Year: 2020

CIA in 2016 briefed Obama on Clinton campaign false Trump/Russian collusion claim

12:55 pm

Newly declassified CIA documents show that the spy agency briefed President Barack Obama in July 2016, during the presidential election campaign, about a Hillary Clinton campaign effort to plant a false Trump/Russian collusion narrative in the press in order “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

The memos indicate the CIA first received the information through monitoring of Russian sources but deemed it credible enough to both brief Obama on it in July 2016 and to refer the intelligence to the FBI in September 2016 for possible investigation.

The warnings came as the FBI was just starting its Crossfire Hurricane probe into now-disproven Trump-Russia collusion, aided by the Clinton campaign-funded dossier by Christopher Steele. They are likely to bolster GOP claims the James Comey’s FBI ignored clear evidence that the allegations were a political dirty trick and not evidence of a counterintelligence threat.

“Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date,” the September 2016.referral from the Agency to the bureau read. ““An exchange [redacted] discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”

Two months earlier, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed Obama, according to handwritten notes written after the briefing. “We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [redacted],” Brennan notes read. “CITE alleged approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.” [emphasis mine]

These notes, written at the time by these CIA officials, also make it clear that this Trump/Russian collusion scam was directly approved by Hillary Clinton as a campaign tactic. Yet, though Obama, the CIA, and the FBI were all informed of the fake nature of this plan, the FBI under James Comey — apparently with Obama’s approval — made that plan a major FBI investigation that allowed the Obama administration, acting as a campaign surrogate for Clinton, to spy on her political opponent. After she lost the effort was then turned into a weapon to try to overthrow Trump, despite the fact that he had been legally elected by the American people.

Many people from that Obama administrion should be in prison for what to me increasingly appears to treasonable actions.

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Cliffs of Martian ice

12:01 pm

southern hemisphere Martian ice scarp
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image to the right, cropped to post here, shows an ice scarp located in the high southern latitudes south of Hellas Basin. It was taken on August 15, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and was released today as a captioned image. From the caption:

Scientists have come to realize that, just below the surface, about one third of Mars is covered in ice. We study this ice to learn about Mars’ ancient climate and astronauts’ future water supplies.

Sometimes we see the buried ice because cliffs form like the one in this image. On the brownish, dusty cliff wall, the faint light-blue-colored ice shows through. [emphasis mine]

This ice scarp is one of about two dozen [pdf] that have so far been found within the latitude bands of approximately 45 to 65 degrees latitude in both the north and south hemispheres. The data so far obtained suggests that the scarp exists because of a pure water ice layer just below the surface. Over time this pole-facing cliff retreats away from the pole towards the equator, leaving behind it an extended pit. In the cliff wall scientists think they have detected evidence of that water ice layer.

Blue in MRO hi-res images can indicate both water as well as very rough surfaces. While much of the blue here could be ether, the blocky cracks suggest it is ice. As explained by Colin Dundas of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science Center in Arizona and lead author of the pdf above,

The crack patterns are likely thermal contraction cracks, which form in shallowly buried ice due to seasonal temperature changes causing it to expand and contract. When that repeats over many years it creates regular patterns of cracks that organize themselves into polygons.

The overview image below gives the location of all known such scarps, as of March of 2020, taken from the pdf paper that I linked to above.
» Read more

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Cygnus freighter arrives at ISS

9:52 am

Capitalism in space: Northrop Grumann’s Cygnus freighter yesterday arrived at ISS, bringing with it four tons of supplies plus a new toilet.

The unpiloted cargo ship was loaded with four tons of supplies and equipment, including crew food and clothing, experiment hardware and material, the virtual reality camera, the new toilet and even samples of Estée Lauder skin cream that will be used in a commercial photo shoot for the company’s social media platforms.

The $23 million toilet, or “universal waste management system,” is smaller and more sophisticated than the station’s current potty and includes modifications to make it easier for female astronauts to use.

Next up for ISS are two manned missions later this month, first a Soyuz bringing a crew of three, followed by the second SpaceX Dragon manned mission, bringing a crew of four. In between the present crew of three will return to Earth.

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Leak search on ISS narrows further

9:25 am

Further work on ISS by the astronauts has now narrowed the location of the station’s long-term slow leak to the aft area of the Russian Zvezda module.

As of Monday, the station crew had not located the precise site of the leak, but officials believe they have traced it to a transfer compartment at the rear section of the Zvezda module, near an aft docking port where a Russian Progress resupply freighter is attached.

The rate of leak continues to be slow and thus not any danger to the crew. It is also a concern, as it could become a safety issue should it increase. They want to find it and patch it. Furthermore, Zvezda is ISS’s second oldest module, launched in 2000. If this leak is a sign of that age is even more essential to know.

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Musk to personally review SpaceX launch procedures

8:51 am

Capitalism in space: As a result of the spate of launch aborts in the past few weeks, the head of SpaceX, Elon Musk, is now planning a personal review of the company’s launch facilities in Florida next week.

Musk would like SpaceX to increase its cadence such that it can reach 48 launches in 2021, which would more than double the company’s previous record for total number of missions in a single year. Technical scrubs like the ones this week would prevent this. Achieving frequent launches will require smooth operations.

“We’re doing a broad review of launch site, propulsion, structures, avionics, range & regulatory constraints this weekend,” Musk tweeted. “I will also be at the Cape next week to review hardware in person.”

This review aligns with the company’s entire strategy regarding rocketry. Instead of accepting such aborts as the cost of doing business, Musk wants to review procedures to see if launches can be made more reliable.

Musk’s statement that they want to be able to do 48 launches next year is most intriguing, as it suggests, based on their manifest of launches, that they are going to launch a lot of Starlink satellites.

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Two dozen exoplanets superior to Earth for life?

8:45 am

The uncertainty of science: A team of scientists have now identified 24 exoplanets from the Kepler telescope archive that they propse might actually be better for life than Earth itself.

All the exoplanets are rocky and terrestrial, like the Earth. All are in the habitable zone, meaning that they orbit their star at a distance that makes their general temperature comparable to Earth.

What makes them superior, according to these scientists, are three factors. First, their stars are not G-type stars, like the Sun, but K-types. K-types have much longer lifespans, 70 billion years compared to the Sun’s 8 to 10 billion, allowing more time for life to develop.

Second, the planets have a slightly greater mass than Earth.

Part of the reason the Earth is habitable is because it’s large enough to be geologically active, giving it a protective magnetic field, and has enough gravity to retain an atmosphere. According to the team, if a planet was 10 percent larger, it would have more surface area to live on. If it was 1.5 times as massive as the Earth, its interior would retain more heat from radioactive decay, would remain active longer, and hold onto its atmosphere for a longer time.

Finally, the orbits of these two dozen exoplanets makes them just slighter warmer than Earth, which is thought to be beneficial to life.

This is interesting, but it is pure guesswork. These factors might make our Earth life happier, but these scientists have no idea if such conditions are beneficial or harmful to the creation of life. At present we have zero data on what the ideal conditions would be.

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SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites

8:20 am

After a number of weather delays, SpaceX this morning finally launched another 60 Starlink satellites into orbit, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

They also successfully landed the 1st stage, on its third flight, the 61st time they have done this. One fairing half was also making its third flight, and was also recovered. I have embedded the live stream of the launch below the fold.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

25 China
16 SpaceX
10 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S. has retaken the lead from China, 26 to 25, in the national rankings.
» Read more

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“N-Word Science” Proves You’re a Racist!

6:44 pm

Link here. The author delves into the so-called “science” of some of the most hyped “white supremacy” academic research, and finds it not only wanting, he finds it downright garbage and not worth the recycled paper it is written on.

No surprise. Race and gender studies are all lies and bigotry, designed not to improve the knowledge of the human race, but to slander all whites, to dehumanize them, and to make it justifiable to treat them as second-class citizens.

I liked his opening however:

With summer 2020 finally in the rearview mirror, and after seven months of “two weeks to flatten the curve,” I’m getting a little sick of “the science.” Not science, mind you, but theee science, the thing that leftists keep assuring us exists—a singular, canonical truth we all must obey. Mind you, it sure seems like there’s not a great deal of agreement about “the science” regarding COVID: You don’t need masks/You do need masks. Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work/Hydroxychloroquine totally works. Sunlight doesn’t help/Sunlight helps. COVID doesn’t linger in the air/COVID totally lingers in the air/COVID doesn’t linger after all.

Large crowds spread COVID/Large crowds don’t spread COVID (if it’s a BLM crowd).

Theee science is whatever today’s CNN home page says it is. If that happens to contradict yesterday’s home page, well, that’s your fault for having a memory. [emphasis in original]

The number of lies and inconsistencies coming from the “We’re all gonna die from COVID-19” crowd is legion. In this one short quote he sums the worst up quite succinctly.

7 comments

Trump proves COVID-19 is nothing to fear

12:34 pm

The recent spat of positive tests for COVID-19 among the Washington elite, including President Trump, highlight spectacularly the continuing overreaction and unnecessary fear and terror that people have of this respiratory illness.

All told since October 1st about eighteen Washington elected officials, staffers, and reporters have announced testing positive for the coronavirus, based on several reports here, here, and here.

These of course are only the announced cases. I suspect that in Washington a lot more are testing positive but are keeping quiet about it.

And yet, among these announced cases has anyone died? No. Has anyone gotten seriously ill? No. In fact, almost no one has been hospitalized, except for Trump, and he recovered so fast that he was released from the Walter Reed hospital today after spending less than four days there. Moreover, he was sent to the hospital only out of caution, not because he was having any significant problems. During his stay it appears he continued his work schedule with almost as much vigor as before.

We used to have a saying during flu season. “Something’s going around, everyone’s got it.” » Read more

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Criss-crossing Martian ridges hit by new impacts

9:41 am

Criss-crossing Martian ridges hit by new impacts
Click for full image.

The image to the right, cropped to post here, is a captioned photo from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance orbiter and released today. From the caption:

The black spots [recent impacts] form because the craters exposed cleaner materials in the subsurface beneath the bright, dusty surface.

Our image is also interesting because the surface has a criss-cross pattern formed by wind activity. Bright ripples that are oriented from the upper right to the lower left are perpendicular to the wind flow. In contrast, outcrops that have been eroded by the wind are oriented perpendicular to the ripples to produce the criss-cross pattern we now observe.

The overview map below might also help explain this criss-cross pattern.
» Read more

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A donut on the Moon

8:58 am

A donut crater on the Moon
Click for full image.

In this case the donut is a crater dubbed Bell E Crater, with a second concentric rim in its interior. The photo to the right, reduced to post here, was taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) as part of its high resolution survey of the entire Moon. As noted at the first link:

Craters not only vary in shape but also in complexity. There are simple craters and complex craters with ring structures and mountains at the center. Somewhere in between is Bell E, a small crater located within the larger Bell crater. These donut-shaped formations are commonly known as concentric craters. Many questions remain on the origin of donut craters. While there have been several ideas about their origin, including double impacts, the currently favored hypotheses involve volcanic processes and compositional variations.

The article outlines four hypotheses for explaining this crater’s formation, a perfectly aligned double impact, ripples at impact into thick warm lava, layers of different densities, and later volcanic activity. None do a good job of explaining all of the concentric craters found on the Moon, and thus suggest that these craters might have formed from some combination of more than one theory.

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