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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five 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.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Maryland’s Obamacare exchanges will not be functional until December.

Fail: Maryland’s Obamacare exchanges will not be functional until December.

A week into its launch, the Maryland exchange had reportedly enrolled only 326 people. A week later, the number had improved to just a little over 1,000, and O’Malley told reporters it could be six weeks before the exchange website was working smoothly. “My sense of it is, probably for the next month or so, month and a half, we will be working out glitches in the portal,” he said.

Maryland was enthusiastic about Obamacare and attacked the problem from the beginning. The result is still pitiful. Even though you are required to get a health plan under Obamacare, you might have no way to do it before the deadline arrives next year.

Which is why the real conservatives in Congress had a shutdown battle: They want to repeal Obamacare, but were willing to offer a compromise whereby the mandate was delayed one year. Considering the problems Obamacare is having, what is so unreasonable about that?

And then there’s this: Insurance companies complain that the ObamaCare website is providing them faulty data, even with its low success rate in enrolling anyone.

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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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

2 comments

  • Pzatchok

    If they didn’t force you to signup first before you could shop around for an insurance plan and price they probably wouldn’t have anyone signed up at all.

    All those numbers they bring out are in no way representative of of who might have possibly actually purchased insurance.

    And now even the insurance companies can not give you a real answer because they do not think the data they are getting from the web sight is correct and accurate.

    What a farce. For all that time and money and the government couldn’t even get a point of sale web site running.
    When 20 year old collage dropout could have done it inside a week.

    Were has all that cash gone? And how much ended up in the democratic coffers as re election donations?

  • Pzatchok

    The president would NEVER EVER EVER let the Republicans have a win.
    And agreeing to delay it a year during the shutdown would be seen as a win by the Republicans, even though he will probably shut it down and delay it a year in the end anyways.
    But it will then look like his decision and not the republicans.

    He places his party over the good of the state and his own good above that of the party for now.

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