Tag: bankruptcy

Today’s blacklisted American: Students demand professor be fired for stating a fact

12:01 pm

Professor Christy Hammer: targeted for blacklisting
Professor Christy Hammer: targeted for blacklisting by students

Persecution is now cool! After decades of quiet effort by leftists to eliminate all conservative teachers from the halls of education, we are now seeing the results: Students at the University of Southern Maine are boycotting the classes of one education professor, Christy Hammer, while also insisting she should be fired, simply because she stated in class this basic fact of biology: that there are only two sexes.

Almost the entire class of 22 students walked out, all except one, demanding a meeting to be held with the university’s School of Education and Human Development.

Elizabeth Leibiger, who is non-binary, said she felt ‘under personal attack’ after Professor Hammer said there were only two sexes. “I let her know I didn’t think she was qualified to teach a class about positive learning environments. It’s the ultimate irony,” Leibiger said to Fox News.

A restorative justice meeting was held, but Professor Hammer’s position didn’t change. Two dozen graduate students in the class continued to demand that the university replace Hammer, believing her to be transphobic. Students are now refusing to return to the classroom in which she teaches and will only attend class if a new educator be appointed.

The class is a requirement to complete the graduate-level Extended Teacher Education Program and become a certified teacher in Maine. [emphasis mine]

The university has refused to comply with the students’ demand that Hammer be fired. At the same time, its administrators are also pandering to these thuggish students. First of all, what the heck is “a restorative justice meeting” other than a typical Orwellian 2-minute hate session for these childish students to throw a tantrum. For the college to play that game is shameful. Nor did the college’s pandering end there:
» Read more

25 comments

Both the Pentagon and Europe are looking for ways to fund Starlink for the Ukraine

9:13 am

According to an article in Politico today, both the U.S. military and the European Union (EU) are investigating ways in which either could fund the cost for providing Starlink to the Ukraine, rather than remaining a voluntary donation by SpaceX.

The most likely source of funding, several government and industry officials said, would be the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which has been used to acquire a range of weapons and services for the Ukraine war effort.

The Starlink issue also came up during a meeting of the European Union’s foreign ministers on Monday, as the countries discussed whether to contribute funding to ensure Ukrainians keep their access to the service. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told POLITICO after the meeting that EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell raised the subject of paying to keep the service running in Ukraine, but the effort is still in its early stages.

It also appears there are discussions to find a back-up to Starlink. At the moment however the only possible option would be OneWeb, and it is not clear its design would work for the soldier in the field.

Regardless, considering the amount of cash being thrown at military contractors for the war — much of which is likely worthless and simply pork — it seems entirely reasonable to devote some to Starlink, a technology that has actually made a difference.

4 comments

Blacklisting in academia has been going on for decades unseen

1:04 pm

The output from modern academia
The triumphant result of academia’s long blacklisting of conservatives

Blacklists are back and academia loves ’em: Though the return of blacklisting by Democrats has only become evident and blatant in the past two years, this blacklisting culture against conservatives has been aggressively blackballing such people from academia for decades, largely silently and without any news coverage.

That no one has noticed this blackballing is because until recently this effort hasn’t tried to get conservatives fired. Instead, administrators and faculty heads in colleges nationwide have simply made it a point to not hire conservatives. They blackballed them, and did so silently so that it was difficult to accuse them of any unfair discrimination.

How do I know this? A recent series of surveys performed by the College Fix proves it unequivocally. The data from Cornell University, though extreme, was hardly unusual:
» Read more

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Government to Musk: “Nice business you got here, shame if something happened to it.”

11:46 am

The government to Elon Musk: Nice business you got here.
The press and the feds negotiate with Elon Musk

Over the past week a series of events relating to the Ukraine War, Elon Musk, and Starlink illustrated starkly the growing corrupt, aggressive, and unrestrained power of our federal government and the administration state and press that supports it.

Our story begins in early October when Elon Musk put forth his own proposed solution to the Ukraine War, suggesting that to end the war the Ukraine should cede the Crimea to Russia and forgo its attempts to join NATO, making itself a neutral power instead.

Not surprisingly, Ukrainian officials responded to this somewhat naive though sincere proposal with great hostility. So did the press, the Biden administration, and many in social media.

Then, on October 14, 2022 Elon Musk said that his company Starlink cannot continue indefinitely providing service to the Ukraine, without some reimbursement. At the beginning of the war Musk had made Starlink available for no charge, and it has been an important factor to the Ukrainians in their recent military successes.
» Read more

18 comments

Pushback: Central Florida U forced to end censorship and blacklisting

12:31 pm

University of Central Florida: Hostile to free speech
University of Central Florida: Its hostility to free
speech had better change soon!

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In a settlement late last month [pdf] resulting from an April ruling against it by the courts, the University of Central Florida agreed to end its programs and policies designed to censor and even blacklist students who expressed opinions the university did not like.

The lawsuit [pdf] was brought by the legal organization Speech First, a student membership organization which acts to stop colleges from squelching the first amendment rights of students.

UCF officials agreed to pay $35,000 in legal fees, rewrite a harassment policy and discontinued the bias response team in a settlement with Speech First.

…The settlement “led to the elimination of UCF’s Stasi-like bias response team and ensured that the university’s policies actually consider the fundamental rights of their students,” Cherise Trump, the group’s executive director, wrote in a news release [pdf]. “Our win in the Eleventh Circuit not only set precedent in all of Florida, Alabama, and Georgia, but it also guarantees that universities recognize that the law is not on their side when they want to violate their students’ rights and shut down dissenting ideas.”

The college’s bias response teams were structured to report and punish any student for…
» Read more

6 comments

Pushback: Chants of “Vote them out!” overwhelm school board meeting

12:11 pm

Roxanne McDonald thinking she is in charge.
School board president Roxanne McDonald,
thinking she is in charge.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: A school board meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, had to be shut down when a mostly Muslim crowd of parents (with some Christians as well) became outraged by what appeared to be resistance by the school board to their demand that various books advocating the queer agenda be removed from the public school libraries.

As the meeting progressed, interruptions from the crowd became louder and increasingly frequent, despite calls from board members for decorum and respecting the right of others to speak.

Chants of “vote them out,” broke out when school board president Roxanne McDonald said a three-minute limit per speaker would be strictly enforced. The room was also far over its occupancy limit, and after the crowd ignored multiple orders for people to move into two overflow rooms, board members ended the meeting prior to the public comment period.

The video below shows the situation leading up to the board shutting down the meeting. Watch it and tell me if you do not think board president Roxanne McDonald is a self-righteous petty dictator who has utter contempt for the parents who are there.
» Read more

26 comments

Pushback: Teacher suspended for not submitting to queer agenda immediately reinstated when hundreds protest at board meeting

12:16 pm

Total victory

Bring a gun to a knife fight: This story begins in late September when the South Side Area School District in Pennsylvania decided it and all its teachers must comply with the insane queer agenda. According to the new policy, outlined in a letter, all of its teachers were ordered to use the pronouns that any student demanded of them. To the district, it didn’t matter if the student was eight or eighteen, if any student on a whim wanted to identify as a boy, then a girl, or then maybe even a tiger, the teachers were required to comply.

Daren Cusato, a biology teacher in the district for 30 years, refused. He sent a letter back to the district, explaining this violated both his Christian beliefs and his first amendment rights.

“Love the sinner but hate the sin,” said RJ Cusato, Daren’s son. “We don’t support what they’re doing but still love the person. He doesn’t have any problem with the students. We have no problems with the kids at all, he just doesn’t want to support what they’re doing. He doesn’t want to give them a pat on the back if they’re doing something he doesn’t think is right.”

The district’s response was immediate.
» Read more

11 comments

Voting in Arizona in 2022

2:02 pm

Liberty enlightening the world
The citizen is sovereign, and your vote demonstrates that power

Below are my election choices in Arizona when I vote on November 8, 2022. Though early voting begins tomorrow in Arizona, on October 12, 2022, I think it utterly foolish to commit my vote even ten seconds early. Too much can happen in the next few weeks. As a citizen it is my responsibility to make these choices with the most information possible, and voting early for no reason but convenience is a dereliction of duty.

Nonetheless, many Arizonians will be voting early by mail — which has been somewhat customary here for more than a decade — so I am posting my preferences now, including my reasoning, to give my readers some help in making their decisions.

Though I am not partisan, and have always distrusted Republicans as much as Democrats, this year my choices are very partisan. The Democratic Party has become very very corrupt. The best thing Americans can do to clean up that party is to throw out as many of its elected officials as possible. At that point the party will be faced with a stark choice: shift gears, change leadership, or die (allowing a new party to replace it). With any of these options, the voters would be provided with a new choice in future elections, coming from a different direction.

I am also making recommendations in connection with statewide and local propositions, several of which are hidden mines designed to eliminate what little election security we presently have. Voters must know this.

Thus, my choices:
» Read more

20 comments

Deadly climate change on Mars!

9:12 am

Junk science! A new computer simulation by scientists now proposes that there was microscopic life on Mars billions of years ago, but its existence served to destroy the climate and kill all life!

The press appears to be eating this story up, with enthusiasm. From the New Atlas story above:

Humans might not be the first lifeforms in the solar system to face the threat of their own activity changing the climate of their home planet. A new model suggests that ancient Mars was once habitable enough to support methane-producing microbes, and they may have wiped themselves out by causing irreparable damage to the Red Planet’s atmosphere. [emphasis mine]

A Space.com story is written better, but it still jumps on the bandwagon:
» Read more

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The dam is about to break on the COVID shots

12:02 pm

Democrats might soon enter the Truth booth
Advocates of the jab are about to be forced, against their will,
to enter that door.

The research continues to pour in every day showing increasingly that the COVID shots that Democrats and Joe Biden forced down the throats of ordinary Americans are not only relatively ineffective at stopping COVID, they are downright risky to take, especially for the young and healthy.

One story however — having nothing to do with this scientific research — suggests strongly that the left’s fantasy-world about the jab is about to break, and break in a big way. These mind-numbed robots are suddenly discovering directly and personally how harmful the jab can be, in the worst possible manner.

Before I tell you about this one story, however, we first must review some of the new research and data that has popped up in just the past week. (For the substantial previous research about the harmful risks and uselessness of the COVID shots see Part 1 of my three part series on the COVID lie from the end of September, with parts 2 and 3 here and here.)

First, the uselessness of the jab:
» Read more

23 comments

Soyuz-2 launches new Russian GPS-type satellite

8:41 am

Russia early today launched another satellite for its Glonass GPS-type constellation, using its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk launch site.

After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Russia’s Glonass constellation withered, with the country for years unable to replace the satellites as they aged and died. Only after free enterprise was encouraged in the 1990s and 2000s and the economy began to boom did the Russian government finally have enough tax dollars to begin launching replacements.

The Russian invasion of the Ukraine will certainly put a crimp in this recovery. As has Putin’s policy of using the government to nationalize many industries, such as its aerospace sector.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

46 SpaceX
43 China
13 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 66 to 43 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 66 to 64.

6 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Black playwright blackballed because he honestly told the story of racism in the Jim Crow south

11:17 am

Carlyle Brown, censored for writing truthfully
Carlyle Brown, censored for writing truthfully

The modern dark age: Close-minded students at the black student association at Texas Wesleyan University have forced the cancellation of a play celebrating the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the 1960s — written by black author Carlyle Brown — because it included realistic dialogue of the time, including the word “nigger”.

Students objected to the use of the n-word in a play that tries to capture the environment of hate and racism of the period. Texas Wesleyan’s Black Student Association declared the reference to be harmful and “triggering.” Calling for a boycott, the Association declared that allowing the play to be heard would “further hurt Black students and possibly students from other marginalized communities.”

The Rambler student newspaper reported that school and theater officials killed the production after a 90-minute campus discussion: “The main concern the students voiced was the ‘triggering’ effect of using the racially explicit word, which is repeated 11 separate times throughout the play, and how it can cause trauma to the black students in the audience.”

The play, Down in Mississippi, can be read here [pdf]. From the play’s summary:
» Read more

41 comments

Pushback: Because of Yale Law School’s enthusiasm for blacklisting, more than a dozen judges now refuse to hire its graduates

11:46 am

Yale Law School's instruction guide
Yale Law School’s instruction guide

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Following the public announcement by Judge James Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that he would no longer hire Yale graduates as law clerks because of that school’s enthusiasm for blacklisting and censorship, it appears that a dozen other judges have joined his boycott as well.

“Students should be mindful that they will face diminished opportunities if they go to Yale,” said a prominent circuit court judge, whose clerks have gone on to nab Supreme Court clerkships. “I have no confidence that they’re being taught anything.”

With one exception, the judges made clear this is a policy they are imposing on future—not current—Yale Law School students.

Ho’s public speech was even more harsh.

“Yale presents itself as the best, most elite institution of legal education. Yet it’s the worst when it comes to legal cancellation.” The school “sets the tone for other law schools, and for the legal profession at large. I certainly reserve the right to add other schools in the future. But my sincere hope is that I won’t have to. My sincere hope is that, if nothing else, my colleagues and I will at least send the message that other schools should not follow in Yale’s footsteps.”

Ho’s message to law schools was clear: “If they want the closed and intolerant environment that Yale embraces today, that’s their call. But I want nothing to do with it.”

Nor is Ho exaggerating about Yale’s intolerant track record. » Read more

9 comments

Today’s blacklisted Americans: UC-Berkeley law school clubs ban Jewish speakers

12:03 pm

The coming genocide
Becoming Judenfrei at UC-Berkeley

Persecution is now cool! Nine different law school clubs at the University of California-Berkeley have now made it their official policy to ban all “pro-Zionist” speakers, and are doing so with the full support of the college administration.

And these are not groups that represent only a small percentage of the student population. They include Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent and the Queer Caucus. Berkeley Law’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a progressive Zionist, has observed that he himself would be banned under this standard, as would 90% of his Jewish students.

Zionism has always been used by leftist hate-monger groups as a euphemism for Jew. Its meaning is generally unclear and vague, and in the end usually ends up covering anyone who is support of Israel’s existence. Since this opinion fits the description almost every Jew, banning Zionism essentially bans Jews.

The university’s support and backing of this anti-Semitic ban has come from Dean Chemerinsky himself, who admits he would be banned under these rules but in a rebuttal posted at the link above, expresses full support for the anti-Semitic policy of these clubs.
» Read more

4 comments

Today’s blacklisted Americans: All normal girls banned from locker room because one cross-dressing boy demanded it

12:09 pm

Blake Allen, punished for being a normal high school girl
Blake Allen, punished for being a normal high school girl

They’re coming for you next: This story, which broke on September 28, 2022, is so absurd that at first glance it is hard to believe: Officials running Randolph High School in Vermont have banned from the girls locker room all girls from the school’s volley ball team because one cross-dressing boy was using it and the girls had the unmitigated nerve to express strong discomfort changing clothes in the presence of a male.

The quote below tells the tale, but in order to make it more precisely describe reality, I have replaced the meaningless words (“trans”, “transgender” “they”) that our queer dictators have imposed on mainstream news sources with words that actually describe the facts.

[Blake] Allen [one of the girls] says that the dispute started when the [boy who likes to wear woman’s clothing] made an inappropriate comment while members of the volleyball team were getting changed. She says her issue is not with having the [cross-dresser] student on the team or at school, but specifically in the locker room. “There are biological boys that go into the girl’s bathroom but never a locker room,” Allen said.
» Read more

14 comments

Head of Commerce’s space office questions new FCC regulations on space junk

10:00 am

Turf war! At a conference yesterday Richard Dalbello, director of the Office of Space Commerce at the Commerce Department, strongly questioned the FCC’s legal authority for its just passed new regulation on the de-orbiting of space junk.

“I think the FCC, for their part, has pushed the boundaries of their authorities pretty aggressively,” he said when asked about what agency should have oversight for issues like that, as his office works to create a civil space traffic management capability. “Although I certainly congratulate them on the depth of their intellectual work,” he said of the FCC and its new order, “a lot of the things that they articulated are probably, arguably, outside their job jar.”

Dalbello’s comments only add to the many turf wars going on in the DC swamp over space regulation. Some in Congress want all space regulation to shift to his office. Others want it to be distributed across a number of agencies in both the military and civilian bureaucracies.

Regardless, Dalbello’s office is the agency that might actually have the legal authority for regulating space junk. And it is certain that the FCC does not have it.

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Part 3: Against the COVID liars and their strong-arm edicts the wheels of justice are grinding forward slowly

1:43 pm

Renewing the Declaration of Independence
Renewing the Declaration of Independence

In the first two parts of this series I very carefully outlined the ugly corrupt lie of the experimental COVID jab, and then followed up with a detailed summary of the lies put forth to justify imposition of the many COVID mandates.

Today, in this concluding essay, we will take a look at the battle by many to resist and end those COVID mandates, a battle that is increasingly successful because the mandates themselves were both immoral and illegal. They desecrated all the fundamental tenets and principles that underlie all American culture and law.

First however an addendum to yesterday’s essay, where I noted that “The royalties possibly received by Fauci and others in the government for their work developing the COVID jab — that the government then mandated — boggles the mind.” Shortly after I posted that essay, this story hit the web:

Fauci’s Net Worth Doubled During Pandemic, As Americans Struggled to Make Ends Meet

In 2021 alone Fauci earned almost two million dollars in royalties, travel perks, and investment gains. We still do not know however exactly what companies paid Fauci this money, or the precise amounts, because, according to the organization Open the Books which obtained this data, NIH has redacted that information.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Something is very rotten in the state of COVID”. The only reason I can fathom for keeping the source of those royalties secret is if their unveiling would reveal a serious conflict of interest. Fauci was one of the most visible government officials pushing the COVID shots on adults and children. Was he also making money on each jab? The public has a right to know.

Now, on to the fight against the illegal and immoral COVID mandates.
» Read more

15 comments

FCC approves new regulation requiring defunct satellite deorbit in five years

10:13 am

Despite questions from Congress and others about the agency’s legal authority to do so, the FCC yesterday approved a new regulation that will require satellite companies to de-orbit defunct satellites within five years, shortening the rule from the previous requirement of 25 years.

Commissioners voted 4-0 to adopt the draft rule, published earlier this month, intended to address growing debris in LEO. Under the new rule, spacecraft that end their lives in orbits at altitudes of 2,000 kilometers or below will have to deorbit as soon as practicable and no more than five years after the end of their mission. The rule would apply to satellites launched two years after the order is adopted, and include both U.S.-licensed satellites as well as those licensed by other jurisdictions but seeking U.S. market access.

The article notes how this rule replaces “a longstanding FCC guideline” Note the difference. Previously the FCC had made a recommendation, recognizing it did not have the authority to impose it. Now, our power-hungry DC bureaucracy has decided it can ignore the law and impose any rule it desires. Nor does it feel it needs to listen to Congress, one committee of which sent a stern letter recently questioning the then proposed new rule and calling for the FCC to hold off any action on it while elected officials review the situation.

The FCC yesterday responded, essentially telling Congress to bug off.

None of these questions have anything to do with whether this rule makes sense. It likely does, but that still doesn’t give FCC officials to right to arbitrarily give themselves more power. Whether our elected officials will act to defend their own power is uncertain, as the pattern in the past half century is for Congress to consistently cede its power to the bureaucracy, whenever challenged.

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Part 2: How the liars spread the ugly corrupt lie of the COVID jab

4:01 pm

Yesterday I outlined in detail how a growing body of research as well as a great deal of blatantly obvious public data is increasingly demonstrating that the COVID shots carry with them some risk, and that in many cases, especially for those younger than 50, the risks outweigh the relatively minor benefits the jab provides against the Wuhan flu.

Though this data was unknown when the COVID shots were first made available, the amount of uncertainty and risk was great enough to make it unconscionable for any politician or health official to require anyone to get the jab, no matter what. And yet, led by President Joe Biden, government agencies and big corporations nationwide demanded employees get the jab, or be fired.

The result: tens of thousands of individuals, especially the young and healthy, have died unnecessarily from the COVID shots, since COVID itself could never have killed them.

Today I am going to outline the lies perpetuated by politicians and government health officials almost from day one of the Wuhan panic that worked hide these basic facts. Many times these lies were committed with the best of intentions. Many times the liars honestly and sincerely believed the lie was their only course of action.

And in too many cases, the lies were merely lies, said simply to protect the individual from scandal and possible prosecution, should the truth come out.

No matter what the reason, however, these lies were not only dishonest, they were morally wrong, and resulted in routinely bad policy that only made the Wuhan epidemic far worse than it ever had to be.

To begin, let us look at the lies of some specific individuals.
» Read more

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Part 1: The ugly corrupt lie of the experimental COVID jab

2:16 pm

Joe Biden: dictator
Joe Biden: claiming the power to tell us what medicines we must take

On September 9, 2021, President Joe Biden announced harsh mandates nationwide that forced millions to get COVID shots. You had no choice. If you refused, you would be fired from your job and made a non-person, forbidden in all ways from participating normally in society.

“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” Biden said, making a direct appeal to the 80 million people who he said were still unvaccinated. “Your refusal has cost all of us.”

…”It’s simple [said an official]: If you want to work for the federal government, you must be vaccinated. If you want to do business with the government, you must vaccinate your workforce.”

Those mandates — unreasonably based on very uncertain knowledge at the time — have now been found to have killed thousands of people who did not need to die.

And worst of all, the people imposing those mandates were lying, and knew they were lying.

Killing young adults

For a large majority of the population that either voluntarily chose to get the COVID jab or were forced to submit under duress, the shots and boosters at this point appear to have been harmless. Most people have exhibited no negative symptoms once jabbed, and have so far been able to go on with their lives as if nothing had changed.

The problem is that for many, that jab was a death sentence, with the executioner often arriving unexpectedly but quickly, and completely unnecessarily.
» Read more

14 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Arrested in 2020 for letting her kids play in park, a mom is still being prosecuted by Idaho Republicans

12:16 pm

Sarah Brady: targeted by both establishment parties for defending her freedom
Sarah Brady: targeted by both establishment parties
for defending her freedom

Persecution is now cool! In 2020, during the worst of the Wuhan panic, Sarah Brady was part of a gathering of parents and children in a public playground in Meridian, Idaho, a playground that the local mayor, Lauren McLean (Democrat), had closed in her panicked fear of COVID. Her irrational ban said that no outdoor equipment or playground equipment could be touched, though people could still gather in the parks.

When police officers demanded Brady and the others leave the park, Brady challenged them, questioning the absurdity of the closure. She was then arrested, and charged with misdemeanor that could result in six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

“I feel like I was singled out because I was the only person that was arrested,” Brady said. “I wasn’t the only person standing on the bark [the playground surface]. I definitely wasn’t playing on the playground equipment. I wasn’t swinging, never touched them. But yeah, I do feel like I was singled out and maybe it was because I asked too many questions.”

Two years later, this absurd persecution of Brady continues. The Republican state attorney general, Lawrence Wasden, has refused to drop the charges, and is instead pursuing them.
» Read more

8 comments

The rising federal Gestapo

1:18 pm

The Houck Family: Targets of FBI harassment and arrest
The Houck Family: Targets of FBI harassment and arrest.
The little boy in the center clearly needs to be frog-marched to prison.

It can happen here. Anyone who denies this is merely guaranteeing that tyranny in America will arrive sooner.

Worse, it is happening here, right now, at this very moment. The Houck family to the right has been in the news the past few days because on September 23, 2022 they found their home surrounded by an FBI SWAT team with guns drawn, pounding at the front door to arrest the father, Mark Houck, for a minor pushing incident that had occurred months earlier that was so minor the court had dismissed the lawsuit against Houck almost immediately. Notwithstanding its utter triviality, the Biden administration, its Justice Department, and the FBI decided it gave them a great chance to intimidate and frighten someone who happened to also be a conservative and religious activist.
» Read more

37 comments

NASA managers decide finally to roll SLS back to assembly building

9:01 am

NASA managers this morning finally gave up on launching their SLS rocket in an early October launch window and scheduled rolling back the rocket to the assembly building tonight.

NASA will roll the Artemis I Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft back to the Vehicle Assembly Building on Monday, Sept. 26. First motion is targeted for 11 p.m. EDT.

Managers met Monday morning and made the decision based on the latest weather predictions associated with Hurricane Ian, after additional data gathered overnight did not show improving expected conditions for the Kennedy Space Center area. The decision allows time for employees to address the needs of their families and protect the integrated rocket and spacecraft system. The time of first motion also is based on the best predicted conditions for rollback to meet weather criteria for the move.

Based on this graph [pdf] provided by NASA earlier this year, the next launch window is from October 17 to October 31, followed by another from November 12 to November 27. It is unclear whether they can meet that first window, even if all engineers do is check and recharge the flight termination system batteries.

The question of the rocket’s two solid-fueled boosters however looms. Both are now one year past NASA’s use-by date, and it appears somewhat unknown what the risks are using them. Replacing them however will entail a significant delay, from three to six months.

As I said this weekend, NASA managers face no good choice, because of the impractical and inefficient design of this rocket.

4 comments

NASA managers scrub September 27th SLS launch

9:59 am

NASA managers today decided that they had to scrub their attempt to launch SLS on September 27, 2022 due to a hurricane threatening Florida, and are instead preparing to roll the rocket back to the assembly building to protect it.

During a meeting Saturday morning, teams decided to stand down on preparing for the Tuesday launch date to allow them to configure systems for rolling back the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building. Engineers deferred a final decision about the roll to Sunday, Sept. 25, to allow for additional data gathering and analysis. If Artemis I managers elect to roll back, it would begin late Sunday night or early Monday morning.

This will likely delay the launch until the late October launch window, or the mid-November window, as shown in this graph [pdf]. During this time engineers will certainly test and recharge the batteries that run the rocket’s flight termination system so that there will be no question they will work should the Space Force safety range officer need to destroy the rocket during launch.

NASA however now faces another quandary it has been avoiding for the past year. The stacking of the five segments of SLS’s two solid rocket strap-on boosters began in November 2020, two years ago. During the shuttle era and until last year, NASA had a rule that said a booster must launch within a year of stacking. The fear was that the weight of the solid rocket fuel could distort it over time, and possibly cause it to burn improperly once ignited. As these boosters are the equivalent of firecrackers — once you light them you can’t turn them off — NASA had chosen, until last year, to have a use-by date of one year for the boosters.

Now however NASA has abandoned that rule. The boosters have been stacked for twice that time, and the agency has to ask if it will be safe to use them. To change them out however will take at least three months, if not longer. The present set of boosters would have to be removed, and a new set stacked and installed.

I fully expect NASA to stay with these boosters, despite their age, once again violating its own safety rules, as it did routinely during the shuttle era (resulting in the loss of two shuttles and the death of fourteen astronauts). Though no humans will be on this test flight, this sloppy engineering culture clearly threatens the lives of the astronauts who will fly on the second Artemis SLS mission, around the Moon.

8 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Google, Paypal, Venmo team up to blacklist a gay organization

12:18 pm

Google loves blacklisting, along with its teammates Paypal,Venmo, and Twitter
Google loves blacklisting, along with its teammates
Paypal,Venmo, and Twitter

Blacklists are back and big tech likes ’em: Apparently because the homosexual advocacy group Gays Against Groomers opposes the exposure of queer ideology to little children, this week the big social media companies Google, Paypal, and Venmo did a coordinated crack down on the group, shuttering its accounts all within one day’s time.

Google, Paypal and Venmo shut down accounts affiliated with Gays Against Groomers, a Twitter account that is critical of gender ideology, particularly in regard to children. Venmo shut down the account early Tuesday morning, and Paypal blocked the account from its services minutes later, according to an email shared by the account’s founder Jamie Michell; Google shut down her account, including her email address, the following morning, according to a screenshot and an email.

Google reinstated the account the next day, but provided no credible explanation for its actions, at all.

In July this same organization had also been suspended by Twitter. The account was only reinstated when the group agreed to replace the letter “o” in “Groomers” with graphic eyeballs. It appears Twitter did not like the use of the word “groomers”, since it described precisely what queer advocates are doing when they espouse their perverse sexual behavior to young children.

The organization had been using its Twitter account to publicize examples where queer advocates performed sexually in front of kids. As it notes on its webpage:
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Pushback: NY cops fight city’s COVID jab mandate

12:16 pm

NY Mayor Eric Adams: an enthusiastic tyrant
NY Mayor Eric Adams: an enthusiastic tyrant

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In the past week three stories from New York City suggest that the willingness to fight against the irrational and abusive COVID shot mandates imposed by the one-party rule of the Democratic Party in that city can win.

First, a state judge in New York on September 13, 2022 ruled in favor of a lawsuit by police officer Alexander Delito, stating that the city cannot fire him for refusing to get the jab. Delito had apparently been arbitrarily denied a religious exemption, with no explanation. As the judge noted in his decision:

“The hollow and generic phrase ‘does not meet criteria’ cannot be rational because not a single item particular to [Deletto] was discussed and not a single reason for the decision was given,” Justice Arlene Bluth ruled. “There is no indication that anybody even read [Deletto’s] arguments. It is the duty of the agency to explain why it made the decision,” the judge added.

The ruling sets a precedent that will make it difficult for New York City to continue the mandate. Not surprisingly, a week later the city’s Democrat mayor, Eric Adams, announced he is lifting the mandate on the private sector and on school children, even as he refused to remove it from government workers.

The response from the leaders of various government unions was immediate. Here is just one example:
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Today’s blacklisted American: Republicans and conservatives increasingly unwilling to talk to pollsters out of fear

12:45 pm

Joe Biden's
Joe Biden’s anti-conservative rally on September 1, 2022

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: According to pollsters, the vicious almost slanderous attacks by President Biden against Republicans and conservatives — following decades of similar harsh language from Democrats nationwide — is causing these voters to increasingly refuse to talk to pollsters about their opinions.

In a Twitter thread, Trafalgar Group chief pollster Robert C. Cahaly said that President Joe Biden’s recent attacks on so-called “MAGA Republicans” will make polling supporters of former President Donald Trump even harder to poll than in previous years. Cahaly pointed out that in the last two presidential election cycles, name-calling and threats from prominent Democrats contributed to the phenomenon of the “shy Trump voter.” But as the 2022 midterms have begun in earnest, Biden’s escalating rhetoric against Trump supporters, accusing them of embracing “semi-fascism” and being a threat to America, will make these voters even harder to reach in polling.
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First meeting of all 21 nations who have signed Artemis Accords

10:13 am

For the first time yesterday, the 21 nations who have signed the Artemis Accords gathered together in a single meeting during the International Astronautical Congress being held in Paris this week.

The article at the link comes from the UAE’s state-run press.

Sarah Al Amiri, Minister of State for Public Education and Advanced Technology and chairwoman of the UAE Space Agency, attended the signatories’ meeting on behalf of the UAE. “During this meeting, heads of space agencies discussed future plans in the industry to ensure the safety of humans and deconfliction of activities on the Moon, as well as the importance of the Accords to emerging space nations,” she said.

Since the U.S. is the lead nation in these accords — with all signatories becoming participating partners in its Artemis program to settle the solar system — U.S. government policies will dominate any discussion. When the Trump administration established the Artemis Accords, a major goal was to establish property rights in space for private companies. Under Trump, the U.S. would have thus certainly exercised its power to make sure that was the goal.

With the Biden administration in charge, it appears the focus has shifted — for good intentions — to promoting international cooperation, which means the goals of our other international partners appear more dominant. Under Biden, the U.S. appears willing to allow these other countries to propose policy. Should this happen, I guarantee the opportunities for private enterprise as well as the freedom for future space generations will not be as promising.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Leftist thugs at University of New Mexico threaten conservative speaker and audience with violence

12:14 pm

Tomi Lahren: targeted for leftist violence
Tomi Lahren: targeted for leftist violence

They’re coming for you next: When the conservative student organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA) invited conservative Tomi Lahren to speak at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, a mob of leftist thugs gathered outside, attempted to force their way in, and apparently actually threatened violence against both Lahren, the audience there to hear her speak, and the handful of police officers trying to protect them.

“I start my speech and you can hear the chants and you can hear the screaming and the expletives. And again, nobody really thought anything of it. They’re just, you know, fired up. And I didn’t really think too much of it until they started pushing past the officers and banging on the doors so much that these double doors are visibly moving and shaking and they are smashing into the windows. And that’s when it became incredibly chaotic,” Lahren continued. “Everybody was worried that they were going to get inside. They were pushing officers in front of the doors and pushing them out of the way. I mean, attacking them. It started to get very ugly and very violent, very fast. Of course, we could only see through these little windows in the front the room we were in, so we couldn’t really see exactly what was going on out there.” [emphasis mine]

A very short video shows these protesters chanting and pushing against the door to the room.
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NASA issues call for new manned lunar lander proposals

10:12 am

NASA yesterday announced a solicitation for proposals for new manned lunar lander proposals, aimed at obtaining services long term, rather than the initial contract it has awarded SpaceX which only covered the first few Artemis lunar missions.

This solicitation is essentially being offered so that Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin will have a second chance to win such a contract, having lost out to SpaceX initially. It also is NASA’s effort to get Congress to give it a bigger budget so that it can pay for two different lunar lander contracts.

Having two competing lunar landers is not a bad thing. Giving a second contract however simply because the company (Blue Origin) exerts political clout is not. Right now it is unclear whether this solicitation is the former or the later.

The announcement also included what has become boilerplate in all NASA announcements about its Artemis lunar missions:

Through Artemis missions, NASA is preparing to return humans to the Moon, including the first woman and first person of color, for long-term scientific discovery and exploration. [emphasis mine]

It is very clear that the number one criteria that NASA has established, under the Biden administration, for picking the crew on that first Artemis lunar landing mission is race and gender, not talent, skill, or ability. While it will be a great thing when the first woman and black steps on the Moon, their skin color or sex should not be the reason they got to go. If it is, it will be incredibly insulting to their talent, skill, and ability. In fact, by making race or gender the only qualification that NASA cares about, it puts an asterisk on those qualifications. Forever people will wonder if these individuals really deserved the honor.

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