Tag: politics

Laid off workers supported by Hamas, take over UN refugee headquarters

10:41 am

Chaos in Gaza: Union workers for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) have seized control of its headquarters in protest of lay-offs caused by the withdrawal of financial support by the United States.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) announced last month more than 250 staff in Gaza and Judea and Samaria would lose their jobs, after a $300 million cut in annual funding from the United States. The redundancies have prompted daily protests by the agency’s labour union in the enclave, which UNRWA’s Gaza head said have led to security concerns. “They have taken over the compound where my office and other offices are,” said Matthias Schmale.

The agency’s Gaza chief admitted UNRWA does not have full control over the site, in Gaza City, explaining he has not been able to access his own office for more than two weeks. “I am the captain of the ship which has 13,000 sailors on it and they have basically thrown me off the bridge and consigned me to my captain’s quarters,” he told AFP, referring to the number of employees in Gaza.

Schmale accused the labor union of multiple incidents of “threatening and intimidating other fellow Palestinian staff. For me that crosses a red line. … I am very concerned about the safety and security of my Palestinian colleagues,” he added.

It appears the take over is backed by Hamas.

What we are seeing here is the possible collapse of the entire UN/Arab structure that has for decades used the Arab refugees from Israel — and their descendants — as political pawns. Rather than repatriate these people into Egypt or Jordan, both countries as well as the entire Arab world, with the help of the UN and sadly a lot of U.S. money, forced them into refugee camps and thus used them as a hammer against Israel

Without U.S. financial support, however, this ploy cannot work. The protests and violence coming from Gaza in the past year has been a response to this collapse. Hamas has depended on that funding to keep itself in power. Without it, it cannot pay off its supporters.

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Leftist thugs harass conservative black woman and white man eating lunch

12:08 pm

They’re coming for you next: Two of the leaders of the conservative Turning Point USA, Candace Owen and Charlie Kirk, were harassed today in Philadelphia by leftist antifa protesters, with one throwing a liquid on Kirk.

Police were required to prevent the protesters from getting violent.

It must be noted the Owens is black and Kirk is white. It appears that the leftists have a problem with them eating together. In fact, somehow this black activist is in favor of “white supremacy” according to these protesters.

This has only just begun. Should the Democrats make gains in the November elections, expect them to throw a great deal of financial support to these thugs, empowering them to do more violence against anyone who dissents from the leftist Democratic power structure.

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Chandrayaan-2 delayed again, until January 2019

9:13 am

The new colonial movement: ISRO, India’s space agency, has revealed that the launch of its lunar rover/lander Chandrayaan-2 has been delayed from October to Janaury 2019.

Dr M Annadurai, Director of U R Rao Satellite Centre confirmed to NDTV that the launch date for Chandryaan-2 “is slipping to 2019” from the initially planned launch in October this year.

Dr Annadurai said that India’s moon mission now aims to land in February and the rocket launch will take place in January next year.

Moreover, since the weight of the Chandrayaan-2 satellite has increased, Dr Annadurai said that now instead of GSLV MK-II, GSLV MK-III will be used. Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle MK-III (GSLV MK-III), also called the ‘The Bahubali’, is India’s heaviest rocket that weighs nearly 640 tons and will be used to hoist the Chandrayaan-2 satellite from India’s rocket port at Sriharikota.

It appears that in building the spacecraft they have not been able to keep its weight low enough, and have been forced to switch launch vehicles, with this switch causing the delay.

The article also provides a tidbit of information about the GLSV MK-III rocket, that they have an real name for it, Bahubali. If so, they should use it. It sells much better than GLSV MK-III.

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More problems for Mueller in Manafort trial

9:55 am

The first trial by Robert Mueller’s special council investigation (supposedly about Russia collusion during Trump’s election) is not going well so far for Robert Mueller.

1. The trial of Paul Manafort has nothing to do with Russian collusion. In fact, after more than a year of investigation Mueller has yet to find any evidence of collusion.
2. Mueller might not be able to call his star witness, without which the judge told him he does not have a case.
3. Mueller’s attempt to demonize Manafort for living the high life went over very badly with the judge.
4. And today, the judge called an early recess, after apparently losing patience with the prosecution for its errors and attempts to slip improper testimony to the jury.

In general, the Mueller prosecuting team has looked like a clown show, both in the Manafort case as well as in its case against a Russian company that surprised Mueller by actually showing up in court. I don’t know yet if they will get a guilty verdict in the Manafort case, but to my eye it increasingly looks like they won’t. And if Mueller fails here, his entire investigation, which has appeared like a fraud from the start, will be discredited in plain sight.

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Two men arrested for making threats against Republican congressmen

2:38 pm

Good news: Police in New York and New Jersey have arrested two different individuals for making threats against Republican Congressmen.

The first amendment allows you to say practically anything, except yelling “Fire!” in a theater and making direct threats of violence against another person. Both of these individuals violated the second restriction. Hopefully they will serve time for the violation.

This story however is important because, while leftist news advocates at CNN whine about being yelled at by Trump supporters, actual threats by the left against the right have been going on now for two to three years, non-stop, without anyone in those leftist news organizations apparently noticing.

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New launch dates for commercial crew posted by NASA

2:26 pm

NASA has now released an updated schedule for the first test flights of Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Dragon manned capsules:

In chronological order:

SpaceX Demo-1 (uncrewed): November 2018
Boeing Orbital Flight Test (uncrewed): late 2018 / early 2019
SpaceX Demo-2 (crewed): April 2019
Boeing Crew Flight Test (crewed): mid-2019

Note once again that this schedule bears no resemblance to the pessimistic schedule put forth by the GAO. That schedule indicated that significant delays could be expected because of NASA’s heavy paperwork requirements.

I fully expect that political needs will force that paperwork to be done much faster than the GAO, or NASA, expects, or even wants. And the increased speed will have little to do with reducing safety.

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Federal judge rules New Mexico’s civil forfeiture law unconstitutional

9:59 am

Good news! A federal judge has ruled that New Mexico’s civil forfeiture law is unconstitutional.

Federal judge James O. Browning found that seizing property from those suspected of a crime, even before a legal judgment had been rendered, violated the property owner’s legal right to the presumption of innocence. The law placed the burden on citizens to absolve themselves from crimes of which they’re accused, even if they had not been charged. He also held that the program’s funds collection, which bankrolls its budget, enticed law enforcement officials to work for personal benefit rather than for civilian protection.

“The City of Albuquerque has an unconstitutional institutional incentive to prosecute forfeiture cases, because, in practice, the forfeiture program sets its own budget and can spend, without meaningful oversight, all of the excess funds it raises from previous years,” Browning, who sits on the District Court of New Mexico, wrote in an order Saturday.

Hopefully this is only the beginning. Civil forfeiture, which is really nothing more than theft by government, violates the plain language of the Fifth amendment to the Constitution.That federal and state officials have been able to get away with it for the last few decades in unconscionable.

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South Africa’s black government moves to allow it to steal land from whites

9:42 am

Modern leftist philosophy: South Africa’s black government has now begun the process to change its constitution to allow it to take land from property owners without compensation.

The racists aim is to take the land from whites and give it to blacks, much as was done in Zimbabwe.

It’s okay, however, because according to modern leftist thought, blacks cannot be bigoted, and nothing they do is bigoted. They are allowed to commit injustices as reparations for past wrongs.

Expect South Africa to become a hellhole in the coming years.

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New York Times hires bigot for its editorial board

9:33 am

The bigoted left: The New York Times yesterday announced the hiring for its editorial board of a woman with a long track record of making bigoted and racist tweets.

A lot more is documented here. The woman very clearly hates whites, is an out-and-out bigot, and if she expressed these same opinions about a minority she would have been fired from whatever job she had previously, in an instant.

But she hates whites, and that’s okay in the warped modern leftist community. I expect the New York Times to rally around her. Update: The New York Times rallies around her.

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Planetary scientists protest use of term “Planet Nine” for unknown planet

9:13 am

A group of planetary scientists have protested the recent use by some of the term “Planet Nine” for the unknown large planet some believe remains undiscovered in an orbit beyond Pluto.

“We the undersigned wish to remind our colleagues that the IAU planet definition adopted in 2006 has been controversial and is far from universally accepted. Given this, and given the incredible accomplishment of the discovery of Pluto, the harbinger of the solar system’s third zone — the Kuiper Belt — by planetary astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh in 1930, we the undersigned believe the use of the term ‘Planet 9’ for objects beyond Pluto is insensitive to Professor Tombaugh’s legacy.

“We further believe the use of this term should be discontinued in favor of culturally and taxonomically neutral terms for such planets, such as Planet X, Planet Next or Giant Planet Five.”

The planetary scientist community, the people who really should be the ones to determine the proper definition of a planet, has never accepted the IAU planet definition. This protest letter is just more evidence of this fact.

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Russian scientist accused of treason fed data to NATO

9:09 am

According to his lawyer the Roscosmos scientists who was arrested two weeks ago has been accused of providing classified data to one of NATO’s member states.

The lawyer did not reveal the specific nation involved. Other reports have suggested the leaked material involved Russia’s hypersonic engine research.

I still can’t help wondering what prompted the arrest, and if it is linked somehow with leaks coming out of the FBI and the Department of Justice in connection with Robert Mueller’s never-ending Russian collusion investigation.

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New York shuts down 7-year-old’s lemonade stand

9:58 am

Fascist New York: Because of complaints by commercial vendors, New York bureaucrats moved to shut down a 7-year-old’s lemonade stand.

Soon-to-be second-grader Brendan Mulvaney ran afoul of government regulators last Friday when vendors at the Saratoga County Fair in upstate Ballston Spa whined to a state health inspector that he had no permit to sell refreshments from his family’s front deck just outside the fairgrounds.

Being just a kid, he was also undercutting their pricey drinks by nearly 90 percent, selling lemonade for just 75 cents — a significant discount from the $7 cups inside the fair. He also peddled $1 snow cones and bottled waters. The vendors griped to a state health inspector doing a routine inspection of the fair, and his next visit was to the Mulvaneys’ home. He promptly ordered the stand shut down, leaving the family shocked.

Note that the stand is on the family’s porch, on private property. The boy has has also been operating it for three years, with no problems.

Essentially, the local vendors used the government as a hammer to smash the competition, even if it was something as innocuous as a child’s lemonade stand. And New York, being a fascist state run by fascist Democrats, immediately moved to do the bidding of those vendors.

The government, embarrassed by this, is now trying to fix it, but they still claim that a permit is required for the stand. How nice of them! In modern New York, no one is allowed to start a business without government permission!

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NASA safety panel reviews commercial crew, tries to justify its paperwork demands

9:35 am

Link here. The article describes the results from the quarterly meeting of NASA’s safety panel, which occurred last week, including its concerns about the recent test problems during a launch abort test of Boeing’s Starliner capsule. It also describes the panel’s general satisfaction at the status of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.

The article however ends with a long screed by one panel member, explaining that the heavy paperwork requirements they are imposing on the two companies is not really paperwork.

“It needs to be noted by everyone, and we’re especially interested in making sure that all of the external stakeholders realize this, that while the concluding process of certification has sometimes been described as a paper process, that is really just a shorthand clarification and in reality it could not be further from the truth,” noted Dr. McErlean.

In reality, the process is as follows. “In a certified design, the design agent – the contractor or partner in this case – performs the design and in the certification plan, the design agent and the certification agency (NASA) agree on the submittal of certification evidence.

“This could be measurements, it can be test data, it can be analysis, but it almost always involves the submittal of detailed technical data, not simply paper descriptions or forms. Sometimes it involves witness testing and sometimes it involves physical inspection. But it almost always wraps around important technical submittals.

Can I translate? The safety panel requires a lot of testing so that a lot of paperwork can be filled out. And while much of this testing is likely to help make the capsule’s safer, most of it seems to me to be make-work, and designed to justify the existence of NASA and its safety panel.

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Russian company that builds Proton rocket faces bankruptcy and reorganization

9:25 am

The Russian company that builds Russia’s Proton rocket now faces bankruptcy and reorganization.

By the middle of 2018, due to the dramatically slowed down rate of Proton launches, its manufacturers fell deeper into the red and needed federal funding to stay afloat. According to the official numbers, GKNPTs Khrunichev lost 23 billion rubles in 2017 and asked for a 30-billion infusion of cash from the government.

At the end of June, the Head of Roskosmos Dmitry Rogozin acknowledged an ongoing effort to fix the financial situation at Khrunichev and announced plans to accelerate the switch of the Russian launch operations from the Proton to the Angara family. Ironically, Roskosmos exacerbated the company’s debt with its penalties for missed production deadlines, even though Russian payloads slated to ride those delayed rockets were themselves years behind schedule and GKNPTs Khrunichev had no room to store large rocket components.

In an effort to raise capital, Khrunichev planned to sell a big part of its campus, located in the hyper-valuable real estate area of Moscow, to private developers. In the process, the company would also dramatically reduce its production capacity and cut its personnel in the Russian capital, shifting key manufacturing operations to Omsk, in Western Siberia. In another cost-saving measure, around 200 people were reported to be marked for layoffs at Proton’s launch facilities in Baikonur beginning in the fall of 2018.

The Russian government, rather than allow for competition, is working to prop the company up. So, rather than having new companies appear with new and better ideas, Russia will be saddled with an old company not good at innovating.

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Federal court allows attacked Trump supporters to continue lawsuit against San Jose

5:18 pm

The Ninth Circuit Court has ruled that a lawsuit by injured Trump supporters against San Jose and seven of its police officers can proceed.

A three-judge panel unanimously affirmed U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California’s 2017 ruling denying the city of San Jose’s efforts to dismiss the suit against seven police officers. The plaintiffs say the officers channeled them into a violent crowd on June 2, 2016, as they exited a rally for then-presidential candidate Trump at the McEnery Convention Center. Rally-goers say they were punched and pelted with eggs while nearby law enforcement officers did nothing to protect them.

“We find the officers violated clearly established rights and are not entitled to qualified immunity at this stage of the proceedings,” Senior Judge Dorothy Wright Nelson wrote for the panel, which also included Judges Andrew Kleinfeld and William Fletcher. “Being attacked by anti-Trump protesters was only a possibility when the attendees arrived at the rally,” Nelson wrote. “The officers greatly increased that risk of violence when they shepherded and directed the attendees towards the unruly mob waiting outside the Convention Center.”

The panel also declined to block the 20 plaintiffs’ claims against San Jose, which Koh allowed to stand, saying it lacked jurisdiction to consider that portion of the city’s appeal.

Unfortunately, the big fish will get off scott free.

The suit originally named San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia and Mayor Sam Liccardo. Liccardo was dropped as a defendant from an amended version of the suit in November 2016 and Koh’s ruling dismissed claims against Garcia.

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Mob gathers and attacks pro-Trump demonstraters in Hollywood

3:48 pm

They’re coming for you next: When a pro-Trump group decided to gather at the now destroyed star of Donald Trump at the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a mob quickly formed cursing them, then threatening them, then attacking them physically.

The video at the link is a little unclear once the fighting starts about who is fighting who. What is clear is that a mob very clearly wanted to shut down a pro-Trump demonstration, and was very eager to use violence to make that happen.

This is not the America I grew up in. The idea that someone would attack someone else, merely because of their opinion, was inconceivable in the culture of my youth. And when it did happen, it was quickly condemned, by everyone. Now, such behavior is celebrated.

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New York Times and Associated Press look for dirt on Kavanaugh’s wife

11:12 am

They’re coming for you next: The New York Times and the Associated Press have now made broad requests for the email records of Ashley Kavanaugh, wife of the current Supreme Court nominee, while she was town manager for the Village of Chevy Chase Section 5 (that’s only part of the village).

The two news organizations took different approaches to obtain the e-mails. According to the documents, the AP made a sweeping request for “all emails sent or received” by Ashley Kavanaugh’s Village of Chevy Chase email address.

By contrast, The New York Times is currently requesting that The Village of Chevy Chase Section 5 hand over “any emails to or from Ms. Kavanaugh that contain any of the keywords or terms listed below.”

And what a list it is, including words like “liberal,” “abortion,” “gay,” and “federalist,” while also explicitly asking for e-mails containing the names of certain individuals.

It’s a witch hunt, and a perfect illustration of McCarthyism of the left. “Have you ever been a member of the Republican Party, or do you know anyone who has?” As noted at the link,

[I]t’s all but clear that the PIA request from the NYT and the AP isn’t to shine a light on the workings of Chevy Chase local government; it’s to invade Mrs. Kavanaugh’s correspondence to dig up dirt on her husband. The nature of the search parameters from the NYT make that excruciatingly clear, unless the NYT has an ongoing in-depth exposé on the use of “federalist” thought in local governments.

…This is an intimidation tactic designed to discourage the next Supreme Court justice appointed by Donald Trump or any other Republican president, warning everyone that spouses will become fair game not just in electoral politics but in non-electoral politics as well.

This is only the beginning. The witch hunt, having failed against Trump, must continue until it succeeds, even if it means broadening it so that everyone who opposes the left is always guilty, and subject to as much blacklisting and thuggery as possible.

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Threats against the children of a Republican congressman part of rising pattern

10:45 am

They’re coming for you next: The report by a Minnesota congressman to the police about a series of threats made against his daughters due to his political positions appears to be part of a rising tide of similar violent threats made against members of Congress, mostly Republicans.

Republican Rep. Jason Lewis told Fox News he has contacted the police over threats to him and even his daughters in the wake of reports about controversial statements he made as a radio show host. “It was serious enough for my office to alert the Capitol Police,” Lewis told Fox News.

The Minnesota congressman said his daughters were threatened in sick messages received by his office. It marks the latest in a wave of threats against not just Republican lawmakers themselves but their families.

Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., also revealed threats against his daughters this month, telling Todd Starnes that “some of the stuff that has been said has been quite sick” and the number of threats has increased dramatically since the last election.

Total reported threats against congressmen doubled from 2016 to 2017, according to the House Sergeant at Arms.

The threats are being made to both sides of the political aisle, though Republicans are getting a larger share. And as long as Democrats continue to coddle and even encourage such behavior, things are only going to get worse, and they themselves are going to find themselves in the cross-hairs as well. It is to their self-interest to calm things down. Sadly, I do not see Democrats doing this.

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The Polls Are Crazy

6:26 pm

Link here. The author does what I had been thinking of doing, of listing a bunch of recent polls that result in completely contradictory conclusions about where the November 2018 elections might be headed.

So how can we make sense of all of this? We can’t. Voters increasingly see the Democrats as extreme and out of the mainstream–no surprise there, since they are. Many Democrats want the U.S. to follow in Venezuela’s footsteps, but don’t want to admit it. Meanwhile most voters, while sensing this, also want the Democrats to control Congress.

My guess is that the polls are missing major currents that will become clear, as in 2016, only after the votes are counted. What those currents will turn out to be, no one really knows.

I can probably provide one possible explanation for why the polls “are missing major currents.” For the past year I have been routinely hanging up on robot-polls. I found them to generally be insulting, useless, and stupid. Then, about three months ago I got a live person conducting a poll, and decided to participate. It was centered on the Republican primary for Congress in my district, something I had not yet delved into.

I soon found it was a push poll, designed to make two candidates look terrible while a third God’s gift to heaven. This was as insulting and annoying as the robot-polls. Worse, it took about ten minutes of increasingly obvious questions to find this out, a real waste of my time.

Since then, I have been refusing to participate in any polls, live or robot. I have better things to do with my time. And I suspect I am not alone in this decision. The number of polls that have been calling our home sometimes rose to ten a day, most of which were fake push polls or stupid in their content. I can imagine a lot of people have responded as I have, which of course makes all the polls increasingly unreliable.

One more thing revealed by the polls at the link, though this really isn’t a surprise: The favorable opinion of socialism held by the young and Democrats is based on some astonishing and apparent ignorance:

Still, one wonders: how can any sentient being favor an ideology that turns a prosperous country into Cuba, Albania, the U.S.S.R., North Korea or Venezuela? The only explanation is invincible ignorance. Rasmussen sheds light on the nature of that ignorance: “Democrats are less likely to know what socialism is compared to other voters but have a much more favorable opinion of it.”

Rasmussen applied a simple criterion for socialism: “Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Democrats…incorrectly believe the individual has more power than the government in a socialist system, a view held by just 12% of Republicans and seventeen percent (17%) of unaffiliated voters. Eighty percent (80%) of Republicans correctly say the government has more power in a socialist system, and 54% of Democrats and 67% of unaffiliateds agree.”

Ignorance about socialism is especially prevalent among the young: “Those under 40 have a much more favorable opinion of socialism than their elders do and are the strongest supporters of Democrats becoming a national socialist party. But younger voters are also the most likely to believe the individual has more power under a socialist system.

I read this and fear deeply for the future. The coming dark age is only a short journey around the corner.

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San Francisco legislators propose banning company cafeterias

4:02 pm

Fascist California: Two San Francisco supervisors plan to introduce local legislation that will ban companies from having their own cafeterias for employees.

The measure, proposed by Supervisor Ahsha Safai and co-sponsored by Supervisor Aaron Peskin, would adjust zoning laws to ban workplace cafeterias moving forward, but would not be retroactive.

Peskin said the measure, was inspired by tech companies like Twitter and Airbnb, which are widely known to have access to dining in their own buildings, depriving nearby restaurants of the dollars usually spent by nearby workers. The measure has the support of Gwyneth Borden, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association and other local merchants.

Under the legislation which is expected to be introduced Tuesday, “you can’t have an industrial kitchen in your office building,” Peskin said. Peskin said the legislation sought to avoid the “Amazon effect that impacts retail and restaurants across the county,” he said. “This is forward thinking legislation.”

Isn’t it amazing how these leftists think that they not only have the right to dictate how everyone else lives their lives, they are also arrogantly convinced that they are anointed with the perfect wisdom necessary to impose their will.

As I have said, California is not a place you should consider moving to, at this time. It is heading for Venezuela, and should get there in about a decade.

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Federal agents steal $29K from innocent man

10:52 am

Theft by government: Federal agents confiscated $29K cash from a man, who has never been charged with any crime, while he was proceeding through security at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.

Yuba City resident Josh Gingerich buys and flips trucks. A recent buying trip to do that cost him a bag of cash which was seized by a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) drug interdiction task force at O’Hare Airport. “A little over 29 grand,” the amount taken said Gingerich who was not arrested and did not break any laws. “No marijuana, no drugs.”

He believes an airport TSA agent saw the money in his backpack and tipped off the DEA. “They take you down to a dingy basement room,” said Gingerich. “No cameras…no nothing.”

Gingerich said he was set up by the officers who he says claimed to smell marijuana on a plastic bag filled with dirty laundry in his backpack. He said officers dumped the clothes, filled the bag with cash, then brought it to the drug dog. “They can just do what they want,” said Gingerich.

There might have been a marijuana smell there, but if so they never used that evidence to charge the man with a crime, only to steal his money.

The Constitution, specifically the Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights, is blatantly clear about this: “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” You can’t get clearer. The entire civil forfeiture process is unconstitutional, illegal, and should end, now. It should especially end because of this quote from the story:

Last March, the U.S. Justice Department Inspector General released a report saying from 2007–2016, the DEA seized $3.2 billion with zero convictions tied to this money.

In other words, the DEA stole more than $3 billion from Americans, none of whom were ever found guilty of any crimes. This is theft by government, and must end.

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House committee approves new space weather bill

9:25 am

The House Science Committee yesterday approved new space weather bill that would shift responsibility for coordinating the government’s space weather observation capabilities to the National Space Council, while also creating a pilot commercial program for launch weather satellites.

It appears there was some heavy political maneuvering involved with this bill, as there was a late switch of language that changed its focus.

The new text has a strong focus on the private sector. In the policy section, for example, it explicitly states that “space weather observation and forecasting are not exclusive functions of the Federal Government” and the government “should, as practicable, obtain space weather data and services through contracts with the commercial sector, when the data and services are available, cost-effective, and add value.” The bill requires the Secretary of Commerce to establish a pilot program for obtaining space weather data from the private sector that appears analogous to NOAA’s commercial weather data pilot program.

The Senate will still have to review and approve this new bill.

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NASA wants to delay WFIRST to pay for Webb overruns

9:07 am

In testimony to Congress yesterday NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said that the agency wants to delay the Wide Field Infrared Space Telescope to pay for the new cost overruns of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Bridenstine said during the hearing that no decisions had been made on how to cover those additional JWST costs. “By the 2020 timeframe is when we’re going to need to have additional funds. So between now and then we’re going to have to make determinations,” he said. “Right now that process is underway.”

He said those decisions would consider the guidance from decadal surveys and a desire to maintain a balanced portfolio of programs. He specifically assured one member, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), that the extra funding would not come out of human spaceflight programs, particularly the Space Launch System. “This is relevant to the Science Mission Directorate exclusively, and that’s where, at this point, we’ve had discussions about what are the options going forward,” Bridenstine said.

Committee members used the two-and-a-half-hour hearing to express their frustrations with this latest delay, noting that the original concept for the mission [Webb] called for it to cost $500 million and launch in 2007, versus a current lifecycle cost of $9.6 billion and launch in 2021. “This is 19 times the original cost and a delay of 14 years,” said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the committee. “It doesn’t get much worse than that.” [emphasis mine]

Only yesterday I speculated that the cuts to WFIRST were related to Webb. It turns out I was right.

I have highlighted above one detail revealed at the hearing. I have always thought Webb’s initial budget was $1 billion with a launch date of 2011. It appears it was less, by half, and it was supposed to launch four years sooner. Makes this boondoggle even more of an embarrassment for NASA and the astrophysics community. And for the astrophysics community it is also a disaster, because Webb’s overruns for the past two decades essentially wiped out what had been a very vibrant space astronomy program at NASA.

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Changes to big August 3 commercial crew announcement do not bode well

8:58 am

On August 3 NASA is planning on making a big announcement concerning its commercial crew program. Yesterday the agency revealed that the NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, will reveal the names of the crew for the first commercial crew flight.

The changes in how that announcement will be made however suggest that they had hoped to make a bigger announcement and have been forced to back off. Initially, vice president Mike Pence was to have made the announcement. He has now canceled his participation. Also, there had previously been rumors that the announcement would have included the launch dates for both SpaceX’s and Boeing’s first flights. That the new press release makes no mention of dates suggests the dates have been delayed.

I hope I am wrong.

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Venezuela to remove 5 zeros from currency due to 1 million % inflation

10:25 pm

The joys of collectivism! The socialist Venezuelan government has decided to remove 5 zeros, not 3, from its currency in order to battle a yearly inflation rate of 1 million percent.

Not surprisingly, the country’s dictator, President Nicolas Maduro, claims the country’s problems are not because of socialist policies but because of the evil United States:

The government has said it is the victim of an “economic war” led by opposition leaders with the help of Washington, which last year levied several rounds of sanctions against Maduro’s administration and a group of top officials.

Meanwhile,

Venezuela’s minimum wage is now about the equivalent of $1 a month, which has left citizens across the country unable to eat properly or obtain basic medical care – fueling an exodus of Venezuelans seeking to escape the economic crisis.

As Margaret Thatcher so accurately noted when speaking of socialism, communism, and all other collectivist ideologies, “Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.”

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Democratic Party hate and demagoguery on display

2:27 pm

This Hot Air story about an over-the-top attack by Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) of Trump’s most recent Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, perfectly encapsulates the hate and demagoguery of the Democratic Party.

Anyone they disagree with is “evil.” Anyone they oppose must be stopped, by any means necessary. To show that I am not exaggerating, listen to Cory Booker himself:

A transcript of Booker’s words:

I’m here to call on folk to understand that in a moral moment there is no neutral. In a moral moment there is no bystanders. You are either complicit in the evil, you are either contributing to the wrong, or you are fighting against it.

[Referencing the 23 Psalm of the Bible, Booker then said] It doesn’t say that I sit in the valley of the shadow of death. It doesn’t say I’m sitting on the sidelines in the valley of the shadow of death. It says I am walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It says I am taking agency that I am going to make it through this crisis.

And so I am calling on everyone right now who understands what’s at stake, who understands who Kavanaugh is. My ancestors said “if someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” He has shown us who he is.

I must add that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) can be seen behind Booker nodding enthusiastically in support of his every word.

So, who is this evil Kavanaugh? The thumbnail description below, from another story describing Booker’s attack, captures a few of the more important details about the man himself:

Kavanaugh, a Christian father of two who regularly donates his time to serve food to the homeless, has been pilloried in the media for taking on credit card debt to purchase season tickets to the Washington Nationals. The double Yale graduate has also been criticized and labeled a “frat boy” by liberal advocacy groups due to his first name and alleged penchant for beer drinking.

You might disagree with Kavanaugh’s legal stance, but to call him evil? This is demagoguery of the worst sort, which is defined as “impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace.” It is also what the Democratic Party is nowadays, a collection of demagogues with no reasoned positions and who seem to hate anything that gets in their way.

If there is any hope for our country, the midterm elections will see the Democratic Party smashed, with major losses across the board. I unfortunately do not yet see that happening.

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