I think it would interesting to see what the world would be like if all the state and federal workers were fired. Would things be better or worse? Would the economy collapse or enter a boom when the tax burden disappeared and we got the free markets the conservatives keep saying will solve all problems.
People relying on government to support them would certainly suffer, social security and Medicare...gone.
What would happen to all the weapons the military has laying around, would someone invade us or would peace break out all over when the worlds biggest and most aggressive country stopped being big and aggressive?
If you still had local police would crime remain in check, though all the state and Federal prisons would be closed down?
The interstates would crater but maybe that would be a good thing especially if the railroads picked up the slack.
"Price is the only consideration you are allowed. Yes, it's stupid, but it's the way the taxpayer demands it be done."
That USED to be the only consideration before the Bush administration came to town, that and if you had a token minority or woman in your executive suite you could win by exploiting affirmative action.
But, the Bush administration has been constantly sole sourcing and otherwise steering contracts to friends and contributors for 7 and a half years. There is a well oiled machine of Republican connected lobbyists who hooked companies up with a fast path to contracts. Karl Rove apparently tried to turn the entire executive branch in to a political tool where government contracts were being steered to "good Republican" companies and as tools to get Republicans elected for bringin home the bacon to companies in their districts. Many of the contracts in Iraq, both in supporting the military and rebuilding Iraq(rebuilding it very badly it turns out), were done that way.
Maybe its illegal but if no one enforces the law what does the law matter. The Bush administration had complete contempt for the law in little things like torture, spying on Americans, hiring and politically motivated prosection in the DOJ etc, what makes you think they care about it in government contracting. If they dominated the executive branch, including the DOJ, and the Congress, which they did from 2000-2006 they knew no one would investigate anything, or enforce any law. Some private citizen or public interest group would've had to blow the whistle. When they've tried the Federal government has been very effective at smacking them down. I recall a number of instances where Federal contract monitors and auditors have questioned the performance and billing of politically well connected contractors, and if they didn't shut up and rubber stamp the payments the Bush administration just fired them and put someone in the job who would stop asking questions. There was an instance of this reported a couple weeks ago.
Even since the Democrats regained control of Congress the Bush administration has been very good at frustrating every attempt to investigate all their law breaking.
If the Republicans had managed to stack the courts a little better, and hadn't been so incompetent and corrupt that they started losing elections again in 2006 the law would have been pretty much history in the U.S.
As I recall. I think when Pelosi was on the Daily Show. she thought it would be funny if Congress stayed in session the rest of the year. The Republicans are the ones most in trouble in the November election and most desperately in need to get home and campaign.
I have no sympathy with the Republicans suddenly getting concerned about oil and gas prices. They had seven years under Bush to address the problem. The only solutions I've seen from them are huge tax breaks to the oil companies who are still getting those tax breaks though they are making staggering profits right now, drill in ANWR, and invade Iraq to free up Iraq's oil which so far has mostly failed miserably. This off shore drilling thing is extremely new from the Republicans. It was almost universally opposed by Dems and Republicans alike until the last oil price spike and it became a huge issue in the coming election.
In particular Bush, Republicans and some Dems have been extremely successful in killing increases in fuel efficiency standards which would have resulted in a big reduction in our oil consumption. They were adamant it would be bad for the car companies and deny American's their freedoms to drive gas guzzlers. You know if they HAD passed tough fuel economy standards Americans would be feeling a lot less pain right now, and the big three car companies wouldn't be teetering on bankruptcy because they were still making gas guzzlers when the whole market demanded the fuel efficiency they have been fighting tooth and nail for years. Their profit margins on pickups and SUV's used to be so big they were determined to make them and get Americans to buy them no matter how much oil they squandered.
You also have to worry that he was involved but that he had co-conspirators and his suicide may prevent the investigation from getting to them.
There is also the possibility the co-conspirators stood with a gun to his head and forced him to swallow the over dose so he would be the fall guy and would have no chance to expose them in exchange for a plea deal.
You hate to think your government would have perpetrated the Anthrax attacks on purpose to amplify the fear after 9/11 and insure the country would support invading Iraq, but everything that's been unveiled about the Bush Administration in the last few years you KNOW they are ruthless enough and may well have been willing to do such a thing to get their way, and seem to have a pretty low regard for the rule of law or the value of human life. Addington in Cheney's office in particular seem to be capable of just about any kind of atrocity. It appears he almost single handedly pushed the U.S. in to torturing people.
I find it a little odd the FBI would have been quite as blatant as they were in tipping their hand to him that he was going to be charged, going to be charged with murder and he might get the death penalty. Its kind of like they were trying to force him to either flee or kill himself.
Not sure how your rant got scored interesting... and I'm the first one to bash NASA..... but I think this article is talking about the X-37B. The X-37A was DEVELOPED by NASA, though Boeing's Phantom Works actually built it under contact to them. The program was transfered to DARPA in 2004 and the X-37B is a second generation developed by the military. Since the original design is from NASA your venom is somewhat misplaced, at least in this instance.
Can't impeach Bush over it. It may well have been done entirely by Rove. To Bush's credit he apparently did ask Rove to resign last year when all this surfaced. As thick as Bush is I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't know about half the stuff Cheney and Rove have pulled.
Besides even if you did impeach what would you gain. Cheney would take his place which is worse, and his term is practically over anyway. You can hope a criminal case will surface after they are out of office but I doubt McCain or Obama would let a former President go to jail.
"by prohibiting us from having a responsible and sustainable nuclear energy policy"
Three Mile Island did this a lot more than Carter, and Chernobyl sealed the deal. The idea of a breeched reactor spewing radioactive waste in the middle of the heavily populated East Coast rightly freaked people out. It didn't help that the officials at Three Mile Island were less than truthful about what was happening there causing people to permanently distrust them.
Coal plants are kind of slow poison but it just takes one screw up at a nuclear reactor to ruin your day. Haven't you ever played SimCity:)
Nuclear power is looking like the lesser of two evils again, and you hope GE, Westinghouse or whomever can build foolproof ones and have learned from past mistakes. Everything I've read recently about all the new plant designs working through the regulation process makes me a little worried. I'm not sure we even have the expertise to build a new reactor any more, maybe we should tap the Canadians or the French.
I really liked McCain in 2000. I sure wish he'd won the nomination 8 years ago instead of Bush. He isn't perfect but almost no one could have done as much damage to America and the world as Bush has. But he didn't win because he ran in to two of the most ruthless campaigners this country has seen in a long time in Rove and Bush.
The problem in 2008 is McCain is so desperate to get his party's nomination and keep its support he's sold his soul to the devil and you can barely distinguish him from Bush these days. If he were to govern like the man he was in 2000 I'd vote for him just to keep the Democrats from running amok, which they will if they control all the branches. If he is going to govern like he talks in 2008 I don't think I can stand another 4 or 8 years of a Bush clone. Unfortunately we don't know which he will be without giving him the keys.
"makes it hard for me to take anything else you said seriously. If the US attorneys served at the pleasure of the President, there is no such thing as an "improper" firing."
The U.S. attorneys do serve at the pleasure of the President, but as soon as the White House started selectively firing them to obstruct criminal cases against Republicans, or to threaten Attorneys if they didn't bring cases against Democrats they certainly stepped over a traditional line of non interference in the cases in the U.S. Attorney's offices, and were potentially obstructing justice which might be a crime. Worse than the cases where attorneys were fired for refusing political influence in their cases may be some where they were doing what they were directed to do by Karl Rove and may have brought politically motivated cases against Democrats, putting potentially innocent people in jail, and where the cases may have been fabricated by the U.S. attorney. Its kind ofbad arrangement where we rely on political appointees to bring federal cases which often involve politicians. The system mostly worked until we got to the Bush administration though. Clinton firing all the attorneys at once is way less bad than Bush and Rove selectively firing them to pressure them to bring politically motivated cases.
You might want to read the case of Don Siegelman, a better though somewhat biased write up here. Counterpunch is pretty left wing but a lot of interesting people write some really interesting stuff there, though there is garbage too.
Siegelman was a popular Alabama Democratic and governor apparently targeted by Karl Rove in 2002. Rove may have used the Alabama U.S. Attorney to bring a case against Siegelman to neutralize him as a factor in Alabama politics. If true, though that remains to be seen, it is the most disturbing example of Karl Rove using the U.S. attorneys as political tools to destroy Democrats and elect Republicans. Rove and Bush teethed their political teeth in Alabama, its where Bush went when he ducked his National Guard service in Texas, they have a long history there, and politics isn't bean bag so I imagine the knew Siegelman from way back.
Siegelman won a very close reelection as Governor in 2002 before it was declared a voting machine had malfunctioned and he was stripped of 3000 votes which cost him the election. There is a chance the election was rigged by the Republicans which is in with a string of election regularities we had in 2000 through 2004, like in Georgia, all of which went in favor of Republicans. Siegelman supposedly agreed to stop challenging the 2002 election result in a deal with Alabama Republican's where the U.S. attorney would drop the investigation against him in return.
The U.S. attorney didn't drop the case though, he was indicted in 2004. The [rosecutor abandoned the first trial when the judge threw out all of the U.S. attorney's evidence because it was so bad. The U.S. attorney wouldn't stop though and tried again in 2006. In 2006 they got the case heard by a Bush appointed judge who happened to have a nasty grudge against Seigelmen which he didn't recuse himself for. The case hinged on testimony of one Siegelman's aides who was a crook and who may have lied to convict Siegelman in exchange for favorable treatment in his case. Two jurors were also caught emailing each and colluding to sway the jury to convict. It was probably jury tampering and should have lead to a mistrial but biased Judge Fuller refused to even investigate the issue.
From Wikipedia, "In June 2007, a Republican lawyer, Dana Jill Simpson of Rainsville, Alabama, signed a sworn statement that, five years earlier, she had heard that Karl Rove was preparing to neutralize Siegelman politically with an investigation headed by the U.S. Department of Justice"
A new judge threw out Seiglemen's conviction this year when the possibility arose the case was politically
"Maybe I'm just a traditionalist, but I think the America we had for a couple hundred years was a pretty good one"
I think many white, conservative, Christian Republicans probably don't agree with you is the problem. Modern America is very different from 1950's America. They want to go back to 1950's America where there is McCarthyism, abortion is illegal, homosexuals are locked in closets, drugs are very illegal, segregation is the law of the land instead of affirmative action, minorities are lucky if they can vote and they sure wouldn't be running for President. Back then they dominated every aspect of the economy, the military and the government and everyone had to conform to their ideology. Its normal for groups who once had all the power to want to return to the nostalgic good ole days. They probably want to go even further back to about the roaring '20s prior to Roosevelt's Socialism. They forgot that Republican excesses and incompetence in the 1920's lead pretty much directly to the great Depression and Roosevelt, much like the excesses of the last 8 years are leading to a similar serious crash today.
They blame liberals and Democrats for all of society's ills which is why they hate them so much and will do anything to keep them out of power. I can't entirely blame them, if someone from the 1950's were dropped in the middle of 2008 it would be kind of a shock. But as troubling as some things are in modern life you have to think its good that people have more freedom to live the way the want, aren't forced to conform to the very rigid and narrow stereotypes of acceptability of a very puritanical group, and there is a greater degree of equality for everyone at birth.
"as the hardware want to trust a specific bit of code (e.g. the linux boot loader) then I should be able to manually sign it somehow"
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think if Microsoft is implementing trusted computing in order to implement DRM, to prevent pirating, then it would be by design to prevent users from signing or trusting any software on their own. If they allow to sign arbitrary software and run it on a trusted computer the whole point of the DRM part of trusted computing is defeated and the BSA, MPAA and RIAA get mad. There is a big difference between the motivations Stallman has in signing things and Microsoft and its corporate partners have in signing things.
The Goodling controversy that is being discussed, and which was in the report released yesterday, was for immigration judges, interns and other assorted civil service positions in DOJ. The guidelines for hiring and firing civil servants is quite strict. The "good American" quote in my original post here was a for a career prosecutor in a U.S. attorneys office not the U.S. attorney.
U.S. attorneys are political appointments and can be hired and fired by the President. I think the career prosecutors in their office and certainly the immigration judges fall under civil service hiring guidelines. In the report on Goodling apparently there are two different employment applications, one for political appointees where you can ask party affiliation and one for civil service jobs where you can't because its against the law to factor party affiliation in to civil service hiring. Apparently Goodling was using the political appointee application for civil service jobs because she was illegally and intentionally using party affiliation, and searches and interviews on applicants views on abortion and sexual orientation in hiring for civil service jobs which is illegal. One interviewee with Goodling reported he expressed a positive opinion of Condolezza Rice to which Goodling frowned and complained that Rice is "pro-choice" just to show you how hard line her attitude was on abortion and not hiring anyone pro choice for a civil service job.
The report on the U.S. attorney firing scandal isn't out yet. I think the DOJ inspector is doing something like four different reports on irregularities at the DOJ, these are just two of them.
The issue with the U.S. attorneys wasn't that they were fired, but why they were fired. They serve at the pleasure of the President but there is evidence the attorneys that were fired were fired for improper reasons, in particular because the White House, particularly Karl Rove, were trying to use selective prosecutions to influence elections:
A. In New Mexico the U.S. Attorney wouldn't speed up prosecution of a Democrat in a corruption case, Senator Dominici called him to pressure him to speed up the case so it would be public before an election and would influence the outcome. He refused because it was improper. He was fired not long after. Domenici didn't stand for reelection after this because what he did was wrong and its lucky he wasn't prosecuted for tampering in the case.
B. In Arizona a U.S. Attorney wouldn't slow down or bury prosecution involving Congressmen Rick Renzi for a possible payoff through a land deal. The White House/Rove was more worried about possibly losing the seat in the next election so they obstructed it by firing the U.S. attorney which was also probably illegal.
A bigger question on the U.S. attorney firing is that since some of the fired attorneys were fired for not doing improper things, were the Attorneys who weren't fired doing the improper things and letting political considerations influence criminal cases, in particular bringing cases against Democrats and burying cases against Republicans.
I read a piece a while ago on Rove's resignation last year, I think on the Washington post, and the suggestion was Bush asked Rove to resign because he's been involved in so many illegal or improper activities, in his ruthless driver to get Republicans elected, Bush wanted him out of the White House to try to take some of the heat off.
My God, media bias isn't something you can quantify in a study, its in the eyes of the beholder. You also have to decide where the middle is. The middle in the U.S. has moved dramatically to the right in recent years, since Reagan and especially since 9/11. The middle in most of Europe would be considered very liberal in the U.S. I think most of the world thinks the middle in the U.S. is now hovering dangerously close to right wing nut job.
The accuracy of the study was shredded when they said Fox wasn't biased. I'm sure when Fox is reporting generic wire news they don't have much bias, no one does, but everyone of their stars and commentators drips right wing bias, every time they cover politics they drip bias. Bill Kristol and Karl Rove are two of their star contributors, say no more. Rupert Murdock and Roger Ailes politics are well known and they created Fox News to carry news from their political perspective. They are constantly cheerleading the Bush administration and the Republicans. The night of the 2006 elections their entire election team was crushed because the Republicans got clocked and their run was over.
CNN was blatantly liberal biased when Ted Turned ran it, it was no secret. Since Turner was replaced by Time Warner and CNN was getting clocked by Fox their liberal bias completely evaporated, at least at CNN US. CNN International is still pretty liberal but its based in Europe, and Europe is extremely liberal compared to the U.S. I can barely tell CNN America from Fox any more, and the quality of their reporting has completely cratered. The New York Time is indisputably liberal, its one of the last liberal bastions, lucky for the right, newspapers are dieing. CBS and Katie I can't detect political bias because she is so fixated on human interest stories most of the time. Gibson and Williams again I can't see the bias, but maybe I'm biased, and there is so little editorial left on the network news anyway since Rather was beheaded.
"He ran with a bad story, and rather than admit that he'd been snookered, he kept screaming about how obvious forgeries were "genuine" till CBS had no choice but to axe him."
It wasn't a bad story, it was an accurate story which is how Rather tripped himself up. He knew it was true, he was desperate to influence the election and stop another four years of madness and stuck his neck out too far. The problem was all the original documents were destroyed by the Bushistas. They certainly were by the time Bush was governor of Texas since he controlled all his records as Governor of Texas. The forgery was described by the secretary for the Guard commander as being about right, it just wasn't the original unfortunately. The original was probably burned long ago.
"Bob Barr would make a decent candidate"
Excepting even the Republican party wouldn't nominate him because he is a Libertarian and a real conservative and the Republican party doesn't remember what real conservatism is any more, they've fallen so far. No telling what skeletons he has in his closet if he gets put under the microscope.
"You mean like Jimmy Carter? Obama is dangerously close to him both in policies and experience level. And you remember the damage Carter did to us in just four years."
Well, then like now the Republicans elected him by being so corrupt and morally bankrupt the voters were going to throw them out no matter who was running against them.
I don't remember Carter well enough to remember exactly how good or bad he was, and the post mortem on him is completely biased against him now. I remember the whole of the establishment, Wall Street, the military, Republicans hated him and worked to make him fail. They did the same thing to Kennedy, Clinton and Truman. Johnson destroyed himself with Vietnam. Unfortunately most of the people with the real power and money in the U.S. are conservatives and Republican's and they routinely do everything in their power to destroy liberal Presidents and they generally succeed because they h
If there is any dirt to be broadcast on Obama I'm sure Fox and Rush are broadcasting it so its not like there is any sweeping conspiracy that will keep it all secret. Its still common for Fox anchors to intentionally confuse Obama's name with Osama Bin Laden and imply he is secretly a Muslim terrorist infiltrating the government as some Al Qaeda plot. Media bias cuts both ways now, get over it.
Maybe part of the problem is this country desperately needs a new President that doesn't suck as bad as the current one, and then we run in to the problem that all politicians suck, especially these days. Unfortunately power corrupts, politicians are practitioners of power, so they all tend to be somewhere between a little or very corrupt. We are just extremely aware of it these days thanks to the internet and saturation media coverage of campaigns and candidates.
If the media destroys them all we will basically be left with no one qualified running the country, kind of like the situation we've had for the last 8 years.
I should point out George W. got his fortune from a sweetheart deal with his dads rich friends, who gave him a giant cut of the Texas Rangers, which he later cashed out at a huge profit with almost no risk on his part. There is also the fact he was busted for cocaine possession in Texas though his connections kept him out of a felony conviction that would have killed his political career. And of course its a near certainty he for all practical purposes deserted the National Guard which his family connections got him in to ahead of others to keep him out of Vietnam. He may have bailed on the Guard because the Guard started testing for Cocaine, which he was using, and didn't want to get caught. He didn't even fulfill the very modest requirements of his guard service and got a free pass and again his connections managed to destroy all the incriminating records. None of this stopped him from becoming President so where was the liberal media bias from 1999 through 2004. Rather was the only one he tried to make an issue out of it and he was destroyed. Why did the "liberal" media behead one of their own if there was a grand liberal conspiracy.
McCain isn't exactly better. You may forget but he was one of the "Keating Five" and was knee deep in the corruption of the Savings and Loan scandals in the 1980's and was doing favors for Keating who was one of the most famous and corrupt execs in the S&L scandal.
We could switch to Hillary though she has shady dealings on Whitewater, the Rose law firm, missing records and host of other scandals from the Clinton presidency none of which quite stuck but didn't go away either.
So I suspect the "media bias" you see these days is the "liberal" media is biting the bullet and embracing Obama because there just isn't anyone better. At least he is very smart, charismatic, a good speaker and is a complete change from the disaster of the last eight years. I think at this point a lot of the liberal media, and a whole lot of the rest of America just wants the Republican gone, and Obama is the man for better or worse. The Republican have no one but themselves to blame, since they had it all, until their hubrus, arrogance, corruption and incompetence completely burned their bridges with the American people.
If we keep playing the gotcha politics you are going to end up with someone with a squeaky clean record but who is totally incompetent, or like the last eight years someone who is incompetent and still corrupt like Bush.
I think the problem here is that all the lawyers in the executive branch under the Bush administration, both the DOJ and White house, apparently completely SUCK at being lawyers. They were hired because they were good ideologues and not because they were good lawyers. Its nearly unanimous amount Republican and Democrats now that Gonzales was incompetent. Harriet Myers was White House Council during much of this. John Yoo is certainly looking scary on the competency front these days. David Addington was probably the scariest one of the bunch for his contempt of the law. When Bush tried to put Myers on the Supreme Court his own party rebelled because she was so poorly qualified for the position.
If you have incompetent lawyers you end up with incompetent interpretation of the law and the Constitution. How else would you explain lawyers who rationalized and authorized torture, and saw no problem with unlimited spying on American citizens without a warrant or any court supervision, even though the original FISA law on the books was the LAW and had forbidden it since Nixon was busted for it.
The only other explanation is they were extremely good lawyers and decided they could break law after law, eventually win in the Supreme court and overturn all the laws they were intentionally breaking. They kind of got away with it especially after two Bush appointments to the Supreme Court restacked it in their favor, and because Congress would inherently do nothing to rein them in before 2006 and aren't doing much better since 2006.
Its a bit sad though if we have a system where the President can break law after law and get away with, with the worst result being a slap on the wrist from the courts, and the best being retroactively making violation of the law OK as was done with FISA.
"I expect the next administration will think I'm a bad American"
A. Even if they do it should NEVER be a factor if you apply for a non political position in the government. I'm not saying liberals or Democrats are perfect but chances are high ranking lawyers in the DOJ in previous administrations knew what the law was and adhered to it, or didn't break it with open contempt like this administration. Its sad commentary on this administration and today's rabid Republican party that they let their ideology blind them and led them to breaking the law.
B. I don't have much more use for the corruption that is today's Democratic party than the Republicans, but if you look back over recent years, the worst of the hatred and partisanship has been coming from the Republicans and Conservatives not Liberals and Democrats. Start with McCarthyism, he was a Republican you know. Move to Nixon and his dirty tricks. Jump ahead to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, there are some partisan liberal talking heads but no one listens to them(with the exception of Stewart and Colbert, and their vitriol isn't in the same league as Rush and Bill. Then look at the Republican stunt trying to impeach Bill Clinton when they knew it wasn't justified and it wouldn't succeed just so they could maximize the damage to him personally, to the Democrats and the nation as a whole. It resulted in short term political gains which is why they did it but at what long term prices. All they did was insure bitter partisanship from that day forward, and put "blow jobs" on the nightly news for kids to listen too. Clinton's judgment was bad, but people do that when sex is involved. What the Republicans did was incomparably worse and damaged the country irreparably. By contrast the Democrats won't even consider impeaching Bush when they regained control of Congress, because they knew it wouldn't succeed and just damage the country further. This is in spite of the fact Bush actually deserves it for violating the Constitution and the law.
"Or the next President decides to fire him because he doesn't like the way he clips his toe nails, which he is perfectly free to do."
Presidents can't just fire civil servants. Their is a vast legal code to protect civil servants from politicians doing just that. The problem here is the same code is supposed to prevent the executive branch from hiring unqualified ideologues too. The Bush administration with their complete contempt for the law and government just chose to ignore that part, probably with the assumption the next Democratic president couldn't get rid of all the Republican only civil servants they were illegally hiring. They were trying to stack the civil service with their people which is against the law, for good reason.
The Bush administration in particular and Republicans in general hate civil servants because they are often unionized and hated for being "big government" and not easily held to account for their performance. It is possible they chose to break the law here in an attempt to completely corrupt the career civil servants at DOJ as their form of revenge, and replace qualified lawyers with unqualified ones with the proper ideological background
Goodling as an example wasn't really qualified for the lofty position she held. She was a graduate of Jerry Fallwell's Grade C law school which placed more importance on your Christian background than academic ability or knowledge of the law. If she was a good lawyer she should have known what she was doing was illegal and she would eventually get busted for it. I assume she figured the Republicans would control Congress and the DOJ forever so no one would ever enforce the law.
Re:NASA continues to be undervalued.
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NASA Turns 50
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"weather forecasting, satellite communications... aerospace and commercial aviation advancements"
You left out GPS. These are the really important things but they would have been done by the military, private sector, or by other nations if NASA hadn't. The rest of the stuff on your list doesn't really matter to most people. They are interesting to scientists and space enthusiasts, no one else would think the price tag for them was justified.
There isn't anything particularly exceptional about NASA except it did an exceptional thing....once. It is just a big bureaucracy, though it has an interesting science and R&D focused charter.
In the 1960's it was exceptional and did an exceptional things because:
A. It was tasked with an incredibly hard and challenging mission by Kennedy with a hard time limit B. It was given a nearly unlimited budget to accomplish the goal C. It had a bunch of exceptional German trained engineers who were essential to the undertaking and in the case of Von Braun had the same dream in the middle of Nazi Germany in the 30's and 40's and had vast funding from the Nazi's to twist their dream in to weapons. D. They drew a bunch more exceptional engineers from the U.S. who ere attracted by the goal and the funding.
It is relatively unlikely there will be a similar confluence of events again. Going back to the moon a second time simply wont excite anyone. Maybe you could gin up enthusiasm for a manned mission to Mars but it would be hugely expensive, and difficult, and the U.S. simply doesn't have the money to spare any more, and has other priorities, like squandering huge sums on the military, finding new energy sources before fossil fuel dependency destroys us, and paying for a crippling safety net for seniors who are living to long and growing in numbers to the point they will break the younger people who have to support their Social Security and Medicare.
If an asteroid strike were found to be imminent that would create a similar confluence but thats kind of a long shot.
If you were able to actually build an affordable space elevator, or mine asteroids on a large scale, or produce energy in space those might be some exciting developments. Going to he moon again is kind of a yawner. Going to Mars to plant a flag would be exciting once. Unless Mars turned in to a colonized planet probably after that it probably wouldn't count for much just like Apollo.
I could be wrong but I get the sense that Europe and Russia are sufficiently disillusioned with NASA after the ISS and Shuttle that I'm not sure they will partner with NASA again on anything big. Maube once Bush is gone the rest of the world wont hate the U.S. quite so much. Its pretty unlikely China, India or Brazil would get entangled with the U.S. or the bureaucratic quagmire with the "Can't Do" attitude that is NASA today.
To further illuminate what Goodling was doing, she told this to a U.S. Attorney telling him he could hire another prosecutor for his office:
"Tell Brad he can hire one more good American."
"good American" is Goodling and probably Bush administration code for conservative, Christian, homophobe, pro life, Bush supporting, Republican. The implication being all other American's are "bad" Americans. How does it feel to live in a country where your Executive Branch has branded you as a "bad" American unless you live and think the way they expect you to live and think.
It is an entirely acceptable standard for political appointees who will come and go with the President who appoints them. It is expected for them to be ideologues in the same mold as their boss. It is an illegal and unacceptable criteria for career civil servants who, once they enter the ranks of civil service, are nearly impossible to get rid of unless they leave of their on accord.
The report unfortunately stops short of finding who directed Goodling to do this, but since she was the DOJ liason to the White House chances are it was Rove, Myers, Cheney and or Bush, who were probably directing Goodling to fill the Justice Department ranks with career civil servants, who need not be well qualified for their jobs, but who were certified ideologues who would carry the right wing flag for decades to come and slant prosecutions and the law in the direction their ideology dictated.
The DOJ has received all the attention but there is an open question if the same program was being practiced in some or all of the other departments and agencies under control of the Executive Branch. If it was there may be an army of entrenched Republican ideologue civil servants who will frustrate future President they don't agree with for decades to come.
"Those are unethical entrepreneurs that have nothing to do with studying business."
LOL... Dude.... it was also Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch, UBS, Lehman, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, a host of smaller banks around the world, and now its sucked in Treasury and the FDIC to try to shore up the devestation by printing money and using tax dollars.
It was like HALF the U.S. financial system and a big chunk of the global financial system. There are trillions in mortgage backed securities that are either not liquid or are being sold to vultures who are hoping the foreclosures deplete them less than the mark down they got on them.
If you attribute it to "unethical entrepreneurs" you are saying nearly the entire financial system is run by "unethical entrepreneurs" which was my original point. Thanks for seeing things my way.
When they were all getting 6% and up returns none of them were complaining or worrying about the fact that a large percentage of the mortgages in their billion dollar bonds were inevitably going to foreclose. They lined their pockets with the bonuses and fat returns while the bubble was going up, and now they expect the government to bail them out.
"If you attribute it to "unethical entrepreneurs" you are saying nearly the entire financial system is run by "unethical entrepreneurs" which was my original point. Thanks for seeing things my way."
A difference with the tech bubble is when it crashed it didn't take down the global economy and the U.S. government didn't have to step in and bail them out with billions of tax dollars. I imagine some engineers got rich off it but I imagine most of it went to shysters like the Cuban brothers who drew up fantasy business plans, threw up a web site and suckered some other clueless CxO's or investors to give them large quantities of money for nothing. In Mark Cuban's case he suckered Yahoo.
People who can create web sites are a substantially lower class of people than real scientists and engineers. Almost anyone can do it for better or worse.
"Did it ever occur to you that those ensuring the smooth operation of social/economic structures are more important the stability than those who are promoting advancement."
The people I listed aren't for the most part ensuring any "smooth operation". They are doing whatever is most likely to maximize their wealth, smooth operation of the system has nothing to do with it anymore. Recently, for example, that's meant massive distribution of mortgages to people who could only afford them if interest rates stayed low and houses kept inflating in value at an unsustainable pace. They didn't and they didn't. Most of the jackass's that promoted the bubble in housing have long since cashed out, and retired to their yachts, Countrywide's Angelo Mozilla in particular. Angelo managed to cash out $200 million from Countrywide in 2006-2007 because he knew the house of cards he built was collapsing. The American taxpayer, and a bunch of homeowners get to pay to clean up the mess. Hope you don't have any of your wealth in U.S. dollars because its headed towards worthless thanks to the excellent management of America's business leaders and politicians over the last decade.
"The vast majority of kids don't really care about science, it's neither fun nor interesting to them."
You forgot to mention that while science, engineering and teaching pay better than factory worker, the pay sucks compared to corporate executive, marketeer, stock broker and lawyer. Unfortunately Capitalism in general and American in particular rewards the fields that suck most directly at the teat of capitalism. If you manage to invent something awesome, get the patents in your name and successfully sell it without the suits stealing you blind you might get rich but its a long shot.
If you get an MBA, kiss the right ass and rise to VP or above you are almost certain to make a killing. Most scientists and engineers are facing a very challenging education, followed by years doing challenging work and the best most can hope for is staying solidly middle class. If you are doing it for inner satisfaction that works, but if you have a wife and kids to feed, clothe, house and educate there is enormous pressure to go in to a field that pays well, and not one that is most worthwhile or satisfying.
Socialism sucks in most respects but it is fairly successful at creating a large cadre of scientist, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals because the system steers people to where there is a need. Capitalism only steers people to where the money is. Sometimes the money is where the need is, much of the time it isn't. For example the amount of money professional athletes make these days borders on criminal. Professional sports are a nice diversion and entertainment but they don't really deserve to suck hundreds out of an average joes pocket to go to one game in a billion dollar stadium watching people who will make more in one night than the spectators will make in a year.
If you want to find one of the most corrosive forces in most American universities its the priority placed on athletics and athletes over academics.
The efficiencies of using photovoltaics to do heating must be absolutely horrendous. PV's are at present very low efficiency in converting sun to electicity and to then turn around and and turn that electricity in to heat doesn't seem like a wise approach though I'm no expert. Passive solar and solar hot water heaters would seem like a better approach to me and they don't need expensive photovoltaics, maybe when the price of PV's comes way down and efficiency goes way up.
Using heating oil to heat homes and to generate electricity are at present two different things.
Solar isn't competing against oil unless you a solar powered car. Solar power is competing against coal, natural gas, hydroelectric and nuclear for electricity generation. In the U.S. oil accounts for 1.6% of electricity generation. Don't mean to be pedantic but it drives me up a wall that people have no clue where their power comes from.
Coal is nearly half of America's electric power. Its price is going up but not as much as oil and it is in much greater abundance in the U.S. Unfortunately coal's impact on the environment, both mining it and burning it, tends towards devastating. The Chinese are using huge amounts of coal for their electricity too.
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I think it would interesting to see what the world would be like if all the state and federal workers were fired. Would things be better or worse? Would the economy collapse or enter a boom when the tax burden disappeared and we got the free markets the conservatives keep saying will solve all problems.
People relying on government to support them would certainly suffer, social security and Medicare...gone.
What would happen to all the weapons the military has laying around, would someone invade us or would peace break out all over when the worlds biggest and most aggressive country stopped being big and aggressive?
If you still had local police would crime remain in check, though all the state and Federal prisons would be closed down?
The interstates would crater but maybe that would be a good thing especially if the railroads picked up the slack.
"Price is the only consideration you are allowed. Yes, it's stupid, but it's the way the taxpayer demands it be done."
That USED to be the only consideration before the Bush administration came to town, that and if you had a token minority or woman in your executive suite you could win by exploiting affirmative action.
But, the Bush administration has been constantly sole sourcing and otherwise steering contracts to friends and contributors for 7 and a half years. There is a well oiled machine of Republican connected lobbyists who hooked companies up with a fast path to contracts. Karl Rove apparently tried to turn the entire executive branch in to a political tool where government contracts were being steered to "good Republican" companies and as tools to get Republicans elected for bringin home the bacon to companies in their districts. Many of the contracts in Iraq, both in supporting the military and rebuilding Iraq(rebuilding it very badly it turns out), were done that way.
Maybe its illegal but if no one enforces the law what does the law matter. The Bush administration had complete contempt for the law in little things like torture, spying on Americans, hiring and politically motivated prosection in the DOJ etc, what makes you think they care about it in government contracting. If they dominated the executive branch, including the DOJ, and the Congress, which they did from 2000-2006 they knew no one would investigate anything, or enforce any law. Some private citizen or public interest group would've had to blow the whistle. When they've tried the Federal government has been very effective at smacking them down. I recall a number of instances where Federal contract monitors and auditors have questioned the performance and billing of politically well connected contractors, and if they didn't shut up and rubber stamp the payments the Bush administration just fired them and put someone in the job who would stop asking questions. There was an instance of this reported a couple weeks ago.
Even since the Democrats regained control of Congress the Bush administration has been very good at frustrating every attempt to investigate all their law breaking.
If the Republicans had managed to stack the courts a little better, and hadn't been so incompetent and corrupt that they started losing elections again in 2006 the law would have been pretty much history in the U.S.
As I recall. I think when Pelosi was on the Daily Show. she thought it would be funny if Congress stayed in session the rest of the year. The Republicans are the ones most in trouble in the November election and most desperately in need to get home and campaign.
I have no sympathy with the Republicans suddenly getting concerned about oil and gas prices. They had seven years under Bush to address the problem. The only solutions I've seen from them are huge tax breaks to the oil companies who are still getting those tax breaks though they are making staggering profits right now, drill in ANWR, and invade Iraq to free up Iraq's oil which so far has mostly failed miserably. This off shore drilling thing is extremely new from the Republicans. It was almost universally opposed by Dems and Republicans alike until the last oil price spike and it became a huge issue in the coming election.
In particular Bush, Republicans and some Dems have been extremely successful in killing increases in fuel efficiency standards which would have resulted in a big reduction in our oil consumption. They were adamant it would be bad for the car companies and deny American's their freedoms to drive gas guzzlers. You know if they HAD passed tough fuel economy standards Americans would be feeling a lot less pain right now, and the big three car companies wouldn't be teetering on bankruptcy because they were still making gas guzzlers when the whole market demanded the fuel efficiency they have been fighting tooth and nail for years. Their profit margins on pickups and SUV's used to be so big they were determined to make them and get Americans to buy them no matter how much oil they squandered.
You also have to worry that he was involved but that he had co-conspirators and his suicide may prevent the investigation from getting to them.
There is also the possibility the co-conspirators stood with a gun to his head and forced him to swallow the over dose so he would be the fall guy and would have no chance to expose them in exchange for a plea deal.
You hate to think your government would have perpetrated the Anthrax attacks on purpose to amplify the fear after 9/11 and insure the country would support invading Iraq, but everything that's been unveiled about the Bush Administration in the last few years you KNOW they are ruthless enough and may well have been willing to do such a thing to get their way, and seem to have a pretty low regard for the rule of law or the value of human life. Addington in Cheney's office in particular seem to be capable of just about any kind of atrocity. It appears he almost single handedly pushed the U.S. in to torturing people.
I find it a little odd the FBI would have been quite as blatant as they were in tipping their hand to him that he was going to be charged, going to be charged with murder and he might get the death penalty. Its kind of like they were trying to force him to either flee or kill himself.
Not sure how your rant got scored interesting... and I'm the first one to bash NASA..... but I think this article is talking about the X-37B. The X-37A was DEVELOPED by NASA, though Boeing's Phantom Works actually built it under contact to them. The program was transfered to DARPA in 2004 and the X-37B is a second generation developed by the military. Since the original design is from NASA your venom is somewhat misplaced, at least in this instance.
Can't impeach Bush over it. It may well have been done entirely by Rove. To Bush's credit he apparently did ask Rove to resign last year when all this surfaced. As thick as Bush is I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't know about half the stuff Cheney and Rove have pulled.
Besides even if you did impeach what would you gain. Cheney would take his place which is worse, and his term is practically over anyway. You can hope a criminal case will surface after they are out of office but I doubt McCain or Obama would let a former President go to jail.
"by prohibiting us from having a responsible and sustainable nuclear energy policy"
Three Mile Island did this a lot more than Carter, and Chernobyl sealed the deal. The idea of a breeched reactor spewing radioactive waste in the middle of the heavily populated East Coast rightly freaked people out. It didn't help that the officials at Three Mile Island were less than truthful about what was happening there causing people to permanently distrust them.
Coal plants are kind of slow poison but it just takes one screw up at a nuclear reactor to ruin your day. Haven't you ever played SimCity :)
Nuclear power is looking like the lesser of two evils again, and you hope GE, Westinghouse or whomever can build foolproof ones and have learned from past mistakes. Everything I've read recently about all the new plant designs working through the regulation process makes me a little worried. I'm not sure we even have the expertise to build a new reactor any more, maybe we should tap the Canadians or the French.
I really liked McCain in 2000. I sure wish he'd won the nomination 8 years ago instead of Bush. He isn't perfect but almost no one could have done as much damage to America and the world as Bush has. But he didn't win because he ran in to two of the most ruthless campaigners this country has seen in a long time in Rove and Bush.
The problem in 2008 is McCain is so desperate to get his party's nomination and keep its support he's sold his soul to the devil and you can barely distinguish him from Bush these days. If he were to govern like the man he was in 2000 I'd vote for him just to keep the Democrats from running amok, which they will if they control all the branches. If he is going to govern like he talks in 2008 I don't think I can stand another 4 or 8 years of a Bush clone. Unfortunately we don't know which he will be without giving him the keys.
"makes it hard for me to take anything else you said seriously. If the US attorneys served at the pleasure of the President, there is no such thing as an "improper" firing."
The U.S. attorneys do serve at the pleasure of the President, but as soon as the White House started selectively firing them to obstruct criminal cases against Republicans, or to threaten Attorneys if they didn't bring cases against Democrats they certainly stepped over a traditional line of non interference in the cases in the U.S. Attorney's offices, and were potentially obstructing justice which might be a crime. Worse than the cases where attorneys were fired for refusing political influence in their cases may be some where they were doing what they were directed to do by Karl Rove and may have brought politically motivated cases against Democrats, putting potentially innocent people in jail, and where the cases may have been fabricated by the U.S. attorney. Its kind ofbad arrangement where we rely on political appointees to bring federal cases which often involve politicians. The system mostly worked until we got to the Bush administration though. Clinton firing all the attorneys at once is way less bad than Bush and Rove selectively firing them to pressure them to bring politically motivated cases.
You might want to read the case of Don Siegelman, a better though somewhat biased write up here. Counterpunch is pretty left wing but a lot of interesting people write some really interesting stuff there, though there is garbage too.
Siegelman was a popular Alabama Democratic and governor apparently targeted by Karl Rove in 2002. Rove may have used the Alabama U.S. Attorney to bring a case against Siegelman to neutralize him as a factor in Alabama politics. If true, though that remains to be seen, it is the most disturbing example of Karl Rove using the U.S. attorneys as political tools to destroy Democrats and elect Republicans. Rove and Bush teethed their political teeth in Alabama, its where Bush went when he ducked his National Guard service in Texas, they have a long history there, and politics isn't bean bag so I imagine the knew Siegelman from way back.
Siegelman won a very close reelection as Governor in 2002 before it was declared a voting machine had malfunctioned and he was stripped of 3000 votes which cost him the election. There is a chance the election was rigged by the Republicans which is in with a string of election regularities we had in 2000 through 2004, like in Georgia, all of which went in favor of Republicans. Siegelman supposedly agreed to stop challenging the 2002 election result in a deal with Alabama Republican's where the U.S. attorney would drop the investigation against him in return.
The U.S. attorney didn't drop the case though, he was indicted in 2004. The [rosecutor abandoned the first trial when the judge threw out all of the U.S. attorney's evidence because it was so bad. The U.S. attorney wouldn't stop though and tried again in 2006. In 2006 they got the case heard by a Bush appointed judge who happened to have a nasty grudge against Seigelmen which he didn't recuse himself for. The case hinged on testimony of one Siegelman's aides who was a crook and who may have lied to convict Siegelman in exchange for favorable treatment in his case. Two jurors were also caught emailing each and colluding to sway the jury to convict. It was probably jury tampering and should have lead to a mistrial but biased Judge Fuller refused to even investigate the issue.
From Wikipedia, "In June 2007, a Republican lawyer, Dana Jill Simpson of Rainsville, Alabama, signed a sworn statement that, five years earlier, she had heard that Karl Rove was preparing to neutralize Siegelman politically with an investigation headed by the U.S. Department of Justice"
A new judge threw out Seiglemen's conviction this year when the possibility arose the case was politically
"Maybe I'm just a traditionalist, but I think the America we had for a couple hundred years was a pretty good one"
I think many white, conservative, Christian Republicans probably don't agree with you is the problem. Modern America is very different from 1950's America. They want to go back to 1950's America where there is McCarthyism, abortion is illegal, homosexuals are locked in closets, drugs are very illegal, segregation is the law of the land instead of affirmative action, minorities are lucky if they can vote and they sure wouldn't be running for President. Back then they dominated every aspect of the economy, the military and the government and everyone had to conform to their ideology. Its normal for groups who once had all the power to want to return to the nostalgic good ole days. They probably want to go even further back to about the roaring '20s prior to Roosevelt's Socialism. They forgot that Republican excesses and incompetence in the 1920's lead pretty much directly to the great Depression and Roosevelt, much like the excesses of the last 8 years are leading to a similar serious crash today.
They blame liberals and Democrats for all of society's ills which is why they hate them so much and will do anything to keep them out of power. I can't entirely blame them, if someone from the 1950's were dropped in the middle of 2008 it would be kind of a shock. But as troubling as some things are in modern life you have to think its good that people have more freedom to live the way the want, aren't forced to conform to the very rigid and narrow stereotypes of acceptability of a very puritanical group, and there is a greater degree of equality for everyone at birth.
"as the hardware want to trust a specific bit of code (e.g. the linux boot loader) then I should be able to manually sign it somehow"
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think if Microsoft is implementing trusted computing in order to implement DRM, to prevent pirating, then it would be by design to prevent users from signing or trusting any software on their own. If they allow to sign arbitrary software and run it on a trusted computer the whole point of the DRM part of trusted computing is defeated and the BSA, MPAA and RIAA get mad. There is a big difference between the motivations Stallman has in signing things and Microsoft and its corporate partners have in signing things.
The Goodling controversy that is being discussed, and which was in the report released yesterday, was for immigration judges, interns and other assorted civil service positions in DOJ. The guidelines for hiring and firing civil servants is quite strict. The "good American" quote in my original post here was a for a career prosecutor in a U.S. attorneys office not the U.S. attorney.
U.S. attorneys are political appointments and can be hired and fired by the President. I think the career prosecutors in their office and certainly the immigration judges fall under civil service hiring guidelines. In the report on Goodling apparently there are two different employment applications, one for political appointees where you can ask party affiliation and one for civil service jobs where you can't because its against the law to factor party affiliation in to civil service hiring. Apparently Goodling was using the political appointee application for civil service jobs because she was illegally and intentionally using party affiliation, and searches and interviews on applicants views on abortion and sexual orientation in hiring for civil service jobs which is illegal. One interviewee with Goodling reported he expressed a positive opinion of Condolezza Rice to which Goodling frowned and complained that Rice is "pro-choice" just to show you how hard line her attitude was on abortion and not hiring anyone pro choice for a civil service job.
The report on the U.S. attorney firing scandal isn't out yet. I think the DOJ inspector is doing something like four different reports on irregularities at the DOJ, these are just two of them.
The issue with the U.S. attorneys wasn't that they were fired, but why they were fired. They serve at the pleasure of the President but there is evidence the attorneys that were fired were fired for improper reasons, in particular because the White House, particularly Karl Rove, were trying to use selective prosecutions to influence elections:
A. In New Mexico the U.S. Attorney wouldn't speed up prosecution of a Democrat in a corruption case, Senator Dominici called him to pressure him to speed up the case so it would be public before an election and would influence the outcome. He refused because it was improper. He was fired not long after. Domenici didn't stand for reelection after this because what he did was wrong and its lucky he wasn't prosecuted for tampering in the case.
B. In Arizona a U.S. Attorney wouldn't slow down or bury prosecution involving Congressmen Rick Renzi for a possible payoff through a land deal. The White House/Rove was more worried about possibly losing the seat in the next election so they obstructed it by firing the U.S. attorney which was also probably illegal.
A bigger question on the U.S. attorney firing is that since some of the fired attorneys were fired for not doing improper things, were the Attorneys who weren't fired doing the improper things and letting political considerations influence criminal cases, in particular bringing cases against Democrats and burying cases against Republicans.
I read a piece a while ago on Rove's resignation last year, I think on the Washington post, and the suggestion was Bush asked Rove to resign because he's been involved in so many illegal or improper activities, in his ruthless driver to get Republicans elected, Bush wanted him out of the White House to try to take some of the heat off.
My God, media bias isn't something you can quantify in a study, its in the eyes of the beholder. You also have to decide where the middle is. The middle in the U.S. has moved dramatically to the right in recent years, since Reagan and especially since 9/11. The middle in most of Europe would be considered very liberal in the U.S. I think most of the world thinks the middle in the U.S. is now hovering dangerously close to right wing nut job.
The accuracy of the study was shredded when they said Fox wasn't biased. I'm sure when Fox is reporting generic wire news they don't have much bias, no one does, but everyone of their stars and commentators drips right wing bias, every time they cover politics they drip bias. Bill Kristol and Karl Rove are two of their star contributors, say no more. Rupert Murdock and Roger Ailes politics are well known and they created Fox News to carry news from their political perspective. They are constantly cheerleading the Bush administration and the Republicans. The night of the 2006 elections their entire election team was crushed because the Republicans got clocked and their run was over.
CNN was blatantly liberal biased when Ted Turned ran it, it was no secret. Since Turner was replaced by Time Warner and CNN was getting clocked by Fox their liberal bias completely evaporated, at least at CNN US. CNN International is still pretty liberal but its based in Europe, and Europe is extremely liberal compared to the U.S. I can barely tell CNN America from Fox any more, and the quality of their reporting has completely cratered. The New York Time is indisputably liberal, its one of the last liberal bastions, lucky for the right, newspapers are dieing. CBS and Katie I can't detect political bias because she is so fixated on human interest stories most of the time. Gibson and Williams again I can't see the bias, but maybe I'm biased, and there is so little editorial left on the network news anyway since Rather was beheaded.
"He ran with a bad story, and rather than admit that he'd been snookered, he kept screaming about how obvious forgeries were "genuine" till CBS had no choice but to axe him."
It wasn't a bad story, it was an accurate story which is how Rather tripped himself up. He knew it was true, he was desperate to influence the election and stop another four years of madness and stuck his neck out too far. The problem was all the original documents were destroyed by the Bushistas. They certainly were by the time Bush was governor of Texas since he controlled all his records as Governor of Texas. The forgery was described by the secretary for the Guard commander as being about right, it just wasn't the original unfortunately. The original was probably burned long ago.
"Bob Barr would make a decent candidate"
Excepting even the Republican party wouldn't nominate him because he is a Libertarian and a real conservative and the Republican party doesn't remember what real conservatism is any more, they've fallen so far. No telling what skeletons he has in his closet if he gets put under the microscope.
"You mean like Jimmy Carter? Obama is dangerously close to him both in policies and experience level. And you remember the damage Carter did to us in just four years."
Well, then like now the Republicans elected him by being so corrupt and morally bankrupt the voters were going to throw them out no matter who was running against them.
I don't remember Carter well enough to remember exactly how good or bad he was, and the post mortem on him is completely biased against him now. I remember the whole of the establishment, Wall Street, the military, Republicans hated him and worked to make him fail. They did the same thing to Kennedy, Clinton and Truman. Johnson destroyed himself with Vietnam. Unfortunately most of the people with the real power and money in the U.S. are conservatives and Republican's and they routinely do everything in their power to destroy liberal Presidents and they generally succeed because they h
If there is any dirt to be broadcast on Obama I'm sure Fox and Rush are broadcasting it so its not like there is any sweeping conspiracy that will keep it all secret. Its still common for Fox anchors to intentionally confuse Obama's name with Osama Bin Laden and imply he is secretly a Muslim terrorist infiltrating the government as some Al Qaeda plot. Media bias cuts both ways now, get over it.
Maybe part of the problem is this country desperately needs a new President that doesn't suck as bad as the current one, and then we run in to the problem that all politicians suck, especially these days. Unfortunately power corrupts, politicians are practitioners of power, so they all tend to be somewhere between a little or very corrupt. We are just extremely aware of it these days thanks to the internet and saturation media coverage of campaigns and candidates.
If the media destroys them all we will basically be left with no one qualified running the country, kind of like the situation we've had for the last 8 years.
I should point out George W. got his fortune from a sweetheart deal with his dads rich friends, who gave him a giant cut of the Texas Rangers, which he later cashed out at a huge profit with almost no risk on his part. There is also the fact he was busted for cocaine possession in Texas though his connections kept him out of a felony conviction that would have killed his political career. And of course its a near certainty he for all practical purposes deserted the National Guard which his family connections got him in to ahead of others to keep him out of Vietnam. He may have bailed on the Guard because the Guard started testing for Cocaine, which he was using, and didn't want to get caught. He didn't even fulfill the very modest requirements of his guard service and got a free pass and again his connections managed to destroy all the incriminating records. None of this stopped him from becoming President so where was the liberal media bias from 1999 through 2004. Rather was the only one he tried to make an issue out of it and he was destroyed. Why did the "liberal" media behead one of their own if there was a grand liberal conspiracy.
McCain isn't exactly better. You may forget but he was one of the "Keating Five" and was knee deep in the corruption of the Savings and Loan scandals in the 1980's and was doing favors for Keating who was one of the most famous and corrupt execs in the S&L scandal.
We could switch to Hillary though she has shady dealings on Whitewater, the Rose law firm, missing records and host of other scandals from the Clinton presidency none of which quite stuck but didn't go away either.
So I suspect the "media bias" you see these days is the "liberal" media is biting the bullet and embracing Obama because there just isn't anyone better. At least he is very smart, charismatic, a good speaker and is a complete change from the disaster of the last eight years. I think at this point a lot of the liberal media, and a whole lot of the rest of America just wants the Republican gone, and Obama is the man for better or worse. The Republican have no one but themselves to blame, since they had it all, until their hubrus, arrogance, corruption and incompetence completely burned their bridges with the American people.
If we keep playing the gotcha politics you are going to end up with someone with a squeaky clean record but who is totally incompetent, or like the last eight years someone who is incompetent and still corrupt like Bush.
I think the problem here is that all the lawyers in the executive branch under the Bush administration, both the DOJ and White house, apparently completely SUCK at being lawyers. They were hired because they were good ideologues and not because they were good lawyers. Its nearly unanimous amount Republican and Democrats now that Gonzales was incompetent. Harriet Myers was White House Council during much of this. John Yoo is certainly looking scary on the competency front these days. David Addington was probably the scariest one of the bunch for his contempt of the law. When Bush tried to put Myers on the Supreme Court his own party rebelled because she was so poorly qualified for the position.
If you have incompetent lawyers you end up with incompetent interpretation of the law and the Constitution. How else would you explain lawyers who rationalized and authorized torture, and saw no problem with unlimited spying on American citizens without a warrant or any court supervision, even though the original FISA law on the books was the LAW and had forbidden it since Nixon was busted for it.
The only other explanation is they were extremely good lawyers and decided they could break law after law, eventually win in the Supreme court and overturn all the laws they were intentionally breaking. They kind of got away with it especially after two Bush appointments to the Supreme Court restacked it in their favor, and because Congress would inherently do nothing to rein them in before 2006 and aren't doing much better since 2006.
Its a bit sad though if we have a system where the President can break law after law and get away with, with the worst result being a slap on the wrist from the courts, and the best being retroactively making violation of the law OK as was done with FISA.
"I expect the next administration will think I'm a bad American"
A. Even if they do it should NEVER be a factor if you apply for a non political position in the government. I'm not saying liberals or Democrats are perfect but chances are high ranking lawyers in the DOJ in previous administrations knew what the law was and adhered to it, or didn't break it with open contempt like this administration. Its sad commentary on this administration and today's rabid Republican party that they let their ideology blind them and led them to breaking the law.
B. I don't have much more use for the corruption that is today's Democratic party than the Republicans, but if you look back over recent years, the worst of the hatred and partisanship has been coming from the Republicans and Conservatives not Liberals and Democrats. Start with McCarthyism, he was a Republican you know. Move to Nixon and his dirty tricks. Jump ahead to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, there are some partisan liberal talking heads but no one listens to them(with the exception of Stewart and Colbert, and their vitriol isn't in the same league as Rush and Bill. Then look at the Republican stunt trying to impeach Bill Clinton when they knew it wasn't justified and it wouldn't succeed just so they could maximize the damage to him personally, to the Democrats and the nation as a whole. It resulted in short term political gains which is why they did it but at what long term prices. All they did was insure bitter partisanship from that day forward, and put "blow jobs" on the nightly news for kids to listen too. Clinton's judgment was bad, but people do that when sex is involved. What the Republicans did was incomparably worse and damaged the country irreparably. By contrast the Democrats won't even consider impeaching Bush when they regained control of Congress, because they knew it wouldn't succeed and just damage the country further. This is in spite of the fact Bush actually deserves it for violating the Constitution and the law.
"Or the next President decides to fire him because he doesn't like the way he clips his toe nails, which he is perfectly free to do."
Presidents can't just fire civil servants. Their is a vast legal code to protect civil servants from politicians doing just that. The problem here is the same code is supposed to prevent the executive branch from hiring unqualified ideologues too. The Bush administration with their complete contempt for the law and government just chose to ignore that part, probably with the assumption the next Democratic president couldn't get rid of all the Republican only civil servants they were illegally hiring. They were trying to stack the civil service with their people which is against the law, for good reason.
The Bush administration in particular and Republicans in general hate civil servants because they are often unionized and hated for being "big government" and not easily held to account for their performance. It is possible they chose to break the law here in an attempt to completely corrupt the career civil servants at DOJ as their form of revenge, and replace qualified lawyers with unqualified ones with the proper ideological background
Goodling as an example wasn't really qualified for the lofty position she held. She was a graduate of Jerry Fallwell's Grade C law school which placed more importance on your Christian background than academic ability or knowledge of the law. If she was a good lawyer she should have known what she was doing was illegal and she would eventually get busted for it. I assume she figured the Republicans would control Congress and the DOJ forever so no one would ever enforce the law.
"weather forecasting, satellite communications ... aerospace and commercial aviation advancements"
You left out GPS. These are the really important things but they would have been done by the military, private sector, or by other nations if NASA hadn't. The rest of the stuff on your list doesn't really matter to most people. They are interesting to scientists and space enthusiasts, no one else would think the price tag for them was justified.
There isn't anything particularly exceptional about NASA except it did an exceptional thing....once. It is just a big bureaucracy, though it has an interesting science and R&D focused charter.
In the 1960's it was exceptional and did an exceptional things because:
A. It was tasked with an incredibly hard and challenging mission by Kennedy with a hard time limit
B. It was given a nearly unlimited budget to accomplish the goal
C. It had a bunch of exceptional German trained engineers who were essential to the undertaking and in the case of Von Braun had the same dream in the middle of Nazi Germany in the 30's and 40's and had vast funding from the Nazi's to twist their dream in to weapons.
D. They drew a bunch more exceptional engineers from the U.S. who ere attracted by the goal and the funding.
It is relatively unlikely there will be a similar confluence of events again. Going back to the moon a second time simply wont excite anyone. Maybe you could gin up enthusiasm for a manned mission to Mars but it would be hugely expensive, and difficult, and the U.S. simply doesn't have the money to spare any more, and has other priorities, like squandering huge sums on the military, finding new energy sources before fossil fuel dependency destroys us, and paying for a crippling safety net for seniors who are living to long and growing in numbers to the point they will break the younger people who have to support their Social Security and Medicare.
If an asteroid strike were found to be imminent that would create a similar confluence but thats kind of a long shot.
If you were able to actually build an affordable space elevator, or mine asteroids on a large scale, or produce energy in space those might be some exciting developments. Going to he moon again is kind of a yawner. Going to Mars to plant a flag would be exciting once. Unless Mars turned in to a colonized planet probably after that it probably wouldn't count for much just like Apollo.
I could be wrong but I get the sense that Europe and Russia are sufficiently disillusioned with NASA after the ISS and Shuttle that I'm not sure they will partner with NASA again on anything big. Maube once Bush is gone the rest of the world wont hate the U.S. quite so much. Its pretty unlikely China, India or Brazil would get entangled with the U.S. or the bureaucratic quagmire with the "Can't Do" attitude that is NASA today.
To further illuminate what Goodling was doing, she told this to a U.S. Attorney telling him he could hire another prosecutor for his office:
"Tell Brad he can hire one more good American."
"good American" is Goodling and probably Bush administration code for conservative, Christian, homophobe, pro life, Bush supporting, Republican. The implication being all other American's are "bad" Americans. How does it feel to live in a country where your Executive Branch has branded you as a "bad" American unless you live and think the way they expect you to live and think.
It is an entirely acceptable standard for political appointees who will come and go with the President who appoints them. It is expected for them to be ideologues in the same mold as their boss. It is an illegal and unacceptable criteria for career civil servants who, once they enter the ranks of civil service, are nearly impossible to get rid of unless they leave of their on accord.
The report unfortunately stops short of finding who directed Goodling to do this, but since she was the DOJ liason to the White House chances are it was Rove, Myers, Cheney and or Bush, who were probably directing Goodling to fill the Justice Department ranks with career civil servants, who need not be well qualified for their jobs, but who were certified ideologues who would carry the right wing flag for decades to come and slant prosecutions and the law in the direction their ideology dictated.
The DOJ has received all the attention but there is an open question if the same program was being practiced in some or all of the other departments and agencies under control of the Executive Branch. If it was there may be an army of entrenched Republican ideologue civil servants who will frustrate future President they don't agree with for decades to come.
"Those are unethical entrepreneurs that have nothing to do with studying business."
LOL... Dude.... it was also Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch, UBS, Lehman, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, a host of smaller banks around the world, and now its sucked in Treasury and the FDIC to try to shore up the devestation by printing money and using tax dollars.
It was like HALF the U.S. financial system and a big chunk of the global financial system. There are trillions in mortgage backed securities that are either not liquid or are being sold to vultures who are hoping the foreclosures deplete them less than the mark down they got on them.
If you attribute it to "unethical entrepreneurs" you are saying nearly the entire financial system is run by "unethical entrepreneurs" which was my original point. Thanks for seeing things my way.
When they were all getting 6% and up returns none of them were complaining or worrying about the fact that a large percentage of the mortgages in their billion dollar bonds were inevitably going to foreclose. They lined their pockets with the bonuses and fat returns while the bubble was going up, and now they expect the government to bail them out.
"If you attribute it to "unethical entrepreneurs" you are saying nearly the entire financial system is run by "unethical entrepreneurs" which was my original point. Thanks for seeing things my way."
A difference with the tech bubble is when it crashed it didn't take down the global economy and the U.S. government didn't have to step in and bail them out with billions of tax dollars. I imagine some engineers got rich off it but I imagine most of it went to shysters like the Cuban brothers who drew up fantasy business plans, threw up a web site and suckered some other clueless CxO's or investors to give them large quantities of money for nothing. In Mark Cuban's case he suckered Yahoo.
People who can create web sites are a substantially lower class of people than real scientists and engineers. Almost anyone can do it for better or worse.
"Did it ever occur to you that those ensuring the smooth operation of social/economic structures are more important the stability than those who are promoting advancement."
The people I listed aren't for the most part ensuring any "smooth operation". They are doing whatever is most likely to maximize their wealth, smooth operation of the system has nothing to do with it anymore. Recently, for example, that's meant massive distribution of mortgages to people who could only afford them if interest rates stayed low and houses kept inflating in value at an unsustainable pace. They didn't and they didn't. Most of the jackass's that promoted the bubble in housing have long since cashed out, and retired to their yachts, Countrywide's Angelo Mozilla in particular. Angelo managed to cash out $200 million from Countrywide in 2006-2007 because he knew the house of cards he built was collapsing. The American taxpayer, and a bunch of homeowners get to pay to clean up the mess. Hope you don't have any of your wealth in U.S. dollars because its headed towards worthless thanks to the excellent management of America's business leaders and politicians over the last decade.
"The vast majority of kids don't really care about science, it's neither fun nor interesting to them."
You forgot to mention that while science, engineering and teaching pay better than factory worker, the pay sucks compared to corporate executive, marketeer, stock broker and lawyer. Unfortunately Capitalism in general and American in particular rewards the fields that suck most directly at the teat of capitalism. If you manage to invent something awesome, get the patents in your name and successfully sell it without the suits stealing you blind you might get rich but its a long shot.
If you get an MBA, kiss the right ass and rise to VP or above you are almost certain to make a killing. Most scientists and engineers are facing a very challenging education, followed by years doing challenging work and the best most can hope for is staying solidly middle class. If you are doing it for inner satisfaction that works, but if you have a wife and kids to feed, clothe, house and educate there is enormous pressure to go in to a field that pays well, and not one that is most worthwhile or satisfying.
Socialism sucks in most respects but it is fairly successful at creating a large cadre of scientist, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals because the system steers people to where there is a need. Capitalism only steers people to where the money is. Sometimes the money is where the need is, much of the time it isn't. For example the amount of money professional athletes make these days borders on criminal. Professional sports are a nice diversion and entertainment but they don't really deserve to suck hundreds out of an average joes pocket to go to one game in a billion dollar stadium watching people who will make more in one night than the spectators will make in a year.
If you want to find one of the most corrosive forces in most American universities its the priority placed on athletics and athletes over academics.
A couple of the pictures are on the Scaled composite web site.
The efficiencies of using photovoltaics to do heating must be absolutely horrendous. PV's are at present very low efficiency in converting sun to electicity and to then turn around and and turn that electricity in to heat doesn't seem like a wise approach though I'm no expert. Passive solar and solar hot water heaters would seem like a better approach to me and they don't need expensive photovoltaics, maybe when the price of PV's comes way down and efficiency goes way up.
Using heating oil to heat homes and to generate electricity are at present two different things.
Solar isn't competing against oil unless you a solar powered car. Solar power is competing against coal, natural gas, hydroelectric and nuclear for electricity generation. In the U.S. oil accounts for 1.6% of electricity generation. Don't mean to be pedantic but it drives me up a wall that people have no clue where their power comes from.
Coal is nearly half of America's electric power. Its price is going up but not as much as oil and it is in much greater abundance in the U.S. Unfortunately coal's impact on the environment, both mining it and burning it, tends towards devastating. The Chinese are using huge amounts of coal for their electricity too.