Dragon returns to Earth safely
After 29 days in space, Dragon returned safely to Earth today, splashing down in the Pacific.
Tag: freedom
High winds cause Falcon 9 scrub
At about T- 13 minutes today’s Falcon 9 launch was scrubbed because of high winds.
They will try again tomorrow at 6:03 pm (eastern).
Busy day for SpaceX
Today will be a busy day for SpaceX, as the commercial space company will have to handle the return of Dragon, the launch of soalr satellite DSCOVR on a Falcon 9, and the hoped for vertical landing of that rocket’s first stage on a floating barge.
Could we get people to get vaccinated if we said measles contained gluten?
Link here.
Read it. It not only is an hilarious and brilliantly written column, the points it makes about the delusional state of modern American elite culture are right on the money.
Ratings plunge for network news shows
All three networks have lost significant viewers since it was revealed that NBC’s lead anchor, Brian Williams, routinely embellished or lied in describing past events in his life.
Not surprisingly NBC has lost the most. However, the reason all three networks have been hit can best be illustrated by this quote at the link by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough:
I’m just hopeful, because I can’t be objective here, I’m hopeful that when all of the madness that’s going on, investigations that need to be going on, when the fury dies down and when we get through the storm and the decision is made to judge what Brian Williams’ future should be, that that decision will be based on the entirety of his career and not on one or two or three mistakes.
Scarborough reveals that he is willing to excuse lying by a news anchor. To him, finding out that Williams was a liar is “madness.” He also reveals that, in his television new community, such behavior should be excused, and that it isn’t that unusual and should in fact be tolerated.
As I’ve said many times before, if you depend on the media for your news information you are not only uninformed, you are misinformed. The entire Brian Williams story only provides further evidence of this.
Falcon 9 launch rescheduled for Tuesday evening
Because of poor weather predictions NASA and SpaceX have rescheduled the next launch attempt of DSCOVR and the Falcon 9 for Tuesday, 6:05 pm (eastern).
What happens if Homeland Security shuts down?
Salmon and a few other conservatives are the only ones saying it publicly so far, but the reality is that a department shutdown would have a very limited impact on national security. That’s because most department employees fall into exempted categories of workers who stay on the job in a shutdown because they perform work considered necessary to protect human life and property. Even in a shutdown, most workers across agencies, including the Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Customs and Border Protection, would continue to report to work. Airport security checkpoints would remain staffed, the Secret Service would continue to protect the president and other dignitaries, the Coast Guard would stay on patrol, immigration agents would still be on the job.
Indeed, of the agency’s approximately 230,000 employees, some 200,000 of them would keep working even if Congress fails to fund their agency. It’s a reality that was on display during the 16-day government-wide shutdown in the fall of 2013, when national parks and monuments closed but essential government functions kept running, albeit sometimes on reduced staff.
In other words, the cries of disaster, mostly from Democrats and from a few in the wimpy Republican leadership, are the same bull we heard prior to sequestration and the previous government shutdown. From a political point of view, the Republicans have nothing to lose politically by letting this agency run out of funds, and everything to gain.
Falcon 9 launch scrubbed
Weather 90% go for Falcon 9 launch today
The weather looks almost perfect for tonight’s Falcon 9 launch.
The Falcon 9 will put a solar observation satellite into orbit. While many left wing media outlets will wax poetic about this is Al Gore’s satellite, it is hardly that. It might have been built initially under his misguided idea of creating a propaganda satellite to take daily images of the Earth (images that are essentially of little use for climate studies), DSCOVR has been very carefully redesigned to give it a real purpose, monitoring the solar activity of the Sun and providing a replacement/back-up for ACE, which is now more than a decade overdue for replacement.
The Falcon 9 launch will also attempt again to land intact its first stage on a floating barge. If this attempt succeeds the entire future of space travel will be reshaped.
“It is ironic a sign warning of the liberal thought police was potentially stolen by the liberal thought police.”
Leftwing facists: A sign advertising a talk being given by Jonah Goldberg about his book Liberal Fascism at the University of Michigan was apparently stolen by liberal fascists who don’t like freedom of speech.
The sign was bright red and declared: “Warning: Liberal thought police. Jonah Goldberg on his best-selling book Liberal Fascism.” It included a picture of a smiley face with a piece of tape over its mouth and the word “censorship.” “The biggest irony is on the front of the poster it says ‘thought police,’” Audia said in an interview with The College Fix. “So a warning on thought police was censored. It’s pretty ridiculous.”
Now of course, we really don’t know exactly who stole the sign, but somehow I don’t believe it was tea party protesters offended by Goldberg’s subject matter. Moreover, such actions have become the typical behavior leftwing students and administrators on college campus.
SpaceX gives names to its floating landing barges
Elon Musk has named SpaceX’s two robotic landing platform boats after science fiction spacecraft created by Scottish sci-fi legend Iain M. Banks.
The drone boats, designed by SpaceX to act as automated landing platforms for the company’s first stage rocket return system, were given the quirky names “Just Read the Instructions” and “Of Course I Still Love You.”
Republicans to stand firm on blocking Obama’s illegal over-reach on immigration?
The Republicans, including Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), are vowing to hold the line on tying funding for the Homeland Security Department to language reversing Obama’s executive actions on immigration — even after Senate Democrats blocked their bill from being considered in the upper chamber. “There’s not a Plan B, because this is the plan,” Scalise said minutes after the Senate vote, according to Fox News’s Chad Pergram. Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) echoed that message, saying “many of us agree that we should stand behind the one bill that we sent over there.” “Most of us feel that way,” he said just before the Senate vote. “Anything less than that, we’re not going to get any better result anyway. So why not just go for what’s really right?”
Tuesday’s Senate vote was 51-48 to end debate on the House-passed Homeland Security bill — far shy of the 60 supporters GOP leaders needed to move to a vote on final passage. Every Senate Democrat voted against proceeding to the package, as did Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.).
If no agreement is reached than funds for Homeland Security run out on February 28. And I say amen! Homeland Security provides us no safety or security in the war against violent Islam, and has instead worked to destroy the very things that make us different from the dictators of the Old World: freedom and the power of the individual over the power of the state. Let it shut down. We had no shut KGB-type agency for the country’s first 225 years and we don’t need it now.
Whether the Republicans will have the courage to actually let Homeland Security shut down, however, is the real question. Since the government shutdowns in the 1990s they have shown themselves to be very fearful of the blowback from any government shutdown, even though there is no evidence in recent years that these shutdowns have hurt them. The liberal press might scream that the public blames the Republicans only, but that is ridiculous, since every shutdown was a team effort by both parties.
In fact, the shutdown two years ago probably contributed to the Republican midterm election triumph in November. If anything, it certainly did them no harm.