You can’t make this stuff up. Democratic Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) told reporters on Tuesday that the Islamic knife and bomb terrorist attacks this past weekend in Minnesota, New York, and New Jersey were the fault of Republicans for blocking new gun control legislation.
Nor was Durbin alone. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) joined him in blaming Republicans and the lack of new gun control rules for the terrorist attacks.
The coming dark age: The first American flag, the flag that Betsy Ross designed for George Washington in the Revolutionary War, now “symbolizes exclusion and hate,” according to a Michigan public school superintendent.
A Michigan public school superintendent wrote in a published “letter to the community” that students at a high school football game injected “hate” and “hostility” because they waved a historical Betsy Ross flag that has 13 stars to represent the original 13 colonies.
The students waved the flag at a Sept. 9 football game at Houseman Field between Forest Hills Central and Ottawa Hills. The students also brought a Donald Trump for President banner to the event.
The superintendent received a complaint from a parent and then published the letter which is dated Sept. 12. “And to wave a historical version of our flag, that to some symbolizes exclusion and hate, injects hostility and confusion to an event where no one intended to do so,” Forest Hills Public Schools Superintendent Daniel Behm wrote. Behm continued with an apology: “To our gracious hosts — the students, families, staff, and community of Grand Rapids Ottawa Hills High School and Grand Rapids Public Schools — and to the student-athletes, coaches, officials, and supporters of both teams, we are truly sorry. These actions are not characteristic of our schools, our staff, our students, or our community, and they represent a lack of knowledge.”
This is where modern academia and the racist left that dominates it is taking us. Any reference to American past history, any reference at all, is going to be considered a racist act, and must be censored, banned, silenced, and rewritten. It doesn’t matter that this flag had nothing to do with hate or exclusion, but was simply the flag of the United States in its war of independence from British rule (a war, by the way, that led to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the eventual end of slavery). It is an integral part of American history, and for young people to learn anything about that history must be prevented, at all costs.
The FBI today arrested in a shoot-out an Afghanistan-born suspect in the bombings this weekend in both Manhattan and New Jersey.
A bar owner in Linden, New Jersey called police around 11am Monday morning, after finding 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami sleeping in the entryway of his business. When police arrived on the scene, Rahami brandished a weapon and started shooting at the cops – injuring two. Officers eventually shot Rahami in the right shoulder and he was taken from the scene in an ambulance, handcuffed to a stretcher.
Police released Rahami’s picture Monday morning, saying he was wanted for questioning in connection to the Saturday bombings in New York City and Seaside Park, New Jersey, as well as the foiled bombing of the Elizabeth, New Jersey train station on Sunday. Law enforcement say it was fingerprints left behind on an unexploded pressure cooker bomb in Manhattan that led them to Rahami. Twenty-nine people were injured when another bomb placed a few blocks away was detonated Saturday night.
Now that Rahami is in custody, investigators are now looking into whether he acted alone or was perhaps working with or for a larger terror network.
There are several facts about this weekend’s bombings, which can also be applied to this weekend’s knife attacks by an Islamic radical in Minnesota, that are instructive. First, everyone’s first and immediate assumption, including myself, was that they were planned and carried out by Islamic terrorists. I didn’t publish anything to say so, because I do not like to speculate. I do admit, however, to the same human biases as everyone else. Second, that assumption turned out to a reasonable assumption, since it, not surprisingly, turned out to be correct. Three, even before the suspect was identified, ISIS and Islamic supporters worldwide were celebrating the bombings and boldly announcing that more such attacks will be forthcoming.
The point here is that we need to recognize that we are at war. The Islamic world wishes to conquer and destroy the western world, and if we do not begin to realize this soon, we will find ourselves soon conquered by them. And if you think I am over-reacting, watch this video at this link.Or this video here.
I am sure they will be those quislings who will argue that it is our fault this situation exists, but the bottom line remains: Do we wish to live as in a society that believes in freedom, science, justice, and equal rights, or do we wish to be conquered by a medieval power-centered ideology that oppresses its population while giving as much power as possible to its rulers?
The choice is ours.
Link here. The analysis is detailed and thoughtful, and gives some perspective about the state of power and control by the present leaders in Russia.
Four parties are expected to secure again their representation in the Duma: the ruling United Russia (UR), the Liberal-Democratic Russian party (LDPR), led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Just Russia, led by Sergei Mironov, and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), led by Gennadi Zyuganov.[1] In contrast, the democratic opposition has fewer chances of being represented. The opposition Russian Democratic Party (“Yabloko”) and People’s Party of Freedom (RPR-PARNAS), cofounded by murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov (October 9, 1959-February 27, 2015), will contest the elections separately – a suicidal tactic that mathematically further reduces their already slim chances to enter the Duma and further reduces the credibility of Russian liberalism. The democratic opposition is represented in the elections by yet another independent nominee -Maria Baronova, running with the support of Open Russia movement, founded by former oil tycoon-turned-activist Mikhail Khodorkovsky, residing out of Russia after his release from long term jail.
Bottom line: Putin will remain in power, no matter what happens in today’s elections. Nonetheless, the article is worth reading because it gives some sense of what might happen after Putin.
The House today voted 310-116 to make it easier to fire or punish employees of the Veterans Administration.
Rep. Mark Takano (Calif.), the VA committee’s ranking Democrat, led an unsuccessful floor fight to soften the misconduct provisions, as the Republican majority defeated every substantive amendment. In the end, with Miller citing support from 18 prominent veteran groups, 69 Democrats joined the united Republican front to pass the bill convincingly.
It would shorten the process to fire, demote or hear the appeal of rank-and-file VA employees, from an average of more than a year to no more than 77 days. It also would end involvement of the Merit Systems Protection Board in such actions for VA senior executives; give the VA secretary authority to recoup bonuses and relocation expenses from employees who misbehave, or to reduce pensions of senior executives convicted of felonies that influenced their performance reports. Additionally whistleblowers would get new protections from reprisals and the bill would mandate strict accountability to supervisors or colleagues who would reprise against them, the VA committee explained.
This bill should become the model for changing the rules for all federal employees. Right now it is so difficult to clean house of corrupt or incompetent federal employees that there are even circumstances where they actually commit crimes and steal federal money and still hold onto their jobs.
It doesn’t matter who you support in the upcoming presidential election. You have to read the customer reviews on Amazon for Hillary Clinton’s new book. They are really hilarious, and do a nice job of poking big holes in the bloated pompousness of all politicians. Here is just one example:
I was going to read this book…..I really was. But just as I got started, I found myself under sniper fire, passed out, and fell and hit my head. After that I got double vision and had to wear glasses that were so damn thick I couldn’t even see to read. Then I had an allergic reaction to something and started coughing so hard I spit out what looked like a couple of lizard’s eyeballs, my limbs locked up, and I passed out and fell down again, waking up only to find out I had been diagnosed with pneumonia 2 days earlier. Somehow I managed to power through it all, but it’s a good thing I was able to make a small fortune on this random small trade in the commodities market (cattle futures or some such thing) and then, miracle of all miracles, a few banks offered me a few million to just talk to their employees for a few minutes – and all that really helped out because I swear I was dead broke and couldn’t figure out how I was gonna come up with the 6 bucks to pay for this book, let alone pay the $1,500 for my health insurance this month. I still want to read it, but, honestly, what difference at this point does it make? I hear it sucks anyway.
Then there is this: “”I bought the audio-book version and all I could hear was coughing.”
If you want a few more good laughs take a look. Quite entertaining.
The competition heats up: Arianespace today used its Vega rocket to launch 5 commercial satellites from its spaceport in French Guiana.
Designated Flight VV07, the mission was Vega’s seventh since beginning operations in 2012 (all seven of which were successful), and it further demonstrated the capabilities of a light-lift vehicle that completes Arianespace’s launcher family – joining the company’s medium-lift Soyuz and heavyweight Ariane 5 in reliable side-by-side operations from the Spaceport in French Guiana. Vega is provided to Arianespace by Italy’s ELV S.P.A., which is the industrial prime contractor.
Tonight’s success also marked the first time since entering its commercial phase that Vega carried passengers on a single launch for two customers/users that are from outside the European market: Terra Bella is a Google company and the four SkySat satellites are its initial payloads entrusted to Arianespace; while PerúSAT-1 was orbited under a turnkey agreement between Airbus Defence and Space and Peru’s CONIDA national space agency.
The competition heats up: The European Space Agency today gave its final approval to the deal that will have Airbus Safran Launchers design, build, and essentially own the new Ariane 6 rocket that ESA hopes to use to compete in the launch market in the 2020s.
This deal essentially closes the book on Arianespace. Though it officially still exists, it will be Airbus Safran that will be running the show in the future.
The competition heats up: ULA today announced a new system for shortening the time from a customer’s initial launch contract to the actual launch of their payload.
The priorities of all of our customers include ensuring their spacecraft launches on schedule, securing the soonest possible manifest date and completing the mission with 100 percent success,” said Tory Bruno, ULA CEO and president. “To address these priorities, we have been working on this offering for more than a year, which allows our customers to launch in as few as three months from placing their order.”
It is very clear that this new system was inspired by the competition with SpaceX. It is also pretty obvious that they are making the announcement now in the hope they can grab some of SpaceX’s customers who are once again faced with delays because of the September 1 Falcon 9 launchpad explosion. It is also likely that SpaceX is pushing to get its next launch off by November in an effort to beat back ULA’s effort here.
Ain’t competition wonderful? It is so good, it will even get us to the stars.
The competition heats up: Despite the admitted difficulty of its investigation into its September 1 Falcon 9 launchpad explosion, SpaceX today said that they are aiming to resume launches as soon as November.
“We’re anticipating getting back to flight — being down for about three months — and getting back to flight in the November time frame,” Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said Tuesday at an event in Paris. “We’ll obviously take another look at the rocket, focus on the ground systems.”
They have not said yet what payload they will launch, though it is clear that first launch will not be the Falcon Heavy demo launch, which has now been rescheduled for the 1st quarter fo 2017.
In the heat of competition: Doug Messier has written an excellent essay today raising some serious questions about SpaceX and its methods of operation.
The issues he raises go the heart of the company’s future. Moreover, he notes the unusual nature of the September 1 launchpad explosion that, unless explained, threatens the company business model.
The rarity of a satellite launch vehicle exploding during fueling had people racking their brains and scouring the Internet to find out the last time something like this happened. At least in the United States, that turned out to be more than 50 years ago when rocketry was in its infancy and accidents were much more frequent.
The lack of any modern precedents and the speed of the accident — Musk tweeted that engineers were reviewing around 3,000 channels of telemetry and video data that cover only 35-55 milliseconds — are making the investigation challenging. Musk has said it is the most difficult of the six failure investigations the company has conducted since it was founded in 2002.
Messier also takes a close look at SpaceX’s overall approach to innovation and development, and notes its unusual and somewhat risky nature.
Read it all. It provides valuable information for anyone who wants to understand honestly the state of the American launch industry.
The competition heats up: Virgin Galactic on Monday announced that it has signed a four-launch contract with Sky and Space Global, using its LauncherOne smallsat air-launched rocket.
They hope to launch by 2018. I’ll make a prediction: LauncherOne will complete its first commercial launch before SpaceShipOne.
