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Steny Hoyer, #2 Democrat in the House, admitted today that Democrats knew that Obamacare would cause the cancellation of millions of health plans.

9:48 am

Steny Hoyer, #2 Democrat in the House, admitted today that Democrats knew that Obamacare would cause the cancellation of millions of health plans.

The Democrats really think Americans are stupid. This is how Hoyer tried to explain away Obama’s often-repeated lie that “if you like your plan you get to keep it”:

Asked by another reporter how repeated statements by Obama to the contrary weren’t “misleading,” Hoyer said “I don’t think the message was wrong. I think the message was accurate. It was not precise enough…[it] should have been caveated with – ‘assuming you have a policy that in fact does do what the bill is designed to do.’”

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

Geologists have determined that the magma reservoir under Yellowstone is much bigger than previously thought.

9:25 am

The uncertainty of science: Geologists have determined that the magma reservoir under Yellowstone is much bigger than previously thought.

Jamie Farrell, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utah, mapped the underlying magma reservoir by analysing data from more than 4,500 earthquakes. Seismic waves travel more slowly through molten rock than through solid rock, and seismometers can detect those changes.

The images show that the reservoir resembles a 4,000-cubic-kilometre underground sponge, with 6–8% of it filled with molten rock. It underlies most of the Yellowstone caldera and extends a little beyond it to the northeast.

The geologists also noted that the threat from a huge volcanic eruption is less of a concern than that of earthquakes.

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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

Sierra Nevada today released a video of the test flight this past weekend of its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle.

9:07 am

Sierra Nevada today released a video of the test flight this past weekend of its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle.

Don’t get too excited. They very cleverly have edited the tape so that we do not see what happened after touchdown. You can see how the left landing gear does not completely deploy, but then they cut away. Nonetheless, the video is posted below the fold.
» Read more

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“It was reported today by MSNBC that President Obama was unaware that he had ever said to anyone the words ‘If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.'”

11:23 pm

“It was reported today by MSNBC that President Obama was unaware that he had ever said to anyone the words ‘If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.'”

As is commonly known, the details of policies put in place by various departments of the Administration are considered beneath the purview of the office of the presidency. The President is above all that and, as Chris Matthews points out, he can hardly be expected to remember such minutiae such as who gave the order to stand down at Benghazi, which is thousands of miles away, or who ordered the IRS to harass certain Tea Party members, let alone members of other terrorist groups, or even what was happening in Fast & Furious down in Mexico. That’s somebody else’s country, said Matthews, and the President just wasn’t personally aware. Besides, he was on the golf course at the time . . . every time.

There’s more, all tragically hilarious.

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Leaving Earth cover

There are now only 3 copies left of the now out-of-print hardback of Leaving Earth. The price for an autographed copy of this rare collector's item is now $150 (plus $5 shipping).

 

To get your copy while the getting is good, please send a $155 check (which includes $5 shipping) payable to Robert Zimmerman to
 

Behind The Black, c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

Leaving Earth is also available as an inexpensive ebook!

 

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

 

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Unnamed healthcare officials admit that the Obama administration specifically wrote the Obamacare regulations so that millions would have to lose their healthcare plan.

7:35 pm

He lied: Unnamed healthcare officials admit that the Obama administration specifically wrote the Obamacare regulations so that millions would have to lose their healthcare plan.

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”

That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”

These regulations were written in the executive branch, which is the complete responsibility of Obama. So, the agency he controls wrote regulations they knew would force the cancellation of millions of healthcare plans, and Obama went around the country lying about it. It is as simple as that.

But remember! Obama and the Democrats forced a government shutdown so Obamacare would go into effect now. Shouldn’t we all be grateful?

Update: The quote above is from the original version of the story. The article itself disappeared from the web on Monday night and then reappeared at a new url (which I have linked to above) with some changes to some paragraphs, none of which did much to change the essential content.

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Sierra Nevada provides an update on the condition of its Dream Chaser test vehicle after this weekend’s glide flight and bad landing.

7:06 pm

Sierra Nevada provides an update on the condition of its Dream Chaser test vehicle after this weekend’s glide flight and bad landing.

SNC has not yet decided whether to repair the Dream Chaser test craft, which does not use the same landing gear the orbital vehicle would use. Investigating what went wrong will take “a couple of weeks,” Sirangelo estimated. He said the vehicle, which is now in a hangar in Mojave, Calif., was “fully intact” after the crash.

“The pressure vessel was completely pristine, the computers are still working, there was no damage to the crew cabin or flight systems,” Sirangelo said. “I went inside it myself and it was perfectly fine. There was some damage from skidding.

“We learned everything we wanted to on this test, and learned more than we expected to learn,” Sirangelo said. “We believe we’ve got most of the data we need [but] I can’t honestly say, I just don’t know yet. It’s not going to affect our schedule in the long term [but] It might affect whether we do another free flight test this year or next year. We’re still assessing that.”

The company also claims that the flight met the requirements of a $15 million NASA milestone payment, since the goals of the flight were to test the vehicle’s flight capabilities, not its landing gear. (The failed landing gear used will not be the gear used on the final flight vehicle.)

They have scheduled a press conference for tomorrow. Stay tuned.

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Lockheed Martin successfully powered up the first Orion capsule last week.

7:00 pm

Lockheed Martin successfully powered up the first Orion capsule last week.

During the test, operators in the Test Launch and Control Center (TLCC) introduced software scripts to the crew module’s main control computers via thousands of wires and electrical ground support equipment. During this process, the foundational elements, or the “heart and brains” of the entire system were evaluated. The main computers received commands from the ground, knew where to send them, read the data from different channels, and successfully relayed electrical responses back to the TLCC. The crew module power systems will continue to undergo testing for six months as additional electronics are added to the spacecraft.

It is a good thing that NASA has finally gotten this far with this very expensive capsule. However, pay no attention to their claims that the capsule “is capable of taking humans farther into space than they’ve ever gone before.” Any long journey it takes will be quite limited in scope. Humans can’t really travel beyond lunar orbit in just a capsule. You need a real interplanetary spaceship for that, and Orion does not fit this bill.

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Why governments can’t do it

10:46 am

A government official today unwittingly revealed a fundamental and unpleasant truth about how governments: operate. In an interview today, the head of India’s space agency denied that his country is in a space race with anyone.

Mr. Radhakrishnan, Secretary in the Department of Space and Chairman of Space Commission, said each country — whether it’s India, the US, Russia or China — had their own priorities.

“There is no race with anybody. If you look at anybody, they have their own direction. So, I don’t find a place for race with somebody. But I would say we are always on race with ourselves to excel in areas that we have chalked out for ourselves,” he told PTI here in an interview.

How typical. By denying the reality of the competition that India is part of Mr. Radhakrishnan illustrates for me and everyone once again the basic reason all government efforts eventually fail.
» Read more

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The 13 Democratic Senators up for re-election in 2014 who voted for Obamacare, both in 2009 and last month.

10:43 pm

The 13 Democratic senators up for re-election in 2014 who voted for Obamacare, both in 2009 and last month.

Here are the Dirty Baker’s Dozen:

  • Mark Begich (Alaska)
  • Mark Pryor (Arkansas)
  • Mark Udall (Colorado)
  • Mary Landrieu (Louisiana)
  • Al Franken (Minnesota)
  • Max “Trainwreck” Baucus (Montana)
  • Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire)
  • Tom Udall (New Mexico)
  • Kay Hagan (North Carolina)
  • Jeff Merkeley (Oregon)
  • Tim Johnson (South Dakota)
  • Mark Warner (Virginia)
  • Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia)

It is time for these politicians to find other work.

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Half a million Californians to lose their health insurance because of Obamacare.

5:19 pm

Half a million Californians to lose their health insurance because of Obamacare.

We are learning now that Obamacare was very specifically designed to eliminate many health insurance plans, especially the ones that cost less and provided fewer benefits (the kinds of plans that young, healthy people prefer). Considering the blatant promise by Obama, repeated over and over again before Obamacare was passed, that if people liked their plan they would get to keep it, these appalling numbers and the fact that Obamacare is very clearly designed to eliminate these low-cost plans, Obama either knew his statement was an outright lie, or he is truly one of the most incompetent presidents ever.

In the first case he was dishonest and corrupt, intending to force a change that people did not want. In the second, Obama was pushing for the passage of a law to which he literally had no understanding. I’m not sure which is worse.

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In its first free flying glide test, the Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle had a perfect flight and approach to landing but flipped over on the runway when its left land gear failed to deploy.

3:43 pm

In its first free flying glide test, the Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle had a perfect flight and approach to landing but flipped over on the runway when its left land gear failed to deploy.

I haven’t yet found any post landing images, nor any information about damage to the test vehicle. This is the kind of tragic failure that sometimes kills a project. The vehicle, operating unmanned, performed quite well actually, flying freely and gliding to the runway as planned. The failure of the one landing gear to deploy is a relatively easy engineering fix. However, the failure could cost a fortune, money the company might not have, if it requires the construction of an entire new test vehicle.

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The Washington Times is preparing to take legal action in connection with the raid of a reporter’s home by government officials.

8:20 am

The Washington Times is preparing to take legal action in connection with the raid of a reporter’s home by government officials.

The warrant was narrowly written to limit the raid to a search for weapons owned by the reporter’s husband. Instead, the raiders carefully picked through the reporter’s files and took those pertaining to her stories about the TSA. The man in charge of this search also happened to be a former TSA employee who apparently had a direct interest in those files.

That her private files were seized, says Mrs. Hudson [the reporter], is particularly disturbing because of interactions that she and her husband had during the search of their home, as well as months afterwards, with Coast Guard investigator Miguel Bosch. According to his profile on the networking site LinkedIn, Mr. Bosch worked at the Federal Air Marshal Service from April 2001 through November 2007.

It was Mr. Bosch, Mrs. Hudson says, who asked her during the Aug. 6 search if she was the same Audrey Hudson who had written the air marshal stories. It was also Mr. Bosch, she says, who phoned Mr. Flanagan a month later to say that documents taken during the search had been cleared.

During the call, according Mrs. Hudson, Mr. Bosch said the files had been taken to make sure that they contained only “FOIA-able” information and that he had circulated them to the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees the Federal Air Marshal Service, in order to verify that “it was legitimate” for her to possess such information.

“Essentially, the files that included the identities of numerous government whistleblowers were turned over to the same government agency and officials who they were exposing for wrongdoing,” Mrs. Hudson said.

In other words, Bosch used the search to obtain the files so that the TSA could identify Mrs. Hudson’s sources within the agency. Expect those individuals to be punished in the coming years, for the crime of telling the truth about America’s KGB.

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Israel today issued a strong warning about the possibility that Iran could have enough uranium within a month to produce a nuclear bomb.

9:33 pm

Another day of reckoning looms: Israel today issued a strong warning about the possibility that Iran could have enough uranium within a month to produce a nuclear bomb.

“We have made it crystal clear – in all possible forums, that Israel will not stand by and watch Iran develop weaponry that will put us, the entire Middle East and eventually the world, under an Iranian umbrella of terror,” Danny Danon, Israel’s deputy defense minister told USA TODAY.

This is not good. For Israel, Iran is a real and present threat. They have made it repeatedly clear that they wish to destroy Israel. Soon, very soon, they will have the capability. For Israel to stand by and let them get that capability would be insane.

What Israel can do, however, is unclear. As strong militarily as Israel is, it does not really have the ability to invade Iran and destroy its developing nuclear facilities. I fear that the only choice it might have is to use its own nuclear arsenal to hit Iran first.

As I said, this is not good. The options before us are truly frightening.

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Russian owned International Launch Services today successfully used its Proton rocket to launch a commercial satellite.

4:55 pm

The competition heats up: Russian owned International Launch Services (ILS) today successfully used its Proton rocket to launch a commercial satellite.

This is the second successfully Proton launch since July’s spectacular failure. The company seems to be recovering, which of course means that the competition for launch services will get hotter in 2014.

Which is excellent news. The competition will keep these companies on their toes, and force them to innovate in order to stay in business. In the long run this will lower the cost to orbit and make space more accessible to everyone.

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Using a warrant to search for guns, Homeland security officers and Maryland police confiscated a journalist’s confidential files.

10:01 am

Fascists: Using a warrant to search for guns, Homeland security officers and Maryland police confiscated a journalist’s confidential files.

The reporter had written a series of articles critical of the TSA. It appears that the raid was specifically designed to get her files, which contain identifying information about her sources in the TSA.

“In particular, the files included notes that were used to expose how the Federal Air Marshal Service had lied to Congress about the number of airline flights there were actually protecting against another terrorist attack,” Hudson [the reporter] wrote in a summary about the raid provided to The Daily Caller.

Recalling the experience during an interview this week, Hudson said: “When they called and told me about it, I just about had a heart attack.” She said she asked Bosch [the investigator heading the raid] why they took the files. He responded that they needed to run them by TSA to make sure it was “legitimate” for her to have them. “‘Legitimate’ for me to have my own notes?” she said incredulously on Wednesday.

Asked how many sources she thinks may have been exposed, Hudson said: “A lot. More than one. There were a lot of names in those files. … This guy basically came in here and took my anonymous sources and turned them over — took my whistleblowers — and turned it over to the agency they were blowing the whistle on,” Hudson said. “And these guys still work there.”

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Data from the Census Bureau reveals that in 2011 the number of people working full time was outnumbered by those getting government aid.

9:40 am

The day of reckoning looms: Data from the Census Bureau reveals that in 2011 the number of people working full time was outnumbered by those getting government aid.

Many of those getting aid according to these numbers could also be full time workers. Nonetheless, the data is stark and depressing, as it illustrates how American culture has declined. Once it was considered shameful to be “on the dole.” Now everybody does it. You can’t have a robust healthy society under those conditions.

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The number of Democratic senators calling for a delay in the Obamacare mandate has now grown to nine.

9:33 am

The number of Democratic senators calling for a delay in the Obamacare mandate has now grown to nine.

So, where were these fools only three weeks ago, when the Republicans offered this very same proposal? Had they voted with the Republicans then, they might have put sufficient pressure on Obama to sign the budget bill. The shutdown wouldn’t have happened and the delay would have gone into effect then.

In other words, three weeks ago this position might have made a difference. Now, it is merely political posturing, intended to give them cover in next year’s election but allowing them to support and keep Obamacare in effect. The voters in their states should note this and dump them accordingly.

Update: The number of Democratic senators calling for a delay has now grown to ten.

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Thousands of elderly New York patients have been told by their insurance company that, because of Obamacare, they will have to find another doctor.

9:25 am

Finding out what’s in it: Thousands of elderly New York patients have been told by their insurance company that, because of Obamacare, they will have to find another doctor.

And I am sure that these blue-state seniors, most of whom are usually knee-jerk Democrats, are pleased that the Democratic Party shut the government down rather than revise Obamacare even a teeny-weeny bit.

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Some new details about SpaceX’s new Raptor rocket engine are revealed.

9:19 am

The competition heats up: A key new detail about SpaceX’s new Raptor rocket engine is revealed.

The only detail about the engine in the release noted it will be capable of generating nearly 300 tons of thrust in vacuum, around four times more powerful than the Merlin 1D. However, it is possible a Raptor engine set could become the baseline for a huge future rocket to be used by SpaceX for missions to Mars, along with a potential role with a Mars ascent stage. [emphasis mine]

It appears that the engine might be intended to replace the Merlin engine entirely, thus giving the Falcon 9 (and other future SpaceX rockets) significantly more power, both for putting payload into orbit as well as returning to the ground.

Meanwhile, it also appears the Chinese, who are SpaceX’s biggest competitor in terms of price, are developing their own methane-oxygen engine with likely similar capabilities.

Ain’t competition wonderful?

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The investigation into the spacesuit leak in July is now awaiting the return of equipment from ISS.

9:09 am

The investigation into the spacesuit leak in July is now awaiting the return of equipment from ISS.

The station astronauts removed a cooling system pump and small contaminants found in the garment’s Primary Life Support System plumbing. The old fan pump separator and the preserved contaminants, including a 1-cm. piece of plastic, will return to Earth aboard Russia’s TMA-09M crew transport late Nov. 10 with Parmitano, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and ISS Russian commander Fyodor Yurchikhin. The hardware and contaminants will then be flown by NASA transport from the Kazakh landing site to Johnson Space Center, where a Mishap Investigation Board (MIB) hopes to quickly complete its probe of the worrisome incident.

Though it appears they have narrowed the problem to a small number of components, the need to return these components to Earth illustrates an overall design flaw with the space spacesuit. When the shuttle was flying regularly these components were easy to return to Earth, which is why NASA designed its suit for maintenance on the ground. Now that the shuttle is gone, however, it is difficult to get components returned, which makes spacesuit maintenance difficult if not impossible.

Spacesuits need to be repairable in space. If you are orbiting Mars and one fails, you can’t call in a repairman from Earth to fix it.

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