Tag: policy

Pushback: Cornell’s library lifts its blackballing of Abraham Lincoln

12:36 pm

Banned by Cornell

Our modern dark age: Faced with a storm of criticism from donors, alumni, and the public, the removal of a bust of Abraham Lincoln from the library at Cornell University, has been cancelled, and Lincoln will once again be given an honored place at the university.

The bust’s removal, along with a plaque celebrating Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (to the right), were removed in 2021 because some unnamed individual had filed a complaint. As I noted in June:
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Virgin Orbit ready to launch from Cornwall, United Kingdom

9:57 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Orbit announced today that it has completed its preparations for its first launch from Cornwall, United Kingdom, which would also be the first launch ever from British soil.

An actual launch date has not yet been set, due to the “launch permitting regulatory process” in the UK. At the moment Cornwall is vying with two new spaceports in Scotland for the honor of that first launch.

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SpaceX successfully launches astronauts to ISS

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this morning successfully launched two NASA astronauts, one Japanese astronaut, and one Russian astronaut into orbit for a mission to ISS, with the docking scheduled for tomorrow.

The capsule, Endurance, is making its second flight. This was SpaceX’s eighth manned launch. The first stage, making its first fight, landed successfully on the drone ship in the Atlantic. This was the first new first stage launched since May 2022, and only the second this year. All other launches in 2022 were completed using SpaceX’s existing fleet of boosters. The company also continues to hold to the pattern of last year for maintaining that fleet, by adding two new boosters each year.

That this achievement is now becoming as routine as SpaceX’s unmanned launches proves the company’s success. And SpaceX did it in less than a decade, something NASA with its government-built shuttle was never able to accomplish.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

44 SpaceX
41 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 63 to 41 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 63 to 61.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: UC-Berkeley law school clubs ban Jewish speakers

12:03 pm

The coming genocide
Becoming Judenfrei at UC-Berkeley

Persecution is now cool! Nine different law school clubs at the University of California-Berkeley have now made it their official policy to ban all “pro-Zionist” speakers, and are doing so with the full support of the college administration.

And these are not groups that represent only a small percentage of the student population. They include Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent and the Queer Caucus. Berkeley Law’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a progressive Zionist, has observed that he himself would be banned under this standard, as would 90% of his Jewish students.

Zionism has always been used by leftist hate-monger groups as a euphemism for Jew. Its meaning is generally unclear and vague, and in the end usually ends up covering anyone who is support of Israel’s existence. Since this opinion fits the description almost every Jew, banning Zionism essentially bans Jews.

The university’s support and backing of this anti-Semitic ban has come from Dean Chemerinsky himself, who admits he would be banned under these rules but in a rebuttal posted at the link above, expresses full support for the anti-Semitic policy of these clubs.
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Today’s blacklisted Americans: All normal girls banned from locker room because one cross-dressing boy demanded it

12:09 pm

Blake Allen, punished for being a normal high school girl
Blake Allen, punished for being a normal high school girl

They’re coming for you next: This story, which broke on September 28, 2022, is so absurd that at first glance it is hard to believe: Officials running Randolph High School in Vermont have banned from the girls locker room all girls from the school’s volley ball team because one cross-dressing boy was using it and the girls had the unmitigated nerve to express strong discomfort changing clothes in the presence of a male.

The quote below tells the tale, but in order to make it more precisely describe reality, I have replaced the meaningless words (“trans”, “transgender” “they”) that our queer dictators have imposed on mainstream news sources with words that actually describe the facts.

[Blake] Allen [one of the girls] says that the dispute started when the [boy who likes to wear woman’s clothing] made an inappropriate comment while members of the volleyball team were getting changed. She says her issue is not with having the [cross-dresser] student on the team or at school, but specifically in the locker room. “There are biological boys that go into the girl’s bathroom but never a locker room,” Allen said.
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India’s Mars orbiter mission ends after eight years

6:17 pm

After eight years in orbit around Mars, India’s Mars orbiter mission, Mangalyaan, has run out of fuel for controlling its orientation, ending its mission.

The Rs 450 crore Mars Orbiter Mission was launched onboard PSLV-C25 on November five, 2013, and the MOM spacecraft was successfully inserted into Martian orbit on September 24, 2014 in its first attempt. “Right now, there is no fuel left. The satellite battery has drained,” sources in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told PTI. “The link has been lost”.

There was, however, no official word from the country’s national space agency, headquartered here.

During its mission it produced more than a thousand images, though the mission’s primary objective was technological, proving that India itself could design, build, launch, and manage a planetary mission to another world. For India, Mangalyaan was thus an unqualified success.

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Head of Commerce’s space office questions new FCC regulations on space junk

10:00 am

Turf war! At a conference yesterday Richard Dalbello, director of the Office of Space Commerce at the Commerce Department, strongly questioned the FCC’s legal authority for its just passed new regulation on the de-orbiting of space junk.

“I think the FCC, for their part, has pushed the boundaries of their authorities pretty aggressively,” he said when asked about what agency should have oversight for issues like that, as his office works to create a civil space traffic management capability. “Although I certainly congratulate them on the depth of their intellectual work,” he said of the FCC and its new order, “a lot of the things that they articulated are probably, arguably, outside their job jar.”

Dalbello’s comments only add to the many turf wars going on in the DC swamp over space regulation. Some in Congress want all space regulation to shift to his office. Others want it to be distributed across a number of agencies in both the military and civilian bureaucracies.

Regardless, Dalbello’s office is the agency that might actually have the legal authority for regulating space junk. And it is certain that the FCC does not have it.

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NASA now aiming for SLS launch in November

1:52 am

In finding that Hurricane Ian caused little damage at its vehicle assembly building at Kennedy, NASA managers have decided to target the the November 12 to 27 launch window for the first launch of its SLS rocket.

According to this graph [pdf], November 27th is the only date that will provide NASA with the longest mission for Orion (38 to 42 days). Furthermore, the mission precludes launches on November 13, 20-21, and 26.

Expect them to aim for November 12th, even though that will result in an Orion mission only 26 to 28 days long.

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Part 3: Against the COVID liars and their strong-arm edicts the wheels of justice are grinding forward slowly

1:43 pm

Renewing the Declaration of Independence
Renewing the Declaration of Independence

In the first two parts of this series I very carefully outlined the ugly corrupt lie of the experimental COVID jab, and then followed up with a detailed summary of the lies put forth to justify imposition of the many COVID mandates.

Today, in this concluding essay, we will take a look at the battle by many to resist and end those COVID mandates, a battle that is increasingly successful because the mandates themselves were both immoral and illegal. They desecrated all the fundamental tenets and principles that underlie all American culture and law.

First however an addendum to yesterday’s essay, where I noted that “The royalties possibly received by Fauci and others in the government for their work developing the COVID jab — that the government then mandated — boggles the mind.” Shortly after I posted that essay, this story hit the web:

Fauci’s Net Worth Doubled During Pandemic, As Americans Struggled to Make Ends Meet

In 2021 alone Fauci earned almost two million dollars in royalties, travel perks, and investment gains. We still do not know however exactly what companies paid Fauci this money, or the precise amounts, because, according to the organization Open the Books which obtained this data, NIH has redacted that information.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Something is very rotten in the state of COVID”. The only reason I can fathom for keeping the source of those royalties secret is if their unveiling would reveal a serious conflict of interest. Fauci was one of the most visible government officials pushing the COVID shots on adults and children. Was he also making money on each jab? The public has a right to know.

Now, on to the fight against the illegal and immoral COVID mandates.
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FCC approves new regulation requiring defunct satellite deorbit in five years

10:13 am

Despite questions from Congress and others about the agency’s legal authority to do so, the FCC yesterday approved a new regulation that will require satellite companies to de-orbit defunct satellites within five years, shortening the rule from the previous requirement of 25 years.

Commissioners voted 4-0 to adopt the draft rule, published earlier this month, intended to address growing debris in LEO. Under the new rule, spacecraft that end their lives in orbits at altitudes of 2,000 kilometers or below will have to deorbit as soon as practicable and no more than five years after the end of their mission. The rule would apply to satellites launched two years after the order is adopted, and include both U.S.-licensed satellites as well as those licensed by other jurisdictions but seeking U.S. market access.

The article notes how this rule replaces “a longstanding FCC guideline” Note the difference. Previously the FCC had made a recommendation, recognizing it did not have the authority to impose it. Now, our power-hungry DC bureaucracy has decided it can ignore the law and impose any rule it desires. Nor does it feel it needs to listen to Congress, one committee of which sent a stern letter recently questioning the then proposed new rule and calling for the FCC to hold off any action on it while elected officials review the situation.

The FCC yesterday responded, essentially telling Congress to bug off.

None of these questions have anything to do with whether this rule makes sense. It likely does, but that still doesn’t give FCC officials to right to arbitrarily give themselves more power. Whether our elected officials will act to defend their own power is uncertain, as the pattern in the past half century is for Congress to consistently cede its power to the bureaucracy, whenever challenged.

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Part 2: How the liars spread the ugly corrupt lie of the COVID jab

4:01 pm

Yesterday I outlined in detail how a growing body of research as well as a great deal of blatantly obvious public data is increasingly demonstrating that the COVID shots carry with them some risk, and that in many cases, especially for those younger than 50, the risks outweigh the relatively minor benefits the jab provides against the Wuhan flu.

Though this data was unknown when the COVID shots were first made available, the amount of uncertainty and risk was great enough to make it unconscionable for any politician or health official to require anyone to get the jab, no matter what. And yet, led by President Joe Biden, government agencies and big corporations nationwide demanded employees get the jab, or be fired.

The result: tens of thousands of individuals, especially the young and healthy, have died unnecessarily from the COVID shots, since COVID itself could never have killed them.

Today I am going to outline the lies perpetuated by politicians and government health officials almost from day one of the Wuhan panic that worked hide these basic facts. Many times these lies were committed with the best of intentions. Many times the liars honestly and sincerely believed the lie was their only course of action.

And in too many cases, the lies were merely lies, said simply to protect the individual from scandal and possible prosecution, should the truth come out.

No matter what the reason, however, these lies were not only dishonest, they were morally wrong, and resulted in routinely bad policy that only made the Wuhan epidemic far worse than it ever had to be.

To begin, let us look at the lies of some specific individuals.
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SpaceX to upgrade 2nd Kennedy launchpad for manned launches

10:13 am

In order to create some increased redundancy, SpaceX and NASA have agreed to upgrade the company’s second launchpad at Cape Canaveral, LC-40, so that both it and pad LC-39A can launch manned Dragon capsules.

This plan grew out of concern by NASA that the new Starship orbital launchpad was too close to LC-39A, and could possibly damage it during a launch. Should that happen, and no back-up launchpad was available, the agency would have no way to get astronauts up to ISS, since Boeing’s Starliner is not yet operational. Because of that concern, NASA made it clear that no Starship launches could occur in Florida until this issue was resolved.

The solution? Make LC-40 a manned launchpad too.

Nothing is known about the nature of the modifications that LC-40 will require. But more likely than not, NASA will require SpaceX to develop something similar to Pad 39A’s facilities. That would involve building a new crew access tower, crew access arm, escape system (39A uses baskets and ziplines), and an on-site bunker for astronauts.

It is also likely that no Starship launches at Kennedy will occur until this work is done and a manned launch from LC-40 takes place. Though this could delay Starship somewhat, I expect not significantly. Before SpaceX is ready to launch operationally in Florida, it still has to do a lot of testing and development of Starship/Superheavy in Boca Chica, work that could take several years. I also suspect that it will get the launchpad work done relatively quickly, especially if NASA agrees to pay for it.

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