Tag: oppression

Obama and the UN vs Israel and the Free World

10:42 pm

I think the following list of stories sums up the situation:

The Obama administration position:

Next some of the response, from Israel, from conservatives, from Congress:

This story list is hardly complete but it does encapsulate the Obama/Israel/UN events of the past week. Make sure you read the stories at the links to really understand what is happening. Based on this information all I can conclude is that Obama and his administration decided in the past week to go public with their hatred of Israel. I call it hatred because I don’t know what else to call it. To them, the building of houses for Israelis to live in is more evil that Palestinian and Islamic terrorist bombings, murders, hijackings, and rocket firings.

As for the response, I have my doubts whether Congress will really do the right thing and dump the UN. In all my life only once have I seen real leadership in these matters, and that was during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, when he decided to withdraw from UNESCO because, as his administration noted at the time, ”Unesco has extraneously politicized virtually every subject it deals with, has exhibited hostility toward the basic institutions of a free society, especially a free market and a free press, and has demonstrated unrestrained budgetary expansion.”

Right now I suspect that the cowardly Republican leadership is scheming for ways they can participate in some form of “failure theater,” something to which they are very practiced, where they pass some meaningless resolutions condemning the UN while allowing its funding and its support to continue unhindered. We shall see if my cynicism here is justified. The one aspect of these events that suggests I might be too pessimistic is the number of Democrats publicly condemning the President. Democratic support these days is very confined to the big urban coastal cities, which also happens to be where their Jewish support is centered. Obama’s actions this week fire a bullet into that support, and very clearly threaten to damage it badly. They have already lost middle Ameica. If they lose the urban Jewish voter their chances of winning elections in the future will become even more difficult.

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California history professor wants to bar climate skeptics from internet

5:37 pm

Fascist: Joseph A. Palermo, a history professor from California, wants to bar Presidient-elect Trump and all climate skeptics from using the internet or any technology. As he wrote,

“Through his public statements and personnel choices Trump has made it clear that he rejects the science of climate change. I’ve always believed that people who dismiss science in one area shouldn’t be able to benefit from science in others. If Trump and his cohort believe the science of global warming is bogus then they shouldn’t be allowed to use the science of the Internet for their Twitter accounts, the science of global positioning for their drones, or the science of nuclear power for their weaponry.”

First, I don’t notice any evidence of Palermo abandoning the use of fossil fuels in order to prevent the certain destruction of humanity and the Earth because of his religious belief in global warming.

Second, notice how his first instinct, like the good liberal that he is, is call for the use of force to restrict, bar, condemn, and oppress his opponents. He doesn’t wish to debate them, he wishes to grind his boot into their face for all time for daring to challenge his beliefs.

By the way, I am not debating the issue of global warming, I am noting the fascist outlook of the modern left and of the global warming activist community.

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Trump interested in lunar manned mission?

3:48 pm

After meeting with Donald Trump a historian now says the president-elect appears very interested in the idea of sending a man to the Moon.

All of these stories continue to be speculation, but I strongly suspect that much of it also consists of trial balloons pushed by the various supporters of SLS/Orion in their effort to give that very expensive and so-far completely unproductive boondoggle a mission it can actually achieve. Right now, SLS/Orion has no mission. It is only funded through the first manned test flight in 2021 (likely to be delayed until 2023). Since it has been a pork barrel favorite of a number of Senators and Congressmen, I would not be surprised if they are trying to convince Trump to fund it by giving it a new Kennedy-like mission.

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Venezuela: the bankruptcy of socialism and modern intellectualism

10:52 am

The editorial board of the Washington Post today decided it was time to speak up about the disaster of Venezuela and the totalitarian rule of that country’s socialist leader, President Nicolás Maduro.

Venezuela, which was once Latin America’s richest country, has become an unwilling test site for how much economic and social stress a modern nation can tolerate before it descends into pure anarchy. This month its 31 million people lurched a big step closer to that breaking point, thanks to another senseless decree by its autocratic populist government.

For years Venezuelans have struggled with mounting shortages of food, medicine and other consumer goods, as well as triple-digit inflation that has rendered the national currency, the bolivar, worthless. By this month the 100-bolivar bill, the largest note in circulation, was worth only 2 cents, forcing people to carry piles of them in order to make the most rudimentary purchases. Then came this coup: On Dec. 11, President Nicolás Maduro, an economically illiterate former bus driver, announced that all 6 billion 100-bolivar notes would cease to be legal tender in just 72 hours. He also closed Venezuela’s borders with Colombia and Brazil, on the theory that traders were hoarding currency in those countries.

Almost overnight, millions of Venezuelans — about 40 percent of whom do not have bank accounts in which the currency could be deposited — lost the ability to purchase even those goods still available on the market. The result was predictable: looting and riots in at least eight cities. In the eastern town of Ciudad Bolivar, with a population of some 400,000, hundreds of stores were looted and at least three people were killed in three days of mayhem. [emphasis mine]

To the Washington Post’s editorial board, made up of east coast liberals, Maduro’s government has never been socialist. Instead, it is an “autocratic populist government.” In fact, nowhere in their entire editorial do the words “socialism,” “communism,” or “Marxism” appear, even though it has been those exact ideologies that has shaped the decisions of Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez. In fact, until recently the liberals on the Washington Post editorial board would have likely celebrated the socialist revolution in Venezuela, begun by Chavez. Their leftwing comrades throughout modern intellectual circles surely did.

With petrodollars pouring in, Chavez had free rein to put his statist prescriptions into effect. The so-called Bolivarian revolution over which he — and later his handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro — presided, was an unfettered, real-world example of anticapitalist socialism in action. Venezuela since at least the 1970s had been Latin America’s most affluent nation. Now it was a showpiece for command-and-control economics: price and currency controls, wealth redistribution, ramped-up government spending, expropriation of land, and the nationalization of private banks, mines, and oil companies.

And the useful idiots ate it up.

In a Salon piece titled “Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle,” David Sirota declared that the Venezuelan ruler, with his “full-throated advocacy of socialism,” had “racked up an economic record that . . . American president[s] could only dream of achieving.” The Guardian offered “Three cheers for Chavez.” Moviemaker Oliver Stone filmed a documentary gushing over “the positive changes that have happened economically in all of South America” because of Venezuela’s socialist government. And when Chavez died in 2013, Jimmy Carter extolled the strongman for “improving the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen.”

Now that this socialist “economic miracle” has failed, as socialist economic miracles always do, the useful idiots on the Washington Post’s editorial board have suddenly realized that it was never Marxist ideology that moved Chavez and Maduro, but an “autocratic populist government.” The intellectual dishonesty here is amazing. Worse, however, is how typical it has become. Western intellectuals, the so-called elites of our society, have developed an uncanny ability to fool themselves. They are never wrong. Instead, they simply change the facts to protect their shallow leftist beliefs.

Nonetheless, Marxist leftwing ideology did destroy Venezuela, just as it destroyed Russia and Eastern Europe, and just as it is destroying the big urban cities of the United States, all ruled by increasingly leftist Democratic politicians whose only goal is to emulate Hugo Chavez and bring his “economic miracle” to their cities.

The great tragedy is that these leftist Democratic politicians in America’s big cities will likely succeed, because our so-called intellectual community, like those on the Washington Post’s editorial board, are willing to blind themselves to the truth.

Remember this the next time they try to tell you how evil Trump and the Republicans in Congress are. They are lying, not just to you, but to themselves.

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China outlines its next five years in space

4:11 pm

A white paper published by China’s State Council Information Office today both summarized the state that nation’s present space program as well as outlining its goals for the next five years.

In addition to outlining their future manned and unmanned missions (such asa landing a probe on the far side of the Moon, as well as sending a lunar sample return mission there), the overall plan includes developing their entire space infrastructure, from communication satellites to ground-based radar to space telescopes to missions to Mars. It is well thought out, and quite comprehensive. Possibly the most important part however is the white paper’s discussion of how they intend to enhance future industrial development.

The mechanism for market access and withdrawal has been improved. A list of investment projects in the space industry has been introduced for better management in this regard. Non-governmental capital and other social sectors are encouraged to participate in space-related activities, including scientific research and production, space infrastructure, space information products and services, and use of satellites to increase the level of commercialization of the space industry.

The government has increased its cooperation with private investors, and the mechanism for government procurement of astronautic products and services has been improved.

The Chinese government, communist now in name only, intends to fuel their space program with private investment and private enterprise. The overall program will be managed and run by the central government, but that government is going to make it a policy to encourage the private sector to compete and innovate in this effort.

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George Washington University drops American history requirement

1:23 pm

The coming dark age: George Washington University has eliminated the requirement that its history majors take American history.

The department eliminated requirements in U.S., North American and European history, as well as the foreign language requirement. Thus, it is possible that a student can major in history at GWU without taking a survey course on United States history.

The new requirements mandate at least one introductory course, of which American history, World History and European civilization are options. Yet, like at many elite universities, the introductory course requirement may be fulfilled by scoring a 4 or a 5 on the Advanced Placement exams for either U.S. History AP, European History AP or World History AP.

As a result, it will be possible for a graduate of this university’s history department to earn a degree and not even know who the university is named after.

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U.S. tests anti-missile interceptors

9:31 am

The U.S. Navy and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) on December 14th successfully test fired two missile interceptors, designed to destroy an incoming missile attack.

The test occurred Dec. 14 and launched two Raytheon-built Standard Missile-6 Dual 1 (SM-6) missiles from the Navy destroyer USS John Paul Jones from just off the coast of Hawaii, MDA officials said in a statement. The two SM-6 projectiles were launched against a medium-range ballistic missile target as part of the MDA’s Sea-Based Terminal Program, using Navy ships equipped with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.

The interceptor missiles also used an explosive warhead to destroy their target, which appears to be an advance on previous interceptors, which relayed merely on hitting the target.

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EPA only archived 86 out of 3.1 million agency texts in 2015

12:21 pm

Cover-up: The EPA and its employees only archived 86 out of 3.1 million agency texts sent during 2015.

The EPA Office of Inspector General (IG) released the report requested by Texas Republican [Lamar Smith], which described enormous text message retention problems within the EPA. One unnamed senior official configured his phone to automatically delete texts after 30 days. The IG claimed EPA officials never “intentionally” violated the Federal Records Act and did not include the low number of archived texts in the body of its report, relaying it instead to congressional staff.

Multiple federal laws and regulations require that officials preserve all documents — including email and text messages — created in the course of conducting official business of the U.S. government.

Like the Pentagon officials I noted earlier today, how stupid does this inspector general think we are? When a government agency, in clear violation of numerous laws, archives less than 0.000003 percent of all texts, you either have to be willfully blind, stupid, or a participant in the cover-up to claim that this behavior was “never intentional.” Furthermore, the report included these juicy details, all clear evidence that the failure to archive was for at least two senior officials very intentional indeed:

The anonymous senior official who configured his phone to delete texts may have deleted vital information, the IG found. “The senior official responded that he did not have any text messages on the device for that (three-month) period,” IG auditor Teresa Richardson said in a podcast. “The device had been set to automatically delete text messages every 30 days. So it is likely that any text messages that were substantive and should have been preserved were deleted.”

The report found another senior official claimed to have zero texts, despite EPA’s quarterly mobile device usage report showing frequent texts from that person. Another official, a regional administrator, potentially lost federal records by failing to transfer or otherwise preserve texts after replacing an old phone.

The more people fired at the EPA, the better. It is presently being run by dishonest political hacks who are very willing to do things in direct violation of the law.

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Fake Hate Crimes

12:06 pm

A new website has been created to keep track of the numerous fake hate crimes that are being committed by crazy people on all sides of the political spectrum.

I generally don’t post stories about “hate” crimes, because almost invariably they are either fake or staged in the reporting for the express purpose of creating disinformation or discrediting a political movement, on either the right or the left. Rarely are they real hate crimes. Moreover, I detest the very term “hate crime”. A crime of violence is a crime of violence. To add a further condemnation to the motives or emotions involved can too easily shift into squelching freedom of speech and religion. In fact, this is exactly what has happened.

However, this entire list is instructive. First of all, the distribution of fake hate crimes is not even. A vast majority are being committed by leftists or Muslims aimed at discrediting the right or western civilization. Thus, the claim that the election of Donald Trump has sparked more rightwing racism against minorities or the left is shown to be bogus, right from the start.

Second, this uneven distribution gives us all a sense of the kind of people who are being attracted to the left and to Islam. While you can find this kind of craziness in any political, racial, or religious group, at this time in history the majority of this craziness is gravitating to liberal, islamic, and leftwing movements.

Think about that. There is a strong element of madness that is gaining power on the left, and in Islam. To ignore this fact is to ignore reality.

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Pentagon makes believe Iran isn’t using $1.7 billion for military

10:56 am

Does this make you feel safer? General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Congress last week that the Pentagon does not believe Iran’s military development is being funded by the $1.7 billion given to them by the Obama administration.

“Intelligence assesses that the $1.7 billion transferred to Iran probably was allocated predominately to Iran’s economic sector, in accordance with Tehran’s stated emphasis on economic expansion, modernization, and diversification,” Dunford said in response to multiple questions from lawmakers, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and 17 other senators.

Lawmakers suspect that Iran has used this cash infusion to boost its military operations in the region, including in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq.

However, Dunford maintained this is not the case. “Iran continues to seek improved missile systems and the replacement of aging military equipment, particularly aircraft and naval vessels,” he wrote. “However, there is a lack of information to suggest Iran is attempting to use the $1.7 billion towards these interests.”

Either this guy and everyone in the Pentagon is downright stupid, or they think everyone else is. The Obama administration handed Iran $1.7 billion, and almost immediately Iran announced it was going to spend $1.7 billion more on military development. And that means there is “a lack of information to suggest Iran is attempting to use the $1.7 billion” for military purposes?

I think this guy, and his cohorts at the Pentagon, should find work they are better qualified to do, such as serving burgers at McDonalds.

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China and the UN open future Chinese space station to international research

9:43 am

China the the UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs will soon announce a partnership for soliciting proposals from the international community for research projects to be performed on China’s upcoming space station.

UNOOSA and CMSA will work together to solicit proposals for payloads and experiments for the space station from scientists all over the world, with projects to be decided by international selection committees. UNOOSA Director Simonetta Di Pippo, in comments provided to gbtimes, stated that: “We expect that the first announcement for project proposals should come in late 2016 or early 2017. Other activities will be undertaken as the environment for their implementation becomes ready.”

The 20-tonne core module of the Chinese Space Station (CSS) is expected to be launched in 2018, with the addition of two experiment modules to complete facility around 2022. “While the space station is being made operational, UNOOSA and CMSA will prepare to call for technical proposals from entities worldwide for the design of experiments to take place on-board the station,” Ms Di Pippo said.

While open to all, the initiative will focus especially on developing nations as part of the UN’s Human Space Technology Initiative (HSTI) which aims to involve more countries in space activities and encourage non-spacefaring countries space research and to benefit from space applications.

The agreement is a good one, but its goal is not entirely altruistic on China’s part. In the article it is clear they are trying to score some propaganda points against the U.S., which by law bars China from ISS and any other U.S./China space partnership because of their bad habit of stealing technology for military purposes. With this UN partnership they are immediately claiming that they are “more open and democratic” than the U.S., as stated in the article. The claim is a lie, however. Just like the U.S. they will surely reject any international proposals they consider a security risk. They simply will, with the UN’s cooperation, be less public about it.

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Leftist and Muslim student organizations make demands at University of Maryland

9:42 pm

The fascists team up! 25 totalitarian student organizations at the University of Maryland have issued a list of 64 demands.

The project, known as ProtectUMD, is a collaborative effort between 25 student organizations at the University of Maryland, including Students for Justice in Palestine, Bisexuals at Maryland, and the Black Student Union. There are 64 demands across 8 subsets of students—Marginalized, American Indian, Black, Latinx, LGBTQIA+, Muslim, Pro-Palestine, and Undocumented—including scholarships for “students of marginalized communities,” a ban on Columbus Day, beginning every on-campus event with an acknowledgement that “this is Indigenous Land,” that African American professors get tenure, that preferred pronouns are included on rosters, and that “queer diversity training” is required.

Muslim students also want “one room in each major building designated for prayer” and “shuttle services to [the local mosque] for Muslim students to have access to a place of worship.” Among the Pro-Palestine demands, students want the administration to condemn the “conflation of Pro-Palestinian activism with Anti-Semitism,” claiming that “Pro-Palestinians do not reject the human rights of any group of people.” [emphasis mine]

I have highlighted the important words that indicate the totalitarian and fascist nature of these groups. They do not wish to negotiate. They aren’t interested in diversity or tolerance. They have no interest in compromise and learning to live with their neighbors. No, they demand, ban, require, and condemn. They are also racists and bigots, despising anyone who does not belong to their favored minority groups. They also expect free scholarships and tenure for those same groups, merely because of their race, gender, sexual preference, or leftwing political beliefs.

Note also how the leftists here have no problem allying themselves with Islam, a religion that routinely murders homosexuals and oppresses women. This should reveal to everyone their priorities, which isn’t protecting the rights of “marginalized communities” but is instead the acquisition of power, which once obtained they will then use to brutally oppress anyone who opposes them.

I fully expect the administration of the University of Maryland to agree to all their demands, mainly because most modern academic administrators are just as bigoted and totalitarian and leftist as these fascists.

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Pressure on Trump to shift NASA transistion team towards private space

1:49 pm

The competition heats up: Several of Trump’s most listened-to advisers are trying to convince him to put more commercial space advocates on his NASA transition team.

The appointments, which are expected to be announced shortly, partly reflect Mr. Thiel’s influence, the people said. The billionaire investor, who is Mr. Trump’s most prominent Silicon Valley supporter, is among more than two dozen people on the executive council overseeing the government-wide transition.

Along with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Republican Congressman Robert Walker—two other champions of commercial space endeavors—Mr. Thiel has argued forcefully inside the transition that the original team sent to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was skewed toward appointees closely identified with legacy space projects run by Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., the people said.

This is good news. While my previous post, The squealing of pigs, focused on Trump’s environmental policy at NASA and elsewhere, his approach to commercial space remains unclear. These changes will help move his administration away from the pork of SLS and toward the competitive commercial space sector.

Let me add that this story reaffirms my belief that the best way to get Trump to shift to the right is to surround him with conservatives. Interestingly, it appears that Trump himself has chosen to do this. His first instincts might not be conservative, but he apparently is quite willing to take the advice of those who instincts are.

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The squealing of pigs

1:31 pm

Back in October 2010, just days before the mid-term elections, I wrote the following:

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that, come Tuesday, the Republicans take both houses, in a stunning landslide not seen in more than a century. Let’s also assume that the changes in Congress are going to point decidedly away from the recent liberal policies of large government (by both parties). Instead, every indication suggests that the new Congress will lean heavily towards a return to the principles of small government, low taxes, and less regulation.

These assumptions are not unreasonable. Not only do the polls indicate that one or both of the houses of Congress will switch from Democratic to Republican control, the numerous and unexpected primary upsets of established incumbents from both parties — as well the many protests over the past year by large numbers of ordinary citizens — make it clear that the public is not interested in half measures. Come January, the tone and direction of Congress is going to undergo a shocking change.

Anyway, based on these assumptions, we should then expect next year’s Congress to propose unprecedented cuts to the federal budget, including the elimination of many hallowed programs. The recent calls to defund NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcastings are only one example.

When Congress attempts this, however, the vested interests that have depended on this funding for decades are not going to take the cuts lightly. Or to put it more bluntly, they are going to squeal like pigs, throwing temper tantrums so loud and insane that they will make the complaints of a typical three-year-old seem truly statesman-like. And they will do so in the hope that they will garner sympathy and support from the general voting public, thereby making the cuts difficult to carry out.

The real question then is not whether the new Congress will propose the cuts required to bring the federal government under control, but whether they, as well as the public, will have the courage to follow through, to defy the howls from these spoiled brats, and do what must be done.

The legislative situation with NASA over the summer and fall might give us a hint about whether the next Congress will have the courage to make the cuts that are necessary. In this case Obama actually proposed doing something close to what conservatives have dreamed of for decades: take NASA (and the government) out of the business of building rockets and spacecraft and pass it over to the private sector.

Moreover, despite the strong dislike the right has for Obama and his leftist policies, many conservative pundits both inside and outside of the space activist community publicly supported the President in this effort.

Nonetheless, these policies were not accepted by Congress. Instead, the legislative body passed an authorization bill that requires NASA to build a new heavy-lift rocket and the manned capsule to go with it. Congress did this partly for national security reasons, but mostly because they wanted to protect the jobs in Houston, Florida, and elsewhere that NASA provides, and thus bring home the bacon to their constituents. And they did this because those constituents had squealed at them about the threatened loss of funding.

In other words, elected officials from both parties had teamed up to authorize this pork-laden program in order to keep the pigs quiet. In other words, NASA’s legislative history this past year does not give us an encouraging view of the future. It appears that Congress will give us the same-old same-old, when asked.

More than six years have passed, and my analysis of the situation in 2010 appears almost perfect. While the Republicans did not win both houses of Congress in 2010, they did in 2014. Despite these victories from voters who clearly wanted them to cut back on the power of government, they did exactly what I expected, based on their actions in connection with NASA and SLS: maintain the pork and chicken out whenever challenged by Obama, the Democrats, the press (I repeat myself), and too many spoiled members of the general public.

After the 2016 elections, things have moved even more to the right. The Republicans not only control both houses of Congress, they have a Republican president (though a very unpredictable one) and the leftwing mainstream press has been discredited and no longer monopolizes the distribution of information. What will happen in the coming years?
» Read more

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Death threats and harassment from Democrats to members of Electoral College

8:58 am

Fascists: Even as the Electoral College gathers today to confirm Donald Trump as the next President, its members are being overwhelmed with death threats, hate mail, harassing phone calls, and boycotts, all part of a campaign to get them to vote against Trump.

The nation’s 538 presidential electors have been thrust into the political foreground like never before in American history. In the aftermath of a uniquely polarizing presidential contest, the once-anonymous electors are squarely in the spotlight, targeted by death threats, harassing phone calls and reams of hate mail. One Texas Republican elector said he’s been bombarded with more than 200,000 emails. “I never can imagine harassing people like this. It’s just f—– up,” said Jim Rhoades, a Republican elector from Michigan who runs a home inspection service. “I’ve lost a bunch of business.”

It is important to highlight the tactics that the members of the left and the Democratic Party use to push their agenda. They don’t try to persuade. They instead intimidate.

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Swiss Space Systems declared bankrupt

5:35 pm

Swiss Space Systems, which only a few years ago appeared to be on the cusp of competing successfully in the new space industry, was declared bankrupt on December 14.

The biggest factor to the company’s failure could be the attack that occurred against the company’s president in September, of which it appears he has not completely recovered. The attack itself remains unexplained, but before the attack the president had received threats, and the company’s offices were broken into and vandalized.

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Four richest counties are all suburbs of DC

11:14 am

New census data confirms that the country’s four richest counties are all located in the Washington DC suburbs.

They are Loudoun County, Va., where the median household income was $125,900 in 2015; Falls Church City, Va., where it was $122,092; Fairfax County, Va., where it was $112,844; and Howard County, Md., where it was $110,224.

The Census Bureau treats independent cities such as Falls Church, Va., as the equivalent of a county when calculating its median household income statistics.

Nationwide, the median household income in 2015 was $55,755, according to the Census Bureau. That means the local median household income in each of the nation’s three richest counties—all of which are Washington suburbs in Northern Virginia—are more than twice the national median household income.

I must note the income disparity again. Federal workers routinely earn more than twice as much as the national average. Moreover, it gets worse. Of the top 20 richest counties, 9 are in the DC area.

And the elites in Washington wonder why they seem out of touch? They are so removed from normal life it is as if they live in a science fiction movie. Moreover , this census data illustrates again that all their claims about wanting to help the poor are actually lies. What these Washington bureaucrats and politicians are really doing is lining their own pockets, even as they pick the pockets of people nationwide who are much poorer then them.

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How the new Congress will repeal Obamacare

9:57 am

Link here. In order to get the repeal passed quickly under reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority and was the same procedure the Democrats used to pass the law, the repeal will not cancel the entire law. It will allow it to happen quickly, however.

The plan, then, is to move quickly post-inauguration to pass legislation similar to the one they passed this past January, which was vetoed by Obama. That legislation repealed the law’s major spending provisions — ending the Medicaid expansion and getting rid of the subsidies for individuals to purchase insurance on government-run exchanges. In addition, the repeal bill scrapped the individual and employer mandate penalties, eliminated the law’s taxes and defunded Planned Parenthood. If all goes smoothly, such a bill could reach Trump’s desk in short order, as early as February — or weeks after Inauguration Day. Though it’s possible that this could slip as certain details get ironed out, there is a determination, among leadership in both chambers, to move with speed.

…The thinking is that the previously passed reconciliation bill was already pored over by Senate staffers, who considered many different scenarios. What they ultimately came up with repealed much of the law, had the votes, and passed muster with the parliamentarian. Upsetting this delicate balance by adding or subtracting major elements, the thinking goes, would delay the repeal process, potentially significantly. As for firing the parliamentarian (currently Elizabeth MacDonough) though it’s true that her job is controlled by the majority party, doing so is seen as out of bounds. One senior Senate leadership aide described it as “a total Reid move,” by which the aide meant, it’s the type of strong-armed tactic to game the rules that one would expect from former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, that would typically make Republicans apoplectic.

The repeal bill offered here will not change many of the insurance regulations imposed by Obamacare, such as the requirement that insurance companies must accept all customers, even the sick ones. Either Congress will have to revisit this issue later, or we will continue to see the health insurance industry collapse in the coming years.

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President of Cornell College Republican club attacked

9:39 am

Fascists: The president of the Cornell College Republican club was called a “racist bitch” and attacked the night after the presidential election.

Her description of the attack is strong evidence that she was attacked merely because she was a Republican and a supporter of Trump. Nor was this attack a one time event.

This incident also does not mark the first time she has been harassed for her Republican identity. “People yell in my face all the time. I get random messages telling me what I should and should not be doing on Facebook, in my email,” Corn told the Voice. “I’ve had a history of people not liking me so much.” She added that after she was quoted in a Cornell Daily Sun article in May saying she would vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, she received death threats.

I would also add that this story is typical today on most college campuses, especially the ivy league ones. The fascists now rule at these universities, will tolerate no opposition or dissent, and often enforce that rule with violence.

For further evidence, see this paper, which documents the dominance of the left within the field of social psychology. Since the 1960s the left has worked tirelessly to blackball conservatives from the field, and has succeeded remarkably, producing today a modern ratio of 14 liberals for every 1 conservative. The result has been a warped research field that can only see one perspective — a liberal one — in every research problem.

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Judge: NASA cannot confiscate an Apollo 11 artifact that was sold by mistake

9:17 am

A federal judge has ruled that NASA has no right to confiscate an Apollo 11 lunar rock sample bag that had been purchased legally, even though the sale itself had been in error.

udge J. Thomas Marten ruled in the U.S. District Court for Kansas that Nancy Carlson of Inverness, Illinois, obtained the title to the historic artifact as “a good faith purchaser, in a sale conducted according to law.” The government had petitioned the court to reverse the sale and return the lunar sample bag to NASA. “She is entitled to possession of the bag,” Marten wrote in his order.

This court case will hopefully give some legal standing to the private owners of other artifacts or lunar samples that NASA had given away and then demanded their return, decades later.

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Obamacare subsidies to go up almost $10 billion next year

9:14 am

Finding out what’s in it: According to a new report, the Obamacare subsidies that are paid to large number of Americans so that they can afford the costly Obamacare health insurance policies will cost taxpayers almost $10 billion in 2017.

The new study estimates that the cost of premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act will increase by $9.8billion next year, rising from $32.8billion currently to $42.6billion. The average monthly subsidy will increase by $76, or 26 per cent, from $291 currently to $367 in 2017, researchers found.

Currently more than eight in ten consumers buying private health insurance through HealthCare.gov and state markets receive tax credits from the government to help pay their premiums.

Not only can’t we can’t afford the Obamacare premiums, we can’t afford the subsidies either.

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Another Obamacare co-op shuts down

10:58 pm

Finding out what’s in it: With Maryland’s Obamacare co-op closing on December 8, 20 of the original 24 Obamacare co-ops have gone out of business.

With the near-collapse of Maryland’s co-op — called Evergreen Health — at least 989,000 individuals nationwide have lost their health insurance coverage when the nonprofit co-ops stopped selling insurance to customers, according to TheDCNF’s tally. The losses cost taxpayers at least $2.2 billion in upfront federal loans awarded by the Obama administration to 24 nonprofit co-ops under Obamacare. The co-ops were intended to help keep health care costs down by providing non-profit competition with commercial for-profit insurers. The losses do not include statewide costs where the state or local governments were forced to cover doctor and hospital bills that the failed co-ops could not pay from remaining revenues.

In many cases, those losses were substantial. In New York alone, state taxpayers face at least $200 million in costs owed to medical providers that the bankrupt Health Republic co-op could not cover, according to the Albany Business Review.

The remaining four are all barely surviving, and will likely fail themselves in the next few years, even if the Republican leadership goes chicken and delays the repeal of Obamacare while they haggle over what to do to replace it. What they should do is repeal it outright, and let that very weird and forgotten concept of freedom operate freely. I’ve heard it has worked very well in the past, though unfortunately most elected officials today are ignorant of that history.

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Pennsylvania college students replace Shakespeare portrait with black author

11:08 am

The coming dark age: Students at the University of Pennsylvania have removed a portrait of Shakespeare, replacing him with a black author, because “he did not represent a diverse range of writers.”

It is very clear that these students have never read one word of Shakespeare, and thus are quite ignorant. It is also very clear that they are outright bigots, rejecting someone merely because of his skin color (white) to favor someone else merely because of their skin color (black).

The real tragedy here is that the university is apparently in agreement with the students. If I was sending my kids to college, this event would definitely place the University of Pennsylvania in the reject pile.

Correction: In my initial post I mistakenly described the private University of Pennsylvania as state funded. It is not, at least not directly. I have corrected the post accordingly.

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India hires private companies to build satellite

9:20 am

The competition heats up: For the first time India’s space agency ISRO has signed a deal with a private consortium of private companies to have them build satellites.

The contract signed on Friday includes assembly, integration and testing (AIT) of two spare navigation satellites consecutively in around 18 months. It was signed between M. Annadurai, Director of ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC), and the consortium lead, Alpha Design Technologies P Ltd. ISAC assembles the country’s satellites for communication, remote sensing and navigation.

From the third year, Indian industry could expect competitive bids for a new lot of spacecraft of 300-500-kg class, perhaps five a year, for both ISRO and for export, Col. H.S. Shankar (retd), CMD of Alpha Design, told The Hindu. This is the first time that ISRO has outsourced an entire satellite to industry, said Col. Shankar .

The Modi government appears to be trying here to emulate NASA in putting private companies in charge of construction, rather than having things designed and built in-house by ISRO. This is a very good sign. If they do it now, in the early days of their space effort, they can reduce ISRO’s ability to grow into a large bureaucracy with its own vested interests.

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Dutch rightwing politician convicted by court for expressing anti-immigration opinions

9:11 am

Facists: The leader of the conservative and anti-immigration party in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, has been convicted by a Dutch court of expressing hate speech during a political rally, simply because he called for a change in policy that would bring fewer Moroccans into the country.

Essentially, this liberal court has ruled that it is illegal for any politician, or anyone for that matter, to express an opinion in opposition to the present policy of the European Union to allow uncontrolled immigration into Europe from the Middle East. As noted at the link, “You read that correctly. An elected representative was convicted in a trial for talking about public policy. If that doesn’t send a chill down your spine then you are considerably more comfortable with socialism than you should be.”

This behavior of the left, however, is quite typical. They are fascists. You aren’t allowed to disagree with them, and if you do, they will work to destroy you. Think I am exaggerating? Consider these two stories from today:

If I was to do a quick internet news search for stories in the past week, I could find another dozen like these. The left’s idea of debate is to demand that you shut up. And they are becoming increasingly aggressive in their efforts to enforce this demand, by the use of force or violence.
» Read more

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The present strengths and limits to North Korea’s nuclear missile capabilities

8:43 am

Does this make you feel safer? A U.S. military official today outlined the strengths and weaknesses of North Korea’s aggressive effort to develop the capability of launch missiles with nuclear warheads.

North Korea appears able to mount a miniaturized nuclear warhead on a missile but is still struggling with missile re-entry technology necessary for longer range strikes, a senior U.S. military official said on Thursday. “I think they could mate a warhead with a delivery device. They’re just not sure (about) re-entry,” said the official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity. “They’re endeavoring to overcome that.”

North Korea has carried out repeated nuclear and missile tests this year in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and sanctions and claims it has the capability to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile. Asked whether North Korea could mate the warhead to the missile, the official said: “I think they can.”

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USGS responds to Congressional inquiry about data tampering with blank documents

4:01 pm

Why we got Trump: In response to a demand for documents from a Congressional investigation into data manipulation that the US Geological Survey allowed two chemists to do for nearly two decades, the USGS turned over documents with almost all the pages blank.

“Are we supposed to play tic-tac-toe on this?” Gohmert asked Tuesday, while waving one of the documents during a hearing of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on the data manipulation. The USGS lab where two chemists skewed data for nearly two decades was finally closed in March 2016.

Gohmert’s subcommittee had requested the documents in September. The blanks received Tuesday represented only a small portion of the total sought by the panel. “We’re still waiting for documents we requested three months ago,” Gohmert said. “Some of the documents we did receive were redacted, they were duplicates or were even blank pages.”

Meanwhile, the USGS refuses to name the two chemists or describe how they were punished. For all we know, they still work there. And it is important to note, that the data manipulation took place in connection with “various energy-related topics, including coal reserves and uranium deposits.” Want to bet the manipulation was done to discourage development?

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Republican Congress passes National Park bill that raises fees

9:26 pm

More bull from the House Republicans: In an effort to fix budget problems at the National Park Service, caused by years of Congressional and Presidential budget malfeasance, the lame-duck Republican-run House today passed a bill that would raise the lifetime fees for a park senior pass.

The House of Representatives moved quickly Tuesday to pass legislation designed to provide the National Park Service with badly needed funds to help the agency chip away at a staggering $12 billion maintenance backlog. However, without concurrence by the Senate by week’s end, the measure could die.

As passed by the House, the National Park Service Centennial Act would increase the price of a lifetime pass for senior citizens 62 and older to $80 from its current $10 lifetime fee. Seniors who don’t want to pay the $80 could purchase an annual pass for $20. Park Service staff estimate that the increase in the cost of a senior pass would generate $20 million a year.

It appears that already purchased lifetime passes would still be valid, though I am willing to bet that, given time, these bastards will change that as well. What really annoys me about this is that the reason the Park Service is short of funds is not really because they don’t have enough money. The budget isn’t really any smaller than it’s been for decades. The reason it is short of money is that the federal government, and the Park Service, wastes enormous amounts on things that are not essential, on pork (such as dozens and dozens of tiny park facilities spread throughout the country that are really outside the Park Service’s original purpose and exist mostly because some elected official pushed for their creation).

What these idiots never do is find ways to reduce or rearrange spending to pay for things that are important. Instead, they constantly work to suck more money from the taxpayer, endlessly. And they wonder why they got Trump.

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