Fly Him To The Moon One Last Time

Arguably the most famous astronaut in human history has passed.  Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, died this afternoon at the age of 82, after undergoing heart surgery earlier this month.

"We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures," Armstrong's family said in a statement obtained by CNN affiliate WKRC.

Armstrong underwent heart surgery this month.

"While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves," his family said.

"For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."

Many Americans and even the history books omit how Armstrong earned his wings saving the Gemini 8 crew some three years earlier.  After the first successful docking of a spacecraft in orbit, the Gemini 8 capsule nearly met with disaster.

As Gemini 8 tumbled wildly at 17,500 miles per hour, Armstrong decided the problem had to be a stuck thruster. He and Scott shut off each of the spacecraft's 16 orbital maneuvering system thrusters one at a time. Thruster Number 8 did not respond.

"All we've got left is the reentry control system," Armstrong told Scott. Armstrong believed those thrusters, more powerful than standard thrusters because they positioned the spacecraft for reentry, would override the stuck thruster.

"Press on," Scott said.

Both astronauts wavered on the edge of losing consciousness. At first, nothing happened. After turning the system off, then on for a second time, the reentry thrusters responded.

Armstrong guided the capsule to a water landing in the Pacific where the Navy deployed to snag the reentry vehicle.  His quick thinking and cool head made him the obvious choice as mission commander when the Apollo 11 mission launched in 1969, where he became the first man on the moon.

Here's to you, Neil.  Not very many people get to be the first person on another celestial body.

Podcast Versus The Stupid!

And we're back on schedule with PVTS #4, Mitt The Birther.  Bon and I discuss reasons why Romney has gone the full birther (hint:  screw the middle and the undedecideds, it's all about turnout) and why it means for the race.

Listen to internet radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on Blog Talk Radio

Give it a listen!

Van Damme Funny

So that the current state of things don't drive us crazy, enjoy a little amusement. I love me some Jean-Claude on a Saturday afternoon.

 

Paul Ryan Visits Springfield

The reception wasn't warm.

From the News-Leader article:

Brigitte Channel, also of Springfield, said she was protesting not only Ryan, but other Republicans such as Todd Akin who spoke last weekend about abortion.

"They are both advocates of not letting a woman have a choice," Channel said.

The dominoes are falling.  It isn't a lot right now, but a lot of Missourians are disgusted.  A lot of people are starting to realize the line of reality has been crossed.  Recent events have splattered mud on the Romney campaign at a time when they need goodwill the most.  Todd Akin has pulled a Palin as it were, and it couldn't have happened at a better time.

Epic win.  

By the way, you may have heard about the FBI investigating threats against Todd Akin.  It wasn't me, honest.  I was at work with a legit alibi.

Bite Of The Golden Apple

The Samsung/Apple patent case came back from a jury, and Samsung just got its head handed to it.

A federal jury in California on Friday recommended that Apple be awarded more than $1 billion in damages after finding Samsung was guilty of "willful" violations of a number of Apple's patents in the creation of its own mobile products.

The jury did not recommend awarding Samsung any money in its counterclaims that Apple had violated some of its patents. The judge and lawyers from both Apple and Samsung continued to discuss the jury forms late Friday afternoon.

"This is a huge win for Apple," Mark Lemley, a Stanford law professor, said over e-mail. "$1,051,855,000 is just large enough to make it the largest surviving patent verdict in history."

In aftermarket trading, Apple stock jumped more than $12 a share, to more than $675 a share.

Samsung said the verdict should be viewed "as a loss for the American consumer."

"It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices," the company said in a written statement. "It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies.

And yes, there's definitely the case that patent law is woefully outdated in the age of the internet.  But patent law is law now, and that's what the case was argued on.  Samsung (and Google) can cry all it wants to, but this was a complete win for the Crew from Cupertino.

A billion bucks isn't chump change, either.  Who knows if Apple will see a dime after appeals, but Samsung is facing nothing but pain for years to come.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Two are dead, including the gunman, and nine more are injured as a work dispute turned deadly outside the Empire State Building in NYC yesterday.
• As the Tampa RNC Convention nears on Monday, the party is considering a call to return to the gold standard.
• Another US drone strike in Pakistan has killed 18, just one day after Pakistan's foreign minister lodged formal protests against drones to the US.
• After a week of fundraisers from oil and gas giants, Mitt Romney released a 21-page energy white paper calling for substantially more fracking and oil and gas drilling on US lands.
• Online game-maker Zynga is imploding, with its stock down 70% and now major talent jumping ship on the dying company.

Last Call

The Prop 8 all-star lawyer team of David Boies and Ted Olsen are trying to turn a long punt to the Supremes into a field goal for same-sex marriage in California, rather than going for a touchdown.

The case challenging the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 is "an attractive vehicle" for determining "whether the States may discriminate against gay men and lesbians in the provision of marriage licenses" — but the Supreme Court should pass on the case, lawyers challenging the law say, and let stand an appeals court ruling that strikes down the 2008 amendment on narrow grounds.

If the Supreme Court takes the advice of Ted Olson, David Boies and the other lawyers representing the plaintiffs in Perry v. Brown, then Proposition 8 would remain unconstitutional, as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held, and same-sex couples in California would regain the right to marry that they had been able to exercise briefly in 2008.

The proponents of the law asked the Supreme Court on July 31 to take the case and uphold the voter-initiated constitutional amendment that had the effect of reversing a California Supreme Court decision that allowed same-sex couples in the state to begin marrying under state law.

In the filing before the Supreme Court, Olson, who was President George W. Bush's top Supreme Court lawyer in the Department of Justice, is the counsel of record for the plaintiffs — meaning it is he who would be likely to make the case to the justices in oral argument should the court accept the case.

He and Boies, Al Gore's lawyer in the 2000 election recount litigation who opposed Olson at the Supreme Court, argue today that the lower court decision striking down Proposition 8 properly applied a 1996 Supreme Court case, Romer v. Evans, calling the Ninth Circuit's opinion a "straightforward application of settled Supreme Court precedent."

Now this is interesting.  What Boies and Olson are saying is that the Prop 8 ruling should be passed up for the much more germane to the entire country cases before SCOTUS of the multiple appeals courts striking down DOMA, but in the meantime, let California have gay marriage back.  Be a pal.

It's actually clever, and it's something I agree with.  It also makes an inordinate amount of sense.  It's the DOMA cases that will decide the fate of same-sex marriage in the country, and I'm betting that decision could come as early as next year.

But that also means that the Supremes could cause all kinds of chaos too.

We'll see.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Still ten weeks and change to go, and Mittens plays the birther asshole card.

The Obama campaign swiftly and harshly condemned a joke made by Mitt Romney about the president’s birth certificate on the campaign trail in Michigan Friday, saying Romney made the “decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement.”

“I love being home, in this place where Ann and I were raised, where but the both of us were born,” Romney said after introducing his wife, fellow Michigan native Ann Romney. “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place where we were born and raised.”

Ni-CLANG.

Full Birther indeed.  And still ten weeks to go.  The ni-CLANG moment is almost here folks, I can feel it.

If You Walk Down The Middle Of The Road...

...eventually you get run over.  That is the reality of our political system:  it no longer rewards compromise, cooperation, or comity.  It rewards fighting for your base.

David Brooks bemoans this of Paul Ryan:

Ryan’s fantasy happens to be the No. 1 political fantasy in America today, which has inebriated both parties. It is the fantasy that the other party will not exist. It is the fantasy that you are about to win a 1932-style victory that will render your opponents powerless. 

Every single speech in this election campaign is based on this fantasy. There hasn’t been a speech this year that grapples with the real world — that we live in a highly polarized, evenly divided nation and the next president is going to have to try to pass laws in that context. 

It’s obvious why candidates talk about the glorious programs they’ll create if elected. It fires up crowds and defines values. But we shouldn’t forget that it’s almost entirely make-believe. 

In the real world, there are almost never ultimate victories, and it is almost never the case (even if you control the White House and Congress) that you get to do what you want. 

While Andrew Sullivan bemoans this of Barack Obama.

The paradigm can still be shifted. Obama can say he didn't embrace the original commission because the necessary majority in the Congressional committee couldn't be rustled up. He can openly and rightly blame Ryan for torpedoing the sanest, most practical debt reduction we have on the table. He can tell his own party that they have to tackle entitlement spending and using the Mediscare tactic is not worthy of the constructive change Obama promised four years ago. He can even say he regretted not going out on a limb - but he thought a grand bargain could be reached through negotiation instead. GOP fanaticism stopped it.

The reason - incredibly - that Obama has not done this is a dislike of the big defense cuts and queasiness over muddying the Medicare issue against Romney. This shouldn't matter. What matters is that Obama should declare his first priority on being re-elected would be a grand bargain on the lines of Bowles-Simpson. Force Romney to say no. Isolate him on his tax extremism and defense spending boom. Show you're more serious on entitlement reform than Ryan's ideological fantasies - because you're backing the most credible, practical option available. Re-capture that sliver of the middle that wants to know what Obama wants to do in his second term. 

Both men argue their candidate can win by embracing the horrible Simpson-Bowles plan that would put the burden of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security squarely on the shoulders of the poorest Americans through sharply regressive taxes and draconian social program cuts.  Ryan won't raise taxes, he'd rather cut them on the rich.  The middle-class would lose.  Obama won't make those cuts, but he'll raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.  The wealthy would lose.

But Simpson-Bowles is "everybody loses, enjoy your austerity instead".  The real losers would in fact be the poorest Americans, socked with gas and VAT taxes on food and clothing so they "pay their share" while the middle class would get that, plus losing all the tax deductions they're used to.  The net result would be the wealthy would indeed get that tax cut and come out ahead, although not as much as they would under Ryan.  But the rest of the country would get reamed.

Funny how that's the only way out for our Village Centrists.

A Swing And A Miss: T-Mobile Style

So close.  So very, very close.

After moving last year to an unlimited data plan that throttled speed after 2 gigabytes of usage, T-Mobile on Wednesday introduced a new, true unlimited data plan.

The Unlimited Nationwide 4G Data plan will become available on Sept. 5, and it will range in price, depending on what type of existing plan it is added to.

“We’re big believers in customer-driven innovation, and our Unlimited Nationwide 4G Data plan is the answer to customers who are frustrated by the cost, complexity and congested networks of our competitors,” said a statement from T-Mobile vice president of marketing Kevin McLaughlin.

One of the new T-Mobile plan's flaws, though, is that it cannot be used for tethering -- that is, connecting multiple devices to the Internet.

Sprint is the only competitor to offer truly unlimited data, and they cost considerably more.  The iPhone is less of a competitive edge as it used to be, particularly when T-Mobile scores better phones like they have been.  Android is pulling away as the most versatile and common OS, so it isn't a deal breaker.

However, tethering is a bigger deal for many consumers.

I depend on tethering to keep me moving while I travel.  I write everywhere, and am usually on location when covering events.  Tethering lets me blog posts, pictures and Facebook with more control and better results than my phone can produce.  I'm not alone.  People who have depended on this service will hold dearly to those grandfathered plans and refuse to make any account changes for fear it will rob us of what we need most... portable Internet.

Still, it will be nice to have unlimited Pandora and video capability when the time comes.  I just hope they thought this through, because a lot of people are going to be really annoyed with this new announcement.

A Big Harry Problem

Well, some think it's a problem.  I don't so much.

TMZ reports Prince Harry had a naked pool party.  Then people get all judgmental and start saying he's a role model, how dare he, blah blah blah.

Guys... he's a prince.  He's rich, young and powerful.  The world will love him because of Di, and he's grown up under some serious pressure.  His every rebellious act was blasted to the world.  The dude got his freak on in a Vegas pool.  Whatever.  Why be a prince if you can't cut loose once in a while?  Nobody was hurt, and a good time was had by all.

Harry is a dedicated soldier.  He lost his mother at a young age and his father is a colorless turd on the lawn of the palace.  The woman who broke his mother's heart lives under that roof now, and every time a snarky word is spoken, the entire world weighs in like they have any clue what that's like.

Have fun, kid.  Shake your groove thang like nobody's watching.  Then fly home and take care of business.

It's A Beautiful Mormon, I Think I'll Go Outside And Lie

Mitt Romney has apparently decided that releasing his tax returns is against his religion, so everyone asking him to do so is a Mormon-hating bigot.

Mitt Romney has said he won't release more than two years of tax returns because "you can never satisfy the opposition research team of the Obama organization." 

But in a forthcoming interview with Parade magazine, Romney revealed a new reason why he's hesitant to release more returns: He does not want to make public his donations to the LDS Church. 

It took him long enough to come up with the reason, but now he can simply accuse anyone asking him about his tax returns that they are hostile to religious freedoms, and hate the Mormon faith.

Here's what Romney told Parade, according to The Salt-Lake Tribune:

"Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given. This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church."

The question now is "will the Village go along with this", knowing now that Mitt Romney is lying to them straight up, covering something much larger up, and openly telling them they can't ask questions of him without prior approval?

We'll see.

For The Future Files

The Blaze touting a University of Colorado election prediction model proclaiming a Romney landslide, 32 states and 320 electoral votes.

It's "been right since 1980" and stuff.  Only as Nate Silver reminds us,

Also, it's false advertising to claim CU model has predicted the last 8 elections right. It's a new model. Hasn't predicted anything yet.

Oops.  Into the future stupidity files you go, prediction!

StupidiNews!

• Norway rampage killer Anders Breivik has been sentenced to 21 years in prison for the murders of 77 people by a Norwegian court. 
• Mark David Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon in 1980, has been denied parole for the seventh time after "significant public opposition" to his release.
• The whereabouts of freelance reporter Austin Tice are unknown after a week since colleagues have heard from him covering Syria.
• Cycling legend Lance Armstrong will reportedly have his seven Tour de France titles stripped and face a lifetime ban from the sport after dropping his opposition to US Anti-Doping Agency findings.
• Meet the Google contractors whose job it is to surf the net for the really awful stuff and remove it from the search engine.

Last Call

And the giant pile-on on Mitt Romney's really awful month continues as John Cook over at Gawker has gotten his hands on nearly 1,000 pages of Bain Capital documents, detailing Mitt's mysterious quarter-billion dollar fortune.

Today, we are publishing more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested—at minimum—more than $10 million as of 2011 (that number is based on the low end of ranges he has disclosed—the true number is almost certainly significantly higher). Almost all of them are affiliated with Bain Capital, the secretive private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and ran until his departure in 1999 (or 2002, depending on whom you ask). Many of them are offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands. Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama's fiscal approach and his money managers' embrace of those same policies. They also show that some of the investments that Romney has always described as part of his retirement package at Bain weren't made until years after he left the company.

Fortune magazine's Dan Primack is already calling the documents "worthless" (really, they read all 950 pages, they promise!)  but as the New Yorker's Amy Davidson points out:

Here is reason number one thousand and forty for releasing your tax returns if you’re running for President of the United States: if you don’t, someone will try to reverse engineer them, using whatever scraps of paper are available, until they have built some sort of structure that may, in your mind, look like a clumsy papier-mâché version of your well-ordered financial house—and you will have no cause to complain; they will be performing a public service.

Mitt Romney took too long to define himself on his own terms because he couldn't do so, as the whole Todd Akin meltdown proves.  Details destroy Romney.  He counted on being an unknown, a Rorschach test to everyone, so that everyone would see what they wanted to in him.  That's what makes the Obama team counterattack so powerful:  it doesn't have to be the absolute truth, just enough of it to be politically useful to Obama.  The only thing Romney can do at this point is release more details...and the devil in those details are far worse than anything that his opponent can come up with.

 

His opponent and the media have now done so for him.  It only gets worse for him here.  All he can do is continue to lie about Obama weakening welfare requirements and supporting infanticide.

That's literally all he has left with 75 days to go.