Tag: oppression

NASA issues call for new manned lunar lander proposals

10:12 am

NASA yesterday announced a solicitation for proposals for new manned lunar lander proposals, aimed at obtaining services long term, rather than the initial contract it has awarded SpaceX which only covered the first few Artemis lunar missions.

This solicitation is essentially being offered so that Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin will have a second chance to win such a contract, having lost out to SpaceX initially. It also is NASA’s effort to get Congress to give it a bigger budget so that it can pay for two different lunar lander contracts.

Having two competing lunar landers is not a bad thing. Giving a second contract however simply because the company (Blue Origin) exerts political clout is not. Right now it is unclear whether this solicitation is the former or the later.

The announcement also included what has become boilerplate in all NASA announcements about its Artemis lunar missions:

Through Artemis missions, NASA is preparing to return humans to the Moon, including the first woman and first person of color, for long-term scientific discovery and exploration. [emphasis mine]

It is very clear that the number one criteria that NASA has established, under the Biden administration, for picking the crew on that first Artemis lunar landing mission is race and gender, not talent, skill, or ability. While it will be a great thing when the first woman and black steps on the Moon, their skin color or sex should not be the reason they got to go. If it is, it will be incredibly insulting to their talent, skill, and ability. In fact, by making race or gender the only qualification that NASA cares about, it puts an asterisk on those qualifications. Forever people will wonder if these individuals really deserved the honor.

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September 16, 2022 Quick space links

4:02 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who trolls Twitter so I don’t have to.

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Today’s blacklisted American: USC professor suspended because one common Chinese word he was teaching sounded like the “N-word”

12:02 pm

Greg Patton, blacklisted for being a good teacher
Greg Patton, blacklisted by USC for being a good teacher

The modern dark age: Today’s blacklist story is in a sense a follow-up of my blacklist story from yesterday, as it clearly shows that the fraternities which broke free of supervision from the University of Southern California (USC) had good reason, and that (as I speculated) one of the main reasons they did so was because of USC’s woke and racist policies.

Today we discover that USC has forced a communications professor specializing in Asia, Greg Patton, to stop teaching because during one virtual class he was explaining the innocent reason why — to English speakers — the Chinese seem to say a racial slur repeatedly. Apparently, the Chinese phrase “那个” (nèi ge), which approximately means “that one” or more simply “um”, is used in Chinese as a filler word, similar to “um,” “ur” in English.

Patton was trying to explain this to his class during a virtual session. Below is embedded that specific moment that has now caused him so much trouble:
» Read more

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Pushback: Fraternities break free from USC’s draconian supervision

11:59 am

What USC wants its students to become
What USC wants its students to become

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Faced with the university’s arbitrary rule that shut them down “without explanation or cause,” ten of the fourteen fraternities that serve the students at the University of Southern California (USC) have broken their affiliation with the university and formed their own oversight body.

Not surprisingly, the university immediately implied that these fraternities were acting to encourage “sexual assaults,” “drug abuse,” “mental health abuse,” and “underage drinking,” and should be blacklisted by USC students. Officials from the new independent council immediately disputed these slanderous claims:

“I want to say unequivocally that no, we are not disaffiliating to dodge these social event policies that were put into place,” Harrison Murphy, a representative from the new council, told The Los Angeles Times.

“Murphy said members that separated from USC did so because they felt the university’s policies toward Greek organizations were unfair and flawed,” The Los Angeles Times reported. “For instance, he said, USC banned all social events from November 2021 through January 2022 even for fraternities that had done no wrong.”

A look at university’s long and complex policy [pdf] for supervising these fraternities makes if very clear why so many have told the university to go jump in a lake. The number of inspections, meetings, and consultations required, combined with a lot of odious paperwork, appears absurdly unreasonable and costly. The policies also apparently allowed the school to shut a fraternity down merely on hearsay accusations, based on incredibly vague standards. Note the highlighted words below:
» Read more

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Pushback: Teacher files class-action lawsuit against Texas A&M for favoring non-Asian minorities in hiring

11:44 am

Academia: dedicated to segregation!
Texas A&M: dedicated to the new segregation!

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Because Texas A&M university has specifically created hiring programs that favor non-Asian minorities, a University of Texas at Austin professor, Richard Lowery, has now filed a federal class-action lawsuit, demanding that this policy end immediately and that the court appoint a monitor to guarantee this.

You can read the lawsuit here [pdf]. It was prompted by a July 8, 2022 letter [pdf] sent out by the Office of Diversity at Texas A&M that outlined a new program, dubbed ACES Plus, which would specifically to pay certain minorities more, merely because of their race:
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Two students harassed and blackballed from a “sexual assault survivor’s club” because they were Jewish

12:33 pm

SUNY-New Paltz: supports blacklisting and anti-Semitism

Two female students attending the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, Cassandra Blotner and Ofek Preis, have now filed a federal civil rights complaint because of the vicious and hostile treatment that they were subjected to by “the sexual assault survivor’s club” at the college, simply because both were Jewish and supporters of Israel.

You can read their civil rights complaint here [pdf].

Denise Katz-Prober, a Brandeis Center lawyer who represents Blotner and Preis, said in an interview with The College Fix that the two women were treated horribly. “They essentially have been victimized three times,” she said. “They were victimized first when they were sexually assaulted, then by the community of students and support services they turned to, and then by the university when they reached out for help and the university failed to take steps to protect them.”

When the other members of the club, officially called New Paltz Accountability (NPA), learned that both women were ardent and public supporters of Israel, these club members began a campaign to harass and dox the women continuously.
» Read more

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SpaceX appeals FCC decision that cancelled Starlink subsidy

9:35 am

SpaceX’s Starlink division has now appealed the decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to cancel a nearly $900 million subsidy award given to companies providing broadband to rural regions.

Starlink’s appeal is complex, its arguments appearing to all center on what the company thinks was unfair practices by the FCC in cancelling the award.

Starlink told the FCC it was held to “standards that no bidder could meet today.”

“Changing the rules to undo a prior policy is grossly unfair after SpaceX has invested thousands of employee-hours and millions of dollars preparing to meet its [FCC program] obligations on the reasonable assumption that the Bureau would apply the Commission’s rules in an even-handed manner,” the company said.

That one FCC commissioner has publicly questioned the legality of the cancellation gives some weight to Starlink’ complaint.

In the end, this entire FCC program is a rip-off of the taxpayer. No companies, including SpaceX, should get this money. SpaceX is proving that it can get its constellation launched and operating profitably in rural areas, without a dime of federal money. Why should the rest of us help them do it?

Furthermore, the questionable nature of the FCC cancellation suggests the money from this program is possibly being awarded for political reasons, payoffs to companies that give the most campaign contributions to the right politicians. SpaceX doesn’t give much to any politicians, so it could be the cancellation was done as punishment for that lack.

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China’s Long March 7A launches communications satellite; dumps debris on Philippines

9:19 am

China today launched its Long March 7A rocket from its coastal Wenchang spaceport, successfully placing a communications satellite into orbit.

The coastal launch site meant that the rocket’s lower stages would not fall on China’s interior. Instead, it appears the drop zones were located in the Philippines.

The [Philippines Space] agency said it was able to verify the estimated drop zones of the rocket debris from a notice by the Civil Aviation Administration of China. “Two drop zones within the Philippine territory have been identified based on the NOTAM: Drop zone 1 is approximately 71 kilometers from Burgos, Ilocos Norte, while drop zone 2 is approximately 52 kilometers away from Sta. Ana, Cagayan,” PhilSA said in an advisory.

No word on whether this debris caused any damage. Regardless, China is continuing its policy, in violation of the Outer Space Treaty, of recklessly dumping rocket stages on others.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

41 SpaceX
37 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 56 to 37 in the national rankings, but is now tied with the entire world combined 56 to 56. This tie will likely not be long-lived. Though Firefly’s launch has been delayed until next week, SpaceX and Rocket Lab have launches scheduled for today and tomorrow, respectively.

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The Ukraine’s big victory this past week was no accident

9:01 am

The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022
The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of September 11, 2022
The Ukraine War as of September 11, 2022. Click for full map.

In the past week the Ukraine has scored a major victory in its effort to drive Russia from its territory, pushing the Russians back across a wide swath in the areas north and east of the city of Kharkiv. The two maps to the right, created by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and simplified, reduced, and annotated to post here, show these gains, with the top map from their August 30, 2022 analysis and the bottom from their September 11, 2022 update. Red or pink areas are regions controlled by the Russians. Blue areas are regions retaken by the Ukraine. Red-striped areas are regions captured by Russian in its 2014 invasion. Blue-striped areas are regions inside Russian-occupied territories that have seen strong partisan resistance.

The green lines on both maps mark rivers that act as important military barriers. The blue arrows on the lower map east of Kharkiv show the Ukrainian military push this past week, first to the east to the river Oskil. From there the forces moved north and south. To the south the Ukrainians used the Oskil river to their left as a wall protecting them from Russian forces. That same river acted to pin the Russians down in the south, forcing them in the past day to quickly retreat to the east across the one remaining bridge under their control, but in the process abandoning large amounts of armaments that the Ukrainians can now use.

In the south, the Dnipro River also acts as a barrier for the Russian occupying forces north of Kherson.
The Ukrainians have spent the last month or so aggressively attacking the handful of bridges that cross this river, thus restricting Russian transport to and from its northern forces. As the Ukrainians made these attacks, they were remarkably public about their plans to follow up with a major campaign in the south to retake Kherson and all territory north of the Dnipro.

In that public campaign lies the key to this whole counter-offensive. As ISW noted in its update of September 11, 2022:
» Read more

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Defense to help Commerce create its own ability to track orbital objects

12:40 pm

The Defense and Commerce departments yesterday signed an agreement where Defense will help Commerce create its own capability for tracking of all objects in orbit, from satellites to space junk.

The agreement, the Commerce Department said in a statement, defines how the two departments will work together to implement provisions of Space Policy Directive (SPD) 3 in 2018 that directed commerce to provide space situational awareness (SSA) and space traffic management (STM) services, such as conjunction warnings, currently provided by the U.S. military.

The result of this is that the federal government is now creating a second bureaucracy to do what the military has been doing quite capably for more than a half century. Commerce intends to obtain its data by awarding contracts to private companies, who will do the actual tracking. The irony is that it is very possible the military will eventually sign similar contracts with the same companies, thus paying them twice for the same service. Meanwhile, Washington has an excuse for hiring more people.

Even more ironic, this policy directive was issued during the Trump administration. It might have intended for Commerce to replace the military, but under the Biden administration the federal bureaucracy is being allowed to interpret the policy more broadly, thus allowing both agencies to do the work.

I also guarantee that the Republicans will almost certainly do nothing to change this, should they take over Congress. For the past thirty years this so-called party of small government has done nothing to earn that title. Instead, it has simply engineered the growth of government, in a more subtle and deliberate manner.

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FAA and NTSB sign deal dividing turf for investigating space accidents

11:46 am

FAA & NTSB agreement

Turf war! The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) yesterday signed an agreement that divides up the responsibilities for investigating accidents that occur in or by space entities.

You can read that agreement here [pdf]. A screen capture of the key clauses is to the right. Essentially, the NTSB will lead any investigation that either causes death or injury, or involves damage to property not related to the space operation itself, while the FAA will lead all other investigations.

The agreement also has a lot of clauses describing how the two agencies will work together in dividing up this turf before, during, and after investigations. Above all, the agreement now authorizes both agencies to “conduct its own analysis and determine its respective conclusions and recommendations in accordance with its authorities.”

The agreement stems from an effort by the NTSB to take over all space-related accident investigations it proposed in November 2021 that both the FAA and industry strongly opposed. This agreement however shows that the Biden administration ignored those objections in order to give the NTSB a wider range of power, while also giving bureaucrats in both agencies more power as well. Under this agreement, every space incident is now going to be investigated twice, with both the NTSB and FAA doing their own investigations.

Expect this agreement to be used by the Washington bureaucracy to slow or shut down innovation and new technology. The NTSB is designed to investigate incidents caused in the long established and robust airline industry, not developing cutting-edge experimental work. It will naturally act to discourage such experimental work.

Meanwhile, the FAA will chime in with its own investigation and analysis. The competing results will only cause confusion and disorder, thus further acting to discourage any new and risky innovations.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Fox blacklists news reporter for not getting jab

12:43 pm

Fox News: eager to blacklist

They’re coming for you next: Her story is not unique in this age of blacklisting and oppression, but it does reveal how bad really things are because the source of the blacklisting happens to be a news outlet that many naively consider against such things. Breanna Morello had moved from Florida to take a new job with Fox News, with the expectation that it would not only get her on-air reporting time but might lead to becoming “a producer for Tucker Carlson.”

After packing up my beautiful Florida apartment in late December, I was relocating back to New York City for work. My remote role as a Fox Business booking producer was going to become an in-person position starting on January 3, 2022.

The day I moved into my new apartment, I was completely caught off guard by an email that was forwarded to me by my Executive Producer. » Read more

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FCC proposes new regulation requiring satellites to be de-orbited five years after mission end

9:53 am

The FCC yesterday announced it is considering a new regulation that would require companies to de-orbit defunct satellites in low Earth orbit no more than five years after the satellite’s shut down.

The order, if adopted by commissioners, would require spacecraft that end their missions in or passing through LEO — defined as altitudes below 2,000 kilometers — dispose of their spacecraft through reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere as soon as practicable and no more than five years after the end of the mission. The rule would apply to satellites launched two years after the order is adopted, and include both U.S.-licensed satellites as well as those licensed by other jurisdictions but seeking U.S. market access.

According to the FCC press release [pdf], this new regulation will be discussed at the next public meeting of the commission on September 29, 2022.

Though in general this rule appears a good idea, there are several legitimate objections to it. NASA’s orbital debris office noted that this rule would only reduce space junk by 10%. Others questioned the FCC’s regulatory authority to do this at all, since its main statutory function is not the regulation satellite operations but the use of the frequencies those satellites use.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Modern Hollywood now celebrates McCarthyism and blacklisting

11:49 am

Hollywood, home of the modern McCarthyism

The modern dark age: Despite a history during the 1950s McCarthy era, when many of its most talented members were blacklisted because of their leftwing political beliefs, Hollywood today celebrates and encourages the blacklisting of conservative talent.

Consider the blacklisting described by comedian Adam Carolla and late night Fox show host Greg Gutfield during one recent podcast:

“Oh, we can’t get the guys who wrote on ‘Conan’ to come into the writers’ room because they’re scared of being blackballed. It drives me insane that they never stop complaining about McCarthyism and they’re more than happy to blackball anybody who crosses the line,” Carolla said.

“They’re the new McCarthy-ites, especially in this woke culture,” Gutfeld said. “I’m counting on this show succeeding without names and creating our own celebrities, which is actually what happens at Fox.”

Both men also described how, even if a writer or performer wanted to work for them, they often backed out because their agent or publicist told them not to, either because of the same fear or because of hostility to their politics.

In addition, Carolla in a different podcast described how this same blacklisting culture is now being used not just against conservatives, but against those who refuse to bow to the absurd COVID edicts.

The story of one actor, Clifton Duncan, is typical.
» Read more

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1-in-5 Democrats and 1-in-3 women Democrats think men can get pregnant

12:41 pm

The uncertainty of science? An online survey has found that large numbers of self-described Democrats now believe that it is possible for a man to give birth to babies.

The online survey, conducted by WPA Intelligence from August 22-25, found 22% of Democrats agreed with the statement, “Some men can get pregnant.” The percentage rose when only including women, and a whopping 36% of white, college-educated female Democrats concurred. [emphasis mine]

There is no uncertainty here. Men cannot get pregnant, and to believe it is possible tells us that you are either insane, or utterly disconnected from the real world.

The highlighted words underline the madness that is overtaking our intellectual upper classes. More than one-third of college educated Democrat women believe this. No wonder these same people wear masks, get triple and quadruple COVID jabs, and want any evidence that they are wrong censored with the speakers blackballed. They have become so divorced from reality that to even let a peep of it enter their brains will cause their heads to explode.

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Pushback: Libs of TikTok threatens Twitter with lawsuit if banning continues

12:25 pm

Twitter: Home for censorship
Twitter: Home for censorship.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: After getting suspended again by Twitter for merely proving that Boston Children’s Hospital was doing sex change operations on children, Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik had her lawyers send the social media company a letter threatening a lawsuit if the suspension was not lifted immediately.

As she notes,

Last week, I was wrongfully suspended from Twitter for seven days after I exposed a hospital that admitted to performing gender-affirming hysterectomies on healthy minors. I say “wrongfully” because the reason given for my suspension was hateful conduct. I did not engage in hateful conduct. I accurately reported the truth

In their letter Raichik’s lawyers made it clear [pdf] that nothing she did was hateful. If anything, her actions caused others on Twitter to spew hate at her. As the lawyers noted also,
» Read more

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The evidence continues to pile up: The government’s strongarm policies against COVID were utter failures

2:05 pm

The modern basis of medical research in the dark age
Health policy during the Wuhan panic

Since my last COVID update in June, the number of research papers has continued to show, with increasing force, the total and utter failure of every single one of the draconian edicts imposed on the pubic by leftist governments both in Democratic Party controlled states in the U.S. as well as worldwide.

Below are a small sampling of this accumulating research. Read it and weep.

My sorrow however comes from knowing that this knowledge was patently obvious from day one. This new research really isn’t new, it confirms what was well known, and was confirmed quickly as early as March 2020. However, when skeptics like myself, mostly on the right, desperately tried to stem the panic, it was all to no avail. The government’s edicts were always wrong, but no one wanted to listen. The data below merely confirms what all the data, before and during the Wuhan panic, was already telling us.
» Read more

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Inouye Solar Telescope begins science operations

10:07 am

The National Science Foundation yesterday announced the inauguration of science operations of the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii.

The sample first images provided at the link are excellent, but rather than show this telescope’s abilities, they instead illustrate the absurdity of spending millions to build a ground-based telescope. None compare with the spectacular high resolution solar images being produced today from the myriad of solar telescopes in space.

Moreover, the history of this telescope tells us much about the bankrupt nature of all modern government projects:

Over 25 years ago, the NSF invested in creating a world-leading, ground-based solar observatory to confront the most pressing questions in solar physics and space weather events that impact Earth. This vision, executed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) through the NSF’s National Solar Observatory (NSO), was realized during the formal inauguration of the Inouye Solar Telescope. [emphasis mine]

It took our modern incompetent federal government a quarter century to build this single telescope. Compare that with the construction of the solar telescopes it is replacing. They were conceived, designed, and built in much less than a decade back in the early 1960s. And cost less too.

The press release at the link also spends a lot of space touting “diversity” and “Native Hawaiian” cultural needs, which really have nothing to do with the study of the Sun. That focus tells us how misguided our government has become, and how it is using its coercive power to drag us all along down that foolish path towards hell.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Fire chief fired for attending a Christian-affiliated leadership conference

1:02 pm

Christians banned from Stockton's government

They’re coming for you next: Ron Hittle, who had served as a firefighter in Stockton, California, for more than two decades and was for five years its fire chief, was fired in 2010 because he had had the nerve to attend a leadership conference that happened to be affiliated with the Christian religion.

More than a decade ago, the Deputy City Manager asked Chief Hittle to attend leadership training. Chief Hittle learned about the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit from a business magazine, and he decided to attend because it was a renowned leadership seminar that featured a “pop up business school” with stellar speakers from various backgrounds including his own Christian worldview. Chief Hittle invited three of his staff members who shared his Christian faith to join him, and he put his attendance on the public city calendar so his supervisors would be aware. The firefighters paid for the two-day seminar with their own funds.

But the same supervisor who asked Chief Hittle to attend leadership training told him it was unacceptable that he attended a Christian-affiliated seminar.
» Read more

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Sunspot update: Solar activity continues to exceed sunspot predictions

3:50 pm

It is the beginning of September and time to post another update on the Sun’s ongoing solar cycle. Below is NOAA’s monthly graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere, with the activity in August now added. I have also added some additional details to the graph to give the numbers a larger context.

Though sunspot activity dropped in August it remained significantly above the predictions of the panel of government solar scientists put together by NOAA. The predicted sunspot number for August, as indicated by the red curve, was supposed to be about 48. The actual number was 75.

» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Google scholarship sets racist quotas favoring minorities

12:07 pm

Google: dedicated to segregation!
Google: dedicated to the new segregation!

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Tech giant Google has established a discriminatory fellowship program that major universities can participate in that specifically favors some races while barring others.

The Google Ph.D. Fellowship, which gives promising computer scientists nearly $100,000, allows each participating university—a group that includes most elite schools—to nominate four Ph.D. students annually. “If a university chooses to nominate more than two students,” Google says, “the third and fourth nominees must self-identify as a woman, Black / African descent, Hispanic / Latino / Latinx, Indigenous, and/or a person with a disability.”

So no one misunderstands Google’s very specific discriminatory intent, here is the exact quote from its FAQ about the fellowship program:
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Pfizer creates segregated program that purposely excludes non-minorities

12:51 pm

Pfizer: dedicated to segregation!
Pfizer: dedicated to the new segregation!

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” The giant pharmaceutical company Pfizer is now offering a segregated program, dubbed the Breakthrough Fellowship Program (BFP), designed to train the company’s future management, with participation limited exclusively to blacks, hispanics, and American Indians. Whites and others are barred.

From the company’s FAQ [pdf] describing the program:

This program is designed to enhance our pipeline of diverse talent of leaders. The BFP, first of its kind will work to advance students and early career colleagues of Black/African American, Latino/Hispanic and Native American descent with a goal of developing 100 fellows by 2025. One of Pfizer’s Bold Moves is to make Pfizer an amazing workplace for all and we are committed to increasing diversity by fostering a more inclusive workplace. Every Pfizer ‘Breakthrough’ program is designed to cultivate a pipeline of diverse talent. Everything we do is driven by our purpose.

» Read more

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The Ukrainian War: After Six Months

1:11 pm

The Ukraine War as of May 5, 2022
The Ukraine War as of June 6, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022
The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022. Click for full map.

It is now more than three months since my June update on the war in the Ukraine. It is also six months since Russia first invaded.

No new updates were necessary because little had changed, as indicated by the two maps to the right, adapted from maps created by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). For their full interactive version go here.

On both maps red indicates territory controlled by Russia, light pink areas that Russia only tentatively controlled, light blue areas recovered by the Ukraine from Russia, and blue-striped areas regions of documented Ukrainian resistance within Russian-controlled territories. The red-striped regions were regions grabbed by Russia during its 2014 invasion.

The top map is from ISW’s June 6th assessment. The bottom map comes from its August 28th assessment.

Though I don’t solely rely on ISW for information (it tends to favor the Ukraine in most of its analysis), its maps have repeatedly appeared reliable and accurate, which is why I use them here.

As you can see, in three months not much has changed. Russia continues to grind away in the middle regions, gaining territory slowly but steadily. The Ukraine meanwhile has either stopped any further Russian advance in the north or south, or has chipped away slightly at Russian holdings in these regions.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Post Office forces Christian worker to quit rather than work on Sunday

11:57 am

Gerald Groff, blacklisted by the post office
Gerald Groff, blacklisted by the post office

They’re coming for you next: Because the U.S. Post Office refused to honor mailman Gerald Groff’s desire to observe the Christian Sabbath of Sunday, he was forced to quit, even though numerous civil rights laws were specifically written to require businesses and government agencies like the post office to accommodate his religious beliefs.

He began his career with the USPS in 2012 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, as a mail carrier. When the postal service began delivering packages on Sundays for Amazon, Gerald asked for a religious accommodation, which is protected under federal law. The postmaster granted his request, and as part of the accommodation, Gerald agreed to work extra shifts during the week. He even switched posts and accepted a lower position in order to be able to abide by his beliefs.

After initially honoring Gerald’s accommodation, the USPS changed position and started scheduling him to work Sundays. Being forced to choose between his faith and his job, Gerald sued the USPS for trampling on his First Amendment rights and violating federal law.

» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Democrat politicians demand the blackballing of anyone who votes Republican

1:11 pm

Orwell's 1984: The instruction manual of the Democratic Party
The instruction manual of the Democratic Party

Soon after Joe Biden was confirmed by Congress as the next president of the United States, I noted how the Democratic Party appeared eager to assembly a new blacklist, aimed at isolating and destroying anyone who ever dared to challenge or even disagree with them. As I wrote then,

Oh boy, it’s the 1950s again and its time for witchhunts from Congress and big corporations.

Unlike the 1950s, however, the question will not be whether you have ever been a member of the Communist Party. No, now the question will be much more effective and to the point. It will be “Have you ever been conservative or a member of the Republican Party?”

Led by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), Democrats in the House were then talking about compiling a list of all Trump Republicans in the media so that Congress could more easily censor and blacklist them.

While that specific effort never came to fruition, for the next two years the Democrats in power — in Congress, in state houses, in academia, in social media, in entertainment, and in corporations — have repeatedly confirmed this is their goal. Dare to disagree with them about anything, from masks to COVID shots to any of their policy decisions and they will do whatever they can to destroy you.

And yet, the leadership of the Democratic Party during this new blacklisting rage has tried to be coy about their repressive effort, either by denying this effort even exists or trying to excuse it by further slandering their opponents as “racists”, “insurrectionists,” or “domestic terrorists.”

In the past week that coyness vanished. Three different very powerful Democrat politicians said the quiet part out loud: We consider all Republicans evil, merely because they oppose us!

First, right after he had won the Democratic Party’s primary in Florida to run for governor against Ron DeSantis, Charlie Crist on August 24, 2022 made it clear what he thought of anyone who might consider voting for DeSantis:
» Read more

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Federal court rejects lawsuit by Dish/Viasat against Starlink

9:11 am

A U.S. appeals court has rejected a lawsuit by Starlink competitors Dish and Viasat that had claimed a plan by SpaceX to deploy some satellites in a lower orbit would have “potential environmental harms when satellites are taken out of orbit; light pollution that alters the night sky; orbital debris; collision risks that may affect Viasat; and because ‘Viasat will suffer unwarranted competitive injury.'”

This decision was the second time the courts have rejected this lawsuit, which by Viasat’s own words above is expressly designed mostly to block a competitor, not protect the environment or reduce space junk.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Blacklisting is not enough, leftists now aim to get conservatives killed by police

11:48 am

The coming genocide
The left proves it really does want to round up its enemies and kill them

They’re coming for you next: Twice in the past two days Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) has been swatted, with the police coming to her house armed and ready to fire because they had received a false report saying that a shooting had occurred there and that the situation was dangerous.

Two police officers rushed to Greene’s home in Rome, Ga., in response to a call they received at 2:53 a.m. The call, according to the Rome Police Department, was about “a male possibly shooting his family members and then himself.”

MSN reported that “the suspect, who called through an internet chat that appeared to be a suicide crisis line, falsely told police responders that a man ‘came out as trans-gender and claimed they shot the family’ at Greene’s address, the report said.” The caller gave his name as Wayne Greene and told police on the call: “If anyone tried to stop me from shooting myself, I will shoot them.” He also warned cops that “they would be waiting for us.”

At the house, there was, of course, no Wayne Greene. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene once again met the police officers at the front door, as she did in the early hours of Wednesday morning. They told her about the call and, according to the Rome Police Department, “confirmed this was a second false report.” The report added that the call can’t be traced, “due to the person(s) using a VPN.”

Called swatting, such false reports are expressly designed to harass the victim, and even get them killed should the police over-react and fire at the house out of fear of the non-existent gunman.

That this happened twice in two nights strongly suggests the caller truly wants this murder to happen. The caller even admitted to as much in a later recorded call to the police, in which the caller also admitted the motive was for political reasons. Greene’s political positions were unacceptable, and thus she must be removed:
» Read more

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FCC commissioner questions legality of FCC cancellation of SpaceX’s $900 million subsidy

9:15 am

On August 24th one of the four FCC commissioners, Brendan Carr, questioned the legality of FCC’s decision on August 10th to cancel the $900 million subsidy it had awarded SpaceX for providing internet capability to rural communities using Starlink.

The Federal Communications Commission denied Starlink nearly $900 million in rural broadband subsidies “without legal justification,” one of the regulator’s four commissioners said Aug. 24.

While the FCC was obligated to review subsidies provisionally awarded for SpaceX’s broadband service in December 2020, Commissioner Brendan Carr said the agency exceeded “the scope of that authority” when it rejected them nearly two years later.

…Carr said he was surprised to learn about the decision from a press release while he was on a work trip to Alaska, adding that it was made without a vote or authorization from the FCC’s Commissioners. [emphasis mine]

Carr also noted that the reasoning used by the FCC in its cancellation notice made no sense. For example, the FCC had referenced the cost SpaceX charges customers for buying the Starlink terminal, $599, in justifying the cancellation. Carr noted that “the FCC is not authorized to deny winning RDOF bids based on the price of equipment, ‘let alone based on an arbitrary one selectively applied to one winner.'”

When the cancellation was announced, I wrote that my first instinct was that it was solely political in nature, and that it stemmed from the growing animus in the federal bureaucracy and in the Biden administration to Elon Musk, combined with a lobbying effort by SpaceX’s competitors against Starlink. I think Carr’s statements this week confirm my instincts entirely. The cancellation was purely political.

Nonetheless, I think it a good thing the FCC cancelled this subsidy, which is really nothing more than welfare for big corporations. SpaceX doesn’t need it. The federal government doesn’t have the money. And the program itself is now clearly corrupt. The taxpayer would be better off if the entire subsidy program was shut down.

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Pushback? BLM murderer of retired black St. Louis police captain found guilty

12:09 pm

David Dorn: Some justice at last
David Dorn: Some justice at last

Two years after the BLM riots of 2020, the murderer of retired St. Louis police captain David Dorn has been found guilty.

A jury has convicted Stephan Cannon in the death of retired St. Louis police captain David Dorn in June 2020.

Cannon was found guilty Wednesday on charges of first-degree murder, first-degree robbery, first-degree burglary, and three counts of armed criminal action. He is scheduled to be sentenced in the case on the morning of September 13.

Dorn had been killed by Cannon because Dorn had responded to a burglary alarm during those BLM riots and was trying to prevent the looting of a friend’s pawn shop. He was the ultimate blacklisted American, murdered because he stood for law, justice, and civilized behavior.

Dorn’s widow, Ann Dorn, also a retired St. Louis police officer, made it very clear in an op-ed shortly thereafter who she really blames for her husband’s death.
» Read more

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There are no permanent political victories

12:43 pm

The fight for liberty never ends
The fight for liberty never ends

There has been much celebration in conservative circles today because of the victories in Florida yesterday in almost every school board election, sweeping leftists and Democrats from power.

Many of the winning candidates have been endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC, an organization that has been instrumental in flipping school boards from liberal to conservative across the country.

“We saw massive election victories all throughout the state of Florida tonight,” 1776 Project PAC founder Ryan Girdusky told Breitbart News Tuesday. “It shows the desire of parents and residents across the country for some normalcy in our education system, and that means pushing against transgender ideology, critical race theory, critical gender ideology, and equity which destroys merit in education.”

“The 1776 Project PAC hopes to take these successes across the country,” he said.

The sense I get, similar to the same sense I got when the Republicans finally regained control of the House of Representatives in 1994 — after decades of uninterrupted Democratic Party rule — is the false belief that yesterday’s victories at these school boards puts an end to bad and oppressive COVID policies and the teaching of the queer agenda and the racist and Marxist program dubbed critical race theory.

And as happened after 1994, the victories yesterday do no such thing. » Read more

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