.
But yes, USAF bailed on the program before the facilities at Vandenberg were completed. The only shuttle to make an appearance there was…Enterprise, I believe. To test the fit in the launch structures. Might have been Columbia, not sure.
Allan
@FlipYrWhig: As is so often the case with Jane, all she’s doing is elevating an anonymous blogger/tweeter to the same level as her and Leslie Sanchez, recognizable cable talking-head “pundents.” But I’m busily forwarding each and every one of her slanderous tweets to the account of Lawrence O’Donnell, who features Jane with depressing frequency on his program. That needs to stop.
Poor Jane. When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
You Don't Say
@Tom65: Who is this Shoq and why does Hamsher care if he works for this Leslie Sanchez?
And why do I care? I hated this when I was in junior high.
Blogreeder
It’s great. You guys never let me down on divulging the latest Palinism. Why doesn’t John just change the name of this blog to Palin-juice already. :)
Unfortunatly I can’t watch the video now. This quote attributed to her in the article was: He needs to remember that, uh, what happened back then with the communist U.S.S.R. and their victory in that race to space Doesn’t she say “victory in THAT race”? So she doesn’t really say that the Soviets won the space race does she? She’s using a qualifier. Like John did when he called Republicans smarter several days ago. Since I haven’t seen the video, does she say something worse but TPM didn’t quote it? I’m assuming this is all she said about it since it’s in the lede.
Tom65
@You Don’t Say: Got me, it’s just fun watching Jane lose her shit in public, and for no particular reason.
Mnemosyne
@Blogreeder:
No, what she’s saying is that Obama’s speech about the “Sputnik moment” was him saying that we need to become the Soviet Union and build the equivalent of the first satellite so our competitors can come up from behind and beat us like the US did with the Soviets.
Of course, normal people who understand the English language know that he was saying that we need to emulate the United States’ response to Sputnik, but it gave her a ridiculous and illogical way to link Obama with the Soviet Union, so she did it.
It’s some of the stupidest Red-baiting I’ve seen in a while, but you fell for it, didn’t you?
trollhattan
@Nerull:
It didn’t help the Soviet cause when they blew up a good many of their personnel in 1960 (Nedelin) and then beginning in ’69, had a string of failures of their N1 moon rocket. Up ’til then they were still in the moon race (although we’ll never know if the N1 was viable).
An interesting side note is Aerojet General bought three dozen leftover engines from the program in the ’90s.
catclub
@FlipYrWhig: “She’s an imbecile who doesn’t listen, think, or reason.”
Now tell us how you really feel.
Allan
@You Don’t Say: Shoq wrote a tweet that precipitated a Greenwald attack, and the rest is history…
geg6
@Mnemosyne:
Well, it IS Blogreeder, the lamest of all the lame wingnut trolls we have. When you’re worse than Sanka…
elvis nixon (formerly Judas Escargot)
@trollhattan:
Those Russian engines keep cropping up: They were used in one of the suggested NLS designs, and Kistler Aerospace wanted to use them, too.
Good projects, done when the country had money. All canceled.
One of the (many) reasons we have no launch vehicle at the moment is that Congress kept on canceling them. It takes 8-12 years from paper study to first launch, minimum: IMO our heated 2/4 year political cycle isn’t conducive to long-term projects anymore.
licensed to kill time
Since I haven’t watched the Palin video either, I’ll add my own useless speculation on Blogreeder’s silly point: her use of the phrase “their victory in that race to space ” sounds to me like one of her pseudo-folksy usages (i.e. “that there race to space, you betcha”)rather than a qualifier.
Jules
Listen, I don’t care how messed up her grasp of history is, all I know is that she said “spudnut” at one point and for me that makes the whole experience awesome.
It was like watching Crazy Michelle’s speech the other night and not hearing a word she said because I could not figure out what the hell she was looking at which meant I laughed the whole time.
Nerull
@elvis nixon (formerly Judas Escargot):
To see Russian engine tech at work, look no further than the Atlas 5, one of the latest high tech American rockets. First stage two-chamber RD-180 engine – build by NPO Energomash.
And, of course, the RD-180 is based on the RD-170 – a four chamber engine, and (Unless things have changed) the most powerful liquid fueled rocket engine ever built – exceeding even the F-1. Which is still used today by Boeing for SeaLaunch on Zenit-3 rockets. (Zenit is itself a Russian rocket family)
Zenit-2s are still launched from Baikonur as well.
Nerull
@Jules: My favorite is still Kaputnik – the nickname for the failed US “Me too!” attempt shortly after Sputnik was launched.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySXgeVzK8rI&feature=related
MattR
@Jules:
I think she was just trying out a potential name for her next grandchild.
You Don't Say
@Allan: Thanks for link. I couldn’t manage the whole read but what I did read was pretty amusing.
liberty60
On other news, Steve Benen has a great takedown about the “shock” that the new deficit numbers are having:
“There’s no great mystery here — the deficit is going up because of the new round of tax cuts. That’s what happens when one cuts taxes — less revenue means higher deficits. If Republicans didn’t want a higher deficit, they shouldn’t have fought so hard to make it worse. “
As some clowns on the Interwebs say…Heh indeedy.
/dev/null
Activate mobile mode!
pattonbt
You know what I find funny, and simultaneously displays the difference between the left and the right, regarding Palin’s comments are:
The people here (left) are doing a back and forth on the merits of the facts of her statement and dissecting the space race and its impacts and how that impacted the fall of the soviet union (yet all the while pointing out that the overall point trying to be made by the comment is ludicrous and totally off base). While those on the right just go “Hell yeah, stick it to him! You show the muslim, commie fascist who’s who!” and could care less about the factual nature of the statements.
This is why the right wins and the left loses in a microcosm.