Month: June 2013

Union bosses threatened businesses and their families because they had legally hired non-union workers to do Hurricane Sandy cleanup work.

5:13 pm

Union civility: Union bosses threatened businesses and their families because they had legally hired non-union workers to do Hurricane Sandy cleanup work.

One of LGS’s contract workers recalled a union heckler telling them to “take your country ass back to Mississippi,” and “get your dumb Tennessee ass off that piece of equipment.” “What they would say is, ‘It sure would be sad if your trucks caught on fire,’” recalled the LGS worker, who spoke to TheDC News Foundation on condition of anonymity because the union also made threats against his wife and children.

Local 138 vice president Phil Capobianco made the threats, said the source. “[He] called and said, ‘Look you have to get us involved,’” recalled the source. “I said, first of all, I don’t have to; second of all, we’ve tried; and third you’ve said you refuse to work for the rates we can pay.” Then Capobianco said something that the source would never forget. “He said, ‘I would just hate for anything to happen,’” recalled the source. Capobianco then rattled off a list of the source’s home address, his wife’s name, his kids and their current whereabouts.

“I’m a combat veteran, and I have never in my life been as frightened as I was in that phone call when he started naming my family members and where they were and what they were doing,” recalled the source. “From that point forward I wasn’t polite to him. I told him exactly what he could do with himself, what he could do with his union, and what he could do with his threats.”

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NASA picks 8 new public relations figureheads, calls them astronauts.

10:43 am

NASA picks 8 new public relations figureheads, calls them astronauts.

To put it bluntly, NASA presently can’t put any astronauts into orbit, and might not be able to do ever again. Any astronauts on NASA’s payroll will thus likely have to beg a seat on a spacecraft built by others. Eventually, that begging won’t get them anywhere, which means that the work these new astronauts will mostly do will be to sell NASA to the public.

In the past, the PR work of astronauts only consumed a significant part of their time. For the present and probably in the future, it will be the only work they do.

Which makes me question the need to hire these astronauts in the first place. If I had my druthers and ran NASA, I’d rather wait until I actually need some astronauts and then hire the pilots who are flying SpaceShipTwo.

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In interviews to Congress, a Washington IRS supervisor admitted to scrutinizing tea party applications.

7:43 pm

In interviews to Congress, Washington IRS supervisor Holly Paz admitted to scrutinizing tea party applications.

So, very clearly this harassment wasn’t limited to low level employees in Cincinnati. Lois Lerner lied.

Still, this article appears to me to be a leak specifically designed to exonerate the Obama administration and to make it seem that the harassment of conservatives was merely bad management. To me, it reads like hogwash. I suspect when we get to see the entire transcripts of her interviews and when Paz is finally forced to answer some questions publicly things won’t look so innocent. For one thing, it seems impossible that only conservative organizations were picked for harassment without someone making a conscious political decision. For another, the following claim doesn’t meet the smell test for me:

Paz said an IRS supervisor in Cincinnati had commonly referred to the applications as “tea party” cases. But, Paz said, she thought that was simply shorthand for any application that included political activity.

Yeah, right. Anyone could see plainly that “tea party” could also be shorthand for radical leftwing organizations or Democratic Party front groups.

Finally, note that the IRS has admitted to replacing Paz, though they haven’t yet said whether she was actually fired. If she was so innocent, why did they do this?

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Even as the IRS was harassing any nonprofit using the word “patriot” in its name, it was rubberstamping exemptions for “Islamic” groups, even those that have violated laws and are thought to have links to terrorist organizations.

7:23 pm

The world upside down: Even as the IRS was harassing any nonprofit using the word “patriot” in its name, it was rubberstamping exemptions for “Islamic” groups, even those that have violated laws and are thought to have links to terrorist organizations.

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Engineers have decided to keep the New Horizons spacecraft on its original fly-by path past Pluto, scheduled for July 2015.

11:37 am

Engineers have decided to keep the New Horizons spacecraft on its original fly-by path past Pluto, scheduled for July 2015.

The New Horizons team recently completed an 18-month study of potential impact hazards – mostly dust created by objects hitting Pluto’s small satellites – the spacecraft would face as it speeds some 30,000 miles per hour (more than 48,000 kilometers per hour) past Pluto in July 2015. The team estimated that the probability of a mission-ending dust impact was less than 0.3 percent if the spacecraft followed the current baseline plan, far below some early, more conservative estimates. So, with the concurrence of an independent review panel and NASA, the project team expects to keep New Horizons on this baseline course, which includes a close approach of about 12,500 kilometers (nearly 7,800 miles) from the surface of Pluto.

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A man claims he has found a piece of debris from the Russian space station Mir in his backyard in northern Massachusetts.

7:43 am

A man claims he has found a piece of debris from the Russian space station Mir in his backyard in northern Massachusetts.

And I have a bridge I want to sell you. This story is very suspicious. No picture, the rock isn’t metallic, the NASA engineer who identified it isn’t identified even though he wrote a letter to the man, and it was found on the eastern United States even though Mir was de-orbited over the south Pacific.

If this story is true, than the journalist who wrote it did a really bad job of reporting it.

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The delays in SpaceX’s commercial launch schedule appear caused by a series of problems testing the first stage’s upgraded engines.

9:45 pm

The delays in SpaceX’s commercial launch schedule appear caused by a series of problems testing the first stage’s upgraded engines.

The article also provides this updated scheduling information:

A successful test will be key for several of SpaceX’s future ambitions, not least their upcoming increase in launch frequency, with the next Falcon 9 – the debut of the v1.1 – set to loft Canada’s space weather satellite, CASSIOPE, out of Vandenberg Air Force Base. This mission has officially slipped to August, with the likelihood it will be re-targeted to September. Focus will then switch to Cape Canaveral, with two satellite missions, the first carrying SES-8, to be followed by the Thaicom 6 launch.

I had suspected the delays were related to the upgrades to Falcon 9. This article confirms this.

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A Democratic Congressman thinks it “is simply not fair” to make his staffers subject to Obamacare like everyone else.

9:31 pm

My heart bleeds: A Democratic Congressman thinks it “is simply not fair” to make his staffers subject to Obamacare like everyone else.

The problem it seems is that

Dozens of lawmakers and aides are so afraid that their health insurance premiums will skyrocket next year thanks to Obamacare that they are thinking about retiring early or just quitting. The fear: Government-subsidized premiums will disappear at the end of the year under a provision in the health care law that nudges aides and lawmakers onto the government health care exchanges, which could make their benefits exorbitantly expensive.

Well, ain’t that just too damn bad. As I say, my heart bleeds.

4 comments

Engineers in the Czech Republic have built a bicycle that can fly.

11:17 am

Engineers in the Czech Republic have built a bicycle that can fly.

The demonstration does beg the question “Why a bike?”. Once those big, knobby tires are lifted off the ground, aren’t they rendered more or less moot? According to the project website, the central concept was to create a flying vehicle that could easily be ridden to a more suitable takeoff site and then be capable of a 3 – 5 minute flight. In order to offset the extra weight added by all the rotors, they could be used to help propel the bike along the ground, besides allowing it to fly.

Video below the fold.
» Read more

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Detroit announces that it will default on its debt today.

10:01 am

Coming soon to a blue state near you! Detroit announces that it will default on its debt today.

The City currently faces approximately $17 billion in total liabilities. Detroit is insolvent and cannot meet its financial obligations without a significant restructuring.

It is important to note that Detroit has been run exclusively by Democrats for about a half century. Thus, this bankruptcy is an entirely partisan event, supported by voters who blindly insisted on one-party rule, and never questioned the incompetence or corruption of that Democratic Party.

And please, don’t argue with me by mentioning examples where Republicans screwed up. They have their own lock on stupidity, corruption, and failure. The point here, however, is to recognize that the failure in Detroit, as well as all of the recent other cities that have gone bankrupt, is because of decades of liberal Democratic rule, where money got funneled to unionized city employees at the expense of the taxpayers, with no regard to cost or affordability.

And if you doubt me, read this history of Detroit’s last fifty years.

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Not one tea party group has yet been contacted by the FBI, one month after the IRS scandal began.

11:31 pm

Stonewalling: Not one tea party group has yet been contacted by the FBI, one month after the IRS scandal began.

Worse, the head of the FBI can’t even name the FBI person in charge of the investigation.

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan lit into Mueller for his lack of knowledge during a House judiciary committee hearing. “This is the most important issue in front of the country in the last six weeks, and you don’t know who the lead investigator is?” Jordan asked, sounding shocked.

“At this juncture, no I do not,” Mueller responded.

“Do you know if you’ve talked to any of the victims?” Jordan went on. “Have you talked to any of the groups that were targeted by their government? Have you met with any of the tea party groups since May 14, 2013?”

“I don’t know what the status of the interviews are by the team that’s on it,” Mueller said.

Reached for comment Thursday afternoon, the FBI’s Washington, D.C. press office transferred TheDC to a long-ringing phone line and eventually hung up.

I have embedded the video of this hearing testimony below the fold. Watch and you will know that the claims of “outrage” by Obama and Holder are utter crap.
» Read more

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An audit has revealed that in 2010 and 2011 more than 1,000 IRS employees misused government charge cards

4:01 pm

The law is such an inconvenient thing: An audit has revealed that in 2010 and 2011 more than 1,000 IRS employees misused government charge cards.

The key quote from the article is this conclusion from the audit:

The inspector general’s bottom line conclusion in this area was that the IRS is more tolerant of its own employees who misuse government charge cards than it is of American taxpayers who fail to pay their taxes in a timely manner.

“Of particular concern is the fact that the IRS ask taxpayers to voluntarily pay taxes owed in a timely manner and yet was more tolerant when its employees became delinquent and defaulted on outstanding payments, violated the terms of the Citibank contract, abused a Government-provided resource (travel funding), and compromised the integrity of the IRS.”

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The Obama administration demands the right to snoop on American private communications, but it specifically forbids any spying in mosques.

10:53 am

The world upside down: The Obama administration demands the right to snoop on American private communications, but it specifically forbids any spying in mosques.

Which might explain why this administration completely failed to catch the Boston marathon bombers, despite plenty of evidence that they were a threat.

No matter. They’ve got us covered. If anyone decides to criticize Obama they will be right on the case!

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