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Egg on the face -- an Embarrassing moments in history thread

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The Hindenburg immediately comes to mind, as does the Dewey/Truman election.


Iran/Contra. Quite the fallout for a country and admin so against drugs and theocratic regimes.


Pretty much anything involving George W Bush opening his mouth, but all that is trumped by him being handed that notice "AQ determined to attack inside the US," then doing nothing for 9 months until...yeah


I think Capt Embarrassment gets extra Egg points for making that horrible joke about looking for WMDs under his note pad, while Americans are dying. Telling the Iraqi insurgency to "bring it on" definitely rates up there too. That guy getting a library named after him was just too funny, and more than a little depressing.


Oh, as Brovane already mentioned, the Hubble! Yeah we fixed it with software, but the reaction after we got it in orbit only to find out the pics looked like shit, ha!
 
kage69 said:
Oh, as Brovane already mentioned, the Hubble! Yeah we fixed it with software, but the reaction after we got it in orbit only to find out the pics looked like shit, ha!
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Hubble wasn't fixed with software, they had to fly up there & replace instruments with ones that were designed to compensate for the flawed mirror.
 
jagec said:
Exactly what I was thinking.

Actually, he didn't "steal" the election either time. The first time, he won the election despite losing the popular vote. That is because the US has a pointless, backwards way of "voting" for the President, not because of an advantage enjoyed by either side.

The second time he won fair and square. God help us all.
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You don't think we have electoral college for a damn good reason? :colbert:
 
Funny, I thought I was in OT but it appears that P&N has taken it over ...
 
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ichy said:
Hubble wasn't fixed with software, they had to fly up there & replace instruments with ones that were designed to compensate for the flawed mirror.
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You're right, they did go back up there I had forgotten. I think I was incorrectly paraphrasing the last big conversation about Hubble I had with people in the know, which was some time ago admittedly.

My friend at Goddard informs me it wasn't just the huge mirror either, he mentioned "crappy spectrograph and secondary cameras" but I think he may not even know the full tally on repairs as he wasn't in the Hubble Team. Yeah, hard to replace power supplies with software right?
 
I believe that they were able to compensate for some mirror flaws with software & fancy image processing. The pictures still weren't as pretty but a lot of the scientific data could be salvaged until astronauts did a proper fix.

Hubble had a lot of problems prior to STS-61 (the first servicing mission). Gyroscopes were going bad, there were problems with the solar arrays (http://hubblesite.org/gallery/spacecraft/13/) and there are probably a lot of other things I've forgotten about. It had been designed from the beginning to be serviced in space but the magnitude of what had to be done on the first repair mission far exceeded the original plans.
 
1306299643.jpg
 
jagec said:
Ichinisan said:
jagec said:
Exactly what I was thinking.

Actually, he didn't "steal" the election either time. The first time, he won the election despite losing the popular vote. That is because the US has a pointless, backwards way of "voting" for the President, not because of an advantage enjoyed by either side.

The second time he won fair and square. God help us all.
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You don't think we have electoral college for a damn good reason? :colbert:
Click to expand...
I'd love to hear one.
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Keep our Union together?

This system was designed so that the federal government would have the least amount of control / influence over individuals and states would have a more-direct influence. That's why they're called "states" (the word "state" is typically synonymous with "independent country"). US states are somewhat independent, and that's what the founders wanted. The federal government should only control issues concerning inter-state commerce and national security (though they've used the commerce clause to exercise FAR more control than the federal government was ever supposed to have over individuals).

States are supposed to have equal representation in federal matters, including presidential elections. Otherwise, all federal legislation would only represent the interests of those states with the highest population (New York, California), and they would also choose the POTUS every single time. Other states would be disenfranchised and there'd be no reason for them to remain part of the union.

The basic reasoning for Personal Property > State > Federal is: habeas corpus

In this "free country," you can choose to live in whichever state you want. If you don't like the way things are done in one state, you have a right to choose to live in another one that is more in-line with your expectations for personal freedom.

Our Democratic Republic would not have lasted this long if CA and NY imposed their values on the rest of the country from the start.
 
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Ichinisan said:
Keep our Union together?

This system was designed so that the federal government would have the least amount of control / influence over individuals and states would have a more-direct influence. That's why they're called "states" (the word "state" is typically synonymous with "independent country"). US states are somewhat independent, and that's what the founders wanted. The federal government should only control issues concerning inter-state commerce and national security (though they've used the commerce clause to exercise FAR more control than the federal government was ever supposed to have over individuals).

States are supposed to have equal representation in federal matters, including presidential elections. Otherwise, all federal legislation would only represent the interests of those states with the highest population (New York, California), and they would also choose the POTUS every single time. Other states would be disenfranchised and there'd be no reason for them to remain part of the union.

The basic reasoning for Personal Property > State > Federal is: habeas corpus

In this "free country," you can choose to live in whichever state you want. If you don't like the way things are done in one state, you have a right to choose to live in another one that is more in-line with your expectations for personal freedom.

Our Democratic Republic would not have lasted this long if CA and NY imposed their values on the rest of the country from the start.
Click to expand...

Hence, the US Senate. Amendments to the US Constitution must also be passed by 75% of states (not 75% of people, or 75% of representatives).

A straight up popular vote does not disenfranchise anyone. The electoral system, however, does. Are you a Democrat in Oklahoma? Too bad, may as well not vote! The inverse is true if you're a Republican living in California.

The electoral college may have been originally intended to give the smaller states a bit more sway in choosing the president, but in recent times all it has done is disenfranchise anyone who isn't living in one of a handful of "swing" states. So while you can say that the electoral college does force presidents to campaign in places other than the most highly populated cities, it simply causes them to focus on different areas. The problem still exists, it's just shifted slightly.

It also magnifies the effects of voter fraud, making it much easier to steal an election by manipulating just a few ballots in one or two states instead of having to fabricate the millions of ballots that would be necessary to swing the popular vote. Just look at 2000. Had we been using a popular vote system, a couple hundred disputed ballots in Florida would not have mattered in the face of a 500,000 vote lead. The less striking example of Ohio in 2004 still illustrates this point - Kerry lost Ohio by a small margin, and some hardcore Democrats wanted him to dispute the results in that state. But he lost the popular vote by a convincing 3-million vote margin, so a few thousand votes in Ohio shouldn't have been able to swing the results.
 
AstroManLuca said:
Hence, the US Senate. Amendments to the US Constitution must also be passed by 75% of states (not 75% of people, or 75% of representatives).

A straight up popular vote does not disenfranchise anyone. The electoral system, however, does. Are you a Democrat in Oklahoma? Too bad, may as well not vote! The inverse is true if you're a Republican living in California.

The electoral college may have been originally intended to give the smaller states a bit more sway in choosing the president, but in recent times all it has done is disenfranchise anyone who isn't living in one of a handful of "swing" states. So while you can say that the electoral college does force presidents to campaign in places other than the most highly populated cities, it simply causes them to focus on different areas. The problem still exists, it's just shifted slightly.

It also magnifies the effects of voter fraud, making it much easier to steal an election by manipulating just a few ballots in one or two states instead of having to fabricate the millions of ballots that would be necessary to swing the popular vote. Just look at 2000. Had we been using a popular vote system, a couple hundred disputed ballots in Florida would not have mattered in the face of a 500,000 vote lead. The less striking example of Ohio in 2004 still illustrates this point - Kerry lost Ohio by a small margin, and some hardcore Democrats wanted him to dispute the results in that state. But he lost the popular vote by a convincing 3-million vote margin, so a few thousand votes in Ohio shouldn't have been able to swing the results.
Click to expand...

Good to know. I think this requires further research. Why was EC ever necessary in the first place?
 
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