The Maverick And The Baracuda vs The Whiner And The Bloviator
With the selection of Sarah 'Baracuda' Palin as his wingman the savvy old fighter pilot shows he is ready to fight the war against graft and corruption in government. Yes Baracuda was her nickname for her aggresive style of play as star point guard for her State Champion basketball team. I have seen several commenters from Alaska say the political landscape up there is littered with the bodies of people, metaphorically speaking, that got in her way to eliminating corruption in the Alaska machine. This is a woman that expects results and if you don't deliver she finds someone who will, she is a doer not a talker. The more I find out about her the more impressed I have become in her short time in politics she has accomplished more to clean up Alaska politics than Obama did in Illinois. He talks a good game, she actually fights to get the reform done as does McCain.
She has more practical experience dealing with foreign governments than Obama or Biden after her work with Canada on a natural gas pipeline and she got all the details hammered out and passed. Alaska is also only some fifty miles from our cold war adversary Russia and hosts our largest Aegis missile defense system. I have no doubt that Gov. Palin has the steel to carry that nuclear football should the need arise and she will be a quick study on other aspects of foreign policy. Behind that pretty face lies the fighting spirit of the American frontier woman, tough as nails with a heart of gold and unafraid to work hard, commercial fishing in Alaska is hard and dangerous, for the right reasons.
Yep the old Maverick has gotten inside Obama's OODA loop with this choice and managed to shoot off Obama's stabalizers in the process. OODA stands for observe, orient, decide, act and was developed by Maj. John Boyd, a topgun fighter pilot during the Korean war, as a way to get inside the thought envelope of the opponent in a dog fight and has been taught ever since to our war pilots. For more on this don't miss this great essay by Charlie Martin and do read the very informative comments that follow.
There are two military concepts here that explain the (absolutely spectacular) choice of Governor Sarah Palin. Both of them are important to the training of a fighter pilot, and while one of them wasn't formulated until after McCain's flying career was over, it was an observation based on what fighter pilots had to know.
One of them is the "envelope" -- which is to say the parameters within which a fighter airplane must operate. The envelope can be seen as a sort of egg-shape, based on how quickly a plane can turn and maneuver. If your plane as a "tighter envelope" than another plane, the pilot has the advantage in a dogfight: you can turn inside the other plane, which means you can get into the perfect firing position, behind the opponent.
More important is the "OODA loop" -- which is the envelope for the pilot's thought process. How quickly can the pilot observe the situation, orient within the situation, decide, and act. If the pilot's OODA loop time is shorter, the pilot can overcome the slower.
At this point, we're seeing that McCain is completely within the Obama campaign's OODA loop -- they are out-thinking them and out-acting them -- and very problably the McCain campaign has a tighter envelope than the Obama campaign, as well.
I have zero doubt that Gov. Palin is the perfect wingman for the Maverick and am sure she is already inside Biden's loop on many issues especially the energy issue. Sarah Palin along with Jeb Hensarling, John Campbell, Bobby Jindal, Jim Demint, Tom Colburn, Michelle Bachman and quite a few others are the new face of the GOP and a very refreshing one at that. I like that direction and the announcement of Sarah Palin excites me as much or more than Mitt's campaign did and long time readers know I worked hard for Mitt.
This is a campaign now of talkers with no record of reform and a background of corruption, Obama/Biden vs doers with a real record of reform fighting corruption, McCain/Palin.
4 comments:
Great Post. McCain definitely out thought Obama on this choice. Palin is almost the perfect fit. There is no way for the left to attack Palin that is not an attack on their own top of the ticket candidate.
:On By!" - Alaska dog sled order = pass another team or other distraction; a few other at the end of the post. Hope people will learn more Alaska terms in the future (years).
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The more I think of it, the more I like this VP choice, although I thought McCain playing it safer, w/ Romney as VP was the direction to go.
Now the Obamatons are all out in arms, braying that Palin has no experience in facing important decisions. While I wholeheartedly agree with the fact that experience is mighty important, I have to remind everyone that, besides the length of experience, is the nature of it that makes the difference, it is the weight, implications and consequences of the decisions that make the difference.
As sheer experience length, forty years as hair dresser in West Hollywood simply cannot be compared with five years as airline pilot, and as consequentiallity of one's decisions, forty years of acting in a soap opera simply cannot compare with five years as a destroyer captainship (not surprise that actors who live in an illusory world so frantically support Obama; and a recent and sobering illustration of the destroyer job captainship consequentiallity is the fact that the first US military ship arrived last week in the Black Sea to assist Georgia was/is USS McFaul).
No, a community activist who never held a job of mininimal consequence cannot compare with an Alaska governor - absurd & easy to dismiss charge & comparison:
Yes, it is true that Alaska has more reindeers than people, and population smaller that Obama’s following in the US penitentiary system, but now look at the map of the North-West America - the Behring strait (just 50 miles between Russia and the USA), then Kamchiatka, Vladivostok, and Russia’s enormous military system lurking in Siberia, eyeing the US and Alaska (with its enormous oil and mineral reserves - and don’t forget that Alaska purchase is another object of nostalgia amongst irredentist Russians. And I don’t introduce now in this ominous reality the N. Korean and China menacing proximity!)
This position gives Alaska a particularly important geopolitical weight, and this situation places on the Alaska governor's office more strategic concerns and matters to deal with than most US governors face.
So, the comparison between Sarah Palin’s (governor of Alaska) and mister Glibama’ (the community activist), job weight is ridiculous - the Alaska governor has more US strategic problems to envisage daily than the community activist from Chicago ever had, and ever will have during fifteen life-times.
Topping this, mister Glibama anyway never-ever-ever held a job of minimal responsibility, of any nature - except an unsuccessful shot as laudromat manager in New York, shot which credentialized him for sitting together with Ayres in a straw-men board to spend the Annenberg millions (we'll learn more about this later).
As far as Joe Biden part of this equation: for any Glibamaton out there - can you tell where is the hope'n change and the no more politics as usual in Washington? Where is the "people want change, want new faces in Washington?" Sure Biden's 35 years in the US senate trumps McCain's, don't they? And what about fresh figures? Have you prepared in your budget some money for Biden's face lift?
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Although dog team drivers are often referred to as "mushers", and "mush" is thought by many to be the standard word to get dogs moving, the word is, in fact, not often used as it is too soft for a distinctive command (the word likely came from the early French explorers and their word "marche" (go, run) used as a command to a team to start pulling.
The most common commands for a dog team are:
• Hike!: Get moving ("Mush" and "All Right" are sometimes also used).
• Kissing sound: Speed up, faster.
• Gee!: Turn to the right.
• Haw!: Turn to the left.
• Easy!: Slow down.
• Whoa: Stop.
* On By!: pass another team or other distraction;
Right on!!
"LET'S GO, LET'S GO, LET'S GO!"is what got my team going--
I wonder if Sarah has a Siberian?
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