Sirius99

The government has been encouraging consolidation of contractors for years - both intentionally and unintentionally. However, a "no-bid" contract is a partisan and inaccurate representation of how this works. It is called sole source contracting, and there are tons of stipulations in the (monstrous) Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) which puts any of these types of contracts under a TON of scrutiny - including scrutiny from the GAO and Congress, which if I recall correctly, is made up of Democrats as well as Republicans. A bid is most DEFINITELY required and several rounds of negotiatons typically happen prior to the contract being let. Bottom line, Congress authorized this kind of acquisition by enacting the pertinent laws and also, via committee at least, participated in the source selection process. Any member of congress who proclaims ignorance regarding this decidedly imperfect process has abdicated their responsibilities.

Congress????? DUH!!! President of the United States! JK could end the war on terrorism, balance the budget, and unify the world all before happy hour!! JK for Pres in '08!!!

double ditto

At least you got part of yours right. Of course, as usual, you completely misrepresented anything that didn't either agree with your partisan agenda, or fall into your narrow view of what this thread should be about. It is useless for me to try to explain your errors, since you have ignored me at least twice in this thread, then completely distorted my point so as to make it unrecognizable as mine. Hence, were I to try, I would simply be re-typing my previous posts, and I really have better things to do. I guess RIBillsFan was right.

I thought you are a lawyer? Aren't you familiar with witness biases and credibility? You use Buckley's background as a conservative as a central reason for selecting his article for the post. You admitted that serveral times. However, when I bring up other parts of his background that make his stance completely non-news worthy, you cry foul and say "woe is me the liberal being oppressed by the mean old conservatives". His rather dramatic experience facilitating the overthrow of the Mexican government when employed by the CIA makes him less than credible in this area. He may be right, but you can't tout his background in one breath and dismiss it in another. Unless you don't mind being intellectually dishonest.

Yes, everyone's is and must be considered. That't the point. I made that pretty clear. None. I don't believe he's a conservative either. Once again, these are not a surprise coming from Buckley. As I said in my first post, this is not new nor shocking.

You have presented Buckley's comments as some sort of proof that conservatives now consider the "war in Iraq a failure". First, that is statistically invalid. One cannot make that kind of extrapolation. Second, one must consider the source to evaluate what individual biases may be affecting the individual's opinion. Buckley's brief CIA experience has most definitely tainted his opinion regarding this type of issue. Also, he has publicly stated he does not believe GWB is a conservative. That does not mean his opinion is without merit. It just means this type of writing from him is absolutely not a surprise, so your posting of the article here as an indication that Bush's support base is turning on him is inaccurate. Suprising would be an article from Buckely praising GWB in these areas. It has been obvious for some time that you have no intention of discussing the merits of any of these issues, so your critcism in that regard is hypocritical.

Buckely has never been a fan of GWB, and is generally not in favor of forcible regime change, especially when an area does not have democratic history. So this is either a tautology, or a no duh. Either way it's not news and I fail to see any appreciable point.

Why yes I am, how'd you guess? And on the way down South, I stopped by Office Max to pick up a dozen or so laser pointers. I'm a-huntin' them thar satalight thingys today...

My name is not Tom, and you said "Geo" orbit. What exactly does that mean to you? To anyone in the space business, it means "geosynchronous". In the context of this <ridiculous> thread, nothing outside of Geo means anything. Beyond that altitude, the missions are non-Earth scientific and/or interplanetary in nature. A polar orbit as highly eliptical as your moronic example would be unstable. There is a reason currently orbiting polar birds are circular. So brainiac, what is this mission of which you speak that is HEO, polar, and has an apogee of 60000 miles and a perigee of 4000 miles. I'm dying to know. Is your last name Kepler per chance?

Geosynchronous orbits are nowhere near 60,000 miles. And supersynch's are transfer orbits only. Wrong again, Euclid.

Yeah, too bad he didn't read 'NFL Drafting for Dummies' by Mike Ditka.

Yeah, that Andre Johnson guy is terrible