01.21.11

The Bullshit Manufacturer, second part

Posted in Stumble and Fail at 1:41 pm by George Smith

On the Sputnik moment — that point where your brain has stopped working, you can no longer tell the truth, and you’ve turned it all over to being a pleasing sounding hack, alleged to be coming in the State of the Union address:

“The great majority of the speech,” says press secretary Robert Gibbs, “will be on the steps … that we need to take in the short term that relate to jobs, and steps that we need to take in the medium and the long term to put our fiscal house in order, and to increase our competitiveness and our innovation that allows us to create the jobs of tomorrow.”

The president has been testing themes for his State of the Union speech for months. In December in North Carolina, he compared today’s economic challenge to 1957, when the Soviet Union sent a satellite called Sputnik into orbit, causing the United States to wake up and boost its investments in science and technology.

He has the opportunity in this speech to continue to be the president of all the people, which has been at the heart of his political appeal since he burst on the scene in 2004.

– Bill Galston, former Clinton White House aide

“So, 50 years later, our generation’s Sputnik moment is back …”

Or, from Howard Fineman, reprinted everywhere:

Expect the president on Tuesday to hearken back to that time, and to say we face another “Sputnik moment” — an economic one. The Soviet Union and the Cold War are gone. In its place are China and a more benign but still as crucial struggle for primacy.

Instead of threatening to blow each other to kingdom come, the United States and China are striving to out-produce and out-consume each other.

And the U.S. is falling behind.

In December:

Without detailing specific new proposals, the president told community college teachers and students it was time for an American “Sputnik moment” — referring to the 1957 Soviet satellite launch that jolted the U.S. into jump-starting its own space and science programs.

“We need a commitment to innovation we haven’t seen since President Kennedy challenged us to go to the moon,” Obama said.

The speech was a preview of Obama’s State of the Union address early next year and his 2011 agenda as he grapples with a divided Congress over the next two years, aides said.

“Right now the hard truth is this,” Obama said. “In the race for the future, America is in danger of falling behind. That’s just the truth. And if you hear a politician say it’s not, they’re just not paying attention.”

When Sputnik went up the US was poised to make a big muscle and move forward.

Now, the evidence is everywhere that a deadly atrophy is deeply rooted in the land.

Preparing to cheer us all on with a zinc-plated cliche which stupid people can smile and clap their hands to seems to be just more evidence of it.

Sputnik moment and DD’s law:

The appearance of the word Sputnik or any reference to a Sputnik kind of moment in any argument signals the person who dropped it needs a pie in the face.

Related rubbish: Invocation of the need for a new Manhattan Project or ‘if we can put a man on the moon’ …

Any suggestions? “We will build a new Hoover Dam of job creation, innovation and renewal …”

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