In the 18th century the British offered a £20,000 prize to anyone who figured out how to calculate longitude. More recently, Netflix offered a million dollars for improving movie recommendations on its Web site. Now Senator John McCain is suggesting a new national prize: He said here Monday that if elected president he would offer $300 million to anyone who could build a better car battery.
The high cost of gasoline — a gallon of regular was selling for $4.65 at a gas station near California State University, Fresno, where Mr. McCain spoke — has made energy policy a big issue in this year’s presidential campaign, and barely a day has passed recently without one of the candidates weighing in with new energy policies, proposals and attacks on opponents.
Mr. McCain, of Arizona, alienated some environmentalists last week during a speech in Houston when he dropped his opposition to allowing offshore drilling for oil; this week, in a swing through California, he spoke about trying to wean the nation from its dependence on oil. He called for improving the enforcement of fuel economy standards, building more cars that could run on alternative fuels, dropping the tariff on imports of sugar-based ethanol from Brazil and offering big tax credits for nonpolluting cars.
“I further propose we inspire the ingenuity and resolve of the American people,” Mr. McCain said, “by offering a $300 million prize for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”
He said the winner should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs. “That’s one dollar, one dollar, for every man, woman and child in the U.S. — a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency,” he said. - nytimes
Cool. Obama should just say that he will offer the same prize if elected. I won't vote for McCain because doesn't have the spine to stand up for what is right. If he did, he would have said no to torture. He should know better.
The revelations of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo, Bagram, Camp Cropper, Abu Ghraib and the secret CIA sites in eastern Europe shook McCain to his core. He’d been tortured for five years by the Vietnamese four decades ago. One of the things that enabled him to survive the Hanoi Hilton was the knowledge that America, the country he had fought for and loved, would never do the same to any prisoners in its own custody. And yet President Bush – the man he championed – authorized some of the very stress positions against terror suspects that to this day prevent McCain from being able to lift his arms much above his shoulders. - timesonline
Plus, McCain would run the country like Bush. More fake terror attacks to gain more control.
Top McCain strategist Charlie Black — the one who lobbies for Iran — dominated this afternoon’s 2-hour news cycle by saying in an interview with Fortune magazine that if we had a terrorist attack right now, “Certainly it would be a big advantage” for John McCain. This line, of course, meant everyone had to feign shock over an accurate political truth, but voiced thus — that if there were a terrorist attack today, Barack Obama would be behind it, potentially hurting his electoral prospects. After a scolding from McCain, Black has come out with an apology. He “deeply regrets” the comments doesn’t recall making... -washpost
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