Scott Walker wins big in Wisconsin
Scott Walker has won the recall election in Wisconsin by a large margin, 53-46 percent, more than predicted and exceeding his vote total in his 2010 election victory.
Scott Walker has won the recall election in Wisconsin by a large margin, 53-46 percent, more than predicted and exceeding his vote total in his 2010 election victory.
An evening pause:
Fare you well, my dear, I must be gone
And leave you for awhile.
If I roam away I’ll come back again
Though I roam ten thousand miles, my dear,
Though I roam ten thousand miles.
Good news: Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) has backed down and modified the language he had inserted in the NASA budget bill that would have limited the number of commercial space companies NASA could subsidize.
From Clark Lindsey:
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) , who is Chairman on the Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations committee, put language into the recent House budget for NASA that requiree NASA to down-select immediately to one primary contractor in the commercial crew program. This would obviously eliminate competition on price and rule out redundancy in case one system is grounded. He has now relented and is willing to allow for “2.5 (two full and one partial) CCiCAP awards”.
As I wrote earlier, the success of Dragon is putting strong political pressure on Congress to support the independent commercial space companies over the NASA-built and very expensive Space Launch System (SLS) that Congress had mandated. Expect to see more elected officials back down in the coming year, with the eventually elimination of SLS from the budget.
Watch the Venus transit live:
From space, from Solar Dynamics Observatory.
From Universe Today, on Youtube.
We’ve only just begun: “So come and get me if you must, Mr. President. I will not bow to your wicked regulation.”
James Dobson is not to be taken lightly. Under the Obamacare HHS contraceptive mandate, his organization, Focus on the Family, would not qualify for any exemption and would be required to pay for contraceptives and abortion drugs. And if Dobson’s organization defies the federal government here, expect very loud fireworks, as Focus is very large with a very large following.
Congressional investigators now have documents that prove senior officials in Eric Holderโs Department of Justice approved Operation Fast and Furious, whereby Justice allowed guns to be purchased illegally and then smuggled back to Mexico.
Hey, so what that Eric Holder committed perjury before Congress? So what that people, including an American Border Patrol agent, have been murdered using these smuggled guns? So what that the Department of Justice, whose task it is to enforce the law, worked to aid Mexican drug cartels in obtaining illegal guns?
What’s the big deal? Mitt Romney was mean to someone when he was in high school forty years ago!
Want to own your own island? Now you can have it built, and put it wherever you want!
Watching the transit of Venus – from Saturn.
Tone deaf: The union representing maintenance crews at Belmont is threatening to go on strike on Friday, just prior to the Belmont Stakes where the horse “I’ll Have Another” has a chance to win the Triple Crown.
With more than 100,000 fans expecting to attend the race as well as millions more watching on television, a strike will do wonders in sealing the union’s image in the public’s eye.
Tone deaf: In order to do a fifteen minute campaign photo-op on Memorial Day, Obama shut down the Vietnam Memorial to everyone, including veterans, for seven hours.
The trustee of the customers whose money was stolen by MF Global has indicated in a report that he might sue Jon Corzine for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.
If they can’t get the government to prosecute him, at least they can go after him in civil court.
The day of reckoning looms: The debt of the federal government is projected to be nearly twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2037, the Congressional Budget Office announced Tuesday.
This CBO report actually supposed to be encouraging, as it indicates that the day of doom has been pushed back a whopping two years! Yowza! Let’s pop the corks on the champagne bottles and start celebrating!
Sadly, the article also has this ridiculous quote:
CBOโs latest prediction is similar to its 2011 report despite the $2.1 trillion in budget cuts enacted in last Augustโs debt-ceiling deal between the White House and Congress.
Nothing was cut by that deal. All they did was trim the rate of growth. For any journalist to continue to participate in this fraud is sickening.
Good news: According to a new poll, the number of voters who consider themselves independents is now the highest in seventy-five years.
If you call yourself independent, it means you intend to keep an open mind about who to vote for. It means you have decided that loyalty to party affiliation is not a reason to vote for a candidate. It means that you have decided to reject conventional wisdom and go your own way.
It doesn’t necessarily mean you will make a wise decision, but it does mean that on the whole the American electorate has decided our government needs a new approach, and that knee-jerk loyalty to the established political parties is not the way to get it.
The surest sign that the Democrats will lose the recall vote there today: “Mainstream media escapes from Wisconsin.”
Next up: Taking a look at the test flight planning for Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo capsule.
What could go wrong? The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has asked the Utah state legislature for permission to scan the license plates of all cars driving on Interstate 15.
Worse, they are already scanning plates in Texas and California, and plan to add Arizona to the list.
I especially like this quote from a Utah legislator in response to the request. “Iโll be quite frank with you. A lot of us in Utah donโt trust the federal government.” Do tell.
An evening pause: In tribute to Doc Watson, who died last week at the age of 89. Blind from the age of 1, Watson is widely considered one of America’s best folk guitarists. Watch what he does here in this 1991 live performance.
Due to cost overruns, NASA has cancelled the GEM X-ray telescope.
The shuttle prototype Enterprise was damaged on Sunday while being transported by barge to its New York City museum home.
Astronomers think they have discovered a distant supermassive black hole that is being ejected from its galaxy at a speed of several million miles per hour.
Although the ejection of a supermassive black hole from a galaxy by recoil because more gravitational waves are being emitted in one direction than another is likely to be rare, it nevertheless could mean that there are many giant black holes roaming undetected out in the vast spaces between galaxies. “These black holes would be invisible to us,” said co-author Laura Blecha, also of CfA, “because they have consumed all of the gas surrounding them after being thrown out of their home galaxy.”
This conclusion however is not final. The data could also be explained by the spiraling in of two supermassive black holes.