Tag: oppression

Today’s blacklisted American: Woman denied kidney transplant in Colorado because she is unvaccinated

1:10 pm

The unvaccinated denied healthcare in Colorado
No healthcare in Colorado permitted for the unvaccinated. Let them die!

Persecution is now cool! A woman who has stage 5 renal failure was suddenly told by UCHealth (University of Colorado Health) — just before her kidney transplant operation — that she was banned from the hospital because both she and her donor are unvaccinated.

“Here I am, willing to be a direct donor to her. It does not affect any other patient on the transplant list,” Jaimee Fougner, Leilani Lutali’s kidney donor, told CBS4. “How can I sit here and allow them to murder my friend when I’ve got a perfectly good kidney and can save her life?”

Lutali said she received a letter from Colorado health system UCHealth at the end of September explaining that she and Fougner have 30 days to begin the vaccine process. They would be removed from the kidney transplant list if they refuse the shots. “I said I’ll sign a medical waiver. I have to sign a waiver anyway for the transplant itself, releasing them from anything that could possibly go wrong,” said Lutali. “It’s surgery, it’s invasive. I sign a waiver for my life. I’m not sure why I can’t sign a waiver for the COVID shot.”

According the article, when they first scheduled the surgery in August they were told by the hospital that being unvaccinated was not a problem. This changed suddenly in late September, at the last moment.
» Read more

11 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Football scout fired for refusing to get vaccinated

12:45 pm

Coming to your town in America soon!
Death camps are coming for the unclean unvaccinated.

They’re coming for you next: The Atlanta Falcons football team has fired one its scouts, Rodrik David, simply because he, like many others, had decided that it made more sense for him to not get vaccinated against COVID.

The owner of the company had issued a policy requiring all employees, both full- and part-time, to be vaccinated. David refused, for reasons that were his own.

As noted at this report, David was good at his job, and had been working for the Falcons for the past five years.

This is his fifth season with the Falcons and his second as an area scout. He joined the club as a scouting intern during training camp, prior to the 2015 season, and was hired as a scouting assistant in February of 2016. He was promoted to pro scout prior to the 2017 season.

David was a riser.

» Read more

5 comments

Russia imposes new restrictions on any reporting of Roscosmos

9:08 am

According to this report of today’s launch by Russia of a movie crew to ISS, Putin’s government has just passed new restrictions on reporting of its space effort by Russian citizens, either in or out of Russia.

The new regulations, which took effect on September 29, 2021, essentially prohibit Russians from reporting on the Russian space program outside of Russia. Violators of these regulations will be classified as “foreign agents” — which would create numerous legal issues for Russian citizens.

Specifically, the new regulations target the field of military and technical activities that are not related to or connected in any way with state secrets but which, with vague language, “can be used against Russia.” Most of the activities on the newly released list by the FSB specifically focus on Roscosmos. Prohibited topics of reporting regarding Roscosmos now include information on investigations conducted by the agency, the organization’s financials, condition of rockets and ground support equipment, development plans for Roscosmos vehicles, Roscosmos’ cooperation with other nations for space activities, and new technologies.

These rules essentially forbid Russian citizens from publishing almost anything that Roscosmos itself does not publish. If they do so without permission from outside the country, returning to Russia will become very problematic.

6 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Chief editor on Oklahoma State U’s student newspaper forced to resign for holding a dissenting opinion

10:51 am

The Bill of Rights cancelled at Oklahoma State University
No freedom of speech allowed at
Oklahoma State University.

The new dark age of silencing: Maddison Farris, the editor-in-chief for Oklahoma State U’s student newspaper The O’Colly was forced to resign her position after she wrote an op-ed opposing any mask mandate on campus and her fellow editors ganged up on her, demanding she leave.

Two days after publication the newspaper’s editorial board issued “a correction”, essentially condemning Farris’s op-ed. They followed this up two days later with a meeting where they demanded Farris resign.

Farris submitted a letter of “forced resignation,” explaining that she had been called into a September 13 meeting with the rest of the editors and pressed into leaving her post.

Farris told Campus Reform that although most students at Oklahoma State support free speech, but there is a “portion of students who value free speech until it makes them uncomfortable.”

More details here. It appears Farris wrote her op-ed as a result of being forced to leave a classroom because she would not wear a mask, even though the law apparently allows her to do so.
» Read more

4 comments

The Arizona election audit found significant issues that could easily have changed the final result

12:22 pm

Maricopa County election audit
Click for full graph.

Now that the election audit of the biggest county in Arizona is complete and released, it is necessary to look at what it found. This article does a nice job of summarizing the audit’s conclusions, which in total make it very clear that a lot of corruption and incompetence occurred in the 2020 election in Maricopa County, some of it possibly bordering on outright election fraud.

The graph to the right, from the audit, illustrates this. In twenty-two different categories the audit found votes that should not have been counted because they were illegal or invalid in some manner. Of those, seven categories described illegal or invalid votes totaling more than 53,000 votes, five times the 10,457 vote margin of Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

Does this meant Trump won Arizona? Who knows? The audit did not determine the number of illegal or invalid votes that went to either candidate. What it did find, however, is that the entire voting system is corrupted and untrustworthy, and must be fixed.

The audit results have also revealed why the election officials in Maricopa County have been fighting this audit from day one. They clearly knew the election system was untrustworthy, and wanted to hide this fact, either to protect themselves from prosecution or to maintain their ability to defraud the voters.

5 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Louisiana health company to punish employees with unvaccinated spouses

11:27 am

Coming to your town in America soon!
Death camps are coming for the unclean unvaccinated.

They’re coming for you next: A Louisiana hospital system, Ochsner Health Systems, has informed its employees that they will be fined $100 per salary check for having an unvaccinated spouse on their health plan.

From the memo sent to all employees:

New in 2022: Ochsner is implementing a new Spousal COVId Vaccine Fee as part of its 2022 medical plan premiums. This means, if a spouse/domestic partner is covered by one of our medical plans in 2022 and unvaccinated against COVID-19, a $100-per-pay-period fee will apply.

The chutzpah and irrationality of this policy is really beyond words. » Read more

68 comments

Biden signs budget continuing resolution, preventing shutdown

9:00 am

At the very last second Congress and President Biden passed and signed another budget continuing resolution that will keep the federal government operating till December and thus preventing another shutdown.

From NASA’s narrow perspective, the action means that the asteroid mission Lucy will likely launch in October as planned. From the perspective of the nation, this last second action merely illustrates the overall failure of the federal government and the elected officials who have been tasked to run it. They are all incompetent, and wouldn’t last five seconds in a real job outside the government.

That the voters keep re-electing them also speaks poorly of America today. We all should be ashamed.

One comment

Dennis Praeger asks: Do you know anyone whom you could trust to hide you from the Nazis?

9:24 pm

Link here. The essay begins with something that is always in the back of the mind of every Jew since the day the Romans kicked our ancestors out of Israel:

There is something about most Jews that few non-Jews know: We Jews often ask ourselves if a non-Jew in our lives would hide us in the event of a Nazi-like outbreak.

I don’t know if young Jews think about this, but nearly all Jews who grew up in the decades following the Holocaust often wondered: Would this non-Jew hide me?

If you are Jewish and have been educated at all about your people’s history, you can’t help thinking about this. It is a variation of an essay I wrote back in January, when it was clear the intolerant and power-hungry Democratic Party was going to take power. At that time I said that America was becoming like Soviet Russia, where you chose your friends very carefully because if you didn’t, you might find yourself betrayed and reported to the secret police.

My example was generic, applying to everyone under the thumb of a dictatorship. Praeger gives a more nuanced example, from the Jewish perspective where repeatedly the larger society decided all Jews must be killed. In both cases, you no longer can be at ease with everyone you meet. You need to look at each new acquaintance in very stark and cold terms. And as Praeger notes, you need to ask: Would this person turn me over to the Gestapo to save their own lives, or would they do the righteous thing, no matter the risk, and protect me?

These are questions Americans now unfortunately have to think about. More significantly, we are at a moment where we can not only think them, but we can ask them aloud, to people’s faces. We can say to people we know: Would you save me from the Nazis? Or would you hide in fear, or turn me in? By asking that bluntly we might finally get some of the “go-along-to-get-along” types to finally wake up.

Read Praeger’s essay. He goes into great detail describing the kind of people who are more likely to protect the innocent from evil, no matter the risk. You might be surprised by what he says.

The question you next have to ask: Does this describe myself?

28 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Private school threatened with shut down by Colorado

1:05 pm

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Still asleep, and tragically, too many refuse to wake up.

They’re coming for you next: A private Christian school in Loveland, Colorado, is planning to sue the local health department because it demanded their students wear masks or else the school would be shut down.

Parents at Resurrection Christian School in Loveland, Colorado, were told on Sept. 15 that all persons entering school buildings the next day must wear a mask, by order of the Larimer County Health Department, or their school would be closed. The order allowed for medical exemptions but made no distinction in regards to vaccination status or acquired immunity.

The same evening, school Superintendent Jerry Eshleman vowed in a video message to parents and staff to fight the health department’s edict in court. He urged parents to comply with the public health order for the time being, so that the students wouldn’t have their school year disrupted by a forced school closure while the case was being fought.

Based on the article, it appears that many parents are trying to get medical exemptions for their children, with some succeeding.

Regardless, forcing kids to put on masks is the height of stupidity. » Read more

12 comments

Former Blue Origin employee blasts company for sexism and safety issues

12:04 pm

Food fight! While the past two days have been filled with silly back-and-forth barbs between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, none of which really matters (which is why I haven’t posted anything about it here), today came the publication of a long scree by a former Blue Origin employee blasting the company for sexism and safety issues.

The rant by Alexandra Abrams, former head of Blue Origin Employee Communications, claims it is co-signed by twenty other present and former Blue Origin employees, but provides no information as who those individuals are. The accusations themselves are all hearsay, since Abrams simply recounts experiences of unnamed others, without any documentation.

Could there be management problems at Blue Origin? Certainly. The real evidence in the past five years suggests that CEO Bob Smith has not done well to get the company off the ground. Not only has Blue Origin accomplished little under his tenure, employees are apparently not happy there, with many fleeing the company.

Abrams’ rant however comes off more like she is a disgruntled former employee who was let go because she was pushing social justice issues rather than focusing on getting her job done. Her use of worn leftist phrases like “climate justice” and “gender gaps” suggests this strongly. The response from Blue Origin to her essay reinforces that impression, noting that she was fired for doing things that could have gotten Blue Origin shut down by the federal government:

Ms. Abrams was dismissed for cause two years ago after repeated warnings for issues involving federal export control regulations.

If so, and Blue Origin would not say this publicly if it wasn’t true, Abrams misconduct could have been very serious indeed. Moreover, as noted at this last link, she was the head of the company’s employee communications department, a division that shouldn’t really be involved in such issues anyway.

This whole kerfuffle reminds me of a similar affair at SpaceX several years ago. A disgruntled former employee made all sorts of similar charges, sued, and lost. I expect a similar result here.

Both companies are in the business of building rockets. Their goal is not “gender equality” or “climate justice”. If that becomes any employee’s first priority, as it appears might have been the case with Abrams, that employee has got to be culled from the company, as that person will only become a cancer that will destroy what everyone else there is trying to accomplish.

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FAA extends comment period for SpaceX Starship/Superheavy environmental reassessment

11:11 am

Capitalism in space: The FAA today announced that it has extended the comment period for its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s operations at Boca Chica, Texas two weeks until November 1st.

From the email announcement:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has received requests for an extension of the public comment period for the Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas (Draft PEA). In consideration of these requests, the FAA is extending the public comment period.

The agency has also changed the dates for the two public hearings it will hold to October 18 and October 20. It will announce more information on those hearings on October 15th.

5 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Suspended for refusing to exempt black students from finals, UCLA professor sues

11:49 am

King's dream banned at UCLA
King’s dream of equal treatment for all
called racist at UCLA

They’re coming for you next: Gordon Klein, an accounting professor at UCLA for 39 years, has sued that university’s Anderson School of Management and its administrators for suspending him for three weeks in June because he refused to favor black students in grading or exempt them from final exams.

Prof. Klein’s alleged offense was that he insisted on treating black students equally. He refused a request by a white student to allow black students preferential treatment on final exams. Because such a racial preference would violate UCLA’s anti-discrimination policies (and maybe even the law), Klein refused. Students then launched a defamatory campaign against Prof. Klein, and the cowards who run UCLA’s Anderson School capitulated, denouncing and suspending Klein. He eventually was reinstated — because he did absolutely nothing wrong — but not before his reputation and career were severely damaged.

..Prof. Klein has just filed a lawsuit in California state court, and among the things he wants, is for UCLA administrators to be held personally liable. [emphasis mine]

During his suspension Klein was also threatened with violence, requiring an increased police presence at his home to protect him.
» Read more

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Government shutdown threatens Lucy asteroid mission

9:00 am

Government marches on! The possibility that the federal government could shut down because of the inability of Congress and the Biden administration to pass a funding bill or raise the debt limit now threatens the launch of the Lucy mission to the asteroid belt.

If no budget agreement is reached the government will shut down on October 1st. If the debt limit isn’t raised that shutdown could follow soon thereafter, even if a budget is passed.

The launch window for the mission is from October 16 to November 7, 2021. If the spacecraft does not launch in that window the science team says it will likely require a major rethinking of the entire project, as it will be difficult to find another opportunity to visit the same set of asteroids.

Right now the chances of a shutdown are very high, as the Democrats are pushing big spending bills without any negotiations with the Republicans. In answer, the Republican caucus has said that none of its members will support raising the debt limit. Without the latter any passed spending bill will soon be moot, as the debt limit will soon be reached, blocking further government spending.

Though I personally would be very saddened if Lucy was prevented from launching, that loss would be well compensated for by having the federal government out of business. The evil and corruption promoted by it far outweighs the good work done by several minor space missions.

8 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: New cancel culture database lists more than 1,400 examples of censorship and blacklisting in academia

1:20 pm

Orwell's 1984
The instruction manual of today’s academia.

The new dark age of silencing: The news outlet The College Fix today released a new database it calls the Campus Cancel Culture Database, listing all the stories that it has covered in the past decade of blacklisting and censorship on college campuses.

To see the complete list, go here. They plan to update it regularly. As Jennifer Kabbany, editor of The College Fix writes,

At some point, I lost count of how many incidents [of blacklisting] we’ve documented. Earlier this year, however, we began to compile them systematically — and today The College Fix releases the Campus Cancel Culture Database. The detailed repository of information lists more than 650 successful cancellations. They include everything from statues hauled off campuses to renamed buildings to memory-holed mascots. The database also cites more than 750 attempted cancellations.

We define cancel culture as any effort by people or groups to identify someone or something as offensive or unacceptable and seek in some way to censor or punish the transgressor or item.

It includes professors who have been suspended or lost their jobs for saying or researching something unpopular, student groups attacked or barred for their conservative, pro-life or libertarian views, and guest speakers shouted down or disinvited.

Overall, the database documents the terrible state of academic thought in the United States. Across the country college administrators, teachers, and students have teamed up to silence any ideas or opinions they do not like, with the bulk of the attacks going against conservatives and the traditions and concepts of western civilization. Not only have people been fired and blackballed, even discussing openly the history of our nation has become verboten. You must either condemn the American dream as racist white supremacy, or you must shut up.
» Read more

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China’s Long March 3B successfully launches satellite, which then fails

9:58 am

China’s Long March 3B rocket successfully launched a military satellite yesterday, though the satellite then had an undisclosed issue which caused it to fail.

Though the satellite failed to function immediately after launch, it appears the launch itself was successful, which based on my criteria means this launch is counted in China’s 2021 launch totals. The leaders in the 2021 launch race are thus:

34 China
23 SpaceX
15 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. still leads China 35 to 34 in the national rankings.

11 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Unvaccinated students at Penn State banned from remote classes

12:23 pm

Coming to your town in America soon!
Rounding up the unclean unvaccinated: It is coming.

They’re coming for you next: Unvaccinated students at Penn State who fail to get a COVID test for three weeks in a row are now banned from the school, including a ban from even attending remote classes.

At Penn State University, 117 students have been placed on interim suspension for failure to comply with the university’s weekly COVID-19 testing requirement.

Students at University Park who are subject to required weekly COVID-19 testing and who have missed at least three weeks of testing have been notified by Penn State that they are out of compliance with the university’s health and safety policies and have been placed on interim suspension through the Office of Student Conduct, a statement from Penn State said.

Students on interim suspension may not participate in classes, in-person or remotely; are not allowed on university property; and may not attend any Penn State-sponsored events, programs, and activities, including football games. On-campus students on interim suspension also are temporarily removed from their residence halls.

The highlighted word prove the insanity and irrationality of this policy. » Read more

23 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Garden hoes banned by Facebook!

12:11 pm

Garden hoes banned by Facebook!
According to Facebook, a garden hoe apparently represents evil
and the worst of white supremacy.

Today’s blacklisted American, garden hoes, is meant more to illustrate the utter brainlessness of the blacklist culture, and why every intelligent American should refuse to bow to it in any way.

It appears that Facebook has been repeatedly flagging and then blocking posts on a gardening group because those gardeners periodically make reference to the gardening tool called a “hoe.”

A group called WNY Gardeners has been repeatedly flagged by the social network for “violating community standards,” when its more than 7,500 members discussed the long-handled bladed implement, which is spelled with an “e,” unlike the offensive term.

When one member commented “Push pull hoe!” on a post about preferred weeding tools, Facebook sent a notification that read, “We reviewed this comment and found it goes against our standards for harassment and bullying,” a moderator said.

“And so I contacted Facebook, which was useless. How do you do that?,” Elizabeth Licata said. “You know, I said this is a gardening group, a hoe is gardening tool.”

Nor has this been Facebook’s only “hoe” error. It had also been routinely flagging posts that referred to the English seaside community of Plymouth Hoe.

Facebook of course never responded to gardening group when they complained, as is usual for these inhumane big tech companies. However, when this story began appearing in the press, it told the AP that it was sorry about it, had corrected the algorithms that had caused the problems, and had assigned a real human to monitor the gardening group to make sure it is not censored for ordinary gardening discussions.

Hah! That didn’t work. The gardeners soon found themselves censored for writing about the various techniques they use for battling the Japanese beetle, a destructive pest to “flowers, trees and shrubs, fruits and vegetables, field crops and turf.” When on commenter suggested that gardeners should “Kill them all. Drown them in soapy water,” and “Japanese beetles are jerks,” the posts were blocked by Facebook.

It seems Facebook employees really don’t know how to read. Instead, they work eagerly to silence anyone for any statement they think should be silenced, without thought.

Throwing away the Kerwood Derby

All this reminds me of the short clip below from the early 1960s cartoon show, Rocky & Bullwinkle.
» Read more

31 comments

News flash! Union lobbyists wants to influence Biden against non-union SpaceX

9:41 am

In the past two days probably a dozen of my readers have sent me a link to this story at the Washington Examiner,
The Anti-SpaceX lobbying campaign casts new light on Elon Musk’s Biden beef.

The story reveals some private emails between a union lobbyist and a vice president at ULA, outlining their mutual effort to discredit Elon Musk and SpaceX because of its long term success in preventing its workforce from unionizing.

Everyone who has sent me this story somehow thinks it reveals a major breaking story.

I think this story is a tempest in a teapot. It reveals nothing newsworthy. All it shows is that a union lobbyist is trying to influence the Biden administration against SpaceX, a decidedly non-union company. Why should these actions surprise anyone? Unions always go after non-union companies, and they often do it by exerting their political clout.

Nor should be we surprised that one of SpaceX’s biggest competitors is partnering with the union in this effort. There is nothing newsworthy about this. Competitors compete, and that competition can sometimes be quite cut throat.

Furthermore, nothing in these emails appears illegal. The lobbyist’s claims against SpaceX are spurious and shallow, but so what? Unions have the right to lobby politicians, and they have the freedom to make whatever arguments they want, even if those arguments are silly or false.

Finally, to think it is a news story that Biden might be receptive to union lobbyists is kind of silly. Biden is a modern Democrat. In almost all matters he is going to genuflect to the unions. I don’t need to read the private emails of a union lobbyist to find this out.

However, the evidence in the past ten months shows that this lobbying effort has so far been incredibly ineffective. While I certainly do not trust the Democrats running the Biden administration, and fully expect them to take actions eventually to squelch private enterprise, this White House’s actions regarding space has so far generally continued the capitalist policies begun during the Trump administration. Note too that these are the same policies first begun at the end of the Bush Jr. administration, and encouraged strongly throughout the Obama administration. It certainly appears that — in space at least — the Democrats are as much for capitalism as the Republicans.

And these emails have apparently done nothing to change that. Thus, there is no news here.

16 comments

Today’s blacklisted Americans: Republicans blacklisted 53 to 1 over Democrats on social media

12:05 pm

Silenced by Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Google
Republicans: Routinely silenced by Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: According to a review of the actions of the big social media companies against politicians, the Media Research Center has found that Republicans are censored at a rate 53 times more than Democrats on social media.

The attacks on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Instagram, and others have been against both standing Republican members of Congress as well as Republican candidates running for office, with further evidence showing that Facebook very specifically has been favoring Democratic incumbents.

Nor have the top managers and owners of these social media companies been able to counter this data.
» Read more

6 comments

Wuhan panic continues to shut down India’s space agency

9:08 am

While most private companies and many nations, such as China and Russia, have been launching continuously since the advent of the coronavirus panic last year, India’s space agency ISRO continues to be shut down, completing few launches with a story today suggesting that the three remaining planned launches for 2021 will likely be delayed until next year.

There have only been two launches this year – the purely commercial PSLV C-51 launch in February carrying Brazil’s earth observation satellite Amazonia-1 and the GSLV-F10 mission in August carrying an Indian earth observation satellite EOS-03 that failed.

To be sure, the space agency has plans for three more missions before the end of the year, including the first development flight of the SSLV [Small Satellite Launch Vehicle]. The other two will use India’s workhorse PSLV to launch two earth observation satellites EOS-04 and EOS-06.

“The three planned missions appear unlikely this year,” a senior scientist at the agency said on condition of anonymity.

Worse, before the year began ISRO had reduced its targeted number of missions for ’21 from 16 to 5.

The article makes believe the epidemic has shut down other programs, such as Artemis, in the same way, but that is false. NASA’s Artemis program might have lost a few months in ’20 due to the agency’s panic over COVID, but since then it has been moving as fast as it can, considering the cumbersome nature of its engineering. Even Rocket Lab, which has been badly hampered by New Zealand draconian Wuhan rules, has managed to launch eleven times since January 2020, compared to the four launches attempted by India during that same time.

Whatever has caused the shut down at ISRO, it really hasn’t been the epidemic. Something about the agency’s management and its bureaucratic culture has prevented them from resuming flights. And as they remained stalled, the private commercial companies in the U.S. and China are grabbing their customers.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Weatherman fired after 33 years for not getting COVID vaccine

12:03 pm

Weatherman Karl Bohnak, now a non-person
Weatherman Karl Bohnak, now a non-person.

Persecution is now cool! Karl Bohnak, who had been a weatherman for the Michigan television station WLUC for 33 years, was fired last week because he refused to get the COVID vaccine shot as now mandated by the station.

Bohnak announced his firing in an essay on his Facebook page [requires Facebook login]. I have posted the full text at the end of this essay, also posted here, to illustrate the rational, thoughtful nature of his decision. You might disagree with him, and think he should get vaccinated, but he outlines in clear detail his valid reasons for not doing so.

His essay also raises the very valid constitutional and ethically reasons for resisting the mandate of this company.

The abrogation of our liberty and freedom under the guise of a pandemic is very disturbing to me. Hopefully, whether you lean right or left, you are concerned about what has occurred the last year-and-a-half. I just wanted to go about my business, “live and let live”, and keep my mouth shut. But this act by the federal government through corporate America has brought me to a crossroads. Our way of life, our freedom and liberty, is collapsing before our eyes.

Sadly, Bohnak is not alone in this. Thousands of people across America are willingly losing their jobs because they will not submit to this dictatorial and entirely unconstitutional vaccine mandate. As the left has loudly proclaimed for decades, these Americans are declaring, “Our bodies, our choice!”

From the beginning, the data said that the lethality of COVID would merely be a variation of the flu. » Read more

40 comments

NASA awards Aerojet Rocketdyne contract to build 20 Orion main engines

10:21 am

NASA announced yesterday that it has awarded Aerojet Rocketdyne the contract to build twenty Orion main engines for capsules on missions running through 2032, with the first to be used on the seventh Artemis launch..

This engine is the one that Orion will use to enter and leave lunar orbit.

Based on the pace that NASA expects to launch SLS, once per year, I expect the last engine in this contract will fly in 2048, not 2032, since it will take about 27 years to put that many Orions into space after SLS’s first launch, expected sometime in the next five months.

In other words, this is a contract to keep the jobs at Aerojet Rocketdyne in existence for the next three decades, even if that company’s engineers build little and accomplish less. Nice welfare work I must say.

One comment

NASA reorganizes bureaucracy of manned programs

9:05 am

Moving those deck chairs! NASA yesterday announced that it is reorganizing the bureaucracy of its manned programs, splitting the Artemis program out from the commercial program.

The space agency announced today (Sept. 21) that it’s splitting the current Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) into two new entities: the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) and Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD).

…ESDMD will be responsible for the development of systems and technology critical for NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to land astronauts on the moon in the next few years and establish a sustainable human presence on and around Earth’s nearest neighbor by the end of the 2020s. ESDMD will also map out NASA’s broader “Moon to Mars” exploration strategy, of which Artemis is an integral part, agency officials said. (NASA aims to land humans on Mars in the 2030s, by leveraging the skills and techniques learned during the Artemis moon effort.)

SOMD, meanwhile, will be in charge of crewed launches and ongoing human spaceflight operations, including activities on the International Space Station and the commercialization of low Earth orbit, a NASA priority over the coming years. SOMD will also be responsible for crewed operations on and around the moon once they get up and running.

Kathy Lueders, who had been promoted from just running the commercial crew program to run all of manned space back in 2020, will once again run just the commercial side. The Artemis side will be run by another long time NASA administrator, Jim Free.

As I noted in 2020, these kinds of reorganizations at NASA happen periodically, and generally accomplish little except to allow NASA’s top managers to make believe they are doing something. In this case the split I think is intended to prevent Artemis from being completely taken over by commercial space, thus giving some bureaucratic clout to SLS and the factions at NASA that favor government control, with NASA designing and building everything rather than simply being a customer. If so, the decision is a bad one for Artemis. It means the Biden administration and those factions want to once again take over the design and construction of the entire Artemis program. Since NASA’s track record in this area has been abysmal for decades, it is unlikely this shift will change anything for the better.

This reorganization also suggests that the Biden administration has had second thoughts about the private and commercial approach as recommended in my policy paper, Capitalism in space and adopted by the Trump administration. If so, the consequences for the new emerging private space industry will not be good. They shall increasingly find the government more eager to micromanage their designs and concepts, rather than allowing the private sector the freedom to create things on its own.

The one silver lining to this change is that by creating these two divisions, NASA will be highlighting the competition between them. As commercial space increasingly succeeds, leaving the cumbersome Artemis program far behind, the split will illustrate clearly to the entire world that a government-built program is not the way to go.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Blackballed professor at NC State sues

12:06 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled at North Carolina State University
Freedom of speech cancelled at
North Carolina State University.

Fighting back: Stephen Porter, a tenured professor at North Carolina State University, has just filed a lawsuit against the university and several of its faculty for blackballing him for simply disagreeing with them on issues of politics and policy.

The introduction of the legal filing [pdf] outlines clearly the actions of the university’s faculty, designed to destroy Porter’s academic career:

[I]n retaliation for Professor Stephen Porter’s protected expressions of opinion on important societal issues, Defendants have intentionally and systematically excluded him from departmental programs and activities that are necessary for him to fulfill his job requirements, effectively hollowing his job out from the inside. They have done this in a deliberate effort to set the stage for his eventual termination. … Defendants are gradually forcing Plaintiff into what is effectively a “rubber room” in retaliation for his criticisms of the so-called “social-justice” ideology that now prevails both in his department and in academia more broadly.

Read the whole complaint. It describes in ugly detail the efforts by his supervisors to isolate and ostracize him so it would be impossible for him to teach and maintain his job.

So, what exactly did Porter do to bring the wrath of these petty dictators down upon him? » Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Gun stores in Boston suburb banned

12:04 pm

Browning Brothers gun shop, Ogden, Utah Territory, 1882. From left to right: Thomas Samuel Browning, George Emmett Browning, John Moses Browning, Matthew Sandefur Browning, Jonathan Edmund Browning, and Frank Rushton
Gun shops banned in Brookline, Massachusetts.

They’re coming for you next: The local government in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburban community outside of Boston, is attempting to impose new zoning regulations that would essentially ban gun stores.

Under the new zoning proposal submitted by town board members Petra Bignami, Janice Kahn, Alexandra Metral, and Sharon Schoffman, gun stores would only be allowed to operate by special permit. It also states buffer zones will be around residential properties, private and public K-12 schools, and childcare facilities, which would block firearm businesses from operating within a certain distance.

The proposal came after the City of Newton, one town over, approved new zoning rules for gun stores in June that restricted them to three locations. This action was in response to a new gun store attempting to open.

Since this very leftist community is routinely hostile to the second amendment and the right to bear arms, it would astonish me if any special permit would ever be approved. And even if one was, the buffer rules are likely so restrictive that there is probably no location in town where a gun store would be legal.

The illogic of gun control advocates always amazes me. » Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Conservative teacher fired for being conservative and colorblind

12:11 pm

Beth Reams horrible post

They’re coming for you next: Beth Reams, a math teacher at a Missouri prep school was fired when first some school alumni complained about her conservative politics that she posted on her private Facebook page and then the school administration discovered that she treated all her students equally and made no effort to find out their religion or race so as to promote the bigoted concepts of modern critical race theory.

The article at the link above tells her sad story in great detail, how the most progressive teachers and alumni from Pembroke Hill School in Kansas City, Missouri, started a campaign against her, with some accusing her of being anti-Semitic because in one Facebook post in August 2020 she published a meme — posted to the right — that made the entirely rational analogy between the Nazi death camps and the increasingly harsh COVID mandates being imposed by the state and federal governments.

It is absurd to accuse Reams of anti-Semitism for this meme. I am Jewish and lost relatives in the Nazi concentration camps, and I applaud Reams for posting it, because it expresses the very same ideas I myself have repeatedly expressed throughout 2020, that the harsh lockdowns and restrictions being imposed by governments were morally wrong, and could only lead to exactly the same kind of genocide as committed by the Nazis.

Reams’ firing however appears to have finally been prompted from something even more absurd and horrifying, revealed by the transcript of a Zoom meeting between Reams and Pembroke’s principal, Mike Hill, and its Director of Human Resources Vanessa Alpert. It appears the principal was upset because Reams made no effort to identify her students’ ethnicity or religion and make it their number one defining attribute. Instead, she focused entirely on teaching them all equally so they could learn math from her. The key portion of the transcript:
» Read more

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FAA now taking public comments on the licensing of SpaceX to launch Starship/Superheavy from Boca Chica

10:59 am

Capitalism in space: The FAA today announced by email that it is now taking public comments on the “Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA)” it requires from SpaceX before it can issue a launch license at Boca Chica, Texas for Starship/Superheavy orbital launches.

From the email:

The FAA invites interested agencies, organizations, Native American tribes, and members of the public to submit comments on all aspects of the Draft PEA. Public comments are due on Monday, October 18, 2021. Comments or questions on the Draft PEA can be addressed to Ms. Stacey Zee, SpaceX PEA, c/o ICF, 9300 Lee Highway, Fairfax, VA 22031. Comments may also be submitted by email to SpaceXBocaChica@icf.com. Before including your address, phone number, e-mail address, or other personal identifying information in your comment, be advised that your entire comment – including your personal identifying information – may be made publicly available at any time. While you can ask us in your comment to withhold from public review your personal identifying information, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so.

The FAA will also hold two public hearings on October 6th and 7th, though it provided no information yet on where those hearings will be held.

This announcement means that the Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight cannot occur any earlier than October 18, 2021, and will actually occur at least several weeks or months later, based on the schedule outlined on slide 32 of this FAA presentation [pdf]. Once the 30-day public comment period ends the FAA must then hold “an industry workshop” reviewing the comments and then issue an update of the PEA, or a rejection of it.

Though the chances of the FAA rejecting SpaceX’s permit are practically nil, I fully expect this process to be slow-walked by the FAA under orders of the Biden administration in order to do whatever it can to prevent this orbital flight occurring before SLS’s first launch, now expected in early ’22.

I hope I am wrong, and that the FAA surprises me. We can only wait and see.

Update: If you think I am crazy thinking that the politics of the Biden administration will cause a slowdown in the FAA’s process, just read this story about the FAA suddenly imposing flight restrictions at the southern border to block drone flights by media outlets that show the illegal immigrant crisis there.

“We’ve learned that the FAA just implemented a two week TFR (Temporary Flight Restrictions) over the international bridge in Del Rio, TX, meaning we can no longer fly our FOX drone over it to show images of the thousands of migrants,” Fox News reporter Bill Melugin tweeted. “FAA says ‘special security reason.’”

Fox’s report resulted in a quick lifting of this flight restriction on their drone, but the action by the Biden administration shows that it is quite willing to interfere with normal aviation regulations for its own political reasons.

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China’s three astronauts land safely

9:33 am

The new colonial movement: China’s three astronauts safely returned to Earth today after spending 91 days in space and 90 days on China’s new space station.

During their stay they did two spacewalks preparing the station for additional modules and later missions.

China is expected to send the robotic Tianzhou 3 cargo spacecraft toward Tianhe around Sept. 20. And the next crewed mission to the module, the six-month-long Shenzhou 13, is apparently scheduled to launch in mid-October. (Exact target dates are hard to come by with Chinese missions, because the nation tends not to announce many details of its spaceflight plans in advance.)

China will also in the next year launch two more large modules to attach to the station, using its Long March 5B rocket. Assuming they have not redesigned that rocket, expect the very large upper stage on both launches to once again crash out-of-control somewhere on the Earth, possibly in habitable areas.

4 comments

Today’s blacklisted Americans: Any tenant not vaccinated in Florida apartment complex

1:38 pm

Coming to your town in America soon!
Rounding up the unclean unvaccinated: What the left nationwide wants.

They’re coming for you next: A Florida landlord is now demanding that any future tenant show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or they will be turned away, and any present unvaccinated tenant move when their lease expires.

If you’re not vaccinated for COVID-19, you can forget about moving into any of eight apartment complexes in Broward and Miami-Dade counties owned by Santiago A. Alvarez and his family.

And if you’re still unvaccinated when it comes time to renew your lease, you’ll have to find someplace else to live.

Alvarez, who controls 1,200 units in the two counties, is the first large-scale landlord known to national housing experts to impose a vaccine requirement not only for employees, but also for tenants. They’ll be required to produce documentation that they’ve received at least an initial vaccine dose.

The policy, which took effect Aug. 15, could set Alvarez’s company on a collision course with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ vaccine passport ban, which prohibits businesses from requiring that customers be vaccinated.

The story reports that already two tenants have contacted attorneys with plans to challenge this discriminatory policy in court. Note too that since the largest percentage of unvaccinated individuals comes from the black community, Alvarez is essentially discriminating against blacks with this policy. It seems that, for the left, the mantra “Housing is a right!” now only applies to those who agree with them. All others should be homeless.
» Read more

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The real human exploration of the solar system began on September 15, 2021

11:26 pm

Falcon 9 at T+13 seconds

Capitalism in space: First the news: On September 15, 2021 SpaceX successfully placed four civilians into orbit using its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule.

Thus began the first private manned orbital mission in space, planned to last three days and reach an altitude of 595 kilometers or 370 miles, the highest any person has flown in space in decades.

The first stage, on its third flight, successfully landed for reuse. The Dragon capsule, Resilience, was on its second manned flight. The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

31 China
23 SpaceX
15 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. now leads China 34 to 31 in the national rankings.

Now the significance: There was one moment about five minutes after lift off that revealed the fundamental difference between this real flight into space and the short suborbital hops that Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic did in July.

The three most critical moments of any launch had just been completed. The first stage engines had cut off, the first stage had separated successfully, and the single upper stage engine had ignited. It was now lifting the capsule towards orbit, with the only major technical task left were its engine cut off and the separation of the Dragon capsule.

At that moment John Insprucker, principal integretion engineer for SpaceX and frequent host during its launch live streams, made a quick comment that was clearly meant to illustrate the vast difference in achievement between this flight and those two July suborbital flights. He said,
» Read more

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