Tag: Biden

Beware the cornered rat!

1:14 pm

Trump is only in the way

The absurd guilty verdict against Donald Trump yesterday by a jury of twelve partisan New York Democrats confirms something that we should have recognized back in 2016. The Democratic Party and its partisan supporters will brook no opposition, and are willing to do anything — including throwing the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the entire legal system in the trash can — in order to maintain their control of the government.

In 2016 they were outraged that an outsider like Donald Trump could become president, and for the next four years exhibited that irrational outrage by pushing one fake and slanderous scandal against him after another, from idiotic claims that he deprived visitors of the same portions of ice cream as he got to the utterly false accusations that he won the election due to Russian help.

To defeat him in 2020 it appears the administrative state teamed up with many Democratic Party governors to create the panic over COVID as well as the outrage over the drug overdose death of an addict during his arrest in Minnesota. The former allowed those governors and state governments to corrupt the election system.

The latter outrage over George Floyd allowed the armed wing of the Democratic Party, its BLM and Antifa thugs, to loot and riot throughout the country, thus reinforcing the absurd lockdown rules imposed because of COVID.

It remains unclear whether the the election shenanigans that followed gave Biden the victory, but any objective review of the facts and the many vote tampering allegiations put forth by numerous election officials nationwide suggests it was very possible.

Thus, Biden became president, and since then the Democrats have been on an aggressive blacklisting campaign to destroy anyone who opposed them. That campaign reached its summit yesterday with Trump’s conviction in what could be called the most ludicrous and disgusting legal case ever brought against any American. Not only can no one name the crime that Trump was supposed to have committed, the jury was given instructions that it could find him guilty even if they themselves couldn’t agree on that crime.

As expected, the public’s response to Trump’s conviction has been to increase his support. » Read more

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SpaceX completes second Starship/Superheavy dress rehearsal countdown; no launch licence yet from FAA

9:22 am

Though SpaceX has now successfully completed a second Starship/Superheavy dress rehearsal countdown in preparation for its targeted June 5, 2024 launch date, the FAA has still not issued the company a launch licence.

The report at the link is very optimistic about the FAA issuing the license, though there as yet no indication that it will do so.

There are two ways to return to flight. Previously, all Starship mishaps were closed using Path One, which means the FAA accepts a SpaceX-led mishap investigation report, where the operator identifies corrective actions for the vehicle and implements them on future flights.

For this flight, SpaceX chose Path Two, which involves an FAA public safety determination. In this process, the FAA makes a safety determination based on all available information to see if the previous flight involved safety-critical system failures. If successful, a return to flight can be conducted even without the closure of the mishap report.

In a statement to [NASASpaceFlight], the FAA reported: “After a comprehensive review, the FAA determined no public safety issues were involved in the anomaly that occurred during the SpaceX Starship OFT-3 launch on March 14. This public safety determination means the Starship vehicle may return to flight operations while the overall investigation remains open, provided all other license requirements are met.

SpaceX has not yet received FAA license authorization for the next Starship launch.”

We shall see. I suspect the people at the FAA want to issue that license. I also suspect that the White House is demanding the full investigation be completed beforehand.

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Peru and Slovakia sign Artemis Accords

8:52 am

In separate press releases (here and here), NASA today announced that both Peru and Slovakia have signed the Artemis Accords, becoming the 41st and 42nd countries respectively to join the American space alliance.

The alliance now includes these nations: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

As with all recent Artemis Accord signing announcements under the Biden administration, the focus of the accords is no longer promoting private property and capitalism in space (as they were conceived by the Trump administration). Instead, the focus appears to be a globalist’s dream, as noted as follows in both annoncements:

The United States and seven other nations were the first to sign the Artemis Accords in 2020, which identified an early set of principles promoting the beneficial use of space for all humanity. The accords are grounded in the Outer Space Treaty and other agreements including the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices and norms of responsible behavior that NASA and its partners have supported, including the public release of scientific data.

Rather than use this alliance as a wedge to overturn the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions on private property in space, it now appears the alliance is working to strengthen those restrictions, led by the U.S. under the Biden administration.

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Need a kidney transplant? You better be poor according to new DEI proposed rules

12:39 pm

The Biden administration: still dedicated to segregation!
The Biden administration: still dedicated to segregation!

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” According to new rules proposed by the Biden administration “to root our racial bias,” a pilot program will favor low-income patients in providing them kidney transplants.

The proposal, which Becerra’s agency announced on May 8, would place 90 of the nation’s 257 transplant hospitals into a pilot program that uses an annual point system to grade participants. Under the system, a successful kidney transplant counts as one point. A transplant furnished to a low-income patient, however, counts as 1.2 points thanks to a “health equity performance adjustment,” thus incentivizing the hospitals to prioritize such patients. At the end of each year, those points are applied to a transplant quota. Hospitals that meet their quota receive as much as $8,000 per transplant; those that don’t may have to pay up to $2,000 per transplant.

While the proposal uses income to categorize patients rather than race, Becerra made clear that the scoring system is meant to address racial concerns. In his statement announcing the proposal, he touted the Biden administration’s “concrete steps to remove racial bias … in the transplant process.”

» Read more

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Lithuania signs Artemis Accords

9:54 am

Lithuania yesterday became the 40th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, joining the American alliance for exploring the solar system.

The alliance now includes these nations: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

The press release for this announcement differed slightly from the last few, all of which emphasized how the accords were designed to “reinforce” the Outer Space Treaty, the exact opposite of its original goals, which was to build an alliance of nations focused on getting around or eliminating the restrictions of the Outer Space Treaty on private property in space. Today the press release was more vague:

NASA, along with the Department of State and seven other nations, established the Artemis Accords in 2020 to lay out a set of principles grounded in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and three related space treaties. With the commitment of now 40 nations, the accords community will facilitate a long-term and peaceful presence of deep space exploration for the benefit of humanity.

Does this mean the Biden administration is going to return to the accords’ original goal? I doubt it. I think instead they decided they needed to be less obvious about their new intentions, which increasingly appears to be to use this alliance to foster globalist international cooperation aimed at keeping all power and legal control in the hands of the governments themselves.

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FAA and Air Force initiate new environmental impact statements for Starship/Superheavy launchpads in Florida

12:08 pm

We’re here to help you! Really! Late yesterday, in a typical Friday story dump just before the weekend to reduce any notice, the FAA announced it has begun a new environmental impact statement (EIS) of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy launchpad infrastructure being built in Florida, working in parallel with a similar environmental impact statement now being conducted by the Air Force.

The EIS will be the second environmental review involving SpaceX’s plans to use LC-39A for Starship launches. NASA completed an environmental assessment (EA) in 2019 of the company’s plans at the time to build launch infrastructure at LC-39A for Starship, finding it would have no significant impact. At the time SpaceX was planning up to 24 Starship launches from that pad annually. A new EIS, the FAA concluded, is needed because of changes in the design of Starship and its operations since the 2019 assessment.

The FAA claims a new assessment is needed because SpaceX is now planning as many as 44 launches. The Air Force has not said why its new assessment is needed. That EIS, which began in March, covers a launchpad previously used by the Saturn-1B and Delta-4 rockets from 1964 to 2022, another pad use by the Air Force’s Titan rocket from 1965 to 2005, as well as a new pad, dubbed SLC-50.

LC-39A meanwhile has been used for launches since the 1960s. The Saturn-5, the space shuttle, and the Falcon 9 all launched from this pad.

The dishonest absurdity of these impact statements can not be overstated. There is zero reason to do new assessments. All the pads have been in use for decades, with all kinds of rockets, some comparable to Superheavy/Starship. The environment and the wildlife refuge at Cape Canaveral have both thrived.

Moreover, to force completely new impact statements because the design and plans for Superheavy/Starship have changed somewhat (but not fundamentally) is even more stupid. This is a new rocket, being developed day-by-day and launch-by-launch. Will the FAA and the Air Force require new EIS’s every time SpaceX changes anything? It seems so.

This is clearly lawfare against Elon Musk and SpaceX by the White House and the administration state. It doesn’t like Musk, and it is now searching at all times for ways to block or damage him.

I confidently predict that neither statement will be completed by the end of 2025. Based on the timeline of most EIS’s, which when politics are involved are almost always slowed by the legal action of activists, the earliest either will be approved will be mid-2026, though likely later.

What is not clear is whether the FAA and Air Force will stop all work while this red tape is being unwound. If so, then the first operational launches of Superheavy and Starship cannot happen out of Cape Canaveral until well into 2027, which means NASA entire Artemis program will be seriously delayed. My previous prediction that the first manned lunar landing can’t happen before 2030 is becoming increasingly too conservative.

And remember this: If Joe Biden and the Democrats remain in power after November, all bets are off. At that point they are certain to ramp up the lawfare against those they see as political enemies, even if their targets are doing great things for the nation and the American people.

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Biden abandons Israel to appease student rioters and help Hamas survive

12:24 pm

Joe Biden, allied with Hamas
Joe Biden, appeaser to Hamas and student rioters

The mask is off: President Joe Biden has now made it clear that if Israel moves into the southern Gazan city of Rafah in order to destroy Hamas’s last batallion of soldiers as well as its leadership, he will stop sending Israel major shipments of ammunition and bombs.

President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt some shipments of American weapons to Israel – which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza – if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an exclusive interview on “Erin Burnett OutFront,” referring to 2,000-pound bombs that Biden paused shipments of last week.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said.

Let’s distill the real significance of Biden’s decision:
» Read more

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The long delay in Israel’s final Gaza offensive has harmed everyone except the terrorists

5:32 pm

Hamas vs Israel
Even the Arabs recognize these facts.
Courtesy of Doug Ross.

Despite several months of delay forced on it by the Biden administration in its effort to placate the Democratic Party’s Islamic wing, Israel today began its final offensive against Hamas’s last Gazan stronghold in the southern city of Rafah.

According to the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), “The IDF is currently conducting targeted strikes against Hamas terror targets in eastern Rafah in southern Gaza.” It has also dropped leaflets throughout Rafah telling the general population to evacuate to the west and north into areas that Israel has set up to hold non-combatant refugees.

The initiation of this offensive is likely linked to Hamas’s actions this weekend. First Hamas proudly took credit for bombing the border crossing used to bring humanitarian aid to the city. That attack killed three Israeli soldiers, and put an end to the aid. Hamas also continued to stall and refuse to negotiate, and then when it was clear the offensive was about to start it suddenly announced it had accepted a ceasefire deal offered to it by Qatar and Egypt that Israel had no part in negotiating and had already rejected.

What will happen next is somewhat unclear. Israel will without doubt be able to take Rafah and likely eliminate the remaining four or so battalions of Hamas terrorists. Will it be able to do so without a large number of civilian casualties is unclear, as Hamas has a policy of using those civilians as shields. It will likely try to do so again.

The ramifications of the long delay in this offensive are however important. It occurred partly because Israel’s army wanted to regroup, but mostly because the Biden administration has been desperately trying to prevent it. The White House has threatened Israel in a number of ways if it moved forward with the attack, most recently by putting a hold on a shipment to Israel of ammo. Biden officials have also stated several times that they are considering a major change in its policy towards Israel if the Rafah offensive occurs.

Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly made it clear that Israel has no intention of making any peace deal with Hamas. In the past month however it did appear the Israeli government was holding off on the offensive in order to placate the White House and hopefully work out a deal to get the hostages released.

In the end, the delay has served no good purpose, and in fact has had many negative consequences, against Biden, the Gazan people themselves, and the United States.
» Read more

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Update on SpaceX’s preparations for the 4th test flight of Superheavy/Starship

11:10 am

Link here. The article is definitely worth reading, as it tells us that SpaceX is pushing hard to be ready to launch in early May, as Musk has promised. The article also thinks SpaceX will be able to ramp up later launches to one every two months.

The article however is I think being naively optimistic about this timeline, because it naively assumes the FAA will quickly approve the launch licenses to meet that schedule. I guarantee the FAA won’t, as it has taken it one to four months after SpaceX was ready to launch to approve the licenses for the previous launches. The length of that approval process has shrunk each time, but FAA still made Space X wait each time, for no reason.

Making that schedule even more unlikely is SpaceX’s desire to do as many as nine test launches per year at Boca Chica. While the company could certainly do this, the environment reassessment issued in 2022 limits it to only five launches per year. It needs a waiver from the FAA and the Biden administration,
a waiver no one should expect considering the Biden administrations hostility to Musk.

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Slovenia signs Artemis Accords

10:58 am

NASA announced yesterday that Slovenia has become the 39th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, joining the American alliance for exploring the Moon and the solar system.

The alliance now includes these nations: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

As with all the recent announcements, the NASA press release now insists that the accords are designed to “reinforce and implement key obligations in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty,” the exact opposite of the original goals of the accords. Rather than overvcome the Outer Space Treaty’s restriction on private property in space, the Biden administration is now using the accords to strengthen that restriction. To quote someone (Mussolini) whose policies the modern globalist world clearly admires, “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

This could all change with different leadership in Washington, but whether the administrative state, led by the Democratic Party, will allow such a thing at this point in history is very questionable. And they appear aided in this totalitarian effort by a meek and largely ignorant American public.

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Part 3: The expected tantrum of madness should Biden actually lose the election

1:48 pm

The Democratic Party: hostile to freedom and fair elections

For the past two days I have tried to lay out some of the illegal and immoral strategies and tactics of the Democratic Party in its relentless effort to guarantee a win in this year’s presidential election, no matter what. (For the first two parts, go here and here.)

The bottom line is that Democratic Party politicians and their allies in the press and big tech will stop at nothing to prevent Donald Trump from regaining the White House. They will cheat, lie, encourage riots and looting, censor and blacklist their opponents, and in the end, even commit election and voter fraud on a massive scale.

But despite all this, what if Donald Trump still ends up victorious? Right now a rational look at both the polling trends and the disastrous consequences of Joe Biden’s presidency all suggest the American public is screaming for a change. The historic shift in the black and hispanic populations to Trump and away from the Democratic Party underlines these trends quite clearly. These trends are further underlined by the presence of two different moderate-left alternative presidential tickets, both drawing the bulk of their support from the Democrats.

In the end, this data tells us that it is very likely that none of the chaos and violence and fear-mongering and vote tampering by the Democrats will work, that in the end Donald Trump will emerge as the winner.

How will this now very close-minded and very vicious Democratic Party respond when that happens? The signs tell us that they can no longer tolerate defeat, or even the existence of alternative parties. (For example, consider the relentless effort by the Democrats to legally squelch these alternative parties from the ballot box.) For them, “democracy” only exists when they win.

We should therefore expect these terrible things to happen in short order after election day.
» Read more

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SpaceX’s next Superheavy/Starship launch, according to SpaceX

10:06 am

According to SpaceX’s CEO, Gwynne Shotwell, the company hopes to be ready to fly its fourth orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship in about six weeks, and will not attempt to deploy any Starlink satellites, as I speculated earlier this week.

“We’ll figure out what happened on both stages,” she said, not discussing what may have gone wrong with either, “and get back to flight hopefully in about six weeks,” or early May. She added that the company doesn’t expect to deploy Starlink satellites on the next Starship launch, as some had speculated. “Things are still in trade, but I think we’re really going to focus on getting reentry right and making sure we can land these things where we want to land them.”

The story however provided one very important tidbit of information about the launch license process from the FAA. Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, noted that after the second test flight in November 2023 “the company completed that report in several weeks.”

That statement confirms my conclusion in late December that SpaceX had been ready to launch in early January, but couldn’t do it because the FAA had to spend another two months rewriting SpaceX’s investigation report.

We should therefore not be surprised if the same thing happens on the next test flight. Shotwell says SpaceX hopes to be ready to launch in early May. That means it will likely submit its report to the FAA around then. Expect the agency to then spend at least one to two months retyping the report, as it has done now after both the first and second flights.

Based on this information, we should now expect the fourth flight to occur sometime in the June-July timeframe, with July more likely.

I am sure that the people at the FAA want to move as quickly as possible. I am also sure their bosses in the White House are demanding they dot every “i” and cross every “t”, with meticulous care, so that things cannot move as fast as desired. That has been the pattern since Joe Biden took office, and I have seen no evidence of that changing now.

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Make no mistake, Israel is about to begin the final defeat of Hamas in Gaza

1:38 pm

Hamas vs Israel
Even the Arabs recognize these facts.
Courtesy of Doug Ross.

If anything should illustrate the bankrupt, mindless, stupid and out-of-touch mentality of the leaders of the Democratic Party, it has been the efforts recently of President Joe Biden and Senate Majority leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) to push for a major slow-down or even shut down of Israel’s war against the murderous Hamas leadership and its minions in Gaza.

Biden wants Israel to slow down and to limit its offensive and not move into the last Hamas stronghold in its southern city of Rafah. Schumer has called for new elections in Israel to remove Netanyahu, who Schumer called “an obstacle to peace.”

Both, along with many members of their party, are presently considering ways to punish Israel if it defies them and invades Rafah, including withholding military aid.

Both men are actually excellent examples of the majority of the modern Democratic Party, willing to excuse rape and murder of women and children, if it furthers their political agenda. Both want the American Muslim vote, and are willing to tolerate any evil by Islamic terrorists to get it. In fact, it is very likely that they are doing this because of a strong undercurrent of anti-Semitism and Jew-hate within their party ranks.

What these leaders of the Democratic Party do not understand at all is that Israel is no longer interested in compromising with them, with Hamas, or with any Islamic terrorists anywhere. As Netanyahu made clear in his response to these calls this past weekend, Israel is moving forward in this war, and nothing is going to stop it.
» Read more

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If Trump wins in November, expect a real insurrection from Democrats

3:29 pm

The Democratic Party: Fostering election tampering everywhere
The Democratic Party

The reaction by Democratic Party politicians and pundits to the Supreme Court ruling on March 4, 2024 — voiding the effort by Colorado to throw Donald Trump off its ballot — reveals some very fundamental realities that must be faced by all Americans. To put it bluntly: These Democrats have no intention of accepting a victory by Donald Trump in the upcoming election, even if he should win by a majority so vast that no amount of election rigging can disguise it.

The first reaction to that decision was a major tell. Jean Griswold is the secretary of state of Colorado who had taken Trump off the ballot, claiming he was an insurrectionist even though that was merely her opinion as Trump has not only never been convicted of that crime, he has not even been charged with it. Immediately after the court rejected her actions unanimously, she tweeted the following:

I am disappointed in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision stripping states of the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for federal candidates. Colorado should be able to bar oath-breaking insurrections from our ballot.

Spurred by her blind hatred of Trump, Griswold’s refusal to deal with reality here is disturbing, to say the least. First, the court made it very clear, unanimously, that the states don’t have this authority when it comes to federal elections. That she as a lawyer could not recognize the plain legal arguments here that were agreed to by even the most radical leftists on the court indicates how blind she has become to reasonable disagreement.

Second, Griswold clearly thinks she by herself, based on nothing but her opinion, has the right to determine who is or is not an insurrectionist. In a country where by law and a very long tradition all people are innocent until proven guilty, by what law does she think she has that right?

The bottom line is that Griswold reveals the mindset of the Democrat Party. They are mentally unprepared to accept a Trump election victory, no matter what, and will do anything to block his victory.

This mindset is further revealed by this CNN article published today, attempting to figure out other ways in which the Democrats can block a victory by Trump.
» Read more

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Amazingly Justice actually charges two leftist activists with felonies for defacing the display case holding the Constitution

12:55 pm

Security guards watch as vandals of the Constitution preach their message
Rotunda security guards do nothing so that these
vandals of the Constitution can preach their message.
Click for video.

In a move that is astonishing considering the political favorism of the left by the Biden administration’s Justice Department, that agency has now charged the two leftist activists who defaced the display case holding the Constitution with felonies.

On Friday, the Department of Justice charged Donald Zepeda of Maryland and Jackson Green of Utah with felony destruction of government property, according to Fox News. Zepeda and Green have been accused of dumping red powder on the case that displayed the historic document. The incident occurred on Feb 14 and the DOJ said their stunt caused more than $50,000 worth of damages.

It is not clear what penalities these two thugs face should they be convicted. For all we know, Justice is merely prosecuting them now for effect, and will allow them to skip with light charges when the case comes to court.

Nor should be we surprised if these vandals end up walking free. » Read more

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Uruguay signs Artemis Accords

8:42 am

Uruguay yesterday became the 36th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, originally conceived during the Trump administration as a political maneuver to get around the legal restrictions against private ownership imposed by the Outer Space Treaty.

It is unclear where Uruguay stands with these goals. The last two signatories, Belguim and Greece, hinted in their public statements that their goals were far different, aimed more at imposing the modern leftist globalist agenda instead (“You will own nothing and be happy.”)

At present these are the nations who have signed on: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

The competing alliance of communist nations, led by China, includes only Russia, Venezuala, Pakistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and South Africa. Former deep Soviet bloc nations like Bulgaria and Romania, as well as previously very Marxist Angola, joined the American alliance, suggesting that these two space alliances are not a return of the Cold War of the 20th century. Instead, it appears that both alliances are untrustworthy when it comes to individual rights, freedom, and limited government. Both have tensions within each, with many leaders in both groups working both against and for these ideals, with a large plurality likely focused on power and control, not human freedom.

The U.S. can do much good here, if its leadership stands firmly for freedom (to paraphrase John Kennedy). Sadly, its leadership today does not do this, and it is very unclear whether future leaders will do so either.

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Can the shift in black vote to Trump overcome the Democratic Party’s vote tampering?

12:50 pm

The Democratic Party: Fostering election tampering everywhere
The Democratic Party

Today JJ Sefton in his daily morning report (also available here) included some excellent commentary about the growing polling evidence showing the black vote shifting rightward to Trump, in numbers that are unprecedented in more than a half century.

Whatever one thinks of polling especially this far out (or near, since elections are either light years away or right around the corner depending upon one’s perspective!) is an eye-opener. In normal, non-rigged elections, if Dem support from blacks drops below 93%, that is a major alarm bell for the former. What this aggregate poll [21.9% of blacks for Trump] shows is a potential disaster. Even if as we can all assume the key swing states which have large urban areas that will be rigged for Biden, the amount of cheating will have to be so massive that it would be even more obvious than what we witnessed four years ago. [emphasis mine]

I want to focus on the highlighted sentence, and try to bring some reality to it. Only by doing so will the Republican Party and Donald Trump have any chance of winning.
» Read more

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Proposed removal of William Penn statue proves the Democrats really are anti-American

12:33 pm

The William Penn statue in Welcome Park
The William Penn statue in the center of
Welcome Park. Note the panels on the wall
behind, describing the achievements of his life.
The park service was also planning to “rehabilitate”
this as well.

Though the Biden administration and the National Park Service immediately backed down from its proposal to remove the statue of William Penn from the Pennsylvania park dedicated in 1982 to honor his memory, the very proposal proved without doubt how much the Democrats who dominate our government truly hate America, its founding, and everything it stands for.

First, let’s review the proposal that has now been dumped. According to the National Park Service press release issued on January 5th,

The proposed rehabilitation of Welcome Park includes expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia and was developed in consultation with representatives of the indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. The reimagined Welcome Park maintains certain aspects of the original design such as the street grid, the rivers and the east wall while adding a new planted buffer on three sides, and a ceremonial gathering space with circular benches. The Penn statue and Slate Roof house model will be removed and not reinstalled. [emphasis mine]

In other words, a park built at the site of William Penn’s pioneer home and designed expressly to honor his achievements as the founder of Pennsylvania as a religious haven for all people was to be redesigned instead as a memorial to the primitive stone-age Indian tribes that once lived there, focusing instead on how Penn and the Quakers oppressed them by coming to America. And to rub salt in the wound, this change was to be done in connection with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.

As I said, the Democrats who dominate our federal bureaucracy as well as academia are our enemies. They truly intend to wipe any positive mention of America from every history book or place, and replace it with Marxist icons and false anti-American propaganda.

Very quickly there was an uproar against this plan. » Read more

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SpaceX sues to have NLRB complaint dismissed

10:31 am

SpaceX yesterday filed a lawsuit in the federal courts to have the employee complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dismissed as a violation of the company’s fifth and seventh amendment rights as well as article II of the Constitution.

You can read SpaceX’s lawsuit here [pdf]. It specifically lists as defendants the board members of the NLRB, as well as the unnamed administrative judge who will run the NLRB’s case, once it begins.

The SpaceX lawsuit is interesting in that it challenges the very legal structure that has established the NLRB, stating that its actions are illegal because that structure forbids the President from having full control over its actions, as required by article II of the Constitution.

Whether this lawsuit succeeds is of course unknown, but its quick filing tells us that SpaceX was prepared for this NLRB action, even before it was filed. It also tells us that the company now recognizes the overall threat to it by the Biden administration, which appears to be trying to weaponize every agency in the federal government to destroy the company, and is prepared to fight long and hard against this abuse of power.

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Can the Democrats offend enough people to make even their aggressive election tampering impossible?

3:24 pm

Are Americans finally waking up and emulating their country's founders?

I normally pay little attention to polls, since for the last two decades they have not only been unreliable but generally weighted unfairly against Republicans. More often than not they have been used not to give us a sense of the state of the political campaign but to make us all believe a Democratic Party victory was inevitable.

However, a poll this week was so astonishing that I think it deserves some discussion. According to a national USA Today-Suffolk University poll published on January 2, 2023 by USA Today, large numbers of blacks, Hispanics, and young voters are now willing to abandon the Democratic Party, and do so in numbers that are shocking and unprecedented. As noted in this article about the poll,
» Read more

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National Labor Relations Board files complaint against SpaceX

9:51 am

Elon Musk, a target for destruction by Joe Biden
Elon Musk, a target for destruction
by Joe Biden

The Biden administration’s continuing legal harassment of SpaceX and Elon Musk was escalated yesterday when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a new complaint against the company, accusing it of firing eight employees illegally for writing a public letter criticizing the company in 2022.

The letter, circulated in 2022, criticized Musk’s actions and the allegations of sexual harassment against him, claiming they were negatively contributing to the company’s reputation. The letter also said the company was failing to live up to its “No Asshole” policy and its policy against sexual harassment.

The letter, whose authorship was not known at the time it was first reported, called on SpaceX to “publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior,” to “hold all leadership equally accountable” for bad behavior, and to “clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s ‘no-asshole’ and ‘zero tolerance’ policies and enforce them consistently.”

According to the NLRB, one SpaceX employer held interviews to determine the writers of the letter, after which they were fired. The case will go before the NLRB in March.

Is this another case of blacklisting, similar to the numerous stories I’ve reported for the last four years where someone was fired for having political opinions? I don’t think so, though some could argue otherwise. In those many other cases, the opinions expressed were generally political in nature and unrelated to the work environment itself. If a company is demanding you bow to critical race theory and admit you are racist simply because you are white and fires you when you refuse, that is not the same as writing a letter accusing your employer of sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment, and then soliciting signatures from the entire workforce before releasing it publicly. The first case is a direct slander against the employee and is an unreasonable demand. The second is a concerted effort to foster a workplace mutiny, something unacceptable to all employers. It seems the company would have the right to remove such malcontents from its place of business.

Gywnne Shotwell, SpaceX’s CEO, made these facts very clear at the time the letter was published.
» Read more

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Navaho Indians attempt to claim ownership of the Moon, delay Vulcan launch

8:47 am

The president of the Navaho Nation has asked NASA to delay the first launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket because it carries ashes from a number of people (none who were members of its tribe) that Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander will place on the Moon.

The remains are a payload purchased by the company Celestis, which offers this burial option to anyone who wishes it. On this flight that payload includes a wide range of ashes, including many actors and creators from the original Star Trek series.

Navaho President Buu Nygren claims that the “Moon is sacred to numerous Indigenous cultures and that depositing human remains on it is ‘tantamount to desecration.'”

Nygren highlighted this commitment in his letter, as well as a 2021 memo signed by the Biden administration that pledged to consult the tribe on matters that impact them. “This memorandum reinforced the commitment to Executive Order 13175 of November 6, 2000,” President Nygren wrote. “Additionally, the Memorandum of Understanding Regarding Interagency Coordination and Collaboration for the Protection of Indigenous Sacred Sites, which you and several other members of the Administration signed in November 2021, further underscores the requirement for such consultation.”

In other words, though the Navaho have no plans to ever go there, have done nothing to try to explore it, and have no remains of any tribal members on the flight, he wants to claim the Moon as controlled entirely and forever by the Indian tribes of North America because of a law designed solely to protect specific archeological sites on Earth, where Indian remains are discovered.
» Read more

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White House issues “policy framework” to lobby for its space regulatory proposal

9:28 am

Faced with stiff opposition from industry and politicians from both parties in Congress to its regulatory proposal issued in mid-November, the White House yesterday released what it called a “policy framework” for implementing that proposal.

You can read this policy framework here [pdf]. It is filled with high-sounding claims about its goal is to encourage private development and reduce red tape, but in the end it only adds more government entities to the entire bureaucracy that regulates commercial space. From the framework itself:

The Secretaries of Commerce and Transportation will co-lead a Private Sector Space Activities Interagency Steering Group in consultation with the Chairperson of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), comprising representation from the Departments of Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, Interior, and State, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and any other Federal entities with expertise or equities pertaining to private sector novel space activities, including relevant stakeholders from the Executive Office of the President. The Steering Group serves as a coordinating body to ensure that the U.S. Government oversight system is prepared to meet U.S. priorities while taking into consideration the competitiveness of U.S. industry now and into the future.

One of the criticisms of the White House proposal from mid-November was that it would split regulation between Commerce and Transportation, thus increasing the complexity for commerical companies. This steering group is clearly an effort to answer those complaints, but based on this proposal, it simply adds one more bureaucratic layer to the mix, making things even more complicated.

The framework also calls for the expansion of the government’s regulatory footprint on several fronts, such as controlling orbital debris, and achieved through “expanding existing, or establish new, federal advisory committees to account for all expanded space authorities in furtherance of this Framework and related legislative proposals.”

From the viewpoint of freedom, this entire proposal reads like a zombie end-of-the-world horror film, with bureaucratic zombies appearing endlessly from all directions, aimed at consuming any independent private company as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.

The original commercial space act proposal from Congress, that the Biden administration (and most Democrats) oppose but carries the endorsement of the private commercial space industry, was passed by its House committee, but still needs to be voted on by the full House, as well as the Senate. Because it remains in limbo, the White House has issued this framework, in the hope it can give its side the ammunition needed to defeat that bill and replace it with the White House’s.

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The Biden war against Musk is a war against America

1:33 pm

How the modern Democratic Party has evolved madly to the left, according to Elon Musk
How the modern Democratic Party has evolved
madly to the left, according to Elon Musk

In 2022 Elon Musk essentially completed the long process of going from what he described as a moderate who had previously voted overwhelming for Democrats to a Republican voter strongly hostile to the present Democratic Party.

He announced this shift in a tweet on May 18, 2022, in which he said the following:

In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party.

But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.

Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold. [emphasis mine]

In the almost twenty months since Musk made that statement, his prediction of a “dirty tricks campaign” by the Democrats has become quite evident and true. Numerous federal agencies under the control of President Joe Biden began taking strong actions to stymie Musk’s companies, sometimes abusing the law in what appear to be legitimate ways, and sometimes abusing power in ways that are absurd. Below is a short list, many of which have been repeatedly reported here at Behind the Black:
» Read more

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FCC denies Starlink $886 million grant

9:48 am

Despite the fact that SpaceX Starlink constellation is presently providing internet access to more rural customers than any company worldwide, the FCC yesterday announced that it will not award the company a $886 million subsidy under its program for expanding broadband service to rural areas.

The FCC announced today that it won’t award Elon Musk’s Starlink an $886 million subsidy from the Universal Service Fund for expanding broadband service in rural areas. The money would have come from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program (RDOF), but the FCC writes that Starlink wasn’t able to “demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service” and that giving the subsidy to it wouldn’t be “the best use of limited Universal Service Fund dollars.”

That was the same reason the FCC gave when it rejected Starlink’s bid last year, which led to this appeal. SpaceX had previously won the bidding to roll out 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload “low-latency internet to 642,925 locations in 35 states,” funded by the RDOF.

This decision can only be explained by utterly political reasons. SpaceX right now is experiencing a booming business, with its traffic up two and a half times from last year,almost all of which is in rural areas. That number is from a news report today, the same day the FCC claims Starlink can’t provide such service. As noted by one SpaceX lawyer:

“Starlink is arguably the only viable option to immediately connect many of the Americans who live and work in the rural and remote areas of the country where high-speed, low-latency internet has been unreliable, unaffordable, or completely unavailable, the very people RDOF was supposed to connect.”

The initial award was made in December 2020, when Trump was still president. It was first canceled in August 2022, after Biden took over. SpaceX appealed, but today’s announcement says the FCC rejected that appeal.

While there is absolutely no justification to give any company this money — SpaceX is proving private companies don’t need it to provide this service to rural areas — this decision is clearly political, driven by the hate of Elon Musk among Democrats and the Biden administration. They don’t care that SpaceX is a successeful private company providing tens of thousands of jobs as well as good products to Americans. Musk does not support them, and so he must be squashed.

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GAO wants the FAA to exert more control over future launch mishap investigations

9:46 am

We’re here to help you! A new GAO report now calls for the FAA to change how it does investigations after launch mishaps, both exerting more control of the investigations as well as demanding companies release more proprietary information after the investigation is complete.

The Government Accountability Office wants the FAA to improve how it investigates space launch mishaps, especially how it decides whether to do an investigation itself or allow the operator to do it. Historically operators are allowed to investigate their own mishaps under FAA supervision, but over the course of 50 mishaps since 2000, GAO found the FAA has not evaluated whether that’s an effective approach. GAO also champions creating a mechanism for sharing lessons learned among operators even though efforts in the past have not succeeded.

This GAO report proves several conclusions I have noted in the past year.

First, the so-called “investigation” by the FAA into the first Starship/Superheavy launch was utterly bogus, as I have repeatedly suggested. The FAA had no ability to do any investigations on its own. It merely rubber-stamped SpaceX’s conclusions, but did so as slowly as possible so as to delay the company’s effort. Before Joe Biden was installed as president, the FAA would quickly permit further launches once a company completed its investigation. Under Biden, that policy has changed to slow-walk approvals.

This also means the present “investigation” by the FAA into the second Starship/Superheavy launch is bogus as well. When SpaceX announces its investigation is complete and all engineering fixes have been accomplished, any further delay from the FAA will be entirely political.

Second, it appears the Biden administration is applying pressure to both the GAO and the FAA to increase this regulatory control. It wants the FAA to write new procedures for determining when it will take control of an investigation rather than let the company do it. While providing some clarity to this decision could be beneficial, it is likely this change under the Biden administration will work against free enterprise. It will give the government a procedure for grabbing control, and holding it for as long as it desires. Politics will become part of any mishap investigation, rather than leaving it solely to engineering.

Third, the desire of the goverment to make companies reveal the details of the investigation, including propertiary information, will only squelch future innovation. Why develop new technology if you will be forced to give it away free during testing, when things are certain to go wrong?

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Cowardice and fear from Western leaders; Courage and determination from Israel and its Arab allies

1:00 pm

The model presently used by all leaders in the free world
The model presently used by today’s leaders
in the free world

If you wish to understand why the Middle East in general has had relatively few pro-Hama demonstrations — even in the Arab territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — while the western nations have been largely engulfed by them — some of which have been violent and bluntly anti-Semitic by actually advocating the genocide of all Jews — you need only listen to the leaders of these countries, because those leaders reflect their populations and their overall attitude to the murder, rape, and beheading of innocent civilians, including children, by Hamas on October 7th.

In Israel Benjamin Netayahu made it once again very clear his country’s determination to eliminate Hamas and its terrorist cell in Gaza in a speech to his nation on December 2nd.

I state clearly and unequivocally: We will continue the war until we achieve all of its goals and it is impossible to achieve these goals without continuing the ground incursion. The ground incursion was essential in order to bring about the results up to now, and it is necessary to bring about future results.

I tell our friends around the world, you share our goal of eliminating Hamas and releasing our hostages; therefore, I also emphasize to them that there is no way of achieving these goals except by victory, and there is no way to achieve victory except by continuing the ground incursion. The IDF and the security forces are doing this with determination, strength and while upholding international law.

The second paragraph above was very specifically but carefully aimed at the leaders of Israel’s allies in the west, who from day one of this conflict have repeatedly waffled in their support, constantly looking for a way to stop Israel’s effort, to appease Hamas, and to make believe that an early end to this fighting, with Hamas still intact and in control of Gaza, will somehow bring peace. French President Emmanuel Macron illustrated their weaselly cowardice quite well during a press conference that same day:
» Read more

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House committee passes its new commercial space act on partisan vote

9:19 am

By a party-line vote of 21-17, the Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee yesterday passed the proposed new commercial space act that had been earlier formulated with industry input and approval, rejecting the alternative proposal that the White House had suddenly dropped on them two weeks ago.

The head of the committee, Frank Lucas (R-Oklahoma), outlined the problems with the White House proposal.

For Lucas, the Space Council’s proposal is a “needless expansion of government authority.” Instead of consolidating new regulatory authority at the Department of Commerce as proposed in H.R. 6131, the White House would assign some activities there and others to the FAA. “Whereas our bill creates a one-stop shop to the extent possible, under this proposal, organizations would be forced to get multiple licenses from multiple cabinet-level departments.” Along with other objectionable provisions, he concluded that “instead of streamlining already convoluted processes, the Space Council is adding to bureaucracy and stifling innovation.”

That White House proposal was also opposed by the industry, which saw it as a power grab that would stifle the industry.

Whether this bill will become law remains to be seen. The full House still has to vote on it, and then the Senate, and then Joe Biden has to be wheeled into his office, a pen handed to him, and someone must guide that hand to sign the bill. Considering that the White House staff opposes the bill, it might refuse to do this latter guiding. Similarly, the Democratic Party’s eagerness to expand regulation and the power of the federal government means that in the Senate it will likely oppose this bill as well.

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Space industry expresses opposition to White House regulatory proposal

9:10 am

Not surprisingly, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), the industry group that represents pretty much the entire new commercial space business, has sent a letter to both the House and Senate expressing strong opposition to the November 15th White House regulatory proposal that would impose heavy regulation on both launches and the construction of any private facility in space.

“We oppose the recently released National Space Council (NSPC) proposal on the topic in its current form, which fails to consider the points that CSF and many other stakeholders raised during the NSPC listening sessions last year,” CSF said in its letter to Congress.

The organization raised several concerns, including how responsibilities would be split between the two departments and the potential for “duplicative and conflicting” requirements between Commerce and Transportation. “For some operations, it is unclear which agency would hold the authority to issue a relevant license, or if multiple licenses would be needed,” it stated.

The group is concerned about giving additional responsibilities to the FAA’s commercial space transportation office without also significantly increasing its budget, noting that the office is struggling to keep up with its current launch and reentry licensing. At an October hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee, industry officials recommended increasing that office’s budget to handle launch licensing work, without any discussion of it taking on additional responsibilities.

CSF was also worried that the proposed mission authorization system could disrupt plans by NASA to shift from the International Space Station to commercial stations by the end of the decade. “Introducing a bifurcated and unclear regulatory regime for commercial space stations,” the letter stated, “could risk U.S. leadership in low-Earth orbit.”

Apparently the entire space industry came to the same conclusion I did after reading the White House proposal after its release:

Essentially, these new rules — purposely written to be vague — will allow the government to forbid any activity in space by private citizens it chooses to forbid. No private space station could launch without government approval, which will also include the government’s own determination that the station will be operatied safely. Once launched, the vagueness of these regulations will soon allow mission creep so that every new activity in space will soon fall under its review.

Since no one in the government is qualified to supervise things like this, in the end politics and the abuse of power will be the rule.

It must be noted that the entire Democratic Party caucus in the House apparently approves of this power grab, because they immediately abandoned all support of the previously negotiated proposal that the industry and Congress had worked out and a House committee was about to pass. Their opposition forced that committee vote to be canceled. According to that committee, it will resume its consideration of that bill today. We shall see if this industry opposition changes any of their minds.

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Postwar in Gaza: some educated guesses

12:51 pm

The first child hostage, 9-year-old Ohad Mundar, being released by Hamas
The first child hostage, 9-year-old Ohad Mundar,
being released by Hamas. Click for video.

The ongoing pause in fighting in Gaza in order to get some of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas out of the war zone — most especially the children — has resulted in a lot of hand-wringing about whether Israel will allow this pause to short-circuit is effort to destroy Hamas.

It will not, though the post-war situation will remain complex and difficult, as is always the case in the Middle East.

First, we must recognize that Israel is not leaving Gaza at any time in the near or even distant future, no matter what Joe Biden and the United Nations demands. Its army has now captured and controls the northern half of the strip, and it fully intends to take full control of the southern half as well, once this hostage exchange agreement concludes. It made this intention very clear just before the hostage pause was announced, when it dropped leaflets in south Gaza, warning citizens to leave. That southern campaign has not yet happened, but only because of the ongoing hostage release operation.

Nor will it matter if that exchange agreement gets extended for weeks, day by day as Hamas releases ten hostages at a time. At some point Hamas will either run out of hostages, or decide it needs to keep the hostages it has left as later bargaining chips. At that moment Israel will resume its offensive with full force. And it will do so with even more force, as there will no longer be child hostages held in Hamas control.

The political situation in Israel demands this. The Israeli public wants nothing less. Politicians and pundits in the west might whine and demand appeasement from Israel, but Israel is no longer interested in appeasing Hamas. It will no longer tolerate a terrorist base on its southeastern border, and it fully intends to re-occupy all of Gaza and make sure its leadership there is completely cleansed of the Hamas gang.

The eventual result will be a Gaza strip controlled entirely by Israeli security forces. » Read more

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