In politics its usually used as the opposite of dogmatic, i.e. doing what is considered right by whatever "expert" tells you to do what you like to do instead of doing the standard-play of your political affiliation/ideology.

Is tonight's speech not considered a State of the Union address? It seems all the articles simply refer to it as "his speech to a joint session of Congress".

It took me a few articles to realize what it was because nobody referred to it as such.

You can have a speech in front of a joint session of Congress and it not be a State of the Union address.

The president can call for a joint session of Congress whenever he wants IIRC.

There is a great recording of Nixon and Ehrlichman discussing homosexuality after Nixon watched an episode of "All In The Family" in 1971. Nixon ends up talking about San Francisco and fashion designers who hate women. Good stuff. Worth the 10 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TivVcfSBVSM

oh, this is funny:

Dumping Phelps Over Bong Rip Damages Kellogg's Brand Reputation

When Kellogg announced it would not renew its endorsement contract with Olympic medalist Michael Phelps after a photo of the athelete smoking pot surfaced, it may have cost the food company its sterling reputation, reports company reputation index Vanno.

Out of the 5,600 company reputations Vanno monitors, Kellogg ranked ninth before it booted Phelps. Now it's ranked 83. Not even an industry-wide peanut scare inflicted as much damage on the food company's reputation.

http://www.businessinsider.com/dumpi...utation-2009-2

State of the Union addresses aren't typically done when a President first comes into office.

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Old-Ex...VzaWRlbnRiYXI-

I think I regret making at least 80% of my posts in OOT. Is this high?

It's probably an order of magnitude or so higher than the average OOTer. On the other hand, the average OOTer should be ashamed of 95% or so of his own posts. Most likely, you've overshot your estimate and the actual number of shameworthy posts you've made is lower.

That was pretty awesome.

It's doing away with ideology that doesn't work in favor of recognizing real consequences and real effects. So, guys like Obama go "**** this ideology of free markets, clearly it doesn't work. We have to be pragmatic here, and realize that the people need help! Bailouts! gogogogo"

LOL

http://www.switched.com/2009/02/23/c...nigerian-scam/

I saw in the paper today that someone has printed a small paperback book of quotations from Pres Obama. Can anyone think of a similar book of quotations by a leftist?

The Looming Crisis at the Pentagon

Not that vr will be able to read it; I'm told the Pentagon blocks LRC. Surprise!

Planning for the F-22 began in 1986, when the Cold War was still alive (even if on life support), and the Air Force was trumpeting its fears that the other superpower, the USSR, was planning a new, ultra-fast, highly maneuverable fighter.

By the time the prototype F-22 had its roll-out on May 11, 1997, the Cold War was nearly a decade in its grave, and it was perfectly apparent that the Soviet aircraft it was intended to match would never be built. Lockheed Martin, the F-22's prime contractor, naturally argued that we needed it anyway and made plans to sell some 438 airplanes for a total tab of $70 billion. By mid-2008, only 183 F-22s were on order, 122 of which had been delivered. The numbers had been reduced due to cost overruns. The Air Force still wants to buy an additional 198 planes, but Secretary Gates and his leading assistants have balked. No wonder. According to arms experts Bill Hartung and Christopher Preble, at more than $350 million each, the F-22 is "the most expensive fighter plane ever built."

The F-22 has several strikingly expensive characteristics which actually limit its usefulness. It is allegedly a stealth fighter – that is, an airplane with a shape that reduces its visibility on radar – but there is no such thing as an airplane completely invisible to all radar. In any case, once it turns on its own fire-control radar, which it must do in combat, it becomes fully visible to an enemy.

The F-22 is able to maneuver at very high altitudes, but this is of limited value since there are no other airplanes in service anywhere that can engage in combat at such heights. It can cruise at twice the speed of sound in level flight without the use of its afterburners (which consume fuel at an accelerated rate), but there are no potential adversaries for which these capabilities are relevant. The plane is obviously blindingly irrelevant to "fourth-generation wars" like that with the Taliban in Afghanistan – the sorts of conflicts for which American strategists inside the Pentagon and out believe the United States should be preparing.

Actually, the U.S. ought not to be engaged in fourth-generation wars at all, whatever planes are in its fleet. Outside powers normally find such wars unwinnable, as the history of Afghanistan, that "graveyard of empires" going back to Alexander the Great, illustrates so well. Unfortunately, President Obama's approach to the Bush administration's Afghan War remains deeply flawed and will only entrap us in another quagmire, whatever planes we put in the skies over that country.

Nonetheless, the F-22 is still being promoted as the plane to buy almost entirely through front-loading and political engineering. Some apologists for the Air Force also claim that we need the F-22 to face the F-16. Their argument goes this way: We have sold so many F-16s to allies and Third World customers that, if we ever had to fight one of them, that country might prevail using our own equipment against us. Some foreign air forces like Israel's are fully equipped with F-16s and their pilots actually receive more training and monthly practice hours than ours do.

This, however, seems a trivial reason for funding more F-22s. We should instead simply not get involved in wars with former allies we have armed, although this is why Congress prohibited Lockheed from selling the F-22 abroad. Some Pentagon critics contend that the Air Force and prime contractors lobby for arms sales abroad because they artificially generate a demand for new weapons at home that are "better" than the ones we've sold elsewhere.

Thanks to political engineering, the F-22 has parts suppliers in 44 states, and some 25,000 people have well-paying jobs building it. Lockheed Martin and some in the Defense Department have therefore proposed that, if the F-22 is cancelled, it should be replaced by the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, also built by Lockheed Martin.

Most serious observers believe that this would only make a bad situation worse. So far the F-35 shows every sign of being, in Chuck Spinney's words, "a far more costly and more troubled turkey" than the F-22, "even though it has a distinction that even the F-22 cannot claim, namely it is tailored to meet the same threat that… ceased to exist at least three years before the F-35 R&D [research and development] program began in 1994."

The F-35 is considerably more complex than the F-22, meaning that it will undoubtedly be even more expensive to repair and will break down even more easily. Its cost per plane is guaranteed to continue to spiral upwards. The design of the F-22 involves 4 million lines of computer code; the F-35, 19 million lines. The Pentagon sold the F-35 to Congress in 1998 with the promise of a unit cost of $184 million per aircraft. By 2008, that had risen to $355 million per aircraft and the plane was already two years behind schedule.

According to Pierre M. Sprey, one of the original sponsors of the F-16, and Winslow T. Wheeler, a 31-year veteran staff official on Senate defense committees, the F-35 is overweight, underpowered, and "less maneuverable than the appallingly vulnerable F-105 'lead sled' that got wiped out over North Vietnam in the Indochina War." Its makers claim that it will be a bomber as well as a fighter, but it will have a payload of only two 2,000-pound bombs, far less than American fighters of the Vietnam era. Although the Air Force praises its stealth features, it will lose these as soon as it mounts bombs under its wings, which will alter its shape most un-stealthily.

It is a non-starter for close-air-support missions because it is too fast for a pilot to be able to spot tactical targets. It is too delicate and potentially flammable to be able to withstand ground fire. If built, it will end up as the most expensive defense contract in history without offering a serious replacement for any of the fighters or fighter-bombers currently in service.

These fighter planes may come in handy should we be attacked by aliens. However, studies of movies on HBO have shown that our planes may not be able to penetrate their defenses.

Don't worry, Jeff Goldblum will write a virus. All the aliens use windows.

Although I agree with cutting the budget on the F-22 and F-35, there are several inaccuracies in that article:

There most certainly are Russian planes in development that threaten our current jets. The Chinese are in the beginning stages of building a similar jet. Weapons like these are superior to our existing fleet of F-15s and F-16s.

The planes can be configured to make them stealthy (no external armament) or for a heavier payload depending on the mission. They can carry the two 2,000 bombs internally or more weapons externally. They also have radars that are designed to minimize the chance of detection.

It seems the preferred weapon of choice nowadays for close air support is a GPS guided bomb dropped from high altitude. You can load this weapon on practically anything.

Perhaps, but I would wager that they will never come into service because the Russians are going to be bankrupt in 3 months.

This does not contradict the article.

Which supports my point.

The wiki you linked says this

the f-22 wiki says this

It is hard to contend that the F-22 was built to protect against a Russian plane that hasn't had its maiden flight 6 years after the first PRODUCTION f-22 came off the lines.

Secondly even if the Russians had such a plane it would not be a threat on its own, they would need at least a few dozen and probably a few hundred to seriously threaten the US air superiority. Finally they would still be outclassed by our land and sea capabilities. The only risk is that they develop it and sell it to someone we are at war with.

I would go to my mom's home and hopefully meet up with as much family as I could and go from there. It would not matter either way, I would be pretty screwed imo.

why do pvn and iron81 have the same avatar?!?!??!?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1EhtUSxjnM

One is sarcastic, the other worshipful.

Maybe I'll switch to one of these:

Who is ElliotR's avatar?