Tag: oppression

The left is now reaping what it sowed

2:39 pm

A Democrat literally responds to Trump's 2016 victory
This is an actual Democrat’s
respond to Trump’s 2016 victory

For four years, since his election, Donald Trump has been met with a never-ending wave of hatred, hostility, and downright total opposition by the Democratic Party and its many very partisan supporters in the mainstream press, the academic community, and in the general public.

If you are conservative, I am sure you’ve all seen it. Not only has it been impossible these past four years to have a reasonable conversation with Democrats about Donald Trump, your opinions and thoughts are routinely treated with insulting contempt and scorn when you tried. Trump was a racist and evil, despite there being no credible evidence to that effect, and if you tried to find out what the evidence was for such a slander you were immediately slandered and called the same.

Trump himself has faced this same level of irrational hate continuously since his election. And it is irrelevant that he often descends to the same tactics. In the climate created by the left since the Obama administration legitimized the use of slander in political discourse, what other choice did he have if he wished to survive?

Lies in fact has too often comprised the only tactic used by the Democratic Party and the left since Trump’s arrival. » Read more

32 comments

Arizona gov says he will not certify results until all lawsuits are settled

3:36 pm

Arizona’s Republican Governor Doug Ducey today announced that he will not certify the results of the state’s presidential election until all the lawsuits involving issues in the count are settled.

In Arizona specifically, the Trump campaign and state GOP filed lawsuits in Maricopa County in a bid to block officials from certifying the election results due to alleged voter irregularities and improprieties.

“There are legal claims that are being challenged in court and everybody on the ballot has certain access rights and remedies and if they want to push that they are able. Once those are adjudicated and the process plays out, I will accept the results of the election,” the Republican governor said in a news conference on Wednesday.

Based on Ducey’s generally spineless leadership, I have no confidence in his announcement. I think he is playing us. He has done less than nothing to really make sure the vote is accurate, even though it is in his power to do so. For example, he could call the legislature back in session so that its Republican majority could get involved. He has refused to do this, keeping them out of the game. Moreover, his administration apparently chose the questionable Dominion election software used to count the vote, despite questions raised about it from many sources for years.

What I think he is doing is making it seem he cares. Then, when he folds like a house of cards to an untrustworthy recount, he can claim he was there for us. All hogwash.

The only saving grace to his announcement is that if no certification occurs before December 14th, the lack of Arizona’s electoral votes might force the decision into the House of Representatives, where the Republicans will have the votes to keep Trump president. If the Democrats wish to avoid this, they should be moving heaven and Earth to clear up any issues and thus settle the lawsuits.

Not surprisingly, I do not see the Democrats doing this. Instead, they are working to block any audits or proper recounts. Makes one wonder what they might be trying to hide.

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Trump lawyers detail extensive election fraud

12:59 pm

The lawyers for the Trump campaign today held a press conference outlining in extensive detail the evidence they have gathered pointing to election fraud in multiple states, all designed to manufacture fake votes for Joe Biden or to disenfranchise Trump voters.

Yes, I know, it is a press conference. And yes I know, it is run by only one side. To simply dismiss what that side said however is to put one’s head in the sand. Two allegations struck me as particularly damning:

Giuliani offered evidence to show that 15,000 voters in Pittsburgh alone were disenfranchised of their vote, and forced to vote via provisional ballot when they arrived at their polling place. These voters allegedly were told that they had already voted by mail.

Giuliani alleged as well that ballots were trucked into Detroit at 4:30 am on election night to be counted after poll workers believed that Republican observers to the count had left. He claimed that workers said that these were Biden ballots, improperly packaged, and without votes for any of the additional races. He said that the votes were counted three times.

In the first case the allegations apparently came from the voters themselves. If based on actual legal affidavits, the allegations have real merit, and suggest massive fraud in Pittsburgh alone.

In the second case, more details are found here.

Guiliani went on to cite testimony from witnesses to bolster his case, ripped the media for falsely reporting there is “no evidence” of fraud and argued proper oversight was not executed while mail-in ballots were counted.

“Do you know how many affidavits were have in the Michigan case? Two hundred and twenty affidavits,” he said. “What they swear to is that at 4:30 in the morning, a truck pulled up to the Detroit center where they were counting ballots. The people thought it was food so they all ran to the truck. It wasn’t food, it was thousands and thousands of ballots and the ballots were in garbage cans, they were in paper bags, they were cardboard boxes and they were taken into the center. They were put on a number of tables. At that time they thought all of the Republican inspectors had left, all but two had.”

“Here’s what they jointly swear to: that every ballot that they could see, everything that they Ould hear, these were ballots for Biden. When they saw a ballot, these were ballots only for Biden, nothing down ticket,” Guiliani continued. “Many of them were triple counted.”

“Why would you not allow inspections of those ballots? Because you knew you were going to use those ballots to catch Biden up,” Guiliani said, adding that the recount in Georgia will be worthless due to a lack of signature [emphasis mine]

The highlighted text puts the lie to the claim that no evidence of election fraud exists. An affidavit is a legal document that carries I think penalties if found to be a lie. Moreover, when you begin to get a lot of them, all confirming each other, their reliability is strongly reinforced.

The election count in the disputed states needs to be completely reviewed, carefully, by going back to the actual ballots. The computer data is untrustworthy and must be put aside.

If that review finds Joe Biden won, so be it. It would mean the country favored the Republicans overall, but preferred a change in president.

If that review instead shows Trump did win, and that a large amount of voter fraud occurred, then major investigations are in order to find the perpetrators. It must also be the number one priority of Republicans in every one of these states (all controlled at the legislative level by Republicans) to overhaul the election system to prevent such fraud from reoccurring. Better to go back to simple paper ballots that are counted by hand, than the unreliable computer systems we have now.

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Republicans in Wayne County rescind their votes certifying Detroit results

12:05 pm

In a dramatic turn, the two Republicans on the Wayne County election board (which covers Detroit) last night rescinded their votes yesterday certifying the Detroit results, claiming in legal affidavits that these votes were obtained through coercion and false promises.

Their pronouncements come just 24 hours after a chaotic meeting in which the county’s election board initially failed to certify the Nov. 3 election results during a 2-2 deadlocked vote when both Palmer and Hartmann voted against certification. But after hours of contentious public comment and criticism — including Democratic allegations of racism and threats against their safety — the two GOP members struck a deal to certify the elections in return for a promise of a thorough audit.

Palmer and Hartmann said Wednesday they learned that state officials had reneged or would not honor the audit, leaving them no recourse but to oppose certification until more investigation could be performed.

It is now presently unclear what happens next, including which of their votes will be considered legal.

Note however how the Democrats appear totally opposed to even addressing the vote count concerns expressed by these two election board members. No, rather than in good will trying to show the concerns are unmerited, Democrats have instead threatened, slandered, and doxed the Republicans, while apparently reneging on an agreement that would have looked into the issues.

As I have written, if the problems with this election are not resolved, or the Democrats refuse to cooperate in fixing them, then it will strongly imply that a Biden victory is tainted and was stolen. The consequences to the country then will be quite bad.

The best course must be an aggressive effort by both parties to address and fix the concerns, with both parties accepting the results no matter what. It does not appear the Democrats desire this.

5 comments

Study: Cloth masks provide “statistically insignificant” protection

12:23 pm

The certainty of the COVID-19 panic: A large Danish study involving about 6,000 people has found that cloth masks provide “statistically insignificant” protection from infection.

From the paper’s conclusion:

The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection. [emphasis mine]

I highlight the last sentence to nip in the bud the claims I expect from the Chicken Little crowd that will point to that “50%” number as proof that masks work. The last sentence points out that a 50% reduction in infection rate is what you also get by washing your hands and avoiding already infected individuals. The masks themselves make no difference.

The study found that 42 people in the in the mask group got infected, compared to 53 in the non-mask group. Since both groups contained 3,000 people, the percentage infected for both groups was about 2%, with the mask group having slightly less infections.

It is important to note the real scale of the virus as demonstrated by this study. Out of 6,000 participants, all older than 18 with no current or prior symptoms, very few people got infected. No one apparently died.

The study notes that it did not look at the effectiveness of masks worn by sick people. It is possible that in that circumstance the mask could prevent the infected person from transmitting the virus to others, but that requires more study. However, having people wear masks in the presence of a sick person had been the practice where masks were used for decades. And it certainly makes more sense than making millions of totally healthy people mask themselves wherever they go, twenty-four hours a day.

Either way, this study illustrates again that the mask mandates being imposed by edict by political leaders have no basis in science. The mandates do not require proper use, and even if they did it is unrealistic to expect that proper use. And even if the use was proper globally, this study shows that the mask would accomplish nothing.

But hey, it is important to make feel-good gestures, even if those feel-good gestures are pointless and cause our focus to shift away from more important tasks, such as immunizing children from measles. So what children will die unnecessarily from the measles and rubella! We will feel safe.

6 comments

Scientists: Major measles outbreaks likely because of COVID-19 lockdowns

10:38 pm

According to a paper published in the peer review journal Lancet, there is a very high likelihood of major measles outbreaks among children worldwide in 2021 — resulting in many unnecessary deaths — due to the shut downs imposed because of the panic over COVID-19.

Lead author Professor Kim Mulholland, from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Chair of the World Health Organization’s SAGE Working Group on measles and rubella vaccines, said that many children have missed out on measles vaccination this year, making future measles outbreaks inevitable. …”The coming months are likely to see increasing numbers of unimmunised children who are susceptible to measles. Many live in poor, remote communities where health systems are less resilient, and malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency are already increasing.”

Professor Mulholland said the COVID-19 pandemic had also had a profound effect on the control of vaccine preventable diseases, with vaccination campaigns paused in the early months of 2020 and routine immunisation services greatly disrupted in many countries.

The WHO estimates that by the end of October, 2020, delayed vaccination campaigns in 26 countries have led to 94 million children missing scheduled measles vaccine doses. [emphasis mine]

Think about it. Because we and our governments panicked and shut down society to protect children from a virus that is not only not contagious among children, it also is practically harmless to them, many children will now die from diseases we know are highly contagious and we know can kill them.

And people accuse me of being heartless because I say the lock downs are senseless, irrational, and a bad idea.

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If election issues are not fixed, elected state Republicans must refuse to certify

4:49 pm

The Preamble to the Constitution

The Constitution is very clear: The actual decision on who should be elected President of the United States every four years is actually made by the state legislatures.

Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 2: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled to the Congress.

12th Amendment: The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President. … The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed.

In other words, the state legislatures choose the Electors, and only when they are chosen can they vote for President. Furthermore, the winner must win a majority from the expected number of total Electors from all the states, which is presently 270. If not, the vote then goes to the House of Representatives in Congress, which votes not by each representative but by state, with each state’s caucus voting separately to determine the state’s vote (as per the 12th Amendment).

American tradition however for almost two centuries has been for these legislatures to let the popular vote of the state guide them on who to pick as Electors. If their citizens choose the Republican candidate, they picked Republican Electors so their states Electoral votes go to that candidate. If the citizens choose a Democrat, they did the same.

It is because of this tradition that we all assume the popular vote makes the choice. It really does not.

For two centuries, this system worked because everyone trusted the election process. While some fraud has always occurred at some level, at the federal level the counts have generally been carefully done and reliably tabulated. Even in the difficult election battle in 2000 it was clear that the effort was to get the actual count right, by both sides.

This trust is now gone. The number of errors, suspicious actions, and indications of fraud, all designed to steal votes from Donald Trump and give extra votes to Joe Biden, makes every single one of the contested elections in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin unreliable. Let’s take a look a just a small sampling of recent stories from each state, detailing rampant election fraud.
» Read more

38 comments

COVID-19 deaths plummeting worldwide

10:36 am

Chicken Little is wrong! From the journal Nature: The death rate from COVID-19 continues to plummet worldwide, for reasons that baffle some scientists.

As a result, it has taken researchers some time to determine whether the number of deaths per SARS-CoV-2 infection is really falling, particularly for older people, says epidemiologist Ali Mokdad at the University of Washington in Seattle. Mokdad and his colleagues have been monitoring global data, with a focus on the United States and Europe. A provisional analysis, he says, which includes data from the American Hospital Association, now suggests that the number of fatalities per infection might have fallen by 20%.

Intensive-care physicians say that treatment has improved, but not always in ways that are easy to pinpoint. Vijayaraghavan and others credit a shift in mindset. In the early days of the pandemic, COVID-19 was viewed as something frightening and new — and worthy of resorting to unproven interventions in a desperate act to save patients. “Unfortunately, a lot of the initial discourse was complicated by noise about how this disease was entirely different or entirely new,” says Vijayaraghavan. “This distraction caused more harm — we were all probably poised to go off track.” [emphasis mine]

The article, from this leftist-leaning science journal, is somewhat amusing in that it wrings its hands almost in despair at these encouraging numbers. It is like watching a group of people who refuse to see the elephant in the room. This quote from the article is especially revealing:

Vijayaraghavan credits the improvements in mortality at his institution to hard-earned experience, a better understanding of how to use steroids and a shift away from unproven drugs and procedures.

Marcus Schultz, an intensive-care specialist at Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands, agrees, adding that it took time to realize that standard treatments were among the most effective. “In just half a year, I think we repeated 20 years of research in acute respiratory distress,” he says. “Everything was done again, and everything came with the same result.” [emphasis mine]

The virus is not nor ever was the deadly plague that journals like this sold it as. From the very beginning, the data showed it would be variation of all other respiratory illnesses, and that to panic over it was a big mistake. The virus is now doing what some reasonable but ignored scientists correctly predicted: it is dissipating and weakening with time, as such viruses always do.

But panic we did, and as a result many more died than was necessary, even as we destroyed the livelihoods of millions and reshaped our society from one that celebrates freedom and boldness to one that demands obedience and encourages fear.

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New study: Lockdowns & masks are useless and might even increase COVID-19 spread

12:03 am

A recently completed research study by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in cooperation with the Naval Medical Research Center and published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that strict quarantine, tightly controlled social distancing, and continuous use of masks did absolutely nothing to contain the spread of COVID-19, and might even have increased its spread.

First, the study used 1,843 Marine volunteers, individuals well trained to follow orders as well as the required procedures. Second, their quarantine took place at Marine facility under the supervision of the military. Both factors meant that the volunteers were going to follow procedures much more correctly than the general public.

Third, no one could enter the study without undergoing 14-days of quarantine beforehand, plus a test to prove they were negative of COVID-19 at the study’s start. The study itself was held in a tightly controlled quarantine campus run by the Marines.

The volunteers then had to follow this incredibly strict quarantine regiment:
» Read more

56 comments

WordPress goes after politically conservative website

1:36 pm

They’re coming for you next: The politically conservative but very accurate and well documented website The Conservative Treehouse has now been told by its platform WordPress that it is being deplatformed, or to put it more bluntly, shut down, because of its conservative content.

One week after the 2020 presidential election, The Conservative Treehouse received the following notification:

…”given the incompatibility between your site’s content and our terms, you need to find a new hosting provider and must migrate the site by Wednesday, December 2nd.”

What does this mean? It means CTH is being kicked-off the WordPress website hosting platform because the content of our research and discussion does not align with the ideology of those who define what is acceptable speech and what is not.

What was our violation? After ten years of brutally honest discussion, opinion, deep research and crowdsourcing work -with undeniable citations on the events we outline- there is no cited violation of any term of service because CTH has never violated one.

The WordPress company is not explaining the reason for deplatforming because there is no justifiable reason for it. At the same time, they are bold in their position. Perhaps this is the most alarming part; and everyone should pay attention. They don’t care.

I as well as probably millions of others use WordPress as the platform for our websites. This decision strikes directly at freedom of speech, and is clearly an effort to silence conservative political analysis.

Worse is coming. I expect in the next few years to receive the same deplatforming message from WordPress, and intend to be prepared. I also would not be surprised if they transition from giving warnings, to simply shutting down sites they don’t like. Don’t be shocked if you try to come here one day and discover the site has vanished.

Everyone else should be on notice as well. The gloves are off, the intent is to silence and shut down dissent against the left and the Democratic Party, wherever possible.

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First US Rocket Lab launch delayed until ’21

9:46 am

Because of issues in Rocket Lab’s flight termination system (used to destroy the rocket should it go out of control during launch), the company has announced that its first U.S. launch will be delayed until 2021.

One reason for the delay, Rocket Lab said, was that it was waiting on NASA to certify the autonomous flight termination system (AFTS) that will be used on the rocket to provide range safety. NASA controls the launch range at the Wallops Flight Facility, where LC-2 is located. “There’s a very long certification process that, quite frankly, we probably underestimated how long it would take,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in an interview in August.

That certification process is ongoing. In a Nov. 10 talk at a Maryland Space Business Roundtable webinar, David Pierce, director of NASA Wallops, mentioned preparations for Rocket Lab’s first launch as part of an overview of the facility’s activities. “We’re really proud of our work with Rocket Lab,” he said. “We’re working really hard to support Rocket Lab with a launch in ’21.”

Asked later about the certification of the AFTS, Pierce said that engineers had kept on schedule with the development of the system into the summer despite the pandemic. “When they sent the unit out for review of the software, we found some errors,” he said. That review involved teams at NASA’s Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility, the Federal Aviation Administration, Vandenberg Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

While I have no evidence of this, I cannot help being suspicious of these various government agencies. For years numerous people in the government put fake roadblocks up to slow or stop SpaceX’s first manned launch, merely because it threatened their turfs. This autonomous termination system will make the ground crews at Vandenberg and at Cape Canaveral irrelevant, and I would not be surprised if some of these issues were drummed up to delay or block this system because of that.

I know I am being cynical, but based on history it is not unreasonable to be so.

One comment

Elon Musk gets contradictory COVID-19 test results

8:40 am

The uncertainty of science: Because SpaceX’s founder Elon Musk had had some minor cold-like symptoms, he decided to get tested for COVID-19, and discovered that after four tests, he still had no idea whether he had it or not.

The Tesla boss and fifth-richest man in the world had initially tweeted Thursday night that “Something extremely bogus is going on” regarding COVID-19 testing. “Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse.”

…Though Musk had initially tweeted that his symptoms were “nothing unusual” and those “of a typical cold,” he gave more detail Friday morning. “Mild sniffles & cough & slight fever past few days,” he told one Twitter user who asked how he was feeling. “Right now, no symptoms, although I did take NyQuil.”

First, the results tell us that the so-called surge going on in new coronavirus cases that is panicking our Democratic Party lords and masters might very well be bogus. At a minimum we should all be more skeptical of the numbers.

Second, assuming Musk does have COVID-19, his symptoms illustrate once again how relatively harmless the virus is to healthy people. In fact, no one seems to notice that of the numbers of people diagnosed with COVID-19 in the general populace, no one seems ever to die from it. Like the flu, they are sick for a week or so, and then recover.

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Ukraine signs Artemis Accords

8:25 am

Ukraine has becomed the ninth nation to sign the Artemis Accords, designed to encourage private enterprise in space.

The article at the link provides little information, other than claiming that ” Ukraine has all the scientific and technical capabilities and experience that allow it to become one of NASA’s important partners in the implementation of the Artemis program.”

Russia and the Ukraine are on opposite sides of a war, with Russia attempting to steal territory, with some success. Russia has also boycotted all Ukrainian space technology, ending a half century of business dealings.

It seems that the Ukrainian government looked at this political landscape, and decided to align itself with the United States. By signing the accords, it now has the opportunity to sell its space technology to NASA, as well as participate in any American effort to get to the Moon and elsewhere. That it chose to pick an ally halfway around the world instead of its big and powerful neighbor, tells us a great deal about the Ukrainian’s opinion of Russia.

I expect there will be a NASA press release in the next day or so that will provide us additional information.

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The disputed elections must recounted properly, or the states should refuse to certify the results

3:11 pm

Signing the Constitution in 1787
The signing of the Constitution in 1787.

The amount of evidence that there was clear election fraud in the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin continues to build.

For example, in Pennsylvania a review of absentee ballots found that 100,000 had suspicious postmarks, with 23,000 apparently postmarked one day but then marked by the election authorities as having arrived the day before, an impossibility. Tens of thousands of other absentee ballots had similar problems.

In Michigan numerous residents and poll workers have signed affidavits describing blatant violations of election law and suspicious behavior. In addition, one contractor witnessed poll workers rescanning the same votes repeatedly, essentially double counting those votes.

In Wisconsin thousands of absentee votes were submitted in a manner that required no voter identification.

In Georgia there is evidence that the software used to count the ballots is corrupted, or was corrupted, ending up switching many votes from Trump to Biden in what they innocently claim was merely a “glitch.” Worse, this “glitch” in election software has now been found to be exist in other states as well.

The list above is only a small sampling of the numerous stories in the past week of suspicious and well documented incidents of voter fraud. The problems in these states appears widespread and systemic. The election results are thus suspect.

According to the Constitution, the real arbiters of the election are the state legislatures. » Read more

55 comments

Lock down madness prevents approval of cancer drug

9:47 pm

Because the FDA’s irrational fear of COVID-19, it has refused to do inspections required to approve a new drug (effective against non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma). The result: The drug company’s application will expire on November 16, meaning that they will have to start all over, a process that could take years, while tens of thousands die annually unnecessarily.

Liso-cel, manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb, originally had its Food and Drug Administration (FDA) application accepted in February, but has yet to have one of its contracted manufacturing sites undergo FDA inspection due to the coronavirus pandemic. Not only is the drug’s approval contingent on the facility inspections from the FDA, according to multiple company executives, but its application expires on Nov. 16, meaning that if the plant is not inspected in the coming days Bristol-Myers may have to completely resubmit the drug’s application as a result.

While the first of two facility inspections occurred, the planned inspection of Bristol-Myers’ contracted Houston facility has not “due to COVID travel restrictions and health risks,” according to a Sept. 8 conference call with Citi biopharma analysts and the company’s chief medical officer.

…The drug, which in clinical trials triggered a positive response in 73% of patients and remission in 53% of patients, according to Bristol-Myers, must receive FDA approval by Nov. 16. If it fails to be approved, it must resubmit its application, further delaying its approval by months, if not years, potentially costing thousands of lives as a result.

Each year, approximately 77,000 Americans are diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and about 20,000 Americans die, according to the American Cancer Society.

I promise you, this story is one of many. A cold rational look at the unnecessary deaths caused by the thoughtless fear of COVID-19 would find without doubt that the cure was much worse than the disease. We are killing many more people from other far more serious illnesses because of our unreasonable terror at something quite comparable to the ordinary flu.

29 comments

New Hampshire legislature flips from Democrat to Republican

6:29 pm

Resist! Not only did all parts of the New Hampshire legislature flip from Democrat to Republican, Republicans saw upset victories in state races in Rhode Island, Vermont, and Maine.

The victories included the defeat of the incumbent Democratic Party state house speaker in Rhode Island, the first time that has happened in more than a century. The same thing happened to the incumbent house speaker in Vermont, where voters ended the Democrats hold on a super-majority.

The Republican victories generally strengthen their power throughout much of New England, a region that for years has been assumed to be a permanent Democratic stronghold. It appears that assumption is no longer valid.

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Gateway already behind schedule and mismanaged

11:47 am

Surprise, Surprise! According to a report by NASA’s inspector general released today [pdf], the agency’s Lunar Gateway space station project is already behind schedule, will likely not be available for any 2024 Artemis lunar mission, and apparently has been mismanaged in a manner that is raising costs.

Many of the problems appear to have been caused by NASA’s abrupt decision, ten months after awarding its contracts to Maxar and Northrop Grumman to build respectively the station’s service (PPE) and habitation (HALO) modules, to require that they both be launched on a single rocket, rather than separate launches as originally planned. From the report:

The decision to launch the PPE and HALO together, while avoiding the cost of a second commercial launch vehicle, has contributed to cost increases due to the redesign of several components, an elevated launch risk, and a longer duration flight to lunar orbit. In addition, due to the decision Maxar was forced to terminate its subcontract with Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) for PPE launch services, even though Maxar had already paid SpaceX approximately $27.5 million for this service, a portion of which was paid by NASA prior to the termination. Further, a co-manifested launch increases risk because together the elements may be too heavy for commercially available rockets or too long for the rocket’s fairing, potentially impacting intended spacecraft mass, length, and other requirements.

While the Trump administration had already made the decision to not rely on Gateway for its hoped-for 2024 manned lunar landing, it still hoped to have it available for use. This now appears unlikely. The report today is very clear: “Gateway likely will not be in a position to support a 2024 lunar landing.”

None of this is really a surprise. If anything, it is a feature of Gateway, not a bug. The program was always intended as a big jobs program, funneling money to NASA contractors who would in turn set up operations in various important congressional districts. Like SLS and Orion, it is more important that the program get delayed while costing more than actually accomplish anything.

Even if a Biden administration (still not confirmed) takes over and decides to support this project (which I think will happen), do not expect it to take place as scheduled. At best, Gateway will not be operational for years yet, and in fact it could take until the ’30s to get it built and launched. And that slow and expensive schedule will be exactly what our corrupt politicians and government bureaucrats want.

Meanwhile, China will be setting up its bases on the Moon. And maybe so will SpaceX using Starship.

4 comments

Leftist election theft must lead to war, if only so freedom can survive

1:29 pm

Clinton supporter going insane after Trump victory
A Clinton supporter after realizing Trump has won

When Donald Trump won the election in 2016, entirely legally with no indication of any election fraud or errors, the Democratic Party, aided by its boot-licking minions in the press and its most radical supporters, all declared that they were now “The Resistance” and would devote their full effort to denying the result of that election. To them, Trump’s victory was illegitimate and invalid, simply because it was not the result they wanted.

And that has been what these Democrat partisans have done, for every moment of the past four years. They culled up fake scandals, the most blatant of which was their accusation that Trump was a Russian agent, a ridiculous accusation that has been proven false by their own hand-picked investigators. It was a lie, and even those willing to give it some credence for awhile know that now.

They then tried to impeach Trump, merely because he rightly called for a more thorough investigation into what appeared to be illegal payoffs from the Ukrainian government to the Biden family. We now know Trump’s concerns were entirely justified. Rather than impeach him, Congress should have been looking into investigating Joe Biden.

For four years the attacks were never-ending. While some criticisms of Trump were certainly valid, as they always are for any elected official, the stupidity, shallowness, and repeatedly proven falsehood of almost all of these attacks demonstrated the unwillingness of the left to simply accept an honest election result.

To them, the only election result that was acceptable was one in which they won.
» Read more

56 comments

Bezos sells another $3 billion of Amazon shares

8:54 am

Jeff Bezos continues to accelerate his sale of his Amazon stock, selling another $3 billion this week.

In August, Bezos offloaded more than $3.1 billion of Amazon shares, after selling more than $4.1 billion worth of shares in February. The sales this week bring his total cash out in 2020 to more than $10.2 billion so far, which is a notable jump from 2019, when Bezos sold $2.8 billion worth of shares.

While Bezos had originally said these sales were for financing his space company, Blue Origin, it now appears that the bulk of this new money is aimed at funding environmental political organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Wildlife Fund.

4 comments

And now we wait

12:28 pm

The American flag

Trying to predict the outcome of today’s election in today’s world of shallow emotions and partisan bickering is beyond impossible. The pollsters, generally favoring the Democrats, have for months slanted their results to favor Joe Biden. The conservative press, desperate to grasp at any straw, has in turn focused on the early voting numbers, broken down by party, to claim that Trump is leading.

I really don’t know which is right, at this moment. Moreover, there is a lot of evidence that we will not even have a result by the end of tonight.

However, I still would like to make some predictions, because there are some things we know are very likely to happen, regardless of who wins the election.
» Read more

105 comments

In Europe, the use of masks leads to more COVID-19 cases

9:28 am

It appears that the three European countries with the strictest mask mandates and the highest percentage of usage are also the three European countries experiencing the highest surge of COVID-19 cases, signaling once again that masks not only do not protect anyone from the virus, they could actually be contributing to its spread.

The Biden campaign and the Democrats are cynically cashing in on these pandemic fears. “We’re in a circumstance where the president thus far and still has no plan, no comprehensive plan,” Biden ranted at the debate. “What I would do is make sure we have everyone encouraged to wear a mask all the time.”

France, Italy, and Spain tried that. It didn’t work.

The European countries most obsessed with masks are doing the worst. Nearly universal mask wearing in those countries has done little to prevent a surge. Democrats have a weakness for wanting to be like the Europeans. But the only thing the Biden mask mandate would do is turn us into France. The French wore masks through the summer heat only to have three times the cases per capita and per day as the Americans who never adopted a mask mandate.

The author outlines the numbers. In France 78% of the population wear masks. In Italy the number is 81%. And in Spain it is as high as 86%. Yet all three have had the biggest recent surges in new cases since the mask mandates were imposed. Meanwhile countries where fewer than a third or less of the population where masks — Sweden, Norway, and the UK — the number of cases is far less, and for Sweden there has been no surge in cases at all..

While the author outlines the failure of these mask mandates to stop the virus’ spread, he does not note one component that might be contributing to the surges in these mask-obsessed countries. Masks if misused and worn when they are not sanitary, as is common when large numbers of people are required to wear them all the time, become pathogen bombs. Instead of blocking the virus (an ability that remains quite unproven), they likely become carriers of the virus, at the very place people breath.

But don’t worry. Though you might be increasing the chances of getting sick, you will “feel-good” about yourself when you put on that mask. It is a talisman that proves your wonderful virtue to everyone else, especially those evil people who have looked at the data and have decided to forego this pathogen spreader.

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NASA officially expresses concerns about proposed private communications constellation

8:55 am

For what appears to be an unprecedented action, NASA has officially expressed opposition to a proposed private satellite constellation by the company AST & Science.

NASA’s position was released in a comment to the FCC, where the company has requested a communications license to operate its satellites.

At issue are plans put forth by AST & Science, which intends to build a constellation of more than 240 large satellites, essentially deploying “cell towers” in space to provide 4G and possibly 5G broadband connection directly to cell phones on Earth. The company, based in Midland, Texas, calls its constellation “SpaceMobile” and has raised an estimated $120 million.

The space agency felt compelled to comment on AST’s proposal for several reasons. Most notably, the proposed altitude for the SpaceMobile constellation lies near the “A-Train,” a group of 10 Earth-science monitoring satellites operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey, as well as partners in France and Japan. “Historical experience with the A-Train constellation has shown that this particular region of space tends to produce a large number of conjunctions between space objects,” the NASA letter states.

The satellites are also very large. In order to provide service, AST plans to build spacecraft with large phased array antennae—900 square meters. According to NASA, in planning for potential conjunctions with other satellites and debris in this orbit, this would require proscribing a “hard-body radius” of 30 meters, or as much as 10 times larger than other satellites.

Maneuvering around the proposed SpaceMobile constellation would be extraordinarily taxing, NASA said. “For the completed constellation of 243 satellites, one can expect 1,500 mitigation actions per year and perhaps 15,000 planning activities,” the space agency stated. “This would equate to four maneuvers and 40 active planning activities on any given day.”

The company has said it is willing to work with NASA to ease its concerns. For NASA to take this particular step however is most strange, especially considering the size of this constellation, 240 satellites. This number is tiny compared to the multi-thousands being proposed by SpaceX, Amazon, and OneWeb. Their large size footprint certainly could be a factor, but it does seem puzzling for the space agency to pick out this particular constellation for opposition, and none of the others.

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Vote for Trump, but even more, vote Republican across the board

11:39 am

Trump

I’ve said it before but I will say it again. Donald Trump is the right candidate for president, and everyone who hasn’t yet voted should vote for him tomorrow, both because he kept his promises and has actually done a decent job as president.

However, it is even more important to vote for Republicans across the board. If Trump is re-elected but the voters do not give him strong majorities in both houses of Congress, his ability to do what the voters want will be seriously circumscribed. And if the Democrats win control of both houses of Congress, expect that their first order of business will be to impeach Trump and then try to remove him from office. The goal will be to quickly nullify your vote for Trump, by the party of segregation, slavery, riots, looting, and stolen elections.

And on the local city and state level things are quite simple. » Read more

33 comments

Climate scientists are science’s biggest frequent flyers

9:49 am

From the people who want to shut down all fossil fuel technology: A newly published survey of 1,400 scientists from 59 countries has found that climate scientists fly more than researchers in any other field.

Climate experts — who accounted for about 17% of respondents — take five flights per year on average, the study found, whereas researchers who specialize in other fields took four. Climate scientists also fly more often for work than their peers, but take fewer international flights for personal reasons. Air travel becomes more frequent with job seniority across all disciplines, with climate-change professors flying on average nine times per year, and those in non-climate disciplines flying eight times.

Although the difference isn’t enormous, it adds up to a “colossal amount of flying”, says Lorraine Whitmarsh, an environmental psychologist at the University of Bath, UK, who led the study. “These figures are really quite stark, I think, and should be a wake-up call for all of science.”

The survey took place prior to the Wuhan panic, and thus does not tell us about the new fear-driven flying patterns of scientists.

That this story comes from the journal Nature,. which in recent years has become increasing controlled by the leftist propaganda machine, suggests the data is quite convincing. Nature wouldn’t allow any publication of any paper that throws a bad light on global warming or its researchers, unless the data was overwhelming and impossible to ignore.

It also tells us that climate scientists themselves don’t really believe their own doomsday predictions about global warming. Before the Wuhan panic they would routinely run numerous international conferences, often in wonderful warm-weather vacation spots in the midst of winter, and would flock there in the thousands to enjoy that warm weather even as they repeatedly called for government restrictions on everyone else. The article quotes one scientist, who tries to justify this travel:

International conferences might also have an influence, says Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Meetings to coordinate global mitigation efforts — such as of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — involve hundreds of researchers from different countries. “You need to have a frequent series of meetings to keep up with the data, to advance our findings, to make sure that they are disseminated across the community,” says Cobb. [emphasis mine]

I highlight her quote because her reasons for attending such conferences are unadulterated garbage. While it is important to personally get together periodically with other scientists in the field to exchange results (something that is unfortunately no longer happening because of fear of COVID-19), you don’t need to do this “frequently” in today’s intenet society. Nor do you need to do it to “keep up with the data” or to distribute it to everyone else. If anything, such conferences are very inefficient for achieving these goals. The internet does it far better.

No, the purpose of many of these very big climate conferences had nothing to do with science. I’ve attended a few, and noticed how little real science was discussed. Instead, these conferences were political gatherings, aimed at organizing political action and regulation, as determined by these high-flying climate politicos. And they were always in nice warm weather locations, in winter.

To sum up: Until the climate field acts like it believes its own pontifications about the evils of fossil fuels, no one else should.

13 comments

Twelve graphs prove masks are useless against COVID-19

9:04 am

Link here. The graphs, covering many more regions, countries, and states then the similar graphs I have posted previously, show that masks have zero effect on preventing the spread of the Wuhan virus. In some places infections rose after mask mandates were imposed. In others they declined. And the pattern showed little difference between places with or without mask mandates. As the author notes quite correctly,

Masks are not merely a small inconvenience. They have inadvertently become a key impediment to returning to a more normal life, a desirable goal for those seeking to twist the pandemic for political and electoral purposes.

Masks dehumanize us, and ironically serve as a constant reminder that we should be afraid. People can now be spotted wearing masks while camping by themselves in the woods or on a solo sailing trip. They have become a cruel device on young children everywhere, kindergarten students covered by masks and isolated by Plexiglas, struggling to understand the social expressions of their peers. Face coverings are causing real harm to the American psyche, provide little to no medical benefit, and distract us from more important health policy issues.

The mask dogma had many cracks in it from the start. For one, the U.S. surgeon general and the Centers for Disease Control both previously said that “masks are NOT effective in preventing [the] general public from catching coronavirus,” so they were already starting with a credibility deficit. Furthermore, many officials have been frequently caught without masks when they think the cameras are off them. Dr. Anthony Fauci, for example, has been caught doing this multiple times.

Take a look at the article and the graphs. They will make you feel really silly and stupid when you next put that mask on.

I say, throw the mask away. I don’t wear one, and won’t. I won’t bow to the scare tactics of politicians and incompetent and lying health officials. I have also found I pretty much can go anywhere I want without that mask. Almost no one questions me, and the few times someone has, I simply tell them I don’t wear for medical reasons, and they back off, leaving me alone.

If more people did as I do, so that those more timid began to see more people maskless and free, more people would be willing to do that same. We might actually begin to see people’s faces again, and live in a manner humans were meant to live.

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More evidence the number of COVID-19 deaths is greatly exaggerated

2:08 pm

The video report below notes that, according to CDC published data, almost all deaths now listed as COVID-19 deaths were actually caused by other factors.

Specifically, of the approximately 220,000 COVID-19 deaths listed so far, almost 94% were likely not caused exclusively by COVID-19, but by other chronic illnesses. While many of these other maladies, such as a variety of respiratory illnesses, probably worked closely in conjunction with the coronavirus to kill the patient, other illnesses were clearly the real cause of death. For example, the CDC says the 51,000 of today’s 218,000 COVID-19 deaths were caused by heart attacks or heart failure, not COVID-19.

If we subtract these coronary deaths, we are left with about 167,000 COVID-19 deaths. The CDC notes that of these, 88,000 were probably caused not by the coronavirus but by the flu and pneumonia. Hospitals listed them as COVID-19 deaths because the CARES act passed by Congress in the spring gives those hospitals a 20% bonus if they claim the death was COVID-19. This fact might also explain the almost complete lack of flu deaths this year, as listed by hospitals.

Based on this data, it appears that the coronavirus probably caused about 79,000 deaths, on top of the 88,000 flu and pneumonia deaths this year. These Wuhan virus deaths are probably excess deaths this year, but with an average age of 78 the deaths are still occurring almost exclusively among the aged sick, rather than the general population. For everyone else, COVID-19 remains relatively harmless, like the flu.

Interestingly, the CDC recently reported that in 2020 the total number of excess deaths is presently estimated at 300,000. Most significantly, the CDC also stated that
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66 comments

“That is a blatant lie.”

10:49 pm

In a long fifty minute public interview tonight on the Tucker Carlson Show, embedded below the fold, a businessman outlined in great documented detail how Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, was lying when he said he had no knowledge and never participated the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden, including a partnership with a Chinese company connected to the Chinese Communist Party.

More details here. The businessman, Tony Bobulinski, was quite clear and convincing. Bobulinski outlined in detail two meetings he had with Joe Biden in connection with those Chinese business dealings.

[Carlson]: The former vice-president has said that he was not involved in his son’s business dealings and had no knowledge of them at all. But this sounds like direct involvement in them.

[Bobulinski]: That is a blatant lie. When he states that, that is a blatant lie.

Apparently this man has come forward because he knows Biden is lying, and in the process is smearing his name by accusing him of being a party to Russian disinformation. Bobulinski however is a Navy veteran who had top secret clearance. To be accused of literally being a traitor was too much for him to take, which is why he has gone public with his knowledge.

Watch the interview below. It is worth your time, especially now only a week before election day. Joe Biden is not only a liar, he has been willing to make deals with Chinese businesses that work for the Chinese Communist Party, and as Bobulinski notes, is very seriously compromised by all standards of national security. As president it will be very difficult for him to defend the nation’s interests, exposed as he is now as someone with deep financial ties to Chinese government interests.

Even worse, the willingness of almost every major news organization to bury this story condemns them forever as true partisan hacks with zero loyalty to the United States itself. They deserve nothing but of utter contempt and disgust from every American.

» Read more

29 comments

Joe Biden is just not qualified, for health reasons

12:29 pm


Biden as he forgets what truths we hold as self-evident.

I have previously argued that people should vote for Trump and Republicans across the board for two reasons:

Today I want to take a look at Joe Biden himself, to show that the man is simply not qualified to be president. I will not be arguing however that this lack of qualification is because his policies are wrong, despite ample evidence that they are.

Nor am I going to point to the recent pay-for-play scandal surrounding Biden and his family. The evidence is quite clear that Biden has used his position of power in government to exhort money from foreign governments while working against American interests in foreign policy.

I am also not going to talk about Biden’s past proven dishonesty, illustrated best by his first failed effort to run for president, an effort that was quashed because he was found to be a serial plagiarist (something that it appears he still does).

No, my argument is simpler. Joe Biden is exhibiting clear symptoms of failing mental health. It is increasingly obvious he really is unaware of what is going on around him, and this condition appears to be worsening at a frightening pace.
» Read more

33 comments

Seven recent examples of leftists threatening to murder their opponents

9:15 am

They’re coming for you next: If you want to know what is in store for those who oppose the Democratic Party and its leftist storm-troopers, this article outlines just seven public examples of Democratic Party and leftist activists calling for the murder of their opponents, not because they committed crimes, but because they simply did not agree with the agenda of the left.

Here’s just one example, from a CNN contributor:

[O]n Aug. 4, 2019, a supposed religious scholar and CNN contributor Reza Aslan announced on Twitter — a tweet still up as of Oct. 22 — that all Trump supporters “must be eradicated from society” along with Trump, and that there is “no longer any room for nuance.” Aslan has nearly 300,000 followers.

His extremely defamatory and threatening tweet reads verbatim: “The President is a white nationalist terror leader. His supporters — ALL OF THEM — are by definition white nationalist terror supporters. The MAGA hat is a KKK hood. And his evil, racist scourge must be eradicated from society.”

None of the examples cited are out of the ordinary. Such statements have become increasing typical from all levels of Democratic Party support, from on high and down low. They have been matched by numerous actions reminiscent of NAZI Germany, from rioting to looting to intimidation to attacking innocent Trump supporters whenever they are spotted.

Just remember this when you vote. If the Democrats win, they will expect total obedience and compliance, or they will be coming for you next.

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