Russian RD-180 Rocket Engine Limit Overturned, McCain Furious and Threatens Outright ban

John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, believes fervently in the importance of the authorizing committees, those bodies charged with making congressional policy and placing restrictions on weapons program spending.

Today, McCain lost a battle against the appropriators, that small group of powerful legislative leaders who decide how much money the executive branch will get to spend. The senior senator from Arizona has waged a passionate campaign to restrict how many RD-180 rocket engines the United Launch Alliance may use to loft enormous national security satellites into orbit aboard Atlas V rockets.

link.  2nd link.

McCain is REALLY mad: full text of his blow up.  

Shelby flips a bird back.

McCain Blasts the United Launch Alliance for Manufacturing a Crisis

Just days after United Launch Alliance dropped out of the Pentagon’s competition to send satellites into space, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee accused the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint venture of attempting to “manufacture a crisis” for military space launch.

“Recent attempts by the incumbent contractor to manufacture a crisis by prematurely diminishing its stockpile of engines purchased prior to the Russian invasion of Crimea should be viewed with skepticism and scrutinized heavily,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wrote in a Thursday letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss.

ULA’s dropping out of the Air Force’s GPS III Launch Services completion, a crucial phase of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program, should not be “misconstrued” as a reason to undermine planned sanctions on Russia, McCain warned.

By bowing out, ULA made good on its threat to skip the competition unless it got relief from the Fiscal Year 2015 defense budget's ban on the use of Russian RD-180 rocket engines for military satellite launches after 2019. ULA, which relies on the Russian RD-180 rocket engine to power its Atlas V rocket, earlier this year begged the Defense Department for some relief from the ban, which was established in response to Moscow's annexation of Crimea last year. But the Pentagon refused.

link.

McCain is also urging lawmakers to uphold the ban on more RD-180s.

oh my

I always knew Tigh looked like McCain, which I thought was intentional, but...oh...my.

Sooo...

Why isn't Obama just smacking McCain around like a little...ahem?

I mean, the economy is going bonkers. We have a war that we are still in that he has promised to draw to a close. We have another war that we are slipping up in and...we have the single most unpopular President in decades, if not ever, in office. Not to mention he's far more articulate than McCain is on the stump.

Why does it seem that the whole election is really a toss up?

With the pronunciations of a landslide prior, I'm wondering: what the heck is up?

Strong Words: an Excerpt from McCain's Speech

If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you’re disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. Enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed. Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier. Because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.

I’m going to fight for my cause every day as your President. I’m going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I’m an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight with me.

Fight for what’s right for our country.

Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.

Fight for our children’s future.

Fight for justice and opportunity for all.

Stand up to defend our country from its enemies.

Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America.

Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We’re Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.

Amen.

Words to live by.

Too bad the base doesn't seem to get it. They'd rather heckle and get nasty.

*sighs*

Double Stinker

Both Obama and McCain voted for telecom immunity & warrantless wire tapping bill. I cannot believe that Obama did that. McCain, I can believe since he's sucking up to Shrubbish to win over the Concons, but Congress and the Senate are by and large in Democratic hands.

phaw.

Small update: Obama originally said he'd filibuster anything like this. Then he didn't. No flipflop there.

AvWeek: The Candidates on Aerospace

Special report looks at presidential candidates' agendas, immediate priorities, and implications for A&D

This week's Aviation Week & Space Technology zeros in on Senators John McCain and Barack Obama and where they stand on aviation, aerospace and defense issues. As the lead article by Editor-in-Chief Anthony L. Velocci Jr. states, "For many aerospace and aviation interests, McCain is a known but feared quantity, while Obama is a blank slate."

AW&ST's discussions with political advisers and reviews of public records provide the backdrop for a thorough analysis of the aviation, aerospace and defense industry under the next president. The report examines key industry challenges the next U.S. president will face, including America's role in future space exploration, defense modernization, and a crumbling civil aviation infrastructure; these issues will be exacerbated by a huge national debt and a war on two fronts.

Aviation Week did pretty much a whole issue dedicated to the question. I don't have it, but its worth noting for those that want to run to the library. As far as space exploration goes, McCain states he wants to stay the course. As far as Obama is concerned, he wants to ax the manned portions of what's planned. Alas. As far as aerospace cotnracting is concerned, AvWeek says it best as far as McCain is concerned: feared, but known. Obama on the other hand is a complete unknown. I suspect that he'll come through with an ax though to pay for his other programs.

McCain Wants More "Prizes"

The presumed Republican nominee is proposing a $300 million government prize to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. The bounty would equate to $1 for every man, woman and child in the country, "a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency," McCain said in remarks prepared for delivery Monday at Fresno State University in California.

McCain said such a device should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs and have "the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars."

The Arizona senator is also proposing stiffer fines for automakers who skirt existing fuel-efficiency standards, as well as incentives to increase use of domestic and foreign alcohol-based fuels such as ethanol.

In addition, a so-called Clean Car Challenge would provide U.S. automakers with a $5,000 tax credit for every zero-carbon emissions car they develop and sell.

This has long been a favorite of the Right. At least online. What do you all think? I can hardly be called an objective PoV here.

Prez Run: A Touch of Energy (Policy)

There's something to like - and hate - from both Presidential candidates' energy proposed energy policies. Neither one makes me particularly happy, really, and both seem to be playing to their constituents. Big surprise that! Let's touch on some specifics. Unfortunately, McCain, other than his recent press releases, seems to be rather vague, so forgive me if I screw this a tad.

On the plus side, but candidates are talking about energy independence. This is something loooong overdue and really should have been considered by some other administration as far back as the 1970s after the OPEC embargo induced price shock. Kudos for them both for at least making the right mouth motions and air exhalations. At least they both say they want to do this.

Obama puts out some good proposals. One of them is the renewable energy requirements: 25% of electricity being renewable by 2025 and the embracing of biofuels, especially the cellosic ethanol. McCain's made mouth motions too about this, but not to the same degree and not as concretely.

McCain does something a little braver in one respect. He claims to have embraced nuclear power in a big way. He wants to increase the number of nuclear reactors by 45 by 2030 from the 100 something now. Obama pans this one. Oh, he doesn't outright reject it, but he does rather poo-poo the idea. Nuclear power just isn't a seller among the Democratic base generally.

Both of them, much to my gut wrenching sickness, state they want 'clean coal.' While I recognize that coal is a vital, current member of our energy mixture, I don't think it really belongs to our future whatsoever. Clean coal requires so much research its ridiculous. You know that carbon sequestration demo coal power plant that DOE was developing? The one that most of the world was excitedly waiting to see if it would solve the CO2 emission issue on a per plant basis? Well, it was cancelled. Why? The costs were spiraling out of control. It's necessary budget doubled without much work getting done to well over a billion dollars and nearing two. This one strikes me a near impossibility to reach and I cannot like any proposal for this. *shrugs*

However, I have to express my skepticism about anything proposed for after any administration's tenure. At best, Obama will have been out of office for nine years (a full administration cycle and a bit) by then and who knows whether or not his successor will continue said policy. This criticism is for McCain, too, btw, with his prognostications about 2030, 14 years, nearly two (!) administration cycles.

blast. Out of time. Meeting coming up and I have a fully booked day after that.

What to do with the Carbon Tax/C&P Dinero?

A debate has started up as what to do with the money we'll get from the carbon tax or cap and trade plans. Both McCain and Obama are planning on a cap and trade scheme. Obama's will have an immediate auction while McCain's will have an allocation initially without auction and then phase in an auction over time. Both have issues - big price jumps and initial lobbyist uber influence, respectively - but I am not going to discuss that in this post. For now, this post is dealing with what I'll call carbon money.

There's a tussle online over what to do with the dinero. It's going to be a LOT of money. The permits could be worth $7 trillion by 2050. If you ponder that, even if you spread that over 40 years, that's something like $175 billion dollars per year. That's a nontrivial chunk of change there. What are we going to do with it?

Before we tackle that, you have to keep some things in mind. First, this is not a long term, guaranteed revenue stream. The whole point is that this is to make up for the 'market failure' of failing to get rid of carbon dioxide emitting industries. Or in the very least get the resources to offset or mitigate the damages from those industries that emit but are irreplaceable. This does mean the revenue stream, even if the auctioned price each year rises should and is intended to fall: we don't want the industries to keep emitting!

Therefore, anything that we want to spend this money on must be short term funding items. The most popular idea is to fund the development of technology to replace the fossil fuels with renewables and other alternate technologies. that's the thrust of the Lieberman bill that McCain backs. Another suggestion might be to set up an insurance fund that would cover the problems that may stem from the large scale implementation of nuclear power plants. Environmental clean up is another suggestion I've come across. Space projects could be yet another. Education reform yet another. There are plenty of suggestions and at an average of $187 billion there's a nontrivial amount of money to be had. There's one suggestion that I came across, I am not so sure is a good idea.

Robert Reich suggested, here and above, to give it all back, to send out dividend checks to the people each year.

I am less than enthused with this option. Each American would get about $625. My family would get about $1,875. While I'd appreciate that amount (!), I have to say that I think someone needs to sit down and do the math associated with moving the money around in the economy like this. I may have time for this but I doubt it.

It also seems to be terrible short sighted. Rather than investing in something, it's merely a redistribution of wealth. Perhaps an unwise method for one at that.

Small Update: Climate Feedback has more.

McCain: I am intrigued by a man on Mars

Presumptive Republican White House nominee John McCain said Thursday he would like to see a manned mission to Mars as part of a "better set of priorities" for NASA that would better engage the public.

[...]

"I am intrigued by a man on Mars and I think that it would excite the imagination of the American people if we can say, 'Hey, here's what it looks like," he said.

"We know that now, and here's what may be there and let's all join in that project. I think Americans would be very willing to do that."

That's great...if we can believe him.

John McCain is known for his spending hacks. He's rather proud of that. NASA would require a lot of money at the best of times for getting a man on Mars. While McCain's as stubborn as they come and I could see him sticking to his commitment to get the funding...if he's really serious.

The reason I keep coming back to the 'if he's serious part' is that one of his very annoying talking points from the debates was the study of DNA of bears. He cracked jokes about whether or not it's a question of their paternity or not. Frankly, the man doesn't seem to have much of a clue about basic research nor does he seem to be interested in understanding why such basic research might be of use.

Being disinterest in science has already made one President less than good for our country...

McCain's Stance on Puerto Rico

Mike dropped by and asked what was McCain's stance on Puerto Rico. Should it be a state? Should it be an independent country? Should it remain an unincorporated territory (ie colony)? Since I already blogged a little about Obama's stance and Hillary's fight to get the Puerto Rican delegates, I really ought to say something about McCain's stance as well.

McCain's stance is that he embraces the President's Task Force on Puerto Rico's Status. He is a cosponsor of Senate Bill 1936 "Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2007." He has stated that he wants to make a permanent resolution to the island's status. He has stated that he would be willing to sign, as President, either the House or Senate version of the bill. Even though the Senate version of the bill allows for Commonwealth status, McCain wants Luis Fortuno who is a very strong advocate of statehood to act as an adviser. That, and the fact that HR900 is loaded towards statehood, would imply he backs statehood.

News links are here and here.