Tag: oppression

The new pogrom in New York

1:57 pm

This story provides a thorough listing (including videos) of all the recent anti-Semitic attacks in the New York City metropolitan area in the past year.

Those attacks included the mass shooting in a Kosher supermarket in Jersey City (killing four), and the machete attack in a Rabbi’s home (injuring five).

It appears that the majority of the attackers are black, which likely also means they are Democrats, spurred by the irrational and bigoted identity politics of that party, that celebrates all minorities except those who happen to be considered either white or conservative in its eyes. They are also probably spurred by the generally hateful and emotional rhetoric of that party, which today bases its entire policy platform on hating Donald Trump and anyone who supports him.

Still, the people who should be punished for these attacks are the people who committed them. Sadly, in New York the Democratically-controlled legislature has changed the law so that these violent individuals now have an almost automatic “Get out of Jail” card.

Much of this violence is closely related to the violence we have seen on college campuses the past three years, all aimed at conservatives. It comes from the left, and it comes as an attempt to strike fear into people’s hearts so that they will no longer be willing to publicly express their opinions.

Sadly, I think it is working. I wonder how many of my readers have found themselves silencing themselves out of fear that expressing their opinion might get them ostracized. I would not be surprised if most have done so.

The ballot box however is private. You can express your opinion there quite safely. I think it is time to do so.

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Modern cars automatically invade your privacy

9:22 pm

Buy dumb! According to a December 17, 2019 news story, modern cars automatically collect a vast amount of incredibly private information about their owners, especially if the owner uses the installed blue tooth phone and GPS.

[The reporter] discovered that the car was recording details about where the car was driven and parked, call logs, identification information for his phone and contact information from his phone, “right down to people’s address, emails and even photos.” In another example, Fowler bought a Chevy infotainment computer on eBay and was able to extract private information from it about whoever owned it before him, including pictures of the person the previous owner called “Sweetie.”

While GM was the subject of Fowler’s experiments, it’s not the only company collecting data on its drivers. In 2017, the U.S. Government Accountability Office looked at automakers and their data privacy policies and found that the 13 car companies it looked at are not exactly using best practices. For example, while the automakers say they obtain “explicit consumer consent before collecting data,” the GAO says they “offered few options besides opting out of all connected vehicle services to consumers who did not want to share their data.”

There is no justified ethical reason for any car company to collect and keep this information, especially without asking the owner permission to gather it. It simply does not belong to them, under any reasonable definition.

As I said, buy dumb. Better to get a used car without these invasive tools, or disable them if the car has them.

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NY, Illinois, California populations in decline

9:22 am

According to several different analyses of census data, all released in the past few days, the Democratically-controlled liberal states of New York, Illinois, and California are seeing either historic drops in population or historic drops in population growth.

For these major states to experience reductions in population growth or declines at this time, during an economic expansion, suggests that other factors are driving people from them. Could it be their leftist socialist policies, which routinely bring high taxes, heavy regulation, and an oppressive political climate? I suspect so, especially because in the past century such socialist/communist policies have routinely caused the same result repeatedly in other countries. People fled the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in Europe (controlled by the Soviet Union), they fled North Korea, they fled China for Hong Kong, they fled Cuba, and they have been fleeing from Venezuela.

And where do they go? Foreign refugees in large numbers clamor to enter the U.S., but if that destination is unavailable they then favor other capitalist nations, where freedom and private enterprise are honored. And in the U.S. the populations continues to generally shift toward more conservative states, places where those same concepts are also honored.

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Russia’s population to shrink?

10:26 am

The coming dark age: According to a report from Russia’s national statistics office, the country’s population could drop by as much as 12 million by 2035.

The report outlined three scenarios, based on present trends, with only the most optimistic predicting any population increase, though even that saw population growing by only about four million by 2035. Meanwhile, the numbers the last two years were stark:

Russia’s overall population dropped for the first time in a decade last year, totaling 146.8 million as migration inflows hit record lows. It totaled 146.7 million so far in 2019, the State Statistics Service Rosstat said this month, as Russia experienced its highest natural population decline in 11 years.

These numbers are very disturbing, for they carry terrible consequences for both Russia and the rest of the world.

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Protesters continue to shut down TMT

5:12 pm

Mob rule: Though an agreement has been reached between the anti-telescope protesters and the mayor of the Big Island to move a tent blocking the access road to Mauna Kea, the deal also provided that no construction will proceed, even though the consortium that is building the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) has gotten legal permission to do so.

They agreed to move the so-called “kupuna tent,” referring to the Hawaiian word for elder, as part of a deal announced by Big Island Mayor Harry Kim.

In exchange, Kim promised protesters there will be no attempts to deliver construction equipment to the telescope site “anytime soon,” according to Kim’s offer letter to Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, one of the protest leaders who is considered a kupuna. “I, Mayor Kim give you my personal assurances that no attempt will be made to move TMT construction equipment up the mountain for a minimum of two months,” his letter said.

Legally Kim doesn’t really have the right to do this, unless Hawaii has decided to completely abandon the rule of law. Then again, Hawaii has decided to abandon the rule of law, as it now lets mobs, not the law, determine who can build where and when.

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FISA court condemns FBI

3:37 pm

The FISA court has issued a rare public rebuke of the FBI over its apparent misconduct and illegal tampering of evidence, as documented by the inspector general report released last week, misconduct aimed at misleading the court into issuing uncalled FISA warrants.

[T]he chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [FISC] strongly criticized the FBI over its surveillance-application process, giving the bureau until Jan. 10 to come up with solutions, in the wake of findings from Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz.

The order, from the court’s presiding judge Rosemary M. Collyer, came just a week after the release of Horowitz’s withering report about the wiretapping of Carter Page, a former campaign adviser to President Trump. “The FBI’s handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the [Office of Inspector General] report, was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above,” Collyer wrote in her four-page order. “The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.” [emphasis mine]

This is another independent confirmation that the behavior of the upper echelons of the FBI during the Obama administration was corrupt, apparently acting to take sides during the 2016 election against Donald Trump.

The highlighted words however are to me very distressing. The FISA court is asking the bad apples to come up with new procedures to prevent them from behaving as bad apples again. If this is all that happens then they will have gotten away with it, and will proceed to do worse in 2020 and beyond.

What needs to happen is firm contempt citations against specific individuals, people like James Comey, followed by prosecution. Until that happens the bad guys will still be in charge, and the American justice system will still be corrupted.

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Spygate from a scientific perspective

12:50 pm

Back in February 2018, Republican-controlled committees in both the House and the Senate released detailed memos, dubbed the Nunes and Grassley memos respectively, accusing the FBI and the Obama Justice Department of using unverified and false information that was nothing more than opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign to illegally obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), warrants that allowed them to spy on the campaign of Donald Trump as well as his administration following his election victory in 2016.

Put more bluntly, the Republicans accused the Clinton campaign, with the help of the Obama administration, of weaponizing the surveillance powers of the FBI and the Justice Department in order to defeat their political opponents.

Not surprisingly, the Democrats and former Obama officials denied these allegations, calling both memos partisan and false. In the House the Democrats issued their own memo, claiming the Republican memos left out key information that made their arguments invalid.

Who was right? What was true? How was an ordinary citizen going to determine which of these competing political positions properly described what had actually happened?

At the time I admit my instincts and own personal biases led me to believe the Republicans. Even so, the allegations were so horrifying — suggesting a clear abuse of power and a willingness of people in Washington to subvert an American election — that some skepticism of the Republican accusations was certainly reasonable.

In fact, the best thing one could do in this situation is to take a scientific approach to the problem. The Republicans had put forth a theory, citing some data that suggested the Obama administration, the Justice Department, and the FBI had abused their power in the worst possible manner. To prove that theory the Republicans would require both corroborating evidence as well as independent reviews that confirmed their conclusions.
» Read more

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Turkey buys machine gun toting drones

9:22 am

Our fascist future: Turkey has purchased shipment of an unspecified number of drones equipped with a machine gun capable of firing as many as 200 rounds.

Made by the country’s own Asisguard, the Songar drone can carry 200 rounds of 5.56 x 45 mm NATO class ammo, and can hit a 15-cm-square (6-inch-square) target from 200 m (650 ft) away with single shots, 15-bullet bursts or a full auto unloading.

The 25-kg (55-lb) drones use a four-armed carbon body design with two coaxially mounted large props on each arm. The automatic machine gun beneath rests in a tilting mount, allowing a remote operator to aim it using controls that would be familiar to anyone who’s used the camera on a DJI Phantom. It carries sufficient battery and powerful enough communications to fly 10 km (6.2 mi) on a mission, it’s GPS and GLONASS stabilized, and it offers twin camera operation for a pilot and gunner if required.

This is not the first or the most sophisticated killing drone ever built. Its simplicity however suggests that it is becoming very easy for governments and the power-hungry individuals who like to run them to obtain technology capable of killing their opposition, in a way that will be untraceable.

I have embedded below the fold a sales video produced by the company. If it doesn’t send chills up your spine you are very divorced from reality.
» Read more

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Major victory for Boris Johnson, Tories, and Brexit

7:18 pm

A victory for democracy: In the elections today in the United Kingdom it appears at this moment that the conservative Tories under Boris Johnson, running under a platform to quickly enforce the public’s vote three years ago to leave the European Union, have won the biggest majority since the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher.

As is typical in the modern journalist field, these results are also much more favorable to the conservatives than all the polls, which had called for a much closer result. The result is also a major rejection of Great Britain’s leftist and increasingly anti-Semitic Labor Party under Jeremy Corbyn.

Most important, the victory for Johnson is also a vindication of his strong position that he and Great Britain’s politicians had a responsibility to respect the voters’ choice three years ago to exit the European Union, and the effort by politicians to nullify that vote was a direct attack on democracy. The voters have clearly shown their contempt for that nullification effort, and have said so forcefully at the polls.

My immediate thought, from an American perspective: If only the American voters were as willing to make such a forceful statement. Our Democratic Party has been acting as bad and as anti-democratic as the politicians in the UK these past three years. It is long past time for a major political house-cleaning in Washington.

So far, the American voters have shown no inclination to do this, however, and in fact in the 2018 election did the exact opposite, rewarding the corrupt Democratic Party with more power by giving them control of the House. The result has been this ludicrous impeachment effort by the Democrats that is blatantly an effort to nullify the 2016 presidential election. They have no grounds for impeachment and the removal of Donald Trump, other than the fact that they don’t like him and that he beat them in a fair election.

They should be punished in the same way. Will the American voters do it? So far I remain pessimistic. I also pray every day that my pessimism turns out to be wrong.

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Bridenstine: SLS costs less than $2 billion per launch

12:30 pm

During an agency meeting where the new manager of NASA’s manned program officially took charge, administrator Jim Bridenstine expressed disagreement with a Trump administration estimate of $2 billion for each SLS launch.

The OMB letter used “over $2 billion” as the estimated cost of an SLS launch, arguing that is $1.5 billion more than a commercial launch. The $2 billion figure has been widely cited since then as an official cost estimate.

Bridenstine was asked about it today, and disagreed. “I do not agree with the $2 billion number. It is far less than that. I would also say the number comes way down when you buy more than one or two. I think in the end we’re going to be in the $800-900 million range.” NASA has bought only two SLS launches so far and negotiations are just starting on the third and fourth, he added. [emphasis mine]

Well that solves everything! SLS will only cost a little less than a billion per launch, not two billion. Any fool can see this is clearly competitive with the $100 million that SpaceX charges for each Falcon Heavy launch. And you’d have to do two Falcon Heavy launches to match what SLS can do in one launch. Obviously we want to buy SLS! It’s what any Washington lawmaker or bureaucrat would clearly conclude.

The article notes that NASA has only “bought two SLS launches” but fails to explain why. This is all that Congress has appropriated. NASA is negotiating with Boeing to build as many as ten more, but as far as I know, the authorization from lawmakers has not yet been given to do so.

But then, why not? We are no longer ruled by our elected officials, but by the unelected bureaucrats who live high on the hog in their plush Washington digs.

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Harris’s exit from presidential race highlights again the bigotry of the Democratic Party

3:10 pm

Today Kamala Harris announced she is dropping out of the race to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.

Not surprisingly, activists in the Democratic Party immediately blamed racism for her failure. From the leftist New York Times:

Still, Ms. Harris had already qualified for the next presidential debate, scheduled for Dec. 19, the only non-white candidate to do so thus far. Without her, Democrats may have an all-white debate stage after beginning the primaries with the most racially diverse field in history, though candidates like Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and businessman Andrew Yang may still qualify in the coming days.

“No matter your candidate, you have to recognize that going from the most diverse field ever in January to a potentially all-white debate stage in December is catastrophic,” wrote Leah Greenberg, a co-executive director of Indivisible, a national progressive group, on Twitter.

…“She really showed the importance of having different perspectives on the debate stage,” said Amanda Hunter, research and communications director at the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which supports women in politics and studies double standards. “Her personal story about being bused to school was something that a historically typical older white man would not bring to the conversation.”

But “there is still a very entrenched stereotype of what a presidential candidate looks like in this country,” Ms. Hunter said. “Simply by running, Senator Harris challenged that and broke down stereotypes. But a lot of the questions around electability and the challenges she faced were probably motivated by that entrenched stereotype that so many people held.” [emphasis mine]

Note how everything to these Democrat officials is based on race. Everything. To them, Harris lost because she wasn’t white, and because Americans can only conceive a white man as president.

Of course, this thinking is quite idiotic, considering that these same Americans voted twice for a black president, in 2008 and 2012. That’s hardly ancient history.

The only diversity that should matter is diversity of thought, of ideas, of policy suggestions. Among Democrats that’s the last thing we’ve seen in the past three years. All they have shown us is hate and opposition to all things Trump, followed by a desire to destroy the free capitalist United States and replace it with their warped view of the Soviet Union.

If you are normal decent person who happens to belong to the Democratic Party and routinely vote for them, be aware that this party is not the party you think it is. These comments above illustrate again the corrupt, racist, and bigoted make-up of the party’s power structure. They hate Trump, they hate ordinary whites, they hate freedom, and they hate you, if you oppose them in any way at all, even if you have been a loyal Democrat for decades.

For my part Harris’s exit is a great relief. She has repeatedly demonstrated her fascist tendencies in recent years.

I suspect this history had a lot more to do with her failure than her skin color.

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Ukraine’s president reiterates: No quid pro quo from Trump

8:46 am

Democratic Party coup update: The president of the Ukraine yesterday once again stated that President Trump applied no pressure on him to begin an investigation into Joe Biden.

Once again, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has denied again that President Trump withheld military aid in order to pressure him to investigate the Bidens or Ukrainian election interference. In an interview with TIME magazine, Zelensky made this absolutely clear. “Look, I never talked to the President from the position of a quid pro quo. That’s not my thing,” he said. “I don’t want us to look like beggars. But you have to understand. We’re at war. If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us. I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo. It just goes without saying.”

This is not the first time he has stated this publicly. Furthermore, his foreign minister has said the same thing, as has the U.S. ambassador during testimony to Congress.

On the other side, the accusations of misbehavior from Democratic Party witnesses have either been hearsay from people not even present during Trump’s phonecalls with Zelinsky, or from low-level bureaucrats who merely have a difference of opinion with Trump about U.S. foreign policy. I don’t remember however ever voting for them for President. Do you?

This ridiculous effort by the Democrats to overturn a legal election would be hilarious if it wasn’t so offensive. However, increasingly it appears it is serving a good end, as it is revealing their power-hungry, totalitarian, and anti-democratic culture to the entire country. They don’t support democracy and elections, only their guaranteed unopposed right to rule. Such people should never be given positions of power, and if they manage to do so, they should be removed by the voters as soon as possible.

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Climate change protesters mob local UK spaceport council

9:04 am

Mob rule: A local Cornwall council meeting yesterday approved a $10 million grant for a new spaceport despite protesters screaming and yelling in the gallery and outside, forcing the meeting to end early.

After deciding not to defer a decision, councillors voted to grant £10.32m of capital funding to the spaceport by 66 to 34, with one abstention.

The gallery then erupted with chants as protesters launched paper airplanes. The chamber was then cleared of councillors and the meeting adjourned as the crowds continued to chant and shouted at councillors as they left saying things like “shame on you”. [emphasis mine]

Police were required to maintain order.

I have highlighted the vote count to note that these protesters clearly did not have that much real support. Their protests however remain a good intimidation tactic, so expect more protests if this project continues, especially because it appears the climate change crowd is beginning to behave as if any new technology is a threat. From the article it appears the protests were dominated by global warming activists from the group Extinction Rebellion. Also, “the groups Red Rebels and deathly-looking Penitents were joined by locals carrying signs and flags.”

I grant that it might not make sense for this local council to spend so much money for a spaceport, especially because they are doing it mostly for Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. They are likely to find the money wasted.

The protests however are mindless and an act of bullying, and are not the way to debate this or any subject sanely.

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Supreme Court allows Mann defamation case to proceed

2:01 pm

The Supreme Court today ruled that the defamation suit of global warming activist Michael Mann against the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute can go forward.

On Monday, the Supreme Court denied a petition by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and National Review magazine to rehear and dismiss the defamation lawsuit brought by well-known climate scientist Michael Mann. The Competitive Enterprise Institute and National Review have been fighting for years to dismiss the case before it goes to trial, but the Supreme Court’s denial means the case will move forward in D.C. district court.

The Supreme Court rejected the petition without comment. But Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, dissented, arguing that the case addresses critical freedom of speech and freedom of the press issues.

The court has basically ruled that Mann should be allowed his day in court. Since the case stems from criticism of Mann’s shoddy climate science work, I suspect he will find himself having problems once that day arrives, as he did in Canada.

The bad part of this is that it allows Mann to achieve part of his strategy, which is to chill any criticisms of his shoddy work, out of fear he will sue and thus cost the critic a lot of money mounting a defense. No one should be allowed to use the law as a weapon to prevent criticism, especially if that criticism successfully proves the nature of that person’s very shoddy and incompetent climate research, including faking data and hiding pertinent real data.

UPDATE: I have crossed out the words above because they misconstrued my intended meaning. Mann’s effort to use the law to try to squelch opposing points of view is wrong, but in a free society we must allow him this bad behavior. If the law functions properly, his misbehavior (and shoddy science work) will become very evident with time.

By the way, did I mention that Mann’s scientific work is generally very shoddy, and not very trustworthy?

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A society run by mob rule

1:15 pm

In the past week several ugly events have illustrated forcefully how mob rule now dictates who can or cannot speak freely in America. Worse, these events show that we are no longer a civilized social order run by reason. Instead, we have become a culture where whoever can throw the loudest tantrum dictates policy.

First we have the horrible events last week at the State University of New York-Binghamton.

To understand how disgusting and despicable the first story above is, it is necessary for you to watch the video below. Pay special attention to the taller girl in the fur-lined parka who at about four minutes keeps looking at the camera-person (whom I think is also a girl) and aggressively and repeatedly asking, “Why are you shaking so? Why are you shaking so?” The reason is obvious. The girl filming is one the conservative students, and she is justifiably frightened. The taller girl, hostile and irrationally angry because a conservative dared to advocate opinions she doesn’t like, is clearly being physically threatening. As are all of her leftist compatriots.

The response of the college administration to this atrocious behavior was even more vile, essentially endorsing the actions of the mob:
» Read more

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Sweeping victories for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong elections

10:27 am

Good news: In elections yesterday in Hong Kong, pro-democracy candidates won a landslide victory, capturing control of 17 of 18 local councils.

Some 2.94 million people voted in the election, compared with 1.4 million in 2015.

Pro-democracy candidates won close to 60% of the total vote on Sunday, but achieved a landslide in terms of seats because of the first-past-the-post system, local media report. Pro-democracy contenders were victorious in 347 of the 452 district council seats up for grabs; pro-Beijing candidates won 60 seats; while independents – many of them pro-democracy – got 45, according to the South China Morning Post.

In the last election four years ago, pro-Beijing councillors won 298 seats, but the distribution of these seats meant they took control of all 18 district councils.

The official response from the China-appointed leader of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), Carrie Lam, was somewhat conciliatory:

After the social unrest in the past five months, I firmly believe that the vast majority of the public would share my wish for the peaceful, safe and orderly situation to continue.

The HKSAR Government respects the election results. There are various analyses and interpretations in the community in relation to the results, and quite a few are of the view that the results reflect people’s dissatisfaction with the current situation and the deep-seated problems in society. The HKSAR Government will listen to the opinions of members of the public humbly and seriously reflect.

Without doubt these results make it difficult for China to use military force on Hong Kong. The elected leadership throughout all but one district will oppose and stymie such actions. To make it happen the Chinese will literally have to arrest everyone.

In a sense, Hong Kong is becoming the West Berlin of China. It is now a path for ordinary Chinese citizens dissatisfied with communist rule to see another option. For totalitarian regimes, this is never a good thing, as when compared to free societies they never do better.

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Nick Sandmann $275 million libel suit against NBC to proceed

10:31 pm

A judge has now ruled that the $275 million libel suit against NBC filed by Covington teen-ager Nick Sandmann can move forward.

A federal judge ruled Thursday that Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann’s $275 million lawsuit against NBCUniversal may proceed on limited grounds, as he had with similar cases against The Washington Post and CNN.

U.S. District Court Judge William Bertelsman dismissed parts of the lawsuit while allowing discovery on allegations that the network’s coverage defamed the teen by reporting that he “blocked” Native American elder Nathan Phillips in a Jan. 18 encounter at the Lincoln Memorial.

…”As predicted, today Judge Bertelsman entered an order allowing the Nicholas Sandmann case against NBCUniversal to proceed to discovery just as he had earlier ruled with respect to WaPo & CNN cases. Huge, huge win!” tweeted Sandmann attorney L. Lin Wood.

Both the Post and NBC are very exposed here, especially when these lawsuits go before Kentucky juries. My big fear is that Sandmann’s lawyer will settle too easily, as these corrupt news organizations need to be slapped down hard for their routine effort to slander anyone on the right or even innocent who happens to do anything that appears to oppose the agenda of the Democratic Party or the left (I repeat myself).

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Air Force to still limit launch contractors to two

10:09 pm

The bureaucracy wins again! Though Blue Origin’s protest of the Air Force’s planned launch contract rules was sustained, and the Air Force plans to revise its contracting rules accordingly, the Air Force today announced that because the ruling itself was somewhat limited, it will still be able to limit future bidding for launches to only two contractors, through 2026.

[T]he Air Force intends to award in mid-2020 five-year contracts to two providers. Four companies submitted proposals: Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX and United Launch Alliance.

Although Blue Origin challenged the Air Force’s decision to pick two providers as harmful to the industrial base, GAO had no objections to that approach. “On the whole, we are pleased that the GAO upheld the major components of the National Security Space Launch competition, especially award timelines, quantities, and period of performance,” said [Air Force acquisition executive Will] Roper.

If you read the article, you will discover why the Air Force still wants to limit to two the number of contractors who can bid on launches. Its rules and methods, as described, are so tortuousness and complex that I suspect even the Air Force doesn’t completely understand them. Thus, to deal with more than two bids individually for each launch is beyond the comprehension or ability of these military bureaucrats. Rather streamline their bidding rules, they have decided it is better to put limits on American private enterprise, raise costs for the taxpayer, and squelch innovation and fast development within the military space effort.

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Blue Origin wins protest against Air Force

11:03 pm

Capitalism in space: The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has sustained Blue Origin’s protest against the Air Force’s launch procurement rules that would have limited bidding on all launch contracts for the first half of the 2020s to only two companies.

In a “pre-award” protest, Blue Origin challenged the terms of a request for proposals (RFP) issued by the Air Force earlier this year for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 Launch Service Procurement, which aims to award two contracts next year expected to cover 30 or more medium- and heavy-lift satellite launches the Air Force plans to conduct between 2022 and 2026.

Blue Origin, owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, is one of four companies that submitted bids for the contracts by the Air Force’s Aug. 1 proposal deadline. The other three companies bidding for the contracts are Northrop Grumman and incumbents United Launch Alliance and SpaceX.

After submitting its bid, Blue Origin filed a formal protest with the GAO arguing that several terms of the RFP unduly restrict competition, are ambiguous, or are inconsistent with customary commercial practice.

The GAO agreed.“GAO sustained the protest, finding that the RFP’s basis for award is inconsistent with applicable procurement law and regulation, and otherwise unreasonable,” Patton said in the statement.

The Air Force’s plan here never made any sense at all. Why put a limit now on the companies that can bid on launches as far in the future as 2026? Why not instead allow all the launch companies, already certified by the Air Force, to bid when the time comes, thus increasing competition while providing the Air Force the most options?

This is good news for the entire American launch industry. It means they will all have the Air Force as a potential customer. It is also good news for the taxpayer, as the competition for business will certainly drive innovation and the lowering of launch prices.

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Inspector general slams NASA’s management for bonus payments to Boeing

10:11 am

In a report [pdf] issued yesterday, NASA’s inspector general blasted the agency’s manned commercial space management for issuing a $287 million bonus payment to Boeing to help it avoid delays in developing its Starliner capsule — which would have caused gaps in future American flights to ISS — even though the cost to use Russian Soyuz capsules would have been far less.

Worse, the agency never even allowed SpaceX to make its own competitive offer.

NASA agreed to pay Boeing Co (BA.N) a $287 million premium for “additional flexibilities” to accelerate production of the company’s Starliner crew vehicle and avoid an 18-month gap in flights to the International Space Station. NASA’s inspector general called it an “unreasonable” boost to Boeing’s fixed-priced $4.2 billion dollar contract.

Instead, the inspector general said the space agency could have saved $144 million by making “simple changes” to Starliner’s planned launch schedule, including buying additional seats from Russia’s space agency, which the United States has been reliant on since the 2011 retirement of its space shuttle program.

…NASA justified the additional funds to avoid a gap in space station operations. But SpaceX, the other provider, “was not provided an opportunity to propose a solution, even though the company previously offered shorter production lead times than Boeing,” the report said. [emphasis mine]

I’ve read the report, and from it the impression is clear that when NASA management discovered that Boeing was facing delays in Starliner and needed extra cash, it decided to funnel that cash to it, irrespective of cost. While it is likely that the agency did so because it did not wish to buy more Russian Soyuz seats, it makes no sense that it didn’t ask SpaceX for its own competitive bid. By not doing so the management’s foolish bias towards Boeing is starkly illustrated

Eric Berger at Ars Technica also notes that the report makes clear how Boeing’s prices for Starliner are 60% higher than SpaceX’s Crew Dragon prices, further illustrating how the agency favors Boeing over SpaceX.

Boeing’s per-seat price already seemed like it would cost more than SpaceX. The company has received a total of $4.82 billion from NASA over the lifetime of the commercial crew program, compared to $3.14 billion for SpaceX. However, for the first time the government has published a per-seat price: $90 million for Starliner and $55 million for Dragon. Each capsule is expected to carry four astronauts to the space station during a nominal mission.

What is notable about Boeing’s price is that it is also higher than what NASA has paid the Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, for Soyuz spacecraft seats to fly US and partner-nation astronauts to the space station. Overall, NASA paid Russia an average cost per seat of $55.4 million for the 70 completed and planned missions from 2006 through 2020. Since 2017, NASA has paid an average of $79.7 million.

I don’t have a problem with NASA favoring Boeing over Russia, considering the national priorities. I can also understand the agency’s willingness to keep buying some Starliner seats in order to guarantee an American launch redundancy. However, giving Boeing even more money to keep its schedule going, when SpaceX is available to fill the gaps, demonstrates the corruption in the agency’s management. They haven’t the slightest understanding of how private enterprise and competition works.

The report is also filled with the same tiresome complaints about the on-going delays to the manned commercial program, focusing greatly on past technical issues (now mostly solved) while hiding in obscure language how it is NASA’s paperwork that is likely to cause all further delays.

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Upcoming big satellite constellations vex and worry astronomers

10:33 am

Astronomers are expressing increasing distress over the possible negative consequences to their Earth-based telescope observations from the several new giant satellite constellations being launched by SpaceX and others.

[M]any astronomers worry that such ‘megaconstellations’ — which are also planned by other companies that could launch tens of thousands of satellites in the coming years — might interfere with crucial observations of the Universe. They fear that megaconstellations could disrupt radio frequencies used for astronomical observation, create bright streaks in the night sky and increase congestion in orbit, raising the risk of collisions.

The Nature article then details the issues faced by some specific telescopes. Hidden within the article however was this interesting tidbit that admitted the problem for many telescopes is really not significant.

Within the next year or so, SpaceX plans to launch an initial set of 1,584 Starlink satellites into 550-kilometre-high orbits. At a site like Cerro Tololo, Chile, which hosts several major telescopes, six to nine of these satellites would be visible for about an hour before dark and after dawn each night, Seitzer has calculated.

Most telescopes can deal with that, says Olivier Hainaut, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Garching, Germany. Even if more companies launch megaconstellations, many astronomers might still be okay, he says. Hainaut has calculated that if 27,000 new satellites are launched, then ESO’s telescopes in Chile would lose about 0.8% of their long-exposure observing time near dusk and dawn. “Normally, we don’t do long exposures during twilight,” he says. “We are pretty sure it won’t be a problem for us.” [emphasis mine]

The article then proceeds with its Chicken-Little spin as if the astronomical world is about to end if something is not done to stop or more tightly control these new satellite constellations.

As indicated by the quote above, it appears however that the threat is overstated. The constellations might reduce observing time slightly on LSST, scheduled for completion in 2022 and designed to take full sky images once every three nights. Also, the satellite radio signals might impact some radio astronomy. In both cases, however, the fears seem exaggerated. Radio frequencies are well regulated, and LSST’s data should easily be able to separate out the satellite tracks from the real astronomical data.

Rather than demand some limits or controls on this new satellite technology, the astronomical community should rise to the occasion and find ways to overcome this new challenge. The most obvious solution is to shift the construction of new telescopes from ground-based to space-based. In fact, this same new satellite technology should make it possible for them to do so, at much less cost and relatively quickly.

But then, astronomers are part of our modern academic community, whose culture is routinely leftist and therefore fascist in philosophy (even though they usually don’t realize it). To them too often the knee-jerk response to any competition is to try to control and squelch it.

We shall see if the astronomers succeed in this case.

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We are not going to die from climate change

12:20 pm

Tony Heller today published this quite thorough review of the failed climate predictions by global warming scientists/activists, while also providing a great summary of the real state of our climate.

You can disagree or question him on one point or another, but the overall data once again illustrates the uncertainty that surrounds climate science. We really do not know what is going on, and any predictions that claim we do are hogwash.

Above all, take a look at the section on the benefits of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. This data is widespread and robust, and has been confirmed by agriculturists for decades. The planet is getting greener and as a result more fertile as there has been an increase in atmospheric CO2.

Meanwhile, the fear-mongers insist the world will end in just over eleven years, based not on any real data but on their emotional desire for catastrophe.

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Youtube and Facebook censoring name of Ukraine leaker

10:04 am

It is now being reported that both Youtube and Facebook are removing any content that mentions the name of CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella, the so-called “whistleblower” is really a leaker of classified information from a telephone conversation between President Trump and the president of the Ukraine.

From the original story at The Federalist:

For the record, it is perfectly legal to say or write the whistleblower’s name, unless you are the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG).

The federal whistleblower statute only requires the ICIG keep a whistleblower’s identity confidential, unless the ICIG determines the name necessary to disclose. No other government official or private citizen is required to protect the anonymity of a whistleblower. No such statute exists. So why the censorship on the whistleblower’s name?

Because disclosing the whistleblower’s name will likely lead to research that makes public what many on the right already know — the whistleblower blew his whistle based on a partisan agenda.

Ciaramella’s name is no secret. Not only has RealClearInvestigations revealed it, he was mentioned in the Mueller Report, and was even identified in published testimony from the secret hearings of Congressman Adam Schiff’s intelligence committee on impeachment.

For so-called news organizations to team-up to help fulfill the Democratic Party’s impeachment strategy is beyond disgraceful. This is one reason I do not allow Google advertising on Behind the Black. Google, which owns youtube, is a very corrupt company that is also a hand-in-glove supporter of the Democratic Party. This is why I also do not use it for my searches, going instead to either Startpage or DuckDuckGo. It is also why I encourage my readers to send me Evening Pause suggestions from video sources other than youtube.

Facebook is equally corrupt, and acts to block conservative sites from getting traffic. Now it is acting as an agent of the Democratic Party in its effort to overthrow the 2016 election.

One more point: It is also disgraceful for all news services, from the left and the right, to label Ciaramella a “whistleblower.” He is no such thing. All he did was leak the contents of Trump’s phonecall, based not on direct knowledge but on hearsay, and then express his objections to Trump’s foreign policy based on what he falsely thought had happened during that call. The transcript of that call demonstrates this unequivocally.

Moreover, Trump is the president. He sets foreign policy, not some lowlife CIA bureaucrat. Ciaramella broke his CIA security clearance by leaking and then spreading this tale. He should be fired, not anointed the honorary title of “whistleblower.”

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The dark future predicted by this week’s elections

1:06 pm

Because the elections this past week on November 5 took place during an off year, they were mostly local, and thus have a limited value in predicting the public’s overall political attitude. The results however can still give us a hint about the future, and are thus worth looking at for that reason.

In general, the results were mostly mixed, with Democrats doing great in some suburbs and in Virginia, and Republicans doing great in the down slate races in Mississippi and Kentucky. The governorship elections were also mixed, with the Republicans winning in Mississippi and the Democrats winning in Kentucky.

Other results also suggest mixed results on a variety of propositions. The link above notes the defeat of a leftist proposition in Washington that would have repealed the state’s prohibition on using affirmative action quotas. On the other hand, in New York City voters approved ranked voting, an election system that Democrats have used in Maine and California to destroy Republican opposition.

Overall however I consider these results a disaster for the future of freedom, democracy, and our Constitutional system. The Democratic Party has made it very clear in the past three years that it no longer respects all three. More importantly, they have also made it clear that they are willing to use slander, libel, and any number of vicious McCarthyite tactics to squelch and destroy anyone who opposes them.

It is terrifying to me that the public seems undecided or ambivalent about these facts, and still willing to vote for Democrats, many of whom have openly supported these tactics and positions. In fact, it suggests a large percentage of the population, majorities in many places, actually applaud the Democratic Party’s fascist tactics and positions.

This week’s elections therefore once again reaffirm for me a very pessimistic future coming in the next few election cycles. Even if Trump should win in 2020, the voting pattern that we have seen in both 2018 (when the voters gave control of the House to the Democrats) and 2019 suggest that his win will be mixed, and that the power the Democrats presently hold in Congress will remain firm and unchallenged. This is what the voters have been telling us. They are not ready to clean house in the Democratic Party.

Dark times are coming. Be ready.

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U.S. formally begins exit from Paris climate agreement

10:21 am

On Monday the Trump administration fulfilled one of Trump’s campaign promises and formally began the year-long process to exit the Paris climate agreement.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the move in a statement. “President Trump made the decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement because of the unfair economic burden imposed on American workers, businesses, and taxpayers by U.S. pledges made under the Agreement,” Pompeo said. “The United States has reduced all types of emissions, even as we grow our economy and ensure our citizens’ access to affordable energy….The U.S. approach incorporates the reality of the global energy mix,” he added, arguing “innovation and open markets” will drive emissions reductions.

There is ample data that indicates the U.S. is beating the targets of the Paris accord, even though Trump made it clear very shortly after taking office that the government would no longer require its implementation.

The article is amusing in its biased effort to provide a soapbox for every special interest (from environmentalists to Democrats) to express their horror at Trump’s decision. Like most
mainstream outlets, it devotes practically no effort to give the whole story.

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Boeing & NASA declare pad abort test a success

8:44 am

According to the NASA press release for yesterday pad abort test of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, the test was a success even though one of three main parachutes did not deploy successfully.

A pitcharound maneuver rotated the spacecraft into position for landing as it neared its peak altitude of approximately 4,500 feet. Two of three Starliner’s main parachutes deployed just under half a minute into the test, and the service module separated from the crew module a few seconds later. Although designed with three parachutes, two opening successfully is acceptable for the test parameters and crew safety. After one minute, the heat shield was released and airbags inflated, and the Starliner eased to the ground beneath its parachutes.

All reports say that this parachute issue will not effect the December 17 planned launch of the first unmanned orbital flight to ISS.

I find NASA’s reaction to this anomaly fascinating. Previously the agency repeatedly made a very big deal about the slightest anomaly by both Boeing and SpaceX on any test or procedure. While the agency’s response to these problems could have been reasonably justified, the caution it sometimes exhibited, often causing significant delays that might have been avoidable, was somewhat disturbing, especially when contrasted with the agency’s willingness to accept far more serious issues in connection with SLS and Orion.

Now however, the agency has no problem with the failure of one parachute to deploy during this test. While I actually agree with this response, the contrast is interesting and suggests to me that politics and deadlines (with the Russian Soyuz contract running out) are finally exerting some influence over NASA’s safety people. I suspect it has been made clear to them that unless something really seriously goes wrong, as long as the tests would have resulted in living astronauts, the safety bureaucrats had better not stand in the way of progress.

If so, this is very good news. It means that, assuming nothing really goes wrong with the remaining tests, the first manned missions are finally going to occur next year, relatively early in the year.

Posted at the Hayabusa-2/OSIRIS-REx asteroid conference in Tucson this week.

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Sunspot update October 2019: Sunspot activity continues to flatline

9:38 am

For the fifth month in a row the Sun has produced practically no sunspots, possibly the longest such stretch since astronomers began recording the sunspot cycle in the 1700s.

This flatlining is very obvious in NOAA’s October update of its graph showing the long term sunspot activity of the Sun, released yesterday, and posted below, with annotations:

October 2019 sunspot activity
The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community for the previous solar maximum. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction, extended in November 2018 four years into the future.

SILSO October graph

As it has done in previous four months, in October the Sun produced practically no sunspots. The graph on the right, produced by Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations (SILSO), shows only one weak sunspot at the beginning of October.

Even though the previous 2008-2009 solar minimum was one of the deepest and longest ever recorded, the lack of sunspots in the past five months has significantly beaten it for inactivity, as shown on the first graph above. That previous minimum never had a period of even two months with so few sunspots. Furthermore, the Sun has now been blank 74% of the time in 2019, a record of blankness that beats the yearly record of either 2008 or 2009. If the Sun continues to be as blank as it has been for the next two months, 2019 will easily set the record for the year with the fewest sunspots ever recorded.

The big question remains: Are we heading for a grand minimum with no sunspots for decades? We still do not know. Even these unprecedented trends prove nothing, as we really do not yet have a clear understanding of why the Sun undergoes these various cycles of sunspot activity/inactivity. The Sun could still come back to life in the coming years. We can only wait and see. As I noted however in last month’s sunspot update, the arrival of a new grand minumum, the first since the 1600s, could have important consequences:

During past grand minimums there is evidence that the Earth also cooled, though the link between the two phenomenon remains circumstantial and unproven. If we see another grand minimum, and the Earth once again cools, then we might be able to finally tie these two phenomenon together.

It is essential that climate scientists pursue this question. Answering it might very well defuse the fears presently expressed by leftist politicians and the leftist press of an oncoming period of global warming.

At the same time, it might also present us with the possibility of an oncoming period of significant global cooling, during which it will be so cold that we might face crop failures (as happened in the previous grand minimum in the 1600s).

We need to know what is going on with the Sun, and its consequences for Earth, as soon as possible. Whether we can find out this solar cycle is unlikely, but a cold hard look at the data would do much to answer the question.

I wonder however if there any climate scientists around willing to do so. Questioning human-caused global warming carries great career risks. In fact, taking any position counter to the prevailing wisdom on any scientific issue appears to carry risks, as demonstrated by the experience recently when a journal decided to publish a paper that questioned modern gender politics:
» Read more

23 comments

House Democrats vote to move forward on impeachment effort

10:05 am

House Democrats yesterday voted to move forward on their very partisan impeachment effort to throw Donald Trump out of office, without any evidence that he had committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors,” as required by the Constitution.

Only two Democrats voted with all the Republicans against this resolution, which establishes some very fishy rules for running this already fishy impeachment inquiry.

The resolution directs the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, Financial Services, Judiciary, and Ways and Means Committees to “continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump.”

The Democrats’ resolution specifies that Republicans in the minority on the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees will have the authority, with the concurrence of committee chairs in the majority, to subpoena witnesses and compel their testimony. If the chair does not consent, the minority can appeal to the full committee. It is common in other proceedings for committee chairs to essentially have veto authority over subpoenas sought by ranking minority members.

The measure also sets the stage for proceedings to move into a public setting soon. The resolution authorizes the Intelligence Committee to conduct an “open hearing or hearings” in which minority Republicans have equal time to question witnesses.

And, after that hearing is concluded, “to allow for a full evaluation of minority witness requests, the ranking minority member may submit to the chair, in writing, any requests for witness testimony relevant to the investigation described in the first section of this resolution within 72 hours after notice is given.” [emphasis mine]

Meanwhile, the only accusation the Democrats have against Trump are statements by two very partisan government bureaucrats that they had policy differences with some of Trump’s statements during his phone conversation with the new president of the Ukraine. No one however has identified anything Trump said that was in any way criminal and would justify impeachment, and you can read the transcript of the conversation yourself to see how relatively harmless it was.

This is the Russian collusion hoax all over again. Some partisan Democrats in the bureaucracy make some partisan accusations against Trump, based on nothing, and then the Democrats (and their willing accomplices in the media) run with these accusations. With the Russian hoax, the Democrats relied on a hack prosecutor, Robert Mueller, to play their partisan games, and discovered that this strategy didn’t work because Mueller was legally exposed. If he had proceeded with fake prosecutions based on no evidence he could have been very liable, personally.

The solution? The Democrats have foregone legal investigations, and are now doing a partisan and sham political investigation in Congress, based on nothing. And according to the rules above as well as their consistent behavior since 2016, I fully expect the Democrats to consistently block any testimony from any witnesses suggested by the Republicans. They will run this kangaroo court in a manner that will guarantee conviction, merely because they still refuse to accept the results of a legal election where they lost.

In a sane and more rational world, these Democrats would be out of office in the next election. We do not live in such a world. Their behavior was as partisan and as slanderous leading up to the 2018 election, and the voters rewarded them with control of the House.

23 comments

UK to have general elections December 12th

3:17 pm

The British parliament has voted 438 to 20 to approve prime minister Boris Johnson’s demand that they hold general elections on December 12th in exchange for getting an extension to remain in the European Union until the end of January.

Though polls suggest that the public supports Johnson strongly in his effort to leave the EU, an actual election is something completely different. We shall now see if it will really happen.

Personally, I am pessimistic. The opposition to Brexit, like the opposition to Trump in the U.S., has never accepted the results of their previous defeats. I doubt any who voted against Brexit then have changed their mind since, while their unrelenting effort (like the resistance to Trump) has likely worn down its support.

8 comments

Comparing Trump vs Obama against ISIS

5:17 pm

This very interesting article does a nice job of reviewing the history of ISIS since 2010, the year that the Obama administration released just killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, using multiple news sources and stories.

Here is a rough timeline:

Obama presidency:
2008: ISIS forces estimated to be about 700 fighters, holding practically no ground.
2010: al-Baghdadi is released.
2011: al-Baghdadi takes over ISIS.
2014: Obama refers to ISIS as a “JV team.”
2015: ISIS forces estimated to be between 20,000 to 31,000 fighters.
2015: ISIS establishes global terrorism network resulting in terrorist attacks worldwide.
2016: ISIS occupies 17,500 square miles, with 35,000 fighters.

Trump presidency:
2017: (July): ISIS pushed out of Mosul.
2017 (October) ISIS in full retreat to U.S. backed forces, loses its capital Raqqa.
2017 (December): ISIS forces now estimated to be 1,000 fighters, holding 1,900 square miles.
2019: al-Baghadi is killed.

At this moment ISIS remains a threat, but a significantly reduced one from its peak in 2016.

Like Trump or hate him, an objective look at how he has handled this issue versus Obama’s handling once again puts the victory mark in Trump’s column. Obama’s policy made things worse in the Arab Middle East. Trump has so far improved things.

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