Of course you do, she could have just sat there vomiting on herself 48 seconds and you would have agreed with it.
Sarah Palin is so funny. Her solution to China investing billions into research and education to erode our advantage is for people to make more coffee. God, we are so doomed.
Yeah, well nothing like a half dozen community colleges to prepare you to do battle with the kids I'm seeing from China: "I know I'm a business major, Dr. B-Bob, but I want to take more physics classes because I already covered the material before college, and I also had three years of calculus."
She said the Soviet economy collapsed because of sputnik since they couldn't afford it. I thought it was Reagan who made them collapse with the arms race. I guess Reagan didn't win the cold war after all.
Her sputnik moment: <iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NRSIhKQhQhY" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen></iframe>
A good column from Krugman about the Republican response to the State of the Union: January 27, 2011 Their Own Private Europe By PAUL KRUGMAN President Obama’s State of the Union address was a ho-hum affair. But the official Republican response, from Representative Paul Ryan, was really interesting. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Mr. Ryan made highly dubious assertions about employment, health care and more. But what caught my eye, when I read the transcript, was what he said about other countries: “Just take a look at what’s happening to Greece, Ireland, the United Kingdom and other nations in Europe. They didn’t act soon enough; and now their governments have been forced to impose painful austerity measures: large benefit cuts to seniors and huge tax increases on everybody.” It’s a good story: Europeans dithered on deficits, and that led to crisis. Unfortunately, while that’s more or less true for Greece, it isn’t at all what happened either in Ireland or in Britain, whose experience actually refutes the current Republican narrative. But then, American conservatives have long had their own private Europe of the imagination — a place of economic stagnation and terrible health care, a collapsing society groaning under the weight of Big Government. The fact that Europe isn’t actually like that — did you know that adults in their prime working years are more likely to be employed in Europe than they are in the United States? — hasn’t deterred them. So we shouldn’t be surprised by similar tall tales about European debt problems. Let’s talk about what really happened in Ireland and Britain. On the eve of the financial crisis, conservatives had nothing but praise for Ireland, a low-tax, low-spending country by European standards. The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom ranked it above every other Western nation. In 2006, George Osborne, now Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer, declared Ireland “a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policy making.” And the truth was that in 2006-2007 Ireland was running a budget surplus, and had one of the lowest debt levels in the advanced world. So what went wrong? The answer is: out-of-control banks; Irish banks ran wild during the good years, creating a huge property bubble. When the bubble burst, revenue collapsed, causing the deficit to surge, while public debt exploded because the government ended up taking over bank debts. And harsh spending cuts, while they have led to huge job losses, have failed to restore confidence. The lesson of the Irish debacle, then, is very nearly the opposite of what Mr. Ryan would have us believe. It doesn’t say “cut spending now, or bad things will happen”; it says that balanced budgets won’t protect you from crisis if you don’t effectively regulate your banks — a point made in the newly released report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which concludes that “30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation” helped create our own catastrophe. Have I mentioned that Republicans are doing everything they can to undermine financial reform? What about Britain? Well, contrary to what Mr. Ryan seemed to imply, Britain has not, in fact, suffered a debt crisis. True, David Cameron, who became prime minister last May, has made a sharp turn toward fiscal austerity. But that was a choice, not a response to market pressure. And underlying that choice was the new British government’s adherence to the same theory offered by Republicans to justify their demand for immediate spending cuts here — the claim that slashing government spending in the face of a depressed economy will actually help growth rather than hurt it. So how’s that theory looking? Not good. The British economy, which seemed to be recovering earlier in 2010, turned down again in the fourth quarter. Yes, weather was a factor, and, no, you shouldn’t read too much into one quarter’s numbers. But there’s certainly no sign of the surging private-sector confidence that was supposed to offset the direct effects of eliminating half-a-million government jobs. And, as a result, there’s no comfort in the British experience for Republican claims that the United States needs spending cuts in the face of mass unemployment. Which brings me back to Paul Ryan and his response to President Obama. Again, American conservatives have long used the myth of a failing Europe to argue against progressive policies in America. More recently, they have tried to appropriate Europe’s debt problems on behalf of their own agenda, never mind the fact that events in Europe actually point the other way. But Mr. Ryan is widely portrayed as an intellectual leader within the G.O.P., with special expertise on matters of debt and deficits. So the revelation that he literally doesn’t know the first thing about the debt crises currently in progress is, as I said, interesting — and not in a good way. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/opinion/28krugman.html?src=me&ref=general
Sputnik? OMG. I really missed out by not watching Palin's speech. That is a whole new level of dumb. part of the initial consternation for NASA was the relative efficiency of putting a blinking, beeping basketball in orbit. That simple metal basketball caused the US to spend huge amounts of money in response, far more than the cost of the Russian space program.
Yes, this article was great. Sadly much of the Republican talking points over the past few years have been based on an imaginary state of things. All of the lies and misinformation about health care and the stimulus fits right into their other worldly line of thinking.
Yes, it was an incredibly ignorant thing for Palin to say. Most of what she says is. It's hilarious that basso prefers her take on state of the Union. Is he trying to paint himself as supporter of ignorance? Why would anyone do that to themselves, especially a Rockets fan?
Palin's reference to the sputnik as what brought down the Soviet Union, is kinda correct. Let's make no mistake on understanding that the space race was in clear and direct lineage to the arms race (especially to the soviets)...Without, the space race drive there would be no ICBM . . . Americans were called to act not because of an OMG, they will get directTV before us, it was a OMG, that could be a missle from space over us!... Palin was also kinda wrong in that Obama was referencing a call to act, and I believe that referenced "act" was and is important...However, Obama is wrong in that call to act is not alluding to government's main purpose - which is to protect us. Back then a reason to win the space race was for our defense and protection... Obama's watered down baby Obamacarelite is not for our defense, and it is not for our protection...(maybe unconstitutional?).. Like I stated (please read my prior posts macky), #37 OVERALL is not ideal, but then again we are the VERY best at 2 out of 5 indicators used to state who IS the best overall...40% of what we do in healthcare is better than what any other country does...remember the WHO said so. . . . YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Well... it's correct in the way that birth of Gavrilo Princip in the late 19th century led to World War II. By that I mean in the weird way that history's many interconnected threads can be arranged to make all kinds of plausible stories as you include more and more decades. But that's fine. It's just an odd comment by her and I don't understand why she referenced Sputnik, unless the only demographic that would recognize the reference is her current target audience (?)
1. a valiant effort to defend Palin. But why twist and contort logic so much that it's no longer logic in an effort to defend someone so ignorant? 2. The main purpose of the space race was not to use it for defense. Please reference Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies.
The Reason the Soviet Empire Collapsed was because of Sputnik which lead to the space race which led to an arms race which led to star wars and afganistan which led to economic collapse. It was not Reagan, it was not capitalism or lack of it, it was not anything but the launching of the first satellite into space. Amazing. Greenday really was telling the story of Sarah Palin when they composed, "American Idiot"
I liked this quick little read from Krugman dissecting some of the economic points of the Republican "rebuttal".
