Tag: oppression

China admits it will do nothing to stop North Korea from attacking US

10:25 am

In an official editorial, China has admitted that it will do nothing to stop North Korea from using missiles to attack the US territory of Guam.

Beijing is not able to persuade Washington or Pyongyang to back down at this time. It needs to make clear its stance to all sides and make them understand that when their actions jeopardize China’s interests, China will respond with a firm hand.

China should also make clear that if North Korea launches missiles that threaten US soil first and the US retaliates, China will stay neutral. If the US and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so.

In other words, China will not stop North Korea from carrying out its attacks, but if it does so China will also not do anything if the U.S. responds.

The editorial is intellectually dishonest however. It also states,

The real danger is that such a reckless game may lead to miscalculations and a strategic “war.” That is to say, neither Washington nor Pyongyang really wants war, but a war could break out anyway as they do not have the experience of putting such an extreme game under control. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words are simply wrong. It has been very clear now for several years that North Korea is eager for war, and has been doing everything it can to instigate a conflict.

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The fifteen most popular search engines

1:40 pm

Link here. Considering the increasingly fascist attitude of Google towards its employees and its users, I thought it worthwhile to provide this list of alternatives. I use Startpage, which isn’t listed because it is actually a slightly different version of Ixquick.

There is no reason to blindly and mindlessly depend on Google. There are many choices out there. Use your freedom and choose. It is our own personal responsibility to do so.

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Minnesota writing conference cancelled because of too many whites

1:34 pm

Bigoted intelligentsia: A Minnesota writing conference was cancelled yesterday because people complained the line-up of speakers did not have enough minorities.

Twenty-two authors were set to speak at the event, but only one had an ethnic background. William Alexander, winner of a National Book Award, is a Cuban-American author. Udesen said the event was canceled in part because of the lack of diversity in the line-up, but also because not enough people were going to attend.

[Britt Udesen, executive director of the event] added that they invited more than 30 people of color to speak at the conference, but none accepted the invitation.

So, now it is unacceptable to even hold an event if minorities are not interested in participated. They must be there, since whites don’t count.

Utter and blatant bigotry. That’s all this is.

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University excludes white males from $10K journalism grant

11:20 am

Bigoted academia: For the second year in a row Brandeis University is offering a racist $10K journalism grant only to minorities and women, specifically excluding white males.

The grant’s entire eligibility requirements, from the university’s press release, are quite blunt:

Applications from women and journalists of color working in any type of media — print, audio, video, online — will be considered.

Applicants must be U.S. citizens but can be reporting from abroad.

As the article above notes, federal law forbids any organization that receives federal funds (as Brandeis does) from discriminating based on either sex or race. But then, bigotry today in the leftwing community is perfectly all right, as long as you are oppressing whites or men.

I think Lous Brandeis, for whom this university is named, would be horrified by its actions.

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How did the Democrats’ IT foreigners get in the U.S?

10:48 am

Michelle Malkin has raised an interesting question regarding the three Pakistani brothers who ran the Democrats computer infrastructure in Congress for the past thirteen years and are now charged with bank fraud and are suspected of doing much worse: How did they get in the country in the first place?

Were the Awans and their family and friends H-1B tech workers — like so many of the 650,000 “temporary” foreign guest workers imported into America under that program over the past quarter-century and predominantly working in IT?

And if they’re not H-1Bs, how exactly did Awan and company get here, when did they get here, and who brought them over here and why?

…Awan first landed a job with former Democrat Rep. Robert Wexler as an “information technology director” in 2004 at the ripe age of 24 or 25. His younger brother, Jamal, is reportedly only 23 years old, yet has pulled in a salary of nearly $160,000 a year since 2014 (when he was 20!) as an information technology worker for Democrat Rep. Julia Brownley. That’s 3.1 times greater than the median salary for a House IT worker, according to InsideGov.

Who sponsored these young foreign techies and chose them to do work in our nation’s capital doing a job that countless young Americans are qualified to do? If not H-1B, did they arrive first as students on foreign visas (who are supposed to return home after their course of study), then game the system to work through the cheap-labor loopholes, such as the Optional Practical Training program? Or did they switch visa categories? Did they pull strings through their well-connected Democratic employers?

Not surprisingly, she has been unable to get an answer to this question from any of the many Democrats who had hired these Pakistanis. You would almost think the Democrats are stonewalling the investigation. It would also be reasonable for you to think the Democrats seem more interested in protecting non-Americans, coming from a Muslim country with many ties to radical Islamic terrorists, then in defending the security of the United States.

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The Google Gulag

10:37 am

Link here. The essay contains a nice collection of links documenting Google’s increasing leftwing fascist bent. The key quote however is this:

Damore [the man Google fired] was working on Google’s search infrastructure. And there’s little doubt that he was wasted there. Google’s search has grown more useless even as the company’s search revenues have grown. Google’s goal is to streamline and shape search results for a mobile environment by giving users what it thinks they want rather than what they are actually searching for. Google isn’t just politically left-wing, its product mindset has become all about forcing users to do what it thinks they should be doing. [emphasis mine]

In other words, Google’s approach to providing a search engine is now aimed at shaping all searches to go where they want them to.

If you use Google, it is time to find another search engine.

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Google unveils new slogan

12:23 pm

News you can use! Google unveils new slogan. Trust me, it is worth it to click on the link.

And this also: New Google technology autocorrects users’ thoughts

At a special press conference held at the technology giant’s sprawling campus Tuesday, Google engineers revealed exciting new technology that autocorrects any errant thoughts its users are having, replacing them with positions approved by the company.

Utilizing advanced retinal scan and proprietary telepathic scanning technology, the new automatic thought correction algorithm is now live for users of Google’s search engine, Android operating system, Chrome OS, and the hundreds of other apps and services the company provides. “Let’s say you start thinking there may be some kind of inherent biological difference between men and women,” Google employee Ryan Vo said in a live demo of the new tech. “Immediately, the thought suggestion program in any nearby Google device, app, or service will scrub the idea of inherent gender differences and replace them with the sure knowledge that there are at least three hundred different genders in existence, and always has been.”

For the background see this story.

And people wonder why I do not use Google, got rid of gmail years ago, and wiped my history at both as soon as I could.

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California’s public colleges to no longer require students to know math or read

12:40 pm

The coming dark age: California’s public universities have decided to drop its requirements that all in-coming students be able to do basic math and be able to read and write English.

Cal State will no longer make those students who may need extra help take the standardized entry-level mathematics (ELM) exam and the English placement test (EPT).

The new protocol, which will go into effect in fall 2018, “facilitates equitable opportunity for first-year students to succeed through existing and redesigned education models,” White wrote in a memorandum to the system’s 23 campus presidents, who will be responsible for working with faculty to implement the changes. The hope is that these efforts will also help students obtain their degrees sooner — one of the public university system’s priorities. Cal State has committed to doubling its four-year graduation rate, from 19% to 40%, by 2025.

…“This will have a tremendous effect on the number of units students accumulate in their first year of college,” said James T. Minor, Cal State’s senior strategist for academic success and inclusive excellence. “It will have an enormous effect on college affordability, on the number of semesters that a student is required to be enrolled in before they earn a degree, and it will have a significant impact on the number of students that ultimately cross a commencement stage with a degree in hand, ready to move into the workforce, ready to move into graduate or professional school.” [emphasis mine]

In other words, the university has no interest in producing graduates with any useful skills. All the university wants to do is to give them a degree, so that they can claim success. Under this new policy, students incapable of reading and writing English and doing math will still be able to take normal courses that require such skills the moment they enter college. They will likely be pushed through the system, given passing grades, so that when they graduate, they will be like the characters in the movie Idiocracy, functionally illiterate but expected to run society as college educated elites.

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International group forms to get UN protection of Apollo sites

8:43 am

An international group of lawyers, academics, and business people has formed an organization called “For All Moonkind,” aimed specifically at getting UN protections for the six lunar Apollo sites.

They are going to the UN because, based on the Outer Space Treaty, this is the only place that has jurisdiction. Unfortunately. This quote illustrates why:

“Though we are based in the US, we are an international organization,” said Michelle Hanlon, US space lawyer and Co-Founder of For All Moonkind. “Humaid Alshamsi [the UAE participant] brings tremendous experience in public and private aviation and space law to our team. We are thrilled that he has agreed to join our effort.”

For All Moonkind was critical of the auction by Sotheby’s of the Apollo 11 Contingency Lunar Sample Return Bag used by astronaut Neil Armstrong. “The astronauts of the Apollo project represented all of us here on Earth,” explained aviation and space lawyer and Advisory Council Member Humaid Alshamsi, “they went to the Moon in peace for all, and the relics of their historic achievement should be shared by all. The loss of this artifact to a private collector is a loss for humanity.”

The Outer Space Treaty forbids any nation from claiming territory in space, thus leaving it under the control of the UN and the international community, a community that — as demonstrated by this quote — is hostile to capitalism and private enterprise. While I laud this group’s desire to protect these historic sites, I fear their actions are going to place limits on the freedoms and property rights of future space colonists.

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Some Amazon Echo speakers can be hacked to spy on you

9:39 am

Some of Amazon’s Echo speakers, designed to listen and record conversations if so commanded, can be hacked to record everything and transmit those recordings remotely.

First of all, you have to have actual access to the device to mess with its hardware. Then, you have to make sure it’s either a 2015 or 2016 model, as brand new Echo versions can’t be hacked similarly.

But if these conditions are met, then a hacker can quickly take the Echo’s base apart and load on it custom firmware that will instruct it to record everything spoken around it. That data can then be sent out to a remote server. That’s what Barnes did in his security tests. Hacking a home speaker may be the best way to spy on certain targets, even if this implies infiltrating their homes to actually mess with the hardware.

This is why I want nothing to do with smart machines. The dumber the machine, the better. I see no reason for my speakers, my washing machine, my car, or my stove, to be connected the internet. All such capability provides is a way to cause problems.

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Aetna to withdraw from all Obamacare exchanges

9:22 am

Finding out what’s in it: Aetna has decided to withdraw from all Obamacare exchanges, after seeing its profits increase when it reduced its participation partly last year.

Aetna has been gradually withdrawing from the Obamacare exchanges. It had decided to pull out of the exchanges in other states because it lost $700 million between 2014 and 2016 and was projected to lose $200 million in 2017 despite having already significantly reduced its participation in the exchanges to only four states.

A disproportionate number of unhealthy customers have signed up for the exchanges, which provide tax subsidies to pay for insurance, causing unbalanced risk pools for many insurers. Aetna also has cited uncertainty over the future of the law and over whether it will receive federal payments as a contributing factor to its decision. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate the fundamental problem with the Obamacare law. It forces insurance companies to take on sick people who had failed to buy insurance before they became sick. Such an insurance model is unsustainable. Insurance works because enough people buy it before they need it, thus helping to fund those who need it. If everyone can wait until they need it then there is no pool to fund any payouts, and the insurance company goes bankrupt.

As is happening with Obamacare.

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EPA stonewalls investigation into its Gold King Mine disaster

11:00 am

The EPA is refusing to release a criminal investigation by its inspector general into the 2015 Gold King mine disaster, caused by the EPA, that polluted water supplies throughout the southwest.

The EPA’s Inspector General (IG) provided the Department of Justice evidence that an employee involved in the August 2015 Gold King Mine disaster violated the Clean Water Act and made false statements. The Justice Department declined to prosecute him, the IG announced in October 2016.

The watchdog wrote a report on its completed investigation but is now keeping it secret. “The material you requested … are part of one or more open law enforcement files,” EPA IG associate counsel Susan Barvenik told TheDCNF in a letter. Producing “such records could reasonably be expected to interfere with ongoing enforcement proceedings.”

An EPA spokeswoman provided conflicting information about the probe.

In other words, the report exposed clear violations of law, but no one in Washington wants to pursue those violations and they are doing whatever they can to bury them in order to protect themselves.

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Court allows lawsuit against police for improper drug raid to go forward

10:36 am

This might be a big victory: A federal appeals court has ruled that a lawsuit by two former CIA agents can go forward against the police for an improper home drug raid against the family because they happened to have a tomato garden.

The police raided the home, threatened the couple and their children, all because they had shopped for garden supplies and had brewed their tea from loose tea leaves. From the court ruling:

This week, the three judge panel — Carlos Lucero, Gregory Phillips and Nancy Moritz — ruled against the state, sending the case back to district court. What’s notable is that the 100-page decision pushed back hard against the claim police officers are immune from legal responsibility if they are just doing their jobs. “The defendants in this case caused an unjustified governmental intrusion into the Hartes’ home based on nothing more than junk science, an incompetent investigation, and a publicity stunt,” Lucero wrote in his opinion. “The Fourth Amendment does not condone this conduct, and neither can I.”

The judge went on to question the department’s claim of probable cause for the raid — particularly on the issue of the supposedly “positive” field-tested tea leaves. “There was no probable cause at any step of the investigation,” the judge wrote. “Not at the garden shop, not at the gathering of the tea leaves, and certainly not at the analytical stage when the officers willfully ignored directions to submit any presumed results to a laboratory for analysis.”

The lawsuit was filed against the specific police officers who conducted the raid, as well as the local county elected officials who sanctioned the raid. I hope they bankrupt them all.

I should also add that the timing here is great, because Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, appears in favor of more of these kinds of raids.

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The head of Iran’s space effort to step down

10:13 am

Mahmoud Vaezi, Iran’s minister of communications and information technology as well as the person responsible for the management of the Iran Space Agency, is stepping down.

It is likely that Vaezi is simply retiring. He is 65. It is also possible that there are developments in Iran that caused him to leave his post. While Iran had what it claimed was a successful test launch of its Simorgh rocket last week, that rocket put nothing in orbit. Furthermore, in the past two years there have been repeated delays in the launch of a number of announced satellites.

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University decides political displays must be hidden to avoid offending anyone

9:33 pm

The heckler’s veto wins: Southern Methodist University has ruled that all political displays must be moved to a less prominent location to avoid upsetting anyone.

They have initiated this policy by telling a memorial to 9/11 that it must be moved.

Nearly 3,000 flags have been placed on Southern Methodist University’s Dallas Hall Lawn every year since 2010, but the group responsible for the display, Young Americans for Freedom, was recently told it must be moved. University officials told Grant Wolf, who leads SMU’s Young Americans chapter, that the display can be placed only on Morrison-McGinnis Park, a less-prominent campus location informally known as MoMac Park.

In a policy posted in July, SMU stated: “The University respects the right of all members of the SMU community to express their opinions. The University also respects the right of all members of the community to avoid messages that are triggering, harmful or harassing. It is the policy of the University to protect the exercise of these rights.”

The tragedy here is that this is being done at a university, demonstrating once again the bankrupt state of intellectualism. You can’t have free speech if you insist that no one can be offended by it.

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The difficult task of legally preserving the Apollo lunar sites

2:27 pm

Link here.

While I heartily agree that these historic sites should be preserved, if you read the article you will notice how the focus with these people is not the future, but preserving relics of the past. I say we don’t need more memorials. The best memorial for Apollo 11 would be thriving city on the Moon, even if it trampled on Tranquility Base.

Note also that the restrictions imposed by the Outer Space Treaty once again make things worse. Under the treaty, there is no way for the U.S. to reasonably preserve these American historical sites, without first getting the approval of the UN. The result? I guarantee that any arrangement we manage to work out will almost certainly restrict the freedoms of future space colonists. This not a good thing, and it certainly isn’t something we here on Earth should be doing to the brave people who will someday want to build new civilizations on other worlds.

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Government officials expect disaster during eclipse

10:39 am

We’re all gonna die! According to this trashy Newsweek article, government officials are expecting disaster and societal collapse because a lot of people are going to travel to see the August 21 eclipse.

Here’s why many folks are planning for a disaster: Oregon has a population of 4 million people, and the eclipse is expected to draw 1 million visitors to the state for a few days. In Missouri, preparations resemble that for a blizzard or “everything from St. Patrick’s Day parade to a World Series celebration,” says Chris Hernandez, city spokesman for Kansas City, Missouri, one of the larger metro areas in the path of the eclipse.

All of those visitors are expected to clog interstates, along with state and local roads, for days before and after the eclipse, much like the rush during emergency evacuations, says Brad Kieserman, vice president of disaster operations and logistics for the American Red Cross. “Some of these places are never going to see traffic like this,” he says. In some areas, “the population will be double or triple.”

Once visitors arrive, they’ll need bottles of water, lodging and restrooms. And, of course, solar glasses.

This fear-mongering reminds me of the Y2K bug. Somehow it was going to shut down society, something I thought was a load of hooey, and turned out to be exactly that, hooey. This Newsweek junk article is just more of the same.

Be prepared, exercise personal responsibility, and all will be well. The only ones who will have a problem will be people who take these articles too seriously.

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Global warming activists tremble as Trump administration reviews their work

9:09 am

This could be a victory: The science journal Nature today published a story, entitled “Fears rise as Trump officials take reins on US climate assessment”, which described the terror that is spreading through the global warming climate field because the Trump administration is bringing in skeptical scientists to review the work done by these government scientists.

Many climate scientists are particularly uneasy about the potential for interference by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), one of 13 agencies that must approve the science report before its expected release in November. EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, who rejects well-established climate science, has raised the possibility of organizing an adversarial ‘red team–blue team’ review of such research. And he has help from the Heartland Institute, a think tank in Chicago, Illinois, that promotes scepticism about climate change.

“We can’t allow science to be held hostage,” says Donald Wuebbles, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and co-chair of the report. “I’m hopeful it won’t get to that, because it would look really bad for the administration to fight this.”

Well, ain’t that just too damn bad! This fake scientist seems to think that his work is so pure it shouldn’t be challenged or peer reviewed. The Nature article at the link is itself an example of fake news, as the author never bothered to interview anyone from the Trump administration, or quote or name any of the skeptical scientists doing the reviewing, something that any good journalist specializing in this field should have no trouble identifying. Had he, he might have found the skepticism reasonable. In fact, the scientific method is founded on skepticism. To believe that your work should never be questioned only proves that you aren’t really a scientist at all.

Be prepared for a lot of squealing when these reviewers step in and request that this climate assessment get reworked to remove any global warming propaganda from it.

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Another California Islamic iman calls for Jewish genocide

8:32 am

Land of fascism: Another California iman has cited Islam in calling for the destruction of the Jewish people.

In his sermon, Harmoush accuses Jews of plotting to take over Palestinian territory, the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, and “most of the Middle East.” He also referenced the recent turmoil surrounding the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of the city’s holiest sites revered by both Muslims and Jews. “Oh, Allah, liberate the Al Aqsa Mosque and all the Muslim lands from the unjust tyrants and the occupiers,” Harmoush said, according to the group’s translation. “Oh, Allah, destroy them, they are no match for you. Oh, Allah, disperse them and rend them asunder. Turn them into booty in the hands of the Muslims.”

In English, the imam also urged those gathered at the mosque: “Wake up, it is time to be a Muslim. Prayer is not the only thing.”

I am sure he will apologize when asked, with everyone knowing that he is merely following Muhammad’s policy of lying to the unbelievers in order to further Islam’s aims.

And I must note again that in California, it is now acceptable both for Muslims to freely preach genocide against Jews and for roving mobs to attack conservatives who wish to exercise their first amendment rights of free speech. What a fascist state.

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John McCain, Liar

12:55 pm

In commenting about the failure yesterday by Senate Republicans to pass a trimmed down version of an Obamcare repeal by a vote of 49-51, Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has this to say:

There are going be a great many Americans who tonight feel a sense of betrayal. …If you stand up and campaign and say we are going to repeal Obamacare and you vote for Obamacare, those are not consistent. And the American people are entirely justified in saying any politician who told me that and voted the other way didn’t tell me the truth. They lied to me.

He then added:

“No party can remain in power by lying to the American people.”

Cruz is right, but only partly. The entire Republican Party did not lie to its voters. Instead, a small contingent of fake Republicans lied, led by John McCain, king liar and the most likely person to stab a friend in the back I have ever seen.
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Pennsylvania school district apologizes for teacher who attacked pro-life protesters

10:53 am

This is a victory: The Pennsylvania school district where a teacher had verbally and physically harassed two pro-life demonstrators has apologized to the demonstrators as part of a lawsuit settlement.

It has also changed their school policy, making it clear that all students, whether pro-life or pro-abortion, have the right to express their opinions and should not be harassed by teachers for doing so.

I had posted the original story of the teacher’s misbehavior (including the video of his actions) under an essay entitled The Coming Fascism. This victory for freedom of speech gives me some reason to hope that my previous pessimism might have been premature.

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IRS routinely rehires fired workers

10:24 am

A new inspector general report has found that the IRS routinely rehires employees it has fired for cause, including some that have committed crimes.

Despite promises to Congress, the Internal Revenue Service has yet to take advantage of a red-flag alert system designed to prevent it from rehiring past employees with blots on their records, a watchdog found.

During the push to expand staff for the annual filing season, the tax agency is supposed to comply with a provision in the 2016 omnibus spending bill that requires a review of any rehire with past conduct or performance problems ranging from tax delinquency to falsification of documents to disruptiveness in the workplace.

But the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that more than 200 of 2,000-plus former employees “whom the IRS rehired between January 2015 and March 2016 had been previously terminated or separated from the tax agency while under investigation,” according to a report released on Thursday.

Worse, the rehires were not evenly spread. Some IRS offices were clearly more corrupt than others.

If you dig into the details of the report it appears that roughly ten percent of the rehires this season were previously dismissed for cause. But it wasn’t evenly spread across all of the offices. The Covington, Ky., office had 213 rehires examined and 96 of them were found to have been previously dismissed “while under investigation.”

That’s almost half the people this Kentucky office rehired, of whom a good percentage had been fired for literally breaking the law. Suggests that the management at that office might be complicit in these illegal acts.

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North Korea launches another ballistic missile

9:58 am

Does this make you feel safer? North Korea today launched another ballistic missile.

Not much is known about the rocket or the launch. My overall impression however is that North Korea is refining its approach to the launch of these rockets. Several years ago they would blast away, with no sense of rhyme or reason, often following up one failed launch with another almost immediately. Sometimes they would even try to launch a bunch of rockets in one day. To me these earlier launches suggested a mindless attempt at bravado, with little serious interest at improving the technology.

Now their launches seem to have a more measured cadence, as if they are properly treating each launch as an engineering test. They then review their results, apply them, and try again.

If so, we have much more to fear from their effort to develop rockets and nuclear bombs.

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Republican Senate committee restores all cuts to NASA climate budget

9:31 pm

Failure theater: The Senate Appropriations Committee today marked up NASA’s budget, restoring almost all of the proposed cuts, including cuts to the agency’s climate programs that both the Trump administration and the House had proposed.

The only program it appears the Senate cut was NASA’s planetary program, which they trimmed by almost 25%.

This only provides more evidence that the large number of the Republicans in the Senate are not really Republicans. They certainly aren’t conservative. And it sure appears that they aren’t very smart either, considering that NASA’s planetary program is one of its most successful endeavors.

We shall see how this budget shakes out in the coming months. Overall I am not hopeful. It appears to me that this Republican Congress wants to spend big bucks, and is hell bent on doing it.

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Video of Iranian launch today

9:22 pm

The Iranians have released video of today’s rocket launch.

I’d love a translation of what the crowd is chanting. I would also encourage the engineers in my readership to look at this and tell me if the launch looks right, and if there is any way to judge whether it is an rocket for orbital satellites or a missile. We still have no evidence the rocket successfully put anything in orbit.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has called this launch a breach of a UN resolution forbidding Iran from developing ballistic missiles.

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Iran launches satellite

10:15 am

According to its state news services, Iran today successfully launched a satellite into orbit.

Iranian state television described the launch as involving a “Simorgh” rocket that is capable of carrying a satellite weighing 550 pounds. The state media report did not elaborate on the rocket’s payload. “Simorgh” means “phoenix” in Farsi.

The website YJC.ir, which is affiliated with Iranian state television, as well as the semi-official Fars news agency, also reported the launch on Thursday, saying it was successful.

No information as yet on the payload. That the launch itself has not yet been recognized by websites that track these things, it is possible the launch was not successful, but they do not want to admit it.

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FBI arrest former IT staffer for many Democrats in Congress

10:05 am

A real Washington scandal: The FBI on Tuesday arrested a former Congressional IT staffer as he was trying to flee the country.

The man, Imran Aran, had run the computer systems for many Democrats in Congress, including former DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And while most Democrats fired Aran when he came under investigation months ago, Wasserman Schultz had kept in on her payroll until his arrest this week.

Several details that give some important political context to this story, and are not mentioned in the CNN article above:

The last story above includes other details about how Aran also threatened the renter of his home for cooperating with police. As the renter (a Marine and apparently a Democrat) noted, “He’s dangerous. This is a crime syndicate that has successfully infiltrated Congress,” he said. “If Donald Trump and the Republicans had hired foreign nationals to be their top IT guys and somehow their congressional files had been compromised, this would have been all over the news.”

Update: The correction above is because the news article linked to had mistakenly said that the hard drives were taken from Wasserman Schultz’s home. There were instead recovered from the Marine above when he found them in Aran’s former home, which he was now renting.

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Judge okays TMT permit

9:14 am

In a 305-page decision, an Hawaiian judge has approved a new construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Mauna Kea.

This does not mean that the project now proceeds.

This isn’t the final say on whether the embattled project will proceed.

Now that Amano has issued her 305-page proposed decision and order, the state land board will set a deadline for telescope opponents and permit applicants to file arguments against her recommendations. The board will later hold a hearing and then make the final decision on the project’s conservation district use permit.

Not surprisingly, the Democratic governor of Hawaii issued a short, non-committal statement, stating that he supports “the co-existence of astronomy and culture on Mauna Kea,” whatever that means.

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Repeal of Obamacare fails in Senate

2:07 pm

Not surprisingly, a clean not-quite-full repeal of Obamacare failed today in the Senate, 45 to 54.

As expected, every Democrat voted to endorse their failed law. They were aided by seven fake Republicans who should all be challenged in primaries. These were Susan Collins of Maine, Dean Heller of Nevada, Shelly Moore Capito of West Virginia, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, John McCain of Arizona, and Rob Portman of Ohio.

A lot of pundits are going to claim that this failure to repeal is a betrayal of the Republican Party. I actually don’t see it as that. Had Mitch McConnell not allowed this vote I might have agreed, but he did allow it, thus forcing those from both parties who support Obamacare to go on record. We now know who those people are.

The real problem is that too many people in the U.S. no longer believe in freedom, instead want a government hand out, and have thus elected legislators (from both parties) who are only too happy to give it to them in exchange for power and wealth. If we are going to get rid of this bad law, as well as many other bad leftwing government policies, we need to vote these specific people out of office.

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California iman calls for genocide against all Jews

4:06 pm

Can’t we all just get along? The Friday sermon of a California iman called for the killing of all Jews because Israel had the nerve to put up metal detectors at the entrances to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

And why did Israel do this? Because three Arabs murdered two Israeli policemen in cold blood at the site.

The bottom line here is that the Islamic world wants to kill Jews, and will find any excuse to do it, even excuses as silly as an Israel effort to prevent further violence. Listen to this guy’s sermon at the link. He makes it very clear that this is a Muslim requirement — from the Koran — to kill Jews. And Israel should negotiate with these fanatics?

I want to also point out that this iman was making his speech in California, a place that increasingly fashions itself a haven for fascists and the power-hungry. Note also these details about the mosque from which he made this speech:

The Islamic Center of Davis in Northern California is located about 15 miles from the state’s capital, Sacramento. It has, in the past, hosted events featuring Waleed Idris al-Menessey, who has also called for Muslims to kill Jews and impose Sharia law on non-Muslims law worldwide. Al-Meneesey’s Minneapolis-based Islamic center has produced five recruits for the Islamic State terrorist organization. On its online resources page, the Islamic Center of Davis links to several known Muslim Brotherhood front groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the Muslim Students Association (MSA).

If I, a Jew, lived in Sacramento I would not feel safe.

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