Hummingbird Aerodynamics
An evening pause:
Year: 2012
Obama press chief said today that they have no plans to take John McCain’s advice and replace Joe Biden as vice president.
Obama’s press chief said today that they have no plans to take John McCain’s advice and replace Joe Biden as vice president.
This public suggestion by John McCain might actually have been the best thing he has ever done for the conservative movement. As Biden has piled on the stupid gaffes in the past few weeks it seemed to me that to fire him and replace him with someone more respectable (and more intelligent) this close to the election would be a very smart political move. Having a Republican suggest it, however, has made the Obama administration decide they can’t do it. Truly wonderful.
Scientists using Solar Dynamics Observatory have found that the Sun is possibly the roundest object every measured, far rounder than predicted by theory.
The uncertainty of science: Scientists using Solar Dynamics Observatory have found that the Sun is possibly the roundest object every measured, far rounder than predicted by theory.
It appears the Obama Justice Department is not going to prosecute Obama fundraiser and former Democratic Governor Jon Corzine for the embezzlement of customer funds at MF Global.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: It appears the Obama Justice Department is not going to prosecute Obama fundraiser and former Democratic Governor/Senator Jon Corzine for the embezzlement of customer funds at MF Global.
What Corzine and MF Global did was the equivalent of a bank president digging into his customer’s private bank accounts in order to fund their own private investments. That is called embezzlement. It is a felony. That the Obama Justice Department is going to let Corzine off the hook is more evidence that this administration doesn’t believe in enforcing the law, but in using the power of government for its own ends. Disgraceful.
On the Road
Posting might be light today, as I am flying from Tucson to Newark with my 94-year-old mother, who is joining my brother and sister-in-law in their move to Israel to be closer to her four grandchildren and now eleven great-grandchildren. (As Diane says, “The most powerful attractive force in the universe is grandchildren.)
The Russians have pinpointed the cause
The Russians have pinpointed the cause for the August 6 Proton rocket launch failure to a problem during production of the upper stage.
In related news, the head of the space firm that made the rocket has resigned.
Bob Dylan – Just like a woman
An evening pause: Bob Dylan, singing “Just Like a Woman,” with George Harrison and Leon Russell providing vocal and guitar support, at the 1971 live concert for Bangladesh.
A routine engine firing to raise the orbit of the International Space Station failed to come off today.
A routine engine firing to raise the orbit of the International Space Station failed to come off today.
Though it appears the engines on the European ATV cargo craft did not fire as scheduled, the report is very vague and does not make clear what actually happened. Stay tuned.
It now appears confirmed that the man arrested for shooting a guard at the Family Research Council in DC apparently did so because he disagreed with the Council’s conservative positions.
Leftwing debate: It now appears confirmed that the man arrested for shooting a guard at the Family Research Council in DC apparently did so at least in part because he disagreed with the Council’s conservative positions.
Since the Tucson shootings in January 2011, the left has gone out of its way to try to pin every madman’s violent terror spree on conservatives and their willingness to aggressively disagree with the left. “If only the right wasn’t so hateful in its rhetoric these acts of violence wouldn’t happen.” Or to put it more honestly, Shut up!
In every case the charges by the left have proven false. In every case, politics had little to do with the murders. In fact, the only political violence we have seen since the rise of the tea party movement in 2009 has come from leftwing protesters trying to shut that movement down.
Now we do have a case where political rhetoric can be directly tied to violence. And it has come from the left, which has been completely over the top in the anger and hate they have expressed for those who disagree with them on the subject of gay marriage.
Sadly, I do not expect Barack Obama to go on the public airwaves and call for civility. To do so would show us that he can rise above partisanship, something I do not think he is capable of doing.
A test flight of an Air Force hypersonic aircraft failed yesterday when it went out of control before its experimental scramjet engine could be started
A test flight of an Air Force hypersonic aircraft failed yesterday when it went out of control before its experimental scramjet engine could be started.
Though failures during engineering tests are not really failures, as the goal is to find out if the engineering works or doesn’t, this particular failure is a bit more like a real failure. They never got to test the scramjet engine, which was the point of the entire flight. Instead, they had a failure of a control fin on the aircraft, and it appears that this fin was “faulty.” Not a good sign, especially as the previous flight in June 2011 also failed prematurely.
Contrasting Paul Ryan with Barack Obama.
Contrasting Paul Ryan with Barack Obama.
The next month, both [budget] plans came to a vote in the Senate. Ryan’s budget lost on a party-line vote; Obama’s lost 0-97. Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, and Obama’s own appointee to the deficit-control panel whose recommendations Obama completely ignored in that budget proposal, told a University of North Carolina audience in September 2011 that Ryan had proposed “a sensible, straightforward, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit by $4 trillion.” In contrast, Bowles told the audience, “I don’t think anyone took [Obama’s] budget very seriously.”
In February 2012, Obama proposed yet another unserious budget that ignored all of the realities of our short- and long-term fiscal shortfalls, with yet another trillion-dollar deficit. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tried to tell Ryan and the House Budget Committee that Obama’s budget proposal would “stabilize” the deficits. This time, Ryan only needed four minutes to dismantle that argument, showing that Obama’s long-term budget only “stabilized” deficits for a decade, after which they escalated out of control — unlike Ryan’s long-term budget reforms, which solved the problem of escalating costs. “We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem,” Geithner finally exclaimed. “What we do know is we don’t like yours.”
Bluntly put, Obama has never been willing to propose anything that might solve the federal budget disaster, while Ryan has at least made an attempt.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has detected helium in the Moon’s tenuous atmosphere.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has detected helium in the Moon’s tenuous atmosphere.