Scroll down to read this post.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. I keep the website clean from pop-ups and annoying demands. Instead, I depend entirely on my readers to support me. Though this means I am sacrificing some income, it also means that I remain entirely independent from outside pressure. By depending solely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, no one can threaten me with censorship. You don't like what I write, you can simply go elsewhere.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. 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.
 

3. A Paypal Donation:

4. A Paypal subscription:


5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.


Roy Moore has won the Republican Alabama senate primary

The revolt continues: Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has handily won the Republican Alabama senate primary, easily beating the Washington establishment’s hand-picked choice, Luther Strange.

Moore will now have to beat the Democrat in the main election.

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 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

5 comments

  • wayne

    Mitch will now back the democrat candidate, and escalate his attacks on Conservatives.

    It’s who he is, it’s what he does, and he won’t stop until the day he dies.

  • LocalFluff

    Concerning the Deep Space Gateway I emailed you on the Spaceshow about, I understand it that only the SLS can launch the Orion to it, since Orion is so heavy and requires a launch escape tower and it has to go to some Lunar orbit. Dragon and Starliner are smaller and don’t have the life support capacity to support a crew for weeks. Even if Falcon Heavy works and could launch the Dragon to the Moon, the Gateway requires Orion’s life support capacity as a component while crewed. The Gateway is not really an independent space station, it is very much smaller than the ISS. It’s more like the current Chinese space station. The Orion itself will make up a third of the living space.

    Delta Heavy could only launch an Orion to quickly crash down into the atmosphere for reentry testing. Like launching a sounding rocket straight up. The Orion + service module + launch escape tower has a mass of 10+15+9 = 34 tons at launch. The Deep Space Gateway is immune against competition by design. No company would develop products for something that is useless and only has a whimsical temporary government customer.
    http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Pratt-Timmons-Cichan_8-30-17/

    DSG is even worse than I thought. And it unfortunately seems to be happening for real, from the talking about it to judge and with Bridenstein appointed. How horrible! In only 5 years the Chinese will dominate human spaceflight with a permanently crewed real space station in an economic, protected and useful orbit and with a usefully large crew to do science and commercial tasks as it is commercially usefully in low Earth orbit. While the DSG can only be visited by a crew of four two weeks at a time once a year, or every second year if the SLS is supposed to sometimes launch uncrewed payloads too, and serves no purpose whatsoever. No research or commercial activities at all can be done under those circumstances. And since there is no use at all for a space station in Lunar orbit, it will never be done “for real” and the experiences learned form the DSG will be worthless.

  • Hi LocalFluff. I suspected it was you tonight. Glad to hear from you again.

    This comment and thread would be better in my SLS post this past weekend. Could you repost it there? I’d rather respond there, as that is the appropriate thread for the conversation.

  • LocalFluff

    Even Trump himself cannot tame “his” movement. Like many politicians who have made society changing breakthroughs, he’s riding a horse which isn’t tame, because it happened to be running in the right direction for a while. But now it doesn’t help him get senate majority.

    Trump campaigning against Bannon and against an outsider candidate, should help him in dealing with democrats and neocons. And he shows that his support in the midterms can be won simply by being loyal to him, regardless everything else. He needs to go towards the center to get legislation done before the midterm, and the weak democratic senators is the enemy’s weak point.

    I think Trump is quite astute in these things. He doesn’t give up an inch of power for some ideological issue. He wants loyal senators, that’s what he needs right now, that’s what he’s going for. He turned the family construction company into a brand name. This is a peoples person. He thinks about how people think (something I tried with my wife, but I don’t have that kind of talent, she always beat me in poker).

  • Edward

    LocalFluff wrote: “Even Trump himself cannot tame ‘his’ movement.

    I think that is well phrased, especially the doubt as to whose movement it is.

    LocalFluff calls it riding an untamed horse, but I think of it more as Trump surfing a wave. Either way, it is not Trump who is in control of “his” movement but it is the movement that will determine whether Trump falls off the horse or surfboard.

    Trump did not start this movement; he is only riding the wave of this movement as being the lesser of two evils. The Tea Party started as a groundswell conservative complaint when Bush deviated from using TARP in the same way as the US recovered from the late 1980s Savings and Loan crisis and instead chose to use it in the same way that the Japanese created its three-decade long economic malaise. Indeed, all of Obama’s term was one long US economic malaise. I would say that Obama inherited the TARP mess, but within a week of his election he had insisted upon Bush making the deviation.

    As Obama created more and more economic catastrophe, the wave of this movement grew in size and power. It is now taking on the Washington establishment (essentially anyone and everyone who says that we can’t change the way Washington works) with great expectations that Trump will now lead the way. However, Trump is only riding the wave, enjoying reflected glory as we await his first victory in our favor. His lack of “draining the swamp” (e.g. both Lois Lerner and Hillary Clinton are still at large with no fear of prosecution) shows that he is not interested in leading the movement or in eliminating the corruption in Washington that the establishment protects.

    If it were Trump’s movement, then it would have followed Trump and voted for the candidate that he backed, not for the candidate that the movement actually favored.

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.

 

Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *