The day of reckoning looms: According the the inspector general, the Post Office will go out of business this year unless Congress bails it out.
And where will Congress and President Obama find the cash? Print it of course, which of course they plan to do with all their other budget problems. Get ready for inflation, gang!
A (new) Mexican standoff at the old spaceport.
Messier not only provides a detailed analysis of the negotiations on-going between Virgin Galactic and Spaceport America over liability issues, he also provides context, much of which is not encouraging. For example,
SpaceShipTwo is set to begin its first powered test flights later this year using a “starter motor” that will be smaller than the full-scale hybrid engine that will be used for flights into space. The motor will allow pilots to test the space plane in the transonic flight region, which would be a major step forward.
Whether the full-scale RocketMotorTwo engine, powered by nitrous oxide and rubber, will be ready to fly this year is an interesting question. There have been stories for years – persistent, consistent and never really denied – that the motor just doesn’t work very well. Hybrid motors can function effectively for smaller vehicles, such as the smaller SpaceShipOne vehicle that flew in 2004, but are difficult to scale up. SpaceShipTwo is three times larger than its predecessor.
Meanwhile, there are the liability questions which might force Virgin Galactic, and all other private space companies, to flee New Mexico. The analysis suggests that the taxpayers of New Mexico might have paid for a very expensive spaceport that might never pay for itself.
Guess why: The mass murder that didn’t happen.
And then ask: Why was this not a major news story considering the focus right now on violence and mass murders?
Now this is a great idea: Pretend gun control!
What we can do is pass a law banning a bunch of made-up things that sound scary, and many gun control proponents already have great ideas along this line. For instance, I read a column in which Howard Kurtz mentioned a ban on high-magazine clips — we can certainly do without something that nonsensical. And I’ve heard the press before mention armor-piercing hollow points and plastic guns (actually, I think we already banned that made-up weapon in the ’80s). And as long as the NRA and Wayne LaPierre go apoplectic about it (“This ban on sorcerer-enchanted guns is just a slippery slope toward eliminating all witch-hexed weaponry!”), gun control proponents won’t know the difference between this and actual gun control.
Considering the level of ignorance about guns exhibited by every one of the gun control advocates, both politicians and media pundits, I almost think we could get away with this.
The law is for little people: David Gregory will not be prosecuted.
This despite the fact that the D.C. Attorney General even admits that Gregory clearly broke the law.
This travesty more than anything demonstrates how pointless these laws are. Gregory waved a high capacity magazine on camera to illustrate the need to ban such items, even though he was doing so in a place, Washington, D.C., where such magazines were already banned. Not only did Gregory prove the law was stupid, the decision not to prosecute him proves that the law exists merely for political reasons. It is used only when it benefits the powers in control. Gregory is on the side of gun control, so of course he gets a pass. Innocent gun owners and supporters of gun rights who happen to be caught traveling in DC with such a banned item, however, can expect jail time.
An Interior Department official has been accused of trying to disband a fish research division specifically because its research is politically incorrect.
The research division, the Fisheries Resources Branch, had repeatedly found good evidence that the salmon of the Klamath River in the northwest were not suffering significantly from the presence of the dams on that river, contradicting the accepted wisdom that the dams had to be removed in order for these species to survive. The Interior official, Jason Phillips, along with the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), did not like these results, and decided that scientific work that “proved others wrong” was unacceptable and had to be squelched. From the actual complaint [pdf]:
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The part-timing of America: An Omaha-based chain of fast food restauants has decided to cut the hours of all non-management employees workers’ hours to part time in order to avoid the costs of Obamacare.
And they voted for it! Under Obamacare health insurance rates for young adults will skyrocket 40 percent next year, according to a new study.
Finding out what’s in it: Health premiums to double under Obamacare.
Leftwing civility: Democrat Alan Grayson returns to Congress and immediately calls Republicans terrorists.
That Democratic voters were willing to re-elect this vicious hateful guy back into Congress is proof to me that these voters really have no good will, are eager to demonize the opposition, and would possibly even approve violence against that opposition to achieve their ends. (Among Grayson’s many offensive acts, he once appeared uninvited at an opponent’s rally and refused to shut up, closing the entire event down. I just can’t find the link at this moment.)
