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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.
 

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Rumors suggest that Republicans are moving to accept a budget deal that would end sequestration.

The stupid party strikes again! Rumors suggest that Republicans are moving to accept a budget deal that would end sequestration.

At issue are efforts to craft a compromise that would ease across-the-board spending cuts due to take effect in January, known as the sequester, and replace them with a mix of increased fees and cuts in mandatory spending programs.

As de Rugy notes:

The sequester, no matter how imperfect a policy, is arguably the only victory for fiscal conservatives in a very long time. Their victory is also president Obama’s biggest defeat (outside of the self-inflicted disastrous Obamacare rollout). It is also another opportunity to remind the American people that the alarmist predictions that we were all subjected to about the devastating impact sequestration would have on our economy didn’t materialize.

She adds:

So let’s sum this up: a massive and unnecessary surrender on the sequester, some tax hikes, and more unemployment benefits. It seems to me that the Republicans are learning their moves from the French army.

Not only do most Democrats have to be replaced, so do a significant number of Republicans. Too many of these politicians have no interest in serving the citizenry being crushed by this out-of-control federal government. Instead they serve that government instead.

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

8 comments

  • Proves that republican leadership is not conservative, with all of the focus recently on JFK, the republican party is shown to be far left of JFK, and Reagan. It seems that there is this movement leftwards that will not be stopped, both parties are bent on destruction of American ideals. The tea party needs to take over leadership positions to thwart this move.

  • mpthompson

    I would be surprised by this if I wasn’t already so damn cynical already regarding the GOP. The stupid party indeed.

  • Cotour

    If the Republican leadership chooses to do such a thing as dial back the sequestration and in addition some major deal on illegal immigration I think that will ensure the growth and take over of the party by the Tea Party.

    With the millenials becoming disillusioned by Obama’s constant lying and the fact that they are unable to afford to marry and have a family, unable to afford their government mandated health insurance and them spending all of what ever money they do have paying for their college loans and living in their parents basements they will be looking for a political party that rights these wrongs. Where will they go?

  • mpthompson

    I estimate there is a 50/50 chance that Obama will forgive a substantial portion of the millennials’ college loans before he leaves office.

  • Cotour

    Strategically it would have to be before the 2014 elections In order for Obama to recapture his power in the Congress and proceed unimpeded with the true believers agenda. The read right now is that that will not be happening IMO and I don’t know if even he was able to forgive the debt through some kind of executive order that it would just be seen as the naked manipulation that it would be and compound his predicament. It may turn out that it winds up where the Senate and the Congress are both in conservative possession and him as the lone and ham strung president.

    Obama is being revealed as just a plain and hollow liar, just like all Marxists must do to retain power. I will paraphrase Larry Kudlow who I heard this morning who said ” Obama see’s America as where everyone has the same results at the finish line not everyone starting at the same starting point and winding up with the results of their potential “. Two diametrically opposed philosophies of operation.

  • PeterF

    If the republicans do absolutely NOTHING until November they will win a majority in both houses of congress. If they only get on the ball with ivestigations of the many “irregularities” of this administration, they may win supermajorities. But if they roll over and show their soft underbellies they will be as over as the Whigs.

  • Edward

    When the Republicans swept into the House and Senate two decades ago, they watched “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” to see how to do it right (not the establishment’s way). Unfortunately, the sequel, “Mr. Smith Comes Back from Washington,” was not made, as it would have given them warning of what absolute congressional power can do to corrupt absolutely. In my mythical sequel, Mr. Smith ends up just like Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Raines’ character), corrupt and ignoring his constituents’ needs for his own personal gain. This is what seems to happen to most or all who stay in that legislative body too long.

    After all this time in office, the once-new legislators have become part of the problem, just as was the Paine character. It is the new crew who has put on the filibuster, a la Smith, and the once-new legislators – the ones who actually watched “Mr. Smith” those many years ago – who opposed them.

    Oh, the irony.

  • Kelly Starks

    They went native – :( – or became one of the pod people. =8O

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