Author: Robert Zimmerman

A modern intellectual looks at the Syrian revolt and immediately concludes it was global warming that caused it

1:02 pm

A modern intellectual looks at the Syrian revolt and immediately concludes that it was caused by global warming!

Climate change: is there anything it can’t do?

Seriously, the drought in Syria might be a factor behind the revolt, but to assert that the drought was caused by global warming is weak at best. There is no data to make that assertion, none at all. All we have is the opinion of some global warming scientists that such extreme droughts might happen more frequently as the Earth warms. And since the temperature increase as predicted by those very same scientists has not occurred, we should take all their predictions with a big grain of salt.

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An elderly leftwing protester spit in the face of at Romney supporter at a campaign event today.

9:02 pm

Leftwing civility: An elderly leftwing protester spits in the face of at Romney supporter at a campaign event today.

When the left made the accusation that a tea party protester had spat at a Democratic Congressman during the healthcare debate, Andrew Breitbart offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who could provide video proving it happened. Three years later that award remains unclaimed, since the only videos of the event show nothing of the sort took place. Today, not only was this disgusting act actually done by a Democratic protester, in mere hours the video is all over the internet.

Tells us something about who are the uncivil ones in this debate.

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Facing tight budgets, a National Science Foundation panel has recommended the shuttering of five major ground-based telescopes.

5:46 pm

Facing tight budgets, a National Science Foundation panel has recommended the shuttering of five major ground-based telescopes.

Stay tuned for loud screams of outrage. However, some of these facilities have not been very useful for years. Consider the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Radio Telescope. It was only rebuilt after it collapsed in 1988 because of the political clout of Senator Robert Byrd. By the time that reconstruction was finished, a process that took more than 20 years, the telescope was completely obsolete. Though it has done some good science, it is far outmatched by other radio telescope arrays.

Many of the facilities are funded merely due to bureaucratic and political inertia. For the astronomical community to be willing to recognize this is a good thing, for which they should be lauded.

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The promised land: where Curiosity is headed.

1:48 pm

The promised land: where Curiosity is headed.

This image (cut out from a mosaic) shows the view from the landing site of NASA’s Curiosity rover toward the lower reaches of Mount Sharp, where Curiosity is likely to begin its ascent through hundreds of feet (meters) of layered deposits. The lower several hundred feet (meters) show evidence of bearing hydrated minerals, based on orbiter observations. The terrain Curiosity will explore is marked by hills, buttes, mesas and canyons on the scale of one-to-three story buildings, very much like the Four Corners region of the western United States.

Click through to the image itself. Like all mountains, what appears to be a featureless mountainside from a distance instead becomes a complex and rough terrain in close-up.

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NASA has granted $45 million to Ball Aerospace to develop a “green” propellent to hydrazine, the toxic fuel used in by rockets, satellites, and even manned spacecraft.

12:06 pm

NASA has granted $45 million to Ball Aerospace to develop a “green” propellent to replace hydrazine, the toxic fuel used in by rockets, satellites, and even manned spacecraft.

Today’s use of hydrazine fuel for rockets, satellites and spacecraft is pervasive. Hydrazine is an efficient propellant and can be stored for long periods of time, but it also is highly corrosive and toxic. NASA is seeking new, non-toxic high performance green propellants that could be safely and widely used by rocketeers, ranging from government to industry and academia. Green propellants include liquid, solid, mono- propellant, which use one fuel source, or bi-propellants, which use two, and hybrids that offer safer handling conditions and lower environmental impact than current fuels.

The “green” terminology is meaningless in this context and is probably a politically-correct gesture to higher ups in the Obama administration. Nonetheless, finding a financially viable replacement for hydrazine would be quite helpful, as its toxic nature adds a great deal of cost to the production of any space vehicle that uses it.

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New data now suggests that in swing states there has been a significant decline in Democratic registration

11:25 am

What does this tell us? New data now suggests that in swing states there has been a significant decline in Democratic registration contrasted with big gains for Republicans voter registration in the upcoming election.

The numbers are startling. Two key quotes:

In Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado, and Nevada — tossup states where direct election-year comparisons could be drawn — the numbers are striking. Democratic rolls increased by only 39,580, less than one-tenth the amount at the comparable point in the 2008 election. At the same time, GOP registration has jumped by 145,085, or more than double for the same time four years ago. Independent registration has shown an even stronger surge, to 229,500, almost three times the number at this point in 2008.

And this:

Based on recent data, Democratic registration has declined by more than 800,000, or 5.2 percent; Republican enrollments were down about 80,000, or 0.7 percent; and independents were up 486,677, or 6.4 percent, in [battleground] states.

These numbers favor the Republicans by 3.5 to 1 and 10 to 1, respectively, numbers that are astonishing. More significantly, these numbers are for the swing states, the very places where voters have been undecided and willing to shift from one side to the other. Thus, these numbers tell us that these voters are now swinging strongly in one direction, and that direction is towards the Republicans.

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The Russian Prime Minister has given the Russian launch industry until September to figure out how to improve its quality control.

10:35 am

The Russian Prime Minister has given the Russian launch industry until September to figure out how to improve its quality control.

It also appears from the above article that there is some confusion about whether the head of the company that built the failed upper stage to the Proton rocket has resigned, as reported here and here.

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Obama press chief said today that they have no plans to take John McCain’s advice and replace Joe Biden as vice president.

1:58 pm

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.

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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.

12:52 pm

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.

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On the Road

12:35 pm

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.)

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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.

3:58 pm

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.

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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

12:45 pm

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.

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Contrasting Paul Ryan with Barack Obama.

12:18 pm

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.

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