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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

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Four things the U.S. government did faster than building the Obamacare website.

Four things the U.S. government did faster than building the Obamacare website.

I’ll give you a hint: None of them were done during Obama’s administration. And all of them were far more challenging that writing the software for a webpage.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

7 comments

  • joe

    I think all four events had a unified population behind the effort, in the case of Obama care the public has largely been against this legislation. That fact does not answer questions about the horrible rollout debacle, this government has proven over and over how inept they can be. Maybe its a good thing the republicans backed down on trying to get a one year delay on the personal mandate, it seems that once they backed off, the rollout began in earnest and the dems said wait a minute, maybe we should delay, they have egg on their face, the rollout proved that they don’t have a clue as how to fix this mess. In reality it can never be fixed!

  • joe

    With regard to the Manhatten project, the public at large was most likely not aware. Could we as a nation duplicate things like the Hoover dam and the moon shot? I think with the bureaucratization of American government, that none of these feats could be possible as too many chiefs have a say as to how, what, when and where things happen, as an example the space launch system, congress built a monster that does nothing it wants it to do, is over budget and may never fly!

  • Remember when it was ‘our’ government, and not ‘the’ government?

  • Don

    When that bridge collapsed a few years back in Minneapolis-St.Paul an entirely new bridge was built within a year. The state DOT and EPA et al gave virtual carte blanche to the builders. So it can be done if government gets out of the way.

  • Cotour

    A positive prediction for a change in regards to this offence to the Constitution.

    (The government, specifically the American government, can not mandate that an individual buy health insurance! I don’t care what the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court says!)

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenhayward/2013/11/11/obamacare-will-be-repealed-well-in-advance-of-the-2014-elections/

  • Edward

    It seems that the government is capable of performing the items that are stated in Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution. You know, the only things that the federal government is *supposed* to do. Specifically:

    “8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts…
    “11: To declare War…
    “12: To raise and support Armies…
    “13: To provide and maintain a Navy…
    “14: To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces…
    “15: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions…
    “16: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States…”

    They really seem to do poorly with other tasks, not allowed by the Constitution, such as:

    The “war” on poverty (we’re still losing that one).
    The Education Department (US education is worse now than when that department was created)
    Social Insecurity (will still run out of money)
    Medicare (ditto)
    and, of course, Obamacare (a money loser after the first ten years, starting almost four years ago).

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

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