It's really sad considering the last two VP's the Democrats have put up are a World Class Aldulterer and this guy- Victor Hanson at The Corner:
And the Media Worries about Palin's Experience and McCain's Age? [Victor Davis Hanson]
I think in the space of about the last 24 hours, Joe Biden claimed that the AIG bailout was bad, but then said it wasn't bad;
that we did not need to burn coal;
that his apology about the dirty McCain ad was, as they say, inoperative;
that FDR once went on television to address the nation after the stock market crash of '29 (that's a twofer that trumps Obama's Americans liberating Auschwitz);
and all but said that McCain took a $50,000 bribe.
Not a bad day's work — encompassing terrible energy policy, flip-flopping, historical ignorance, and slander. And this comes on top of Palin the "good looking" "Lt. Governor" of Alaska, Hillary as the better VP pick than himself, the patriotism of paying higher taxes, and so on.
And those in turn come on top of the primary remarks about Indians in donut shops, and "bright and clean" blacks. And those in turn come on top of . . . (Well, go back to the pilfered speeches and made-up bios.)
Something is very wrong here. While most forgive the silly slip like "Barack America" or asking the wheel-chair bound to stand up, I think the Obama staff must have gone from amusement to embarrassment and now to serious concern whether Biden is up to the job.
Had this been Palin, the election would now be over.
This of course isn't surprising to anyone. Palin managed to meet a bunch of World Leaders recently and people were more interested in talking about how dumb she is.
If Biden and Edwards are your alternatives, I'll take dumb, thanks.
First up is the latest from NASA's Swift Satellite, which recently (ho-hum) picked up the single most luminous event ever witnessed by humans. Take it away NASA-
On March 19, 2008, Swift discovered a bright Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB 080319B). The image shows the X-ray afterglow as seen by the X-Ray Telescope (left) and the bright optical afterglow as observed by the Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope on board Swift.
"Naked-Eye" Gamma-Ray Burst Was Aimed Squarely at Earth 10 September 2008 -- Unparalleled data from satellites and observatories around the globe show that the jet from a powerful stellar explosion on 19 March was aimed almost directly at Earth. The event, called a gamma-ray burst, became bright enough for human eyes to see. The burst's extraordinary brightness arose from a jet that shot material directly toward Earth at 99.99995 percent the speed of light.
NASA's Swift satellite detected the explosion -- formally called GRB 080319B -- at 2:13 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time that morning and pinpointed its position in the constellation Boötes. The Swift satellite is controlled by Penn State University from its Mission Operations Center at University Park, and Penn State led in the development and assembly of two of the Swift satellite's three telescopes. "Swift was designed to find unusual bursts," says Swift principal investigator Neil Gehrels at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "We really hit the jackpot with this one."
By the way, this Gamma Ray Burst was 7.5 billion light years away, which is more than halfway across the visible Universe. Very cool, and even cooler that it did not irradiate the entire planet with lethal high-energy gamma and X-rays in a matter of seconds. That would be bad, mmmmkay?
Also we have the latest from the Rosetta Mission . It recently flew within 800km of an asteroid known as Steins, which is orbiting in our solar system more than 220 million miles from Earth, whilst en route to the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In 2015 Rosetta will do with a comet what NASA did with an asteroid during the NEAR Shoemaker mission in 2001: land a spacecraft on said comet/asteroid and ideally transmit back some data.
Here is the 3-mile wide in diameter asteroid Steins-For an amazing video, click here and watch the actual animation of the raw data from Rosetta as it flew by Steins.
Yes, since you didn't ask I'll tell you: if this asteroid was on its way to earth and scheduled to hit us within the next five years, we would be pretty much farked. We have nothing remotely capable of diverting a 3 mile wide asteroid from it's pre-ordained path that is available to launch in the next five years.
Yes, the folks at the B612 Project Foundation are one of the only groups currently doing anything about this. As former astronaut and current B612 Foundation contributor Ed Lu and said recently-"The number of people, worldwide, who are actively working on this problem, is enough to staff one shift at McDonalds. And that's about accurate."
Sure looks pretty though, don't it?
And finally in somewhat related deep space news, they turned on the Large Hadron Collider and sent a pair of photon beams around the 17 mile long path in different directions successfully. No, they didn't create any mini-black holes which was the latest fad conspiracy. And they won't when they send the other photon beam in to collide with the first one. Hopefully.
It will take about a month for scientists to align the proton beams traveling in opposite directions in the LHC so that proton-proton collisions are generated. The LHC will create almost a billion such collisions per second at an energy of 14 trillion electron volts. These collisions will take place at four points around its 17-mile ring, where the four main LHC experiments, including CMS, are located.
"This is an extremely important moment," said Clare, a professor of physics. "We are now on the verge of making hopefully many discoveries over the next years in our understanding of particle physics and how the universe works. For the first time in a long time, we will be breaking new ground. We may discover the Higgs boson; we may discover supersymmetry. We may discover completely new and unexpected phenomena, which would be by far the most exciting prospect."
Current Las Vegas odds put them at around 40:1 according to various sources, so there's what people with money think.
The majority of the talking heads on TV, print and alternative media don't even see the Titans finishing any better than the Houston Texans, and in most cases worse. There is a strong argument to be made that the AFC South actually has four playoff teams that should be playing in January, as they had the most last year with three. I can describe it in many ways, but the AFC South is one of the harder divisions to play in primarily because they have to play each other so much. There are no off days on division games. It is somewhat like the argument that the SEC makes in the NCAA Championship every year- "If we didn't have to play each other, we would've been undefeated". Actually, I guess it's like that for a reason; there are a ton of SEC players in the AFC South.
I normally don't make any pointless predictions about the season for any of the teams I like to follow, but this year I'm breaking with tradition.
THE TENNESSEE TITANS WILL WIN THE SUPER BOWL.
No hold on, I know what you're saying; Vince Young, no wide receivers. How can a team win a Super Bowl with a talented yet unpolished QB, and a wide receiver corps who would get shut down by Vanderbilt's secondary on most days? I don't necessarily disagree with these facts, because they are facts.
Vince Young has tons of talent but has been downright ugly at times in his decision making adjustments since he came to the the NFL. I've seen just about every NFL game snap he's had in the two years he's played. The list of plays he's made have ranged from walk-off homeruns in over time, like this-
I think this is the year that Vince gets it together, mainly because Mike Heimerdinger has replaced Norm Chow as the Offensive coordinator. One thing Vince is not is a Matt Leinart Pac-10 style drop back QB. Chow and Young were never going to see eye to eye, and I'm not sure Chow worked all that well with McNair either. The last time Coach Heimerdinger was in charge of the Titans offense, Steve McNair shared the MVP of league with Peyton Manning. I have every reason to believe that Vince Young will fit better with Coach Heimerdinger based on what he was able to do with Steve McNair in terms of style. Steve was also a QB who could get the job done wth his legs too, running for four TD's in the 2003 MVP season. I think this was the problem with Vince last year, and it has now been corrected.
If Vince plays better, expect to see less whining about our Wide Receiver corps, because they do have some potential in the two Justin's- McCareins and Gage. Plus, the addition of pro-bowl Tight End Algae Crumpler will be a much needed safety valve option for Vince. Crumpler is used to playing with a non-traditional QB from his days with Michael Vick from Atlanta, so this could really be interesting.
Other than these two issues and the normal injury-free hopes for the starters, I can't really find any other big problems with the 2008 Titans lineup. The Defense appears ready to pick up where it left off last year. If pro-bowlers Albert Haynesworth and Kyle Vanden Bosch stay healthy, no one will be running against us, and our secondary is a year less green with true studs emerging at CB Courtland Finnegan and at safety Michael Griffin. We have one of the best LB's in the business in Keith Bulluck. Did I mention The Freak is back? Yes, Jevon Kearse has come back for another year to terrorize AFC South QB's again. How about thunder and lightning in the backfield with Lendale "Bowling Ball" White and Chris "What was that?" Johnson ?
Watch this run from Chris from this years preseason game against the Rams-
This kid should be fun to watch.
So there's my argument. I have no reason to root for or desire anything less than a Super Bowl Title for the Tennessee Titans. When you root for your team you should throw the odds and the talking heads out the window and cheer for them to win the whole damn thing. Why would I want to write anything less with this team? Sure, they have some issues, but which team doesn't?
Last year the Giants started out 35-1 odds to win the Super Bowl.
