Category: Points of Information

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

Democrats perform sit-in in Congress to protest 5th amendment of Bill of Rights

10:24 am

The fascist Democratic Party: For the past two days Democrats have been holding a sit-in protest in Congress against the idea that American citizens should have the right to due process before their rights under the Bill of Rights are denied.

Not 24 hours ago, Senate Democrats had the chance to vote on a bill that would have given them the core of what they want, namely, DOJ power to block gun purchases by anyone on a terror watch list. All they had to do was make a simple concession to due process by requiring the feds to go to court and show their work, proving to a judge within three days of the attempted purchase that the person on the list was actually dangerous. Too many innocent people have been put on watch lists erroneously to grant the federal government power to strip them of their rights with no judicial safeguard. That was the Cornyn bill; it died in the Senate, 53/47, when Democrats refused to give it the 60 votes it needed for cloture. The left killed the bill only because it provided due process to gun owners. [emphasis in original]

Previously the Democrats introduced a constitutional amendment to nullify the first amendment of the Bill of Rights, and this protest not only demands a nullification of the fifth amendment and due process, it is focused on nullifying the second amendment as well.

But I have been told I shouldn’t call these fascists fascists, because it might hurt their feelings. Well, I hope I hurt their feelings bad, along with the feelings of anyone even thinking of voting for them in the future. If you do, you are enabling the rise of oppression, and should be ashamed of yourself.

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SpaceX’s first stage teaches them how to land on Mars

9:56 am

The competition heats up: This update on the status of SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule also provides this interesting detail about the engineering knowledge gained from the company’s effort to vertically land its Falcon 9 first stages:

The company is also using the propulsive landings as a way to practically and physically test landing systems in a near-Mars atmospheric environment. “Earth’s upper atmosphere is also a really good analogue for Mars’ atmosphere,” noted [Garrett Reisman, Director of Space Operations]. “When you get up high enough, the density and consistency of the atmosphere is very similar to what you face during Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) on Mars. So every time we land, we take one of these rockets and we perform hypersonic retrograde propulsion, the data from which we’re sharing with JPL because it’s the first time this has ever been demonstrated on a major scale.”

To this end, Reisman pointed out that the Falcon 9 first stage landings are really serving as test beds for the EDL systems of eventual Mars missions. “Every time you see one of those rockets coming back, not only is it enabling a whole new paradigm for launching things into space, but it’s also bringing us one step closer to Mars.

As for Dragon, it now appears the company wants to do a full unmanned demo flight to and from ISS before it performs its launch abort test. They will then follow this with a manned demo mission to ISS. All three flights are planned for 2017.

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Sierra Nevada prepares for Dream Chaser glide tests

9:46 am

The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada now expects to deliver its refurbished engineering test prototype of Dream Chaser to NASA for new glide tests in August.

“Our version of the shuttle Enterprise is about to be finished for its next phase of flight tests,” [said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president.] “Somewhere in the August time frame, it’s going to be shipped off to California, to the Armstrong [Flight Research] Center and to Edwards to be in Phase 2 of flight testing, which is going to be really fun and exciting.”

Sirangelo said lessons learned from the atmospheric flight tests will be applied to the development of the orbital test vehicle, which is now being outfitted in Colorado. That test vehicle, in turn, will blaze the trail for the spacecraft that will carry cargo for NASA under the CRS-2 contract. “We are looking to be launching on time, which is about three years from now, in the second half of 2019,” Sirangelo said.

They get this cargo version flying successfully, and they will certainly get a contract to build a manned version.

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California bills man for rescuing family

7:52 pm

Fascist California: A man pulls a family trapped in an overturned car and the local authorities in California then bill him $143 for doing their work.

It makes no sense, and neither does the explanation offered by those authorities.

Cosumnes Deputy Chief Mike McLaughlin tells CBS Sacramento that, though DeAnda’s situation is unique, issuing first-responder bills is just standard practice for his district. “We’re obligated to provide the same level of service, the same billing, the same everything — for every patient we encounter,” he said.

What a crock. They are simply incompetent, and probably mistakenly recorded the man as one of the victims, and then charged them all for work the man did.

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New model for Enceladus’s subsurface ocean

4:03 pm

A new model proposes that the subsurface liquid water ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus is possible only 3 miles below the surface near its south pole.

In order to reconcile the different constraints [created by the known data], the researchers propose a new model in which the top two hundred meters of the ice shell acts like an elastic shell. According to this study, Enceladus is made up successively of a rocky core with a radius of 185 km, and an internal ocean approximately 45 km deep, isolated from the surface by an ice shell with a mean thickness of around 20 km, except at the south pole where it is thought to be less than 5 km thick. In this model, the ocean beneath the ice makes up 40% of the total volume of the moon, while its salt content is estimated to be similar to that of Earth’s oceans.

Need I mention that this is only a computer model, and should therefore be considered with great skepticism?

Posted from warm and dry Tucson, Arizona, where I am home at last!

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Russia in perspective

10:49 am

The coming dark age: This column today attempts to put the present economic shape of Russia into context with the rest of the world. Russia does not come off well.

According to the International Monetary Fund’s most recent data, the Russian economy is approximately the same size as Australia and slightly smaller than South Korea. As an exporter, it is now less important than Belgium, Mexico, and Singapore. And it is poor. The World Bank ranks Russia’s GDP per capita below Lithuania, Equatorial Guinea, and Kazakhstan. A larger proportion of its population lives below the poverty rate than in Indonesia, India, or Sri Lanka. It is ranked 67th in the world in the Global Competitive Index and 66th in the UN’s Human Development Index.

I find this news very disturbing and worrisome. As much as I might consider Russia a competitor to the U.S., I also want it as a nation to thrive, because otherwise it can only be a threat to the rest of the world. If Russia can’t figure out how to be a successful, competitive, and vigorous first world capitalist nation, it can only become something none of us will like. These are the same circumstances that made the rise of Hitler and Mussolini possible.

Unfortunately, I am not optimistic about Russia’s ability to turn things around. When they had the chance after the fall of the Soviet Union, instead of encouraging free competition, the people who remained in power divided the country and its industries up like Prohibition-era gangsters, and stamped out anyone who tried to move in on their territories with new ideas. Those people remain in power, and have acted to further consolidate their power by recreating the Soviet model of centralized control from the top-down.

Posted from Los Angeles Airport, a place where a tiny pre-made sandwich costs almost $15, probably because of high California taxes and regulations.

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RINOs in Senate team up with Democrats for gun control push

8:28 am

Senate moderate Republicans are teaming up with Democrats to propose another gun control measure, aimed at disarming Americans instead of fighting Islamic terrorism.

Senate Republicans are expected to bring a bipartisan gun control bill to a vote this week despite opposition to the measure from the National Rifle Association and other conservative groups. The measure, spearheaded by centrist GOP Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), would block people on two terrorist watchlists from buying guns.

Sources in both parties on Tuesday said the Collins legislation is gaining momentum — a sign that doing nothing to prevent terrorism suspects from obtaining guns is a problem for vulnerable Republicans in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting. While the NRA is opposed to the measure, Senate Majority LeaderMitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is more focused on protecting his vulnerable incumbents and keeping control of the chamber in November, according to Senate GOP sources. “He will not be dictated to,” one lawmaker said of the NRA’s efforts to pressure McConnell.

The Senate Democrat who launched last week’s filibuster on gun control depicted a vote on the Collins measure as a pivotal moment for the Senate, which on Monday rejected four other gun control bills. “I think you’re seeing in real time the vice grip of the NRA loosening in this place,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “This is a watershed moment whether this gets to the finish line or not. You have Republicans scrambling to try to find a way to remedy their no votes [Monday] night.”

Once again, the focus of these politicians is not on solving the problem, terrorism inspired or planned by Islam, but to attack and disarm the American public, the exact opposite of what needs to be done. When you are in a war, you don’t disarm, you arm yourself.

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Russia plans 12 person lunar base by 2030

8:15 am

The competition heats up? Russia has announced plans to build a 12-person lunar base by 2030.

Color me skeptical. Since the late 1990s I have been reading these stories about ambitious Russian space plans, none of which has ever happened. In fact, they all remind me of the dozens of ambitious space plans announced by NASA over the years, none of which ever happened either. Typical of big government projects, they end up on the scrapeheap because government can’t do things quickly or efficiently.

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Damaged Falcon 9 first stage returns to port

7:57 am

The remains of the damaged Falcon 9 first stage that tipped over during its barge landing last week returned to port this past weekend.

Video and images of it can be seen at the link, all of which suggest that there is a slight chance the engines might be salvageable. Regardless, SpaceX once again has valuable used space hardware that no one else has ever had which it can study to improve its future rocket designs.

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UC-Irving bans Republican club for a year

11:04 pm

Leftwing fascists: The administration of the University of California-Irving has suspended the student Republican club for a year because it didn’t like their political activism.

The UC Irvine Republicans have been suspended for an entire year after they informed the administration of their plans to schedule another event on campus withBreitbart senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos.

Nearly a month after their initial event with Milo, entitled “Social Justice is Cancer,” the College Republicans were asked to attend a debriefing with the Director of Student Life & Leadership, Darlene Esparza, and Associate Dean of Students, Sherwynn Umali, to discuss the planning process of the event. During the meeting, College Republican President Ariana Rowlands raised the possibility of Milo’s return to campus.

Just four hours after the meeting, a UCI administrator sent the group an email to inform them they had suspended the club for an entire year.

Posted from fascist California, a liberal dominated state where free speech is okay as long as you only express leftwing opinions.

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Trump campaign announces Christian advisory board

10:40 pm

This is encouraging news: The Trump campaign today announced the formation of an executive board of important evangelical Christians to advise the candidate.

The list of members, shown at the link, is decidedly conservative. They were asked to join the board but were not required to endorse Trump to do so.

As I’ve said repeatedly, the most important way to make sure a Trump presidency follows conservative and constitutional policy is to surround Trump with a lot of conservatives.That the campaign has done this is good news, though I must also add that it is no guarantee that Trump will pay any attention to these people once he is elected. Right now this could merely be a move on his campaign”s part to gain the support of these evangelicals.

Posted from Los Angeles, California, a place so wonderful that my hotel has locked doors and security gates everywhere, making my one night here seem more like a night in jail than an overnight hotel stay. Interestingly, the only time I have ever seen the need for this much security has been when I have visited or lived in major urban cities, run by Democrats. I wonder why that is.

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Another North Korea missile test

10:25 pm

Does this make you feel safer? North Korea test fired two missiles today, with one traveling more than 300 miles.

At around 5:58 a.m., North Korea fired off what is presumed to be a Musudan missile from near Wonsan along the east coast, but the launch seems to have ended in failure, the JCS said, providing no further details. About two hours later at 8:05 a.m., the North launched another missile presumed to be the same type of IRBM from the same area, the JCS noted. “The second Musudan-like missile flew about 400 km,” the JCS said without elaborating on whether it was a success. “South Korea and the United States (militaries) are carrying out an in-depth analysis on it.” Military sources added the first missile has been detected to have burst into pieces in the air after flying some 150 km after launch.

I am sure the Obama administration will express deep concern about this, which of course solves the problem.

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Judge strikes down as illegal Obama fracking regulations

10:16 pm

The law is such an inconvenient thing: With strong language a federal judge has bluntly struck down the Obama administrations attempt to regulate the fracking industry.

Judge Scott Skavdahl of the District Court of Wyoming already had put a hold on the regulations last year, and in a decision released late Tuesday, he ruled that Congress did not give Interior the power to regulate hydraulic fracturing, indeed it had expressly withheld that power with some narrow exceptions. “Congress has not delegated to the Department of Interior the authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing,” Judge Skavdahl wrote in deciding a lawsuit brought by industry groups and a number of Western states. The “effort to do so through the Fracking Rule is in excess of its statutory authority and contrary to law.”

The judge dismissed particularly the claim by the Interior Department and its Bureau of Land Management that it had inherent broad regulatory authority to pursue the public good on federal and Indian lands, the only place the regulations would have applied. “Congress‘ inability or unwillingness to pass a law desired by the executive branch does not default authority to the executive branch to act independently, regardless of whether hydraulic fracturing is good or bad for the environment or the citizens of the United States,” wrote Judge Skavdahl, whom Mr. Obama appointed to the bench in 2011. [emphasis mine]

That a judge whom Obama appointed, who thus is almost certainly a Democrat, was willing to put aside his partisan loyalties to rule so forcefully against the Obama administration gives me great hope. In recent years Democratic judges have almost ceased ruling based on law and have instead been guided almost exclusively by their political leanings. This judge’s ruling here suggests that there remain some principled judges, even on the left.

Posted from fascist Los Angeles, a place where they make you pay $19 for a five minute two mile taxi ride.

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Pluto might have subsurface liquid water ocean

9:52 pm

An analysis of the data sent back from New Horizons strongly suggests that Pluto might still have a liquid ocean of water beneath its surface.

The pictures New Horizons sent back from its close encounter with the Kuiper Belt’s most famous denizen showed that Pluto was much more than a simple snowball in space. It has an exotic surface made from different types of ices — water, nitrogen and methane. It has mountains hundreds of meters high and a vast heart-shaped plain. It also has giant tectonic features — sinuous faults hundreds of kilometers long as deep as 4 kilometers. It was those tectonic features that got scientists thinking that a subsurface ocean was a real possibility for Pluto. “What New Horizons showed was that there are extensional tectonic features, which indicate that Pluto underwent a period of global expansion,” Hammond said. “A subsurface ocean that was slowly freezing over would cause this kind of expansion.”

Scientists think that there may have been enough heat-producing radioactive elements within Pluto’s rocky core to melt part of the planet’s ice shell. Over time in the frigid Kuiper belt, that melted portion would eventually start to refreeze. Ice is less dense than water, so when it freezes, it expands. If Pluto had on ocean that was frozen or in the process of freezing, extensional tectonics on the surface would result, and that’s what New Horizons saw.

I must emphasize that this result has a great deal of uncertainty. Nonetheless, it suggests once again that we might liquid water in space in a lot of places we never expected or imagined.

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Beware new javascript ransomware

8:44 pm

A new ransomware attack, designed to kidnap your computer and demand money from you before releasing it, has been written entirely in javascript and is thus more dangerous because many email programs, like Gmail, will not block the running of the .js file.

The bottom like is always the same: Don’t run attachments sent to you unexpectedly, even from friends. Check with them to confirm that they meant to send it, and if they don’t confirm, delete it.

I could also label this story as another reason I don’t use gmail, but that really is a different story entirely.

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Florida demands $15K port fee from SpaceX

7:18 pm

Nice first stage you got there, be a shame if something happened to it: The Florida port where SpaceX has been offloading its recovered first stages from its barge has announced that it wants to charge the company $15,000 each time.

“We view their cargo passing over our dock just like any other cargo passing our dock,” Port Canaveral Chief Executive Officer John Murray said. “We’re not looking at this as an adversarial relationship. It’s no different than anything else coming across the dock. You have to pay for use of port facilities. That’s how a port makes its money.”

“The proposed wharfage fee is 14 times higher than what any other business is being charged for using port facilities,” SpaceX spokesman John Taylor said in an email to FLORIDA TODAY. “Port Canaveral is an important partner in our recovery operations. But we expect fees to be fair and reflect our actual use of the port. We’re looking forward to participating in the meeting later this week.”

The port notes that the size and the weight of the first stages cause significant wear and tear to the port, and thus should pay more. They have a point, but this still looks like they have noticed they have a customer with deep pockets that they now are trying to pick.

Posted from Linthicum, Maryland.

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Stratolaunch three quarters complete

5:16 am

The competition heats up: Vulcan Aerospace now says that construction of its Stratolaunch airplane, the largest ever to fly, will be completed by the end of this year.

Assembly of the plane is 76 percent complete, with the engines, landing gear and one tail section still to be installed. The plane is expected to be finished before the end of the year. Commercial services are expected to begin before 2020.

They still have not determined the second stage rocket they will use with this mother ship to launch satellites, which leaves me increasingly skeptical about their future. It is very late in the game to still not know this detail.

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Backgrounder on June 23 UK vote on EU membership

10:36 pm

Link here. The videos at the link are especially informative.

Polls have recently shifted strongly in favor of leaving the union, but that is not a certain result. If it happens, however, I will consider that decision by the public to be another example of a growing revolt by the general public against the intellectual elites who presently rule western society, since most of these elites appear to favor keeping the United Kingdom in the European Union.

Posted from Washington, D.C.

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Trump softens tone on gun restrictions

9:59 pm

In a television interview today Donald Trump softened his position on the use of terrorist watch lists to deny Americans their second amendment rights under the Bill of Rights, aligning his position more closely to that of the National Rifle Association which endorsed him.

This whole kerfuffle illustrates once again the importance of surrounding Trump with trustworthy conservatives who can influence him. Trump is not trustworthy, but he will bend to the will of those who advise him, and he has made it clear that he wants the NRA’s advice.

Thus, it is crucially important to elect a lot of conservative Republicans this November. Such people in Congress, and only such people, can prevent the worst abuses coming from what will likely be a generally confused Trump administration, or a decidedly leftist Clinton one.

Posted from Washington, D.C.

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New Shepard successfully completes fourth flight

8:46 am

The competition heats up: Blue Origin today completed the fourth test flight of its New Shepard suborbital spacecraft, successfully landing intact its capsule with only two parachutes.

That’s four flights in about seven months, which for a test program seems a reasonable pace. I would expect them to soon begin testing faster turnaround times for the spacecraft, just to see if they can launch and repeat more quickly.

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Trump affirms support for denying Americans their second amendment rights

11:10 pm

Update on the November Democratic primary: Donald Trump today repeated his support for the idea of allowing the FBI or a bureaucrat in Washington to decide whether Americans will have the right to own or buy guns, essentially denying them their second amendment rights.

Donald Trump reaffirmed his stance on restricting individuals on the terror watch list from being able to purchase firearms, despite Republican objections. “We have to make sure that people that are terrorists or have even an inclination toward terrorism cannot buy weapons, guns,” Trump told ABC’s White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl in an interview that will air Sunday on “This Week.”. [emphasis mine]

So now, according to Trump it is even reasonable for the government to deny you your rights, based merely on what they think you think. Gee, what could possibly go wrong with that idea, especially when such power is handed to government bureaucrats whose political bosses crave power above all else?

I must admit I have been toying with the idea of voting for Trump, because Hillary Clinton is going to be far worse. Trump however is doing his damndest to convince me that this would be a mistake, and a third party vote makes more sense, even if Gary Johnson has his own problems..

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Europe announces a three month delay for Orion service module

10:01 pm

Be still my heart: Delivery of the service module for NASA’s Orion capsule, being built by the European Space Agency, will be three months late due to engineering modifications.

Nico Dettman, head of ESA’s space transportation department, said the delay is partly a result of the fact that several components could not yet be assessed in the full critical design review and need more time to be integrated into the design. Dettman said another issue forcing the delay resulted from a reassessment by NASA of the stresses the service module needs to be capable of handling in orbit. These “in-orbit load” specifications have recently been tightened. But any design modifications will not affect the service module’s core structure, he said. “If it has an impact, it will be limited to the solar array wings, not the structure – nothing where flight hardware has been manufactured that we will have to touch,” Dettman said. “It’s a late modification, but not too late.”

Note that George Bush proposed Orion in January 2004. The first full up test flight, unmanned, is now scheduled for 2018. Thus, they only had 14 years to build this single capsule and service module.

It took NASA less than five years to build the first Apollo capsule and service module, and less than 8 years to fly seven to the Moon. Damn, it took the Allies less than four years to defeat Germany and Japan in World War II. Yet somehow the big government space programs of NASA and ESA can’t build a single manned capsule in less than 14 years.

Doesn’t anyone but me see something wrong with this picture?

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Russia negotiating with Australian investors to buy SeaLaunch

9:52 pm

The competition heats up: Roscosmos revealed today that Russia is negotiating with investors in Australia to buy SeaLaunch.

I’m not sure how seriously we can take this announcement. The sale still has a lot of problems for any investors. Boeing is owed a lot of money by the SeaLaunch partners, specifically Russia, and the SeaLaunch floating launchpad is docked in the U.S. where they can hold it as collateral

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GOP congressman defeated in primary because of Obamatrade support

10:49 pm

The revolt continues: Republican incumbent Congressman Randy Forbes (R-Virginia) was defeated in Tuesday Virginia Republican primary, despite being supported by the party establishment and outspending his opponent, Scott Taylor, 10-1.

Forbes, who started his pivot from the 4th District to the 2nd with an incumbent’s healthy campaign fund, spent more than $1.3 million in the primary compared with the little more than $142,000 that Taylor reported spending as of late May.

Taylor, a former Navy SEAL, ran against much of Virginia Beach’s GOP establishment, with several local elected officials as well as departing U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell endorsing Forbes’ candidacy. Rigell rented Forbes his former headquarters on First Colonial Road and sold him his email lists of supporters.

Redistricting was certainly a factor in the incumbent’s defeat but this article points out something that the newspaper article above as well as all other mainstream articles I’ve read fail to note: Incumbent Forbes had voted to make it almost impossible for Congress to challenge or amend Obama’s the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, also called Obamatrade.

Taylor blasted Forbes for voting to give President Obama fast track authority to ram through Congress the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping 12-nation international regulatory pact that would merge our economy with some of the poorest and most repressive on earth. This move was especially hypocritical for Forbes, chairman of the House Prayer Caucus. Obamatrade would give special economic privileges to countries that persecute Christians, including Vietnam, Malaysia and the Shariah-law regime of Brunei.

After his disastrous vote for fast track, Forbes tried to tap dance around the Constitution-shredding, religious-liberty-trampling Obamatrade agreement. In a letter to constituents, Forbes recycled the party establishment’s globalist talking points, saying free trade is “crucial to our economy” and to “our future as a country.” Then Forbes said he would support Obamatrade if it were amended, glossing over the fact that his vote for fast track surrendered Congress’ power to amend the agreement. [emphasis mine]

In other words, Forbes had been part of the Republican establishment that has consistently refused to fight any of the Democratic agenda, instead focusing on putting on a show of failure theater, where they act like they are fighting Obama while allowing his legislative goals to pass. The voters saw through this, and kicked him out.

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