Tag: oppression

Lockheed Martin starts assembling first manned Orion capsule

10:38 am

My heart be still! Thirteen years after winning its contract to built the manned Orion capsule, Lockheed Martin proudly announced this week that it has finally begun building the first capsule that will carry humans.

I should add that this first manned flight is not scheduled to happen for another five years. Moreover, they have so far spent at least $14 billion on this capsule, and will likely spend another five billion by the time it finally launches. That’s 18 years and $19 billion, for a single manned mission. Seems somewhat shameful to me.

The article is filled with much of the dishonest hyperbole that has surrounded the Orion capsule from the start:

  • “NASA’s first of a new generation of manned deep space exploration craft”
  • “Orion will be a major step in the American program to establish a Deep Space Gateway station, return to the Moon, and eventually make a manned landing on Mars”
  • “Orion has tremendous momentum.”
  • “This is not only the most advanced spacecraft ever built, its production will be more efficient than any previous capsule.”

What Orion really is is a lie. It is nothing more than the ascent/descent capsule for the as-yet still undesigned, unfunded, and unbuilt interplanetary spaceship that will be needed for any real deep missions. It is also a boondoggle of the worst sort, providing pork for congressional districts while accomplishing nothing.

Lockheed Martin is lying in its press release here, and it is shameful that any journalist who knows anything about space should buy into those lies.

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VA rewriting the words of Abraham Lincoln because of feminist whines

10:01 am

Because a feminist group complained, the Veterans administration is rewriting its motto, which had been take from an actual the words of Abraham Lincoln.

The Department of Veterans Affairs says it has received complaints about its official motto, which is a quote from Lincoln’s second inaugural address in 1865. The quote, which has been the VA’s motto for 59 years, reads:

“To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.”

The motto appears on plaques at many VA facilities across the U.S.

But in November, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America asked VA Secretary David Shulkin to change the motto, saying the Lincoln quote excludes women service members and symbolizes the obstacles they face in navigating the VA health system, Stars and Stripes reported. “They’re missing the point that women don’t feel comfortable at the VA,” IAVA Executive Director Allison Jaslow, a former U.S. Army captain who served in Iraq, told Stars and Stripes. “We want to be respected and appreciated as much as male veterans are, and the motto is symbolic of overall challenges.”

In response, Kayla Williams, director of the VA Center for Women Veterans, said the VA has gradually been introducing an altered version of the quote: “To care for those who shall have borne the battle and their families and survivors.”

I would have told this pampered feminist children to “Go pound sand.” Sadly, no one in government today has any courage, so instead, we are going to rewrite history, while allowing this group of hateful babies to denigrate the reputation of one of our greatest and most humane presidents.

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House memo describes misuse of FISA rules by Obama administration

11:19 am

The House intelligence committee memo released today reveals clear misuse of the FISA law and its rules for allowing spying on American citizens.

Essentially, the memo outlines how the Obama administration, the Department of Justice, and the FBI used sloppy, inaccurate, and unverified Clinton campaign material to get a FISA warrant, without revealing this fact to the courts, and then used that warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, during the campaign. Had they told the courts about the nature of that Clinton campaign material, the courts would never have allowed the FISA warrant.

This release essentially confirms what was already commonly known, that the Obama administration was misusing FISA to try to obtain campaign dirt on the Trump campaign.

I should note that, having read the memo, I can find nothing in it that threatens American security in any way. There was never any reason to keep it classified. In fact, the entire FBI investigation that is describes had nothing to do with the country’s security. Instead, it was clearly an effort by the FBI, the Justice Department, and Obama to abuse their power in order to sabotage the campaign of their political opponent.

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Anti-Trump FBI officials discussed ways to avoid transparency requirements

1:26 pm

Newly released texts between the anti-Trump FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page show that they discussed ways in which they could evade regulations that made their communications public records.

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page discussed getting new Apple iPhones, in lieu of their Samsung 5 government issued phones in text messages they exchanged in August 2016. They noted in the texts that the new phones would help keep their text messages from government collection after speaking with the FBI’s IT director, according to newly released August 2016 text messages.

“According to text messages produced by the committee, Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok make references to communicating with other FBI employees via text message, phone call, email, and voice mail,” stated Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson, in a letter dated Jan. 31, to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. “Additional text messages suggest that FBI officials used non-official email accounts and messaging programs to communicate about official business.”

The article includes some texts, such as this juicy tidbit:

Strzok: “Hot damn. I’m happy to pilot that…we get around our security/monitoring issues?”

Page: “No, he’s proposing that we just stop following them. Apparently, the requirement to capture texts came from omb, but we’re the only org (I’m told) who is following that rule. His point is, if no one else is doing it why should we.”

Not only were these officials apparently conspiring to sabotage the election, they were eager to break basic transparency laws to do it.

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Cape Town about to run out of water

9:40 am

The coming dark age: Cape Town in South Africa will run out of water on April 16 if it does not rain soon.

Officials estimate that if water levels continue to fall as expected, South Africa’s second most populous city will run out of water by April 16, which has been dubbed “Day Zero.” Experts are keeping a close eye on daily consumption in a desperate bid to avoid the disaster, warning residents tempted to ignore measures that they face fines and the installation of water-management meters if they do not comply.

It may seem unthinkable that a developed city of four million could run out of water but it’s been a slow-burning catastrophe exacerbated by some uncontrollable factors. Cape Town been enduring the worst drought in a century for the past three years. A changing climate and rapidly growing population have made matters worse. And as the crisis has taken hold, Capetonians have not been doing enough to curb their water use, further aggravating the scarcity. Only an estimated 55% of the city’s residents are actually sticking to their allotted water per day, according to last week’s figures issued by authorities.

The city is now working to upgrade its water systems — rushing to build desalination, aquifer and water-recycling projects — and help stretch the current supply, but officials say residents need to step up, too. [emphasis mine]

It is interesting to me that this CNN article seems to downplay the South African government’s lack of planning while instead focusing on the failure of residents to ration themselves. The real scoop here however is this: “Why did the government let this situation get to this point?” Such incompetence should have been the highlight of the article, and in the past would have been. Now, the journalists at CNN feel obliged instead to make excuses for them.

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New Zimmerman op-ed: NASA’s safety bureaucracy sabotaging manned space

9:50 pm

The website American Greatness has now published a new op-ed I have written that describes how the bureaucracy at NASA is acting to sabotage commercial space, even as it ignores far more significant safety issues with SLS and Orion.

I was prompted to write the op-ed after reading the reports in the past few weeks by NASA’s safety panel and the GAO, both of which clearly favored NASA’s bloated projects.

What both reports actually demonstrate is that the bureaucrats in Washington have very little interest in safety, but instead are more focused on putting their thumbs on the scale in order specifically to harm these private efforts—especially SpaceX’s. One report in particular, by NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), was especially hostile to these private efforts, even as it remained completely unconcerned about similar but far worse safety issues that exist with NASA’s government-built and competing SLS and Orion programs.

Both reports also illustrated starkly the complete lack of understanding that the Washington community has for the nature of exploration, the very task that NASA was founded to spearhead. The result is a bureaucratic culture that makes the manned exploration of space by the United States practically impossible.

If things do not change, expect this country to be bypassed in the coming decades by the rest of the world as the solar system is colonized and settled.

Check it out.

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SpaceX seeks more government money for Texas spaceport

8:44 am

It appears that SpaceX is asking for an additional $5 million in government subsidies to build local infrastructure for its Boca Chica spaceport in Texas.

This new money would be in addition to about $15 million already set aside for SpaceX’s spaceport. It is unclear however what it will exactly pay for.

Update: Meanwhile, the New Mexico state legislature is considering dumping another $10 million to Spaceport America. (Hat tip Robert Pratt) From the article:

Other provisions of the updated budget proposal might raise eyebrows. One is $10 million for Spaceport America to build a new hangar. State officials hope the Spaceport can become a tourist draw.

I don’t know how they can imagine this will ever be a tourist draw, since Spaceport America is a spaceport with practically no customers except for Virgin Galactic, which unlike SpaceX will likely never fly.

Note: A reader noted that I mistakenly wrote that Spaceport America was in Texas in the initial post. The reader is correct. I wrote without thinking, and now have fixed the post.

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House committee votes to release memo on Justice Dept surveillance abuse

4:58 pm

The House Intelligence committee today voted to release a memo the Republicans there have written that supposedly outlines the surveillance abuse committed at the Justice Department in connection with Special Counsel Robert Meullers Russian collusion investigation.

It is hard to say how much impact this much ballyhooed memo will have. Without the underlying original material (which they are likely to hold back because it is classified), the memo can easily be written off merely as Republican talking points, as the article notes Democrats are already doing.

It does appear however that it was connected with the removal of McCabe earlier today, as that event occurred after his boss, FBI Director Christopher Wray, was allowed to review the memo this past weekend.

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Forensic experts baffled about FBI claims about lost texts

7:53 pm

They were lying: Forensic experts consider absurd the FBI claim that the texts between two anti-Trump FBI investigators were lost.

A former FBI special agent, who worked extensively on counterterrorism related cases, stated they were “dumbfounded” by the FBI’s original excuse that the text messages were irretrievable.

“Even though the servers ‘lost’ the text messages of Strzok they would still be on his actual device, even if he deleted them,” stated the former FBI special agent, who asked to speak on background due to the sensitivity of the case. “That’s how we catch bad guys, we forensically search their phones. Nothing disappears off the device, nothing… unless they take a hammer to it or microwave it. The question is, the FBI knows this, so why did the bureau say they couldn’t retrieve them – why did they mislead Congress.”

Makes sense to me. They are lying. They are trying to cover-up. And what they are lying about and trying to cover up is down-right treasonous.

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Justice Dept inspector general says he has recovered missing texts

12:25 pm

The inspector general of the Justice Department has told the pertinent congressional committees that he has recovered the missing texts between two anti-Trump FBI investigators that the FBI had claimed were lost.

In a letter sent to congressional committees, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said his office “succeeded in using forensic tools to recover text messages from FBI devices, including text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page that were sent or received between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017. …Our effort to recover any additional text messages is ongoing,” Horowitz said. “We will provide copies of the text messages that we recover from these devices to the Department so that the Department’s leadership can take any management action it deems appropriate.”

Fox News has learned from U.S. government officials that the inspector general recovered the texts by taking possession of “at least four” phones belonging to Strzok and Page.

This quick recovery is proof to my mind that the initial claim by the FBI that the texts were lost was a lie. The FBI was stonewalling, and also hoping no one would push them about it, as had been the case with the Lois Lerner IRS emails that were so conveniently lost. Here, however, the people under attack are the politicians doing the investigation. They are not going to let this slide.

Expect some shocking revelations to come out in the coming weeks.

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Govt shutdown deal included provision reducing spending oversight of surveillance agencies

9:22 am

The swamp wins: The deal that ended the government shut down included a provision that will allow intelligence agencies to spend billions with much less Congressional oversight.

From the article:

The new wording was requested by the White House Office of Management and Budget at the urging of the Pentagon and was backed by House and Senate appropriations committee leaders over the strident opposition of intelligence committee leadership.

…“Essentially the intelligence community could expend funds as it sees fit,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., warned about the change on the Senate floor Monday. “A situation like this is untenable.” Senate intelligence panel Ranking Member Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., warned covert operations could be funded without oversight and the House Intelligence Committee’s GOP leadership also opposed the wording.

…Steven Aftergood, who directs the government secrecy project at the Federation of American Scientists, has a different view. “The new provision is certainly a departure from the norm that all intelligence activities must be authorized,” he said. “What is not clear is whether this is simply an artifact of the legislative drafting process, with no particular significance, or whether it is intended as a cover for some unauthorized activity,” Aftergood said. “Normally, I would suspect the former. But the fact that steps to correct the language were deliberately blocked in the Senate … makes you wonder if there is something else going on.” [emphasis mine]

Considering the revelations in recent days about the possible secret efforts of FBI agents to overturn the 2016 Presidential election, either Congress is incredibly stupid, or corrupt, or both, to give such organizations more spending power at this time. The highlighted quote indicates to me that they are both, and that there are some people in the government who have done this for very corrupt reasons.

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