Too bad the USSR won the Space Race

I think Sarah Palin should avoid saying the word "spudnut." Too darn tempting....

That was... hmmm... incoherent is the word that comes to mind.

I think her speech writer has been replaced with a random word generator. I've had more comprehensible conversations with Cleverbot.

they won [the race to space] but they also incurred so much debt at the time that it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the soviet union

So it was Sputnik that did them in... Which history book is this in?? Another example from the "I reject your reality and substitute my own!!" crowd.

So it's pretty obvious that someone is sponsoring Representative Bachmann's Presidential ambitions. I want to know who -- don't y'all?

I mean, really:
* Someone from SNL who's jealous of Tina Fey?
* George Soros?
* Barack Obama?

Does Sarah Palin realize that she was talking to the lame-stream media in that interview? That she has been making a pretty great salary off the the lame-stream media since 2008?

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

History, it is what ever serves my argument at the moment.

If the Germans had not produced such a large national debt we would all be speaking some Germanic language today!

Palin was not talking to the lamestream media she was talking to Faux news. A good question for Greta van Sustern would be why did she not push back on that remark. Greta is a lawyer, she is supposedly smart & educated.

Hi! I'm Michele Bachmann and I hated checking my references when writing term papers in college? Didn't you hate that, too? Join the Tea Party movement! We don't care about actual facts because reality has a liberal bias. In the Tea Party we can say whatever stuff we like! We're on God's side so it's okay!

Ms. Palin usually gives me a "STFU" moment. Please make her stop!

Not sure to Greta van S comes off much better. Following up the spud nut rant with a question about Bristol?

psst, zeno, this is Sarah Palin in this thread. But I am sure that it applies to whatever Michelle said today.

When Sputnik happened I had completed my BS and was doing odd jobs while waiting to get drafted. Obama's reference to the Sputnik moment was to our reaction when we found someone else doing things we thought we would be the first to do. Palen knows of this by hearsay, pre-Palin history, so to speak, and has no clue what it all means. I doubt that the cost of the Russian space program was a large part of their expenditure. It was their total defense spending, trying to match us, which bankrupted them.

I thought her Spudnut comments were more informed; presenting the idea that we should look at successful American business and ask why are they successful. I liked that better than anything else I have heard her say.

Thats fine until Spudnut goes the way of Joe the Plumber.

Sarah Palin is clearly the foremost representative, and the person most obviously in need of, a new organization, Dunning-Kruger Anonymous.

With Palin as our leader, America will lead the world in potato/donut based technology. U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

I was kinda surprised when Chris Matthews focused on "the USSR won the space race" as the thing that was wrong with what she said. There are many things wrong with what she said, but that one, in the specific context of Sputnik, seemed at least justifiable -- the USSR was the first into space, so they won that race (if indeed there can be said to have been a race on at that time).

I could add that the idea of the manned Moon landing as the "finish" of the race has always struck me as arbitrary and ex post facto -- it was really the first time we beat them (after a long series of firsts in space by the Soviets), so we declared victory and quit the race. But that's probably me being too cynical.

Anyway, the deeper issues include her confusion of the arms race with the space race, and the implicit perpetuation of the myth that space programs are really, really expensive -- even running to nation-bankrupting levels. As Wikipedia notes:

Public perception of the NASA budget is very different from reality and has been the subject of controversy since the agency's creation. A 1997 poll reported that Americans had an average estimate of 20% for NASA's share of the federal budget. In reality, NASA's budget has been between 0.5% and 1% from the late 1960s on. NASA budget briefly peaked at over 4% of the federal budget in the mid-1960s during the build up to the Apollo program.

I don't know what percentage of the Soviet budget their space program peaked at, but I think it's safe to say, it wasn't the problem.

Wow. Yikes. Jaw-drop

"Spudnut?!" Really?

The ignorance and stupidity of this woman just buuurrrnnnnssss! :-o

I hope everyone in the States realises that she's wa-aay too much of a joke to ever hold high political office . Because if not .. no words. *facepalm*

I think Greta had a WTF moment of her own there, right before the question about Bristol!

Palin is a "SPUDNUT".

Greta is a lawyer, she is supposedly smart & educated.

Educated I'll grant you, but that does not imply smart. After all, we are talking about somebody who has a show on Faux News.

Back in the late '60's at the height of our space activities, I happened to see figure, from two separate sources, on how much we were spending per year on NASA and on picking up litter on Interstate highways. We were spending slightly more picking up litter than we were spending on NASA.

[Insert tasteless Space Shuttle Columbia joke linking litter to space shuttle program here]

You have to admire her really. She is so determined to provide us with an answer, any answer, so the mouth opens, the brain disengages and a string of utter verbal diorrhea spews out. She is the political equivalent of a really bad shellfish.

Please, could someone tell me what this means? "..one of these Sputnik moments he would aspire Americans to celebrate, and he needs to remember that ...."

This woman was seriously considered for the post of Vice-President? Your country is not going to have another American century, not if such utterly stupid people like Ms Palin and Ms Bachmann(now that is one completely context-free person)can get into office.

The USA was not in any "space race" when Sputnik went into orbit. The reason there was a space race was that the USA got a severe kick in its complacency, and went on a national drive to catch up. That is the kind of mood that Obama is trying to crystallise.

And Palin's alternative vision is a doughnut shop? Did I miss something, or was doughnut technology the reason for the present pre-eminence of the USA?