Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

A college that bans any guns on campus has also decided to ban any speech that mentions guns.

8:43 am

Liberal free speech: A college that bans any guns on campus has also decided to ban any speech that mentions guns.

Officials at the private university–which prohibits guns on campus–told The College Fix that literature promoting guns in any way, shape or form is strictly forbidden. “Gun promotion is contradictory of the university’s policy to carry on campus,” wrote Lisa Albert, director of communications for TCU, in an email to The College Fix.

The fascist nature of the left reveals itself more and more. They start out banning behavior that might be construed — if you are naive — as contributing to violence. Then they move to banning speech. Next, they will follow by banning anything they disagree with.

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Thousands of Americans have stormed the World War II memorial, as well as other barricades monuments in DC.

10:50 am

Occupy America! Thousands of Americans have stormed the World War II memorial today, as well as other barricaded monuments in DC.

More here. The first link above says that there was some “pushing and shoving” between protesters and the police at one location. This is not confirmed however. This story says the protesting vets were carrying the barricades to the White House.

Update: It appears the veterans are bringing barricades from all over and are using them to “barricade the White House.”

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The test pilots who have been flying SpaceShipTwo report on their work at a test pilot symposium.

3:42 pm

The test pilots who have been flying SpaceShipTwo report on their work at a test pilot symposium.

Lots of interesting engineering details about the ship’s flight capabilities, including one near disaster that was saved by SpaceShipTwo’s robust design. No details, however, on the state of the ship’s engine, or when further test flights at higher and higher altitudes will be attempted.

Posted from home, Tucson, Arizona.

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“Obama lied, my health care died.”

10:30 am

“Obama lied, my health care died.”

Remember the presidential talking point? If you like your current health plan, Barack Obama and his allies repeated over and over again, you would get to keep it. There would be no change. Things would go on as before even if Obamacare became the law of the land. The letter that came Thursday put the truth to the president’s lie. I would not be allowed to keep my current plan because it did not conform to the dictates of the new law and it was going away. And there was nothing I could do about it save enroll in a new plan because, as the letter also said, “you will be required to select a new ACA-compliant plan in order to continue your coverage.”

There are no two ways about it: Barack Obama stood up in front of the Congress of the United States and lied the nation into a new health care insurance system. Given that, it is now clear what the origins of the current contretemps between the executive and the legislative branches clearly are.

By insisting the Congress give him a continuing resolution to sign that includes funding for Obamacare, and by willing to engage in a phony shutdown of the federal government to make his point, President Obama is trying to undo nearly 10 centuries of the democratic process – going all the way back to the Magna Carta – to regain the power of the purse for the executive. Though the current crisis may, to some, seem silly or petty, it has as its basis a critically important point. The U.S. House of Representatives is the representative of the people of the United States, the same people in whom the U.S. Constitution invests national sovereignty. And they have determined that Obamacare should not be funded.

Note again that Obama and the Democrats have shut the government down in order to make sure Obamacare goes into effect.

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Privatize the National Park Service.

8:12 am

Privatize the National Park Service.

This recommendation will anger NPS employees. Well, for that, they can thank White House schemers for overplaying their heavy hand and unwittingly shedding ominous light on the abusive possibilities of this agency. That’s not a sentiment that the president and allies intended to foster when they began agitating and orchestrating their shutdown campaign. Rather than convincing us of the alleged evils of congressional Republicans, they’ve unveiled the roguish tendencies of some federal employees who blindly follow orders. Let’s respond by taking power away from those employees, so this cannot happen again. Easily maneuvered into providing propaganda for a president or party, these NPS workers have proven themselves unworthy of the mission entrusted to them. They are the embodiment of the dangers of unaccountable, big government.

To this I say amen! I spend a lot of time visiting the national parks, and more often than not have been consistently disgusted with the National Park Service and its possessive and dictatorial attitude. In the past two decades the park service has changed. Once it considered its job that of a mere custodian, administering these parks for the benefit of the American public, the parks’ real owner. Today the park service instead sees the parks as their private little playground, and the public as annoying trespassers whose access should be limited as much as possible.

It is time to fire these thugs and give the job to someone else.

Note also the ease in which state governments are taking over operations of the major parks out west. For less money too. This illustrates how bloated and unnecessary most of the park service actually is. It can be replaced.

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“Obamacare has raped my future”

7:41 am

From a college student: “Obamacare has raped my future.”

This budget fight exists because Republicans are trying to delay or repeal Obamacare while Democrats are doing everything to keep the law in place. If the Republicans had any brains they would focus on this point, as I do, all the time. Obamacare is a disaster, everyone sees it, and by showing how the Democrats are willing to even shut down the government to endorse it can only work to the Republicans’ political advantage.

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Obama apparently has rejected the Republican capitulation offer from yesterday.

6:59 am

The budget negotiations continue: Obama apparently has rejected the Republican capitulation offer from yesterday.

The Republican plan, which I think sucks, was simply not humiliating enough. Meanwhile, there appears to be some pushback from conservative Republicans. I am not hopeful, however. The cowards at the head of the Republican party always back down.

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SpaceX has revised the schedule for its next three launches, pushing back two weeks so engineers can review issues with the Falcon 9 upper stage engine.

6:27 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX has revised the schedule for its next three launches, pushing back two weeks so engineers can review issues with the Falcon 9 upper stage engine.

The debut launch of the upgraded Falcon 9 successfully deployed Canada’s Cassiope spacecraft into orbit on September 29. However, after safely deploying its payloads, the upper stage was then set to restart its Merlin VacD engine for a second burn related to SpaceX’s ambitions to create a fully reusable launch system. An anomaly with the restart held no mission impact, but the company’s CEO and chief designer, Elon Musk, did note they expected to implement corrective actions ahead of the next launch. “In the case of the upper stage relight, we initiated relight and the system encountered an anomaly and did not complete the relight. We believe understand what that issue is and should have it addressed in time for the next flight of Falcon 9,” he noted. “We essentially saw the engine initiate ignition. get up to about 400 psi and then it encountered a condition that it didn’t like. We have all of the data from the restart, so I am confident that we will be able to sort it out and address it before the next flight. We just have to iron out some slight differences of it operating in vacuum.”

I find Musk’s vague terminology about the engine issue to be interesting. I wonder if the “condition” the engine “didn’t like” was when the engine exploded, as some have suggested. (I personally am skeptical the engine exploded, however, as such a failure would probably require a much longer delay to deal with.)

Either way, the next few months should be a busy time for commercial space. Not only does SpaceX have two major commercial launches and a Dragon mission to ISS, Orbital Sciences has its next Cygnus cargo mission and Virgin Galactic claims it will be ready to fly SpaceShipTwo with passengers.

Posted on the road heading into the empty wilds of west Texas.

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The Republican leadership folds.

7:56 pm

The Republican leadership folds on the government shutdown. Key quote:

In exchange for meeting, at least momentarily, all of Obama’s demands, the House GOP is seeking a “framework” for future negotiations.

They get a repeal of an Obamacare tax on medical equipment, but lose everything else, plus give up some of the sequester cuts that have actually produced the first real reduction in the size of government in decades.

And the Republican leadership wonders why they keep losing elections? With incompetent friends like this, who needs enemies.

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Jeff Bezos reveals some details about the goals of his space company, Blue Origin.

7:17 pm

The competition heats up: Jeff Bezos reveals some details about the goals of his space company, Blue Origin.

Blue Origin is now working on its third version of the New Shepard, which is designed to take everyday people on suborbital journeys. Bezos said that he’s hopeful that this will be the last iteration, and he wants to see the next vehicle ready for commercial operation. “I’m very optimistic about that,” he said. Bezos didn’t give any specific timetables. However, he did say that Blue Origin’s orbital vehicle, designed to send astronauts to the International Space Station and elsewhere, will be tested by 2018. Eventually, the goal is to let anyone fly up into space safely at reasonable prices.

Not a lot of details, but previously we knew practically nothing. That the present ship is being designed for suborbital tourist flights makes it a direct competitor of Virgin Galactic and XCOR. And considering the problems that Virgin Galactic has with SpaceShipTwo, and that XCOR doesn’t have the big bucks of Bezos, Blue Origin might actually be in the lead in the race to put the first tourists in space.

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A remotely operated Russian telescope, located in New Mexico, on Wednesday discovered a kilometer wide Near Earth asteroid.

7:09 pm

Boom! A remotely operated Russian telescope, located in New Mexico, on Wednesday discovered a kilometer wide Near Earth asteroid.

The asteroid, believed to be the 704th largest with an orbit that comes relatively near Earth, does not pose a danger of crashing into our planet, said the head of the observatory that made the discovery. “It’s a big asteroid, but it poses no danger for us,” Leonid Elenin, who lives in the Moscow Region, told RIA Novosti on Friday.

Finding a new asteroid like this illustrates that there might be other such large objects out there undiscovered. Also cool is how the Russians discovered it, using equipment in the United States!

Posted from Midland, Texas, the center of the world for the American oil industry.

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