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Thứ Ba, 14 tháng 5, 2013

George Bush says brother Jeb best man for the White House

Former President George W. Bush, left, and Former Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush.Reuters/AP
The George W. Bush Presidential Center is built on the campus of Southern Methodist University.AP Photo

Since leaving office in 2009, former President George W. Bush has offered few political insights. But when it comes to his brother, Bush has a firm opinion: Jeb Bush is the best man to be president.

“Yeah, he’d be the best candidate,” Bush tells Parade Magazine in an exclusive interview published today. “I told him he ought to run, and he didn’t answer me. No, he’d be great.

“He’s got a proven track record. He was a governor of a big state. He’s very articulate. He could deliver a convention speech in Spanish. In my judgment, he’s right on the issues, [but] whether he runs or not, I have no idea.”

Bush made his remarks about his brother, former Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush, on the proverbial eve of the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, located on the campus of Southern Methodist University, where his wife, Laura Bush once studied.

On April 25, the 43rd president will welcome President Obama, and his three living predecessors — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Bush's father, George H. W. Bush — to the official dedication ceremony.

He and former First Lady Laura Bush offered their opinions – and thoughts – on a wide range of topics for Parade Magazine, including being grandparents, whether the U.S. is safer since Sept. 11, 2001 and the future of Iraq.

Asked whether he believes the world is safer since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, Bush said, “I think it is, because there’s a recognition that there are people who are willing to murder the innocent to achieve their objectives,” Bush reportedly said. “And as a result, our country went on the offense and hardened our defenses.

“You know, prior to 9/11, it seemed like we predicted that oceans could protect us from harm, but it didn’t work.

“And so, yes,” Bush added, “my administration and President Obama’s administration have gone on the offense against people who would do us harm. The ultimate way for there to be peace, however, is for freedom to take root, democracy to take root, where governments are decided by the will of the people. And that’s beginning to happen as a result of the Arab Spring.

“It’s going to take a long time for the process to evolve. But I am optimistic and hopeful that the beginnings of true peace are now being laid in a part of the world in which we better hope there is peace.”

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Perry's Path to GOP Nomination Could be the Clearest

Maybe Texas Gov. Rick Perry said he’s decided to test the waters on a presidential run just because he’s feels left out.

For all the attention paid to the presidential possibilities of two members of the House (Paul Ryan and Michele Bachmann) and a reality show host (you know who), you’d never know that the Republicans had on their bench the three-term governor of the state with the nation’s best economy and the largest Republican population.

But for some reason, when Perry told people he wasn’t running, reporters believed him. If Chris Christie even flies over Iowa, the blogosphere goes into meltdown mode, but the political press for some reason mostly took Perry at his word.

It seems strange that they would have.

Perry, who has been governor for more than a decade, is a favorite of the Tea Party movement for his tough stands on state sovereignty, border security, taxes and gun rights. Anybody who packs heat when he jogs so he can blow away coyotes that mess with his Labrador retriever and hangs out with Ted Nugent at a Tax Day rally is going to have serious street cred with the Republican base.

As the Perry talk heats up, these primary election positives will be reinforced by liberals who find his Texas-fried politics to be repellant. Every time Democratic cable news talkers remind viewers that Perry once warned that Texas might secede from the union if Washington kept piling on new federal powers, somewhere in Iowa or South Carolina a Republican primary voter thinks, “Not bad.” When Perry gets chided for declining photo-ops with President Obama on visits to the state, somewhere in New Hampshire a guy with a “Don’t tread on me” flag on his bumper thinks, “Cool!”

But unlike some of the other Tea Party favorites, Perry has an easier case to make to establishment Republicans. His state has a $1.3 trillion economy now on track to pass California's as the nation’s largest. Perry has also avoided some of the hardest stands of the conservative movement. Consider that while Perry is constantly hectoring Obama for more border security, he declined to sign onto the movement for an Arizona-style crackdown on illegal immigration when it was very hot among Republican circles.

Raised on a cotton farm and prone to a strong Texas twang, Perry won’t be grabbing the wonk vote from Mitch Daniels’ fans. But as a 28-year political veteran who started his career as a Democrat and pushed his way to the head of the state GOP and now the national Republican Governors Association, Perry knows how to adapt, survive and compromise when he needs to.

Plus, Republicans are almost certain to pick a nominee who is or was a governor. It makes for more gravitas when running against a sitting president and the GOP just seems more comfortable with the strong, decisive type than coalition-building congressmen.

Republican’s haven’t lost a presidential election with a former governor since Thomas Dewey in 1948. All six of the Republican presidential losses in the same period have been with a current or former member of Congress.

So how could it be that the GOP hasn’t been looking harder at Perry, the 61-year-old Methodist who’s married to his high-school sweetheart? It’s partly because Perry has no ties to the East Coast media establishment. The people around him are pure Texas and he’s never done much that would catch the eye of the political press. He’s not exactly a symposium kind of guy.

So maybe Perry is just engaging in this presidential flirtation to make a point and raise his profile ahead of fundraising season when he will be hitting the road to raise money for his fellow governors. Maybe he thought it would nice just to be asked.

But whatever has brought him to this point, if he does take a serious look, he may find that he has clearer path to the nomination than anyone else.

Perry has a natural alliance with the most important potential kingmaker of the cycle, if Sarah Palin doesn’t run herself. He would provide the sharpest contrast – politically and culturally – with frontrunner Mitt Romney at a time when Republicans are eager for an alternative. And being from a large, wealthy state, he has the best chance to turn on the kind of fast fundraising necessary to contend with Romney’s mega bucks.

Now that he’s moseyed over to the pool, Perry may find good reason to dive in.

Chris Stirewalt is FOX News’ digital politics editor. His political note, Power Play, is available every weekday morning at FOXNEWS.COM.

Chris Stirewalt

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Romney Must Block Huntsman, Keep GOP Field Divided

As Mitt Romney moves into official campaign mode, he might be excused for wondering what’s so great about being a frontrunner anyway.

In a tumultuous Republican field, Romney is as close as the party has to an actual frontrunner. He has the staff, organization and cash that come with the title. Most polls do show him in the lead, but narrowly and often neck and neck with folks who aren’t running like Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani.

And what does he get for a 15 percent share of a five or six way race? A big target painted on his back as the “establishment candidate.” Since the Republican establishment has been a dying elephant for a long time, the brand is almost all downside. It lets your primary opponents beat you up and doesn’t add much electoral weight in early primaries.

History shows a considerable advantage for establishment candidates. The last four Republican presidential nominees have been products of the institutional GOP. But an informal survey of the professional political class in Washington doesn’t suggest that Romney has the same kind of lock-step support that his predecessors enjoyed.

It may be the nasty fight in the 2008 primaries. Unlike McCain’s 2000 upstart campaign, Romney chased the frontrunner deep into the primary calendar and traded a lot of body blows with not only McCain but Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani.

So Romney gets branded as the inside man, even though he isn’t. Not fun.

Romney’s natural advantages beyond his money and organization relate to geography (the former Massachusetts governor owns a home in New Hampshire), his resume as a successful businessman (many Republicans wondered how much better than McCain Romney might have fared against Barack Obama during an election overshadowed by a financial panic) and his appeal to a more moderate wing of the party (the hybrid of social conservatism and libertarianism in the Tea Party movement has been unsettling to many rock-ribbed Republicans).

Romney’s biggest advantage, though, has been what all of his frontrunner forbearers had going for them: inevitability. Romney’s team makes a convincing case that while Republican voters may not be swooning, their candidate is the only one who can go the distance. The scenario they paint is that Romney will come out of the early primaries with wins in New Hampshire, Nevada and Florida and be ready to outgun and outlast whoever wins the other two key early contests in Iowa and South Carolina.

And if that comes to pass, there’s no doubt that Romney would be in a good position to grind out a hard-fought win. By April 2012, Republicans would start closing ranks and helping the frontrunner to fend off attacks from the more conservative members of the field.

But for that inevitability strategy to work, Romney needs to head off two serious threats now forming.

The first is from former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, fresh from his stint as Obama’s ambassador to China. As Huntsman is testing the waters for a run, he has paid particular attention to New Hampshire and Florida. They’re both must-win states for Romney precisely because they are places where a well-financed moderate can succeed. Huntsman’s support for gay civil unions and global warming fees might be deadly in Iowa and South Carolina, but not disqualifying in New Hampshire and Florida.

Huntsman’s family fortune is larger than Romney’s personal wealth and he doesn’t have to lug around a health care law that helped lay the groundwork for Obama’s national plan. Huntsman may be little known, but he also gets to start with fewer negative perceptions.

There is also the issue of their shared Mormon faith. Romney, who is devout, has struggled with how to explain and defend his beliefs to evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics who are skeptical of the Utah-based faith. Huntsman, meanwhile, told Time magazine that it was “tough to define” whether he was still a member of the faith and described himself as “very spiritual.” Romney may get credit for constancy, but it’s still not a topic on which he wants to spend much time.

Romney’s first task will be to scuttle Huntsman’s ambitions. Ideally for Romney, Huntsman would opt against a run. But if he does mount a campaign, stopping the attack from the left in New Hampshire and Florida has to become job number one for Romney.

The second threat to Romney’s inevitability strategy is an alternative candidate emerging too soon. The best scenario for Romney is that the rest of the field remains unsettled for as long as possible and that when it finally does take shape, the electorate’s divided loyalties continue to let him lead with a relatively small share of support.

A troubling scenario for Romney would be that another candidate, most likely former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty or Texas Gov. Rick Perry, starts rounding up key endorsements this fall. Romney would not like to see Pawlenty rallying with governors Chris Christie and Jeb Bush or Perry hand in hand with Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee.

If Romney can make it into March without a single rival emerging, it will probably be too late for anyone to bring him down. If the various blocs of the party start looking past the long shots and marshalling their forces behind the big names in the race in August or September, Romney could see the air go out of his inevitability balloon very quickly.

Chris Stirewalt is FOX News’ digital politics editor. His political note, Power Play, is available every weekday morning at FOXNEWS.COM.

Chris Stirewalt

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Did sleep apnea cause Rick Perry's gaffes?

Published September 25, 2012

Life's Little Mysteries

During a 2011 debate, when Texas Gov. Rick Perry failed to remember one of the government departments he would eliminate if elected president, the epitaph he chose for his drawn-out mental lapse was "Oops."

Turns out, that syllable may have signaled a brain struggling under the effects of sleep apnea, which scientists say could cause daytime fatigue and even long-term cognitive damage.

According to "Oops," Texas Tribune correspondent Jay Root's new diary of his time covering the Perry campaign, the famous error came after weeks of poor sleep caused by an undiagnosed case of sleep apnea.

Referring to another debate malfunction in Orlando, Fla., in which Perry made a nearly unintelligible attack on Mitt Romney for being duplicitous, Root wrote:

"Perry had kept in touch with his medical team, and by early October, days after the Florida fiasco, the campaign had urgently consulted sleep specialists, bringing them in to investigate.

"After conducting overnight tests on Perry, they produced a rather startling diagnosis: He had sleep apnea, and it had gone undetected for years, probably decades."

Obstructive sleep apnea, the most common form of the sleep disorder, occurs when the throat muscles relax during sleep and intermittently block a sufferer's airway, according to the National Institutes of Health. This condition, often signaled by loud, fitful snoring, can interrupt a sleeper's oxygen supply for periods ranging from seconds to minutes.

By repeatedly rousing a sufferer into lighter states of sleep in order to restart breathing, sleep apnea often causes poor sleep and chronic daytime fatigue, but it may also result in long-lasting cognitive impairment, research has suggested. [Sleep Apnea: Symptoms, Causes & Treatment]

According to a 2008 study from the University of California, Los Angeles, sleep apnea is associated with tissue loss in brain regions that store memory.

The study, detailed in the journal Neuroscience Letters, scanned the brains of 43 sleep-apnea sufferers and determined that the mammillary bodies, a pair of brain structures known to play a role in memory, were nearly 20 percent smaller in sleep-apnea sufferers than in a control group.

"Our findings demonstrate that impaired breathing during sleep can lead to a serious brain injury that disrupts memory and thinking," principal investigator Ronald Harper, a professor of neurobiology at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, toldThe New York Times.

So science suggests that some of Perry's blunders may have been exacerbated by sleep apnea, and though the governor can't take back his debate performances, there are still plenty of reasons for him and other sleep-apnea sufferers to seek treatment, which is available. The disorder has also been linked to strokes and Alzheimer's disease.

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Thứ Năm, 9 tháng 5, 2013

Air-breathing engine in Boeing's X-51A WaveRider may pave the way to Mach 20 planes

A Silver Surfer-style, air-breathing engine defied naysayers with its triumphant recent test reaching Mach 5 -- that’s an astonishing mile per second, or nearly 4,000 miles per hour-- smashing its own previous time in flight record.

At Edwards Air Force Base on Wednesday, May 1, Boeing's WaveRider made the longest hypersonic flight to date, flying for three minutes and smashing its own 2010 record. The air-breathing engine that powered the X-51A WaveRider could be key not just to travelling coast to coast in under 40 minutes but to making the sort of deep-space exploration seen in "Star Trek: Into Darkness" a reality.

The government has high hopes for this type of hypersonic engine, and defense agency DARPA is looking to push the tech further, with plans to invest more than $90 million into the hypersonics programs over the next two years.

One goal is to provide global-range, maneuverable, hypersonic flight at a mind-warping Mach 20. In 2014, DARPA plans to launch the Small Responsive Space Access X-Plane to mature the technology inexpensively, for quick reaction not just anywhere on the globe but also in space.

DARPA wants this X-Plane to successfully undertake ten flights in ten days, carrying cargoes up to 5,000 pounds to low earth orbit at a speed of at least Mach 10. The goal is a system ten times cheaper as well, which the Agency proposes to transition to the Air Force, Navy and commercial sector.

The 'Silver Surfer,' coming soon
Often described as a surfboard that rides its own self-created sonic wave, the X-51A Waverider does look sort of like the Silver Surfer’s mode of travel. It’s actually an unmanned scramjet-powered experimental aircraft.

It weighs approximately 4,000 pounds with a fuel capacity about 270 pounds and currently has a ceiling of more than 70,000 feet.

Ordinary rocket engines tend to get their thrust from a high-pressure, high-velocity gas stream, resulting from the combustion of liquid oxidizer and a hydrogen fuel.

They require on-board oxygen in a big way because they tend to use it to combust the hydrogen fuel - and this gives you speeds up to around 10,000 mph.

For example, a space shuttle weighs about 165,000 pounds, but still needs to lug around an extra 1.36 million pounds of liquid oxygen.

No such albatross with these very promising air-breathing engines. The WaveRider’s engine doesn’t require its own oxygen supply and instead harvests the air as it flies through the atmosphere.

Due to the novel method of combustion, its current take-off doesn't look like a traditional Cape Canaveral launch. Instead it uses a booster rocket to get to hypersonic speed, before the scramjet takes over and does its stuff.

In 2010, the X-51A achieved a major aviation history landmark by making the longest-ever supersonic combustion scramjet-powered flight.

The following year, the second flight test vehicle encountered a problem while nearing Mach 5. The third test run last year also encountered some problems and the vehicle was lost.

This fourth test produced a triumph, successfully demonstrating not just the revolutionary engine, but also high temperature materials, airframe and engine integration at hypersonic speeds.

NASA's experimental unmanned NASA's X-43A scramjet still holds onto the bragging rights on the speed front, however. It set the world speed record for a jet-powered aircraft -- recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records -- at Mach 9.6, or nearly 7,000 mph.

Air-breathing engines unlock aviation’s future
WaveGlider’s recent record-setting is important not just for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, but for further establishing the bedrock of the hypersonic tech of the future.

With air-breathing engines, future space travel could be faster and cheaper, in part due to the potential for reducing the absurdly heavy onboard liquid oxygen weight currently necessary to make that journey from earth to space.

Air-breathing engines could allow for far larger payloads revolutionizing cargo transport to space and between points at home.

On earth, the speed of U.S. Air Force aircraft could be unmatched, and commercial air travel immensely accelerated -- making the Concorde look positively prehistoric.

Pratt & Whitney is developing a suite of hypersonic propulsion system technologies that have defense potential well beyond aircraft. Missiles, high-speed weapons and advanced defense systems could all be enhanced by this sort of tech.

This next stage hypersonic speed could be very useful for time-critical missions, and give the U.S. unprecedented speed in global strike.

Ballet dancer turned defense specialist Allison Barrie has traveled around the world covering the military, terrorism, weapons advancements and life on the front line. You can reach her at wargames@foxnews.com or follow her on Twitter @Allison_Barrie.

Allison Barrie

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Thứ Tư, 8 tháng 5, 2013

In tweets we trust ... or not. Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel debate tech industry

Will technology save us and save the economy or is it just spinning its wheels and contributing to stagnant wages and intellectual torpor?

It's a popular dinner-time discussion among tech CEOs, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs these days. The concern is that with all the hype about the democratization of information, smart phones, wearable computing, and ever faster processors, not a lot has actually been accomplished recently. Playing Angry Birds while waiting in line or posting pictures of your dinner on Facebook isn't doing much to advance the human race -- or eliminate famine, war, or poverty.

At a recent panel discussion between Marc Andreessen (he of Netscape and now mega venture capitalist) and Peter Thiel (he of PayPal and another big tech investor) the issue was raised again. What was most interesting about the discussion was the entrenched mythology that Silicon Valley continues to labor under. It might be why more programmers off highway 101 seem to be working social networking pages rather than figuring out how to make more efficient solar panels.

Myth 1: The Media Bashes Technology.
One interesting theme of the discussion was how we -- the media -- are all a bunch of skeptical, naysaying Luddites. Andreessen said he was experiencing schadenfreude as The New York Times struggled with the Internet age, something the paper ridiculed back in the early '90s.

Actually, the reporter Andreessen singled out -- Peter Lewis -- wrote a lot of the early positive stories about the potential of the Web as "a powerful new communications tool -- inexpensive, open 24 hours-a-day and global in reach" even back in June 1994. (Full disclosure: I contribute to The New York Times, and I knew Mr. Lewis when he was at the paper.) He also wrote about earlier technological innovations, such as external modems, Next Computer and Compaq's first laptop.

Rather than making fun of innovations and inventions, generally, the media has hyped, rather than harmed technology (and encouraged investment along the way). That said, Windows 8 still really stinks, wireless carriers charge too much, and Angry Birds is a time sink.

Myth 2: Technology Good, Hollywood Bad.
If the movie industry would just make some positive movies about technological advances, it would incite people to work harder toward making a better future. We need more encouragement, was Thiel's message about the bad rap Hollywood has been giving Silicon Valley.

It's true that we love dystopian, blow-up-all-the-robots movies. But the truth is, we've always loved those stories. Today's sci-fi blockbusters are often derived from the science fiction stories that people who head up today's tech firms grew up with in the '50s and '60s. Isacc Asimov and Philip K. Dick form the foundation of yesterday's and today's digital fantasies, and those futuristic visions (no matter how disastrous), rather than discouraging budding young scientists, actually has encouraged them.

Myth 3: Technological Change is Rapid.
We should certainly question whether the high-tech business is headed in the right direction. Businesses have to place bets, financial and otherwise, and it's important to place them carefully and expect failure.

However, the effects of a technology can take time. Andreessen used this point to defend today's technological developments, such as digital communications tools. He's got a right to think so.

When Microsoft was moved to squash a start-up called Netscape (Andreessen's company) back in 1994, it was because it was thought that Web-based services like word processors and online storage would kill the PC software business. For various reasons -- anti-trust trials included -- it's taken nearly 20 years for that to start happening. Some think it's already happened. Theil referred to Microsoft as part of the digital rust belt, and this week '80s software stalwart Adobe caved, putting PhotoShop online for $50 a year.

Myth 4: Twitter Will Save the World.
Andreessen and Theil both think Twitter is the future -- well, at least for the next decade. However, their reasons differ. Andreessen believes services like Twitter are world-changing. Theil is considerably less enthusiastic but believes Twitter workers will have "great job security for the next decade ... perhaps a lot more than people working at The New York Times." (One wonders what people will tweet about if there are no New York Times stories to tweet about.)

Unfortunately, Twitter isn't quite the influencer that they may think. In countries experiencing political upheaval, despotic governments can and do shut it down with a push of a button. Demographics are not helping Twitter, either, with most 20-somethings regarding the service as something for old people.

The brand is entering the ad market in a major way this month, which may further dilute its authority. Many companies have already been "advertising" for free on Twitter (so-called social engineering), pretending to be users of products extolling the virtues of their widgets. The value of this free digital communications tool seems even more questionable when one considers that 140 characters can trick gullible Wall Street firms into sending the market plunging.

Most myths are used to prop up the establishment and maintain the status quo. Silicon Valley's mythology seems no different. Perhaps it's time to abandon those myths, be a little less "social," and look toward solving our long-term problems. Or maybe I'm just being negative.

Follow John R. Quain on Twitter @jqontech or find more tech coverage at J-Q.com.

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George Bush says brother Jeb best man for the White House

Former President George W. Bush, left, and Former Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush.Reuters/AP
The George W. Bush Presidential Center is built on the campus of Southern Methodist University.AP Photo

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Since leaving office in 2009, former President George W. Bush has offered few political insights. But when it comes to his brother, Bush has a firm opinion: Jeb Bush is the best man to be president.

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