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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.

 

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Trump to keep U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv

President Trump today signed a waiver allowing him to keep the U.S. Israeli embassy in Tel Aviv, rather than moving to Jerusalem as he promised repeatedly on the campaign trail.

This is not the most important political story of the day, but it illustrates what we can expect from Trump. In the end, he backs down under pressure from the Washington elitist community. For example, even though his proposed federal budget suggested a willingness to cut the deficit and eliminate whole agencies, I have doubts he will succeed in getting Congress to agree to any of those cuts.

This is also why I have not yet posted on the various rumors claiming that he plans to exit the Paris climate treaty. Until I actually see him do it, I do not believe it.

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

5 comments

  • eddie willers

    I would hold my fire too as I don’t believe he will back out of Paris.

    Hope to come back and admit I’m wrong in a few minutes.

  • LocalFluff

    He will back out of the Paris climate treaty, because it is against everything he stands for. The address of an embassy is just meaningless decoration and cheap to sell in a negotiation. Now the Israelis insist that he doesn’t change it to Jerusalem, so he gets something in exchange from Israel for not doing it. For now.

  • eddie willers

    Out of this one, but will talk about a new one.

    I hope the howling will be so loud and over-the-top that he says “Screw it, I don’t want to talk about it anymore”.

  • LocalFluff

    “The purpose of the Paris treaty is to keep America bound and ted down. It won’t happen while I’m president, sorry!”

    “I’m elected president by the voters of Pittsburgh, not of Paris”

    Some rats typing their waste here do not understand Trump’s presidency. It is very simple, still far from the brains of some.

  • wayne

    “Some rats typing their waste here do not understand Trump’s presidency.”

    huh?
    I am intrigued by the typing of rats, please expand.

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

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