Tag: policy

Appeals court rules against Obama immigration executive order

2:42 pm

The law is such an inconvenient thing: A federal appeals court has sustained a lower court injunction halting the Obama administration’s effort to make up law and issue amnesty to illegal immigrants.

Three significant take-aways from this:

  • 1. The case will now proceed quickly to the Supreme Court.
  • 2. The courts appear to be united against Obama’s illegal action, a fact that to me is a relief considering the number of Democratically-appointed judges in recent years who have allowed their partisan leanings to influence their decisions.
  • 3. This will strengthen the hand of the lower court judge whose injunction was defied by the Obama administration, making it easier for him to impose serious contempt charges against Obama officials and Department of Justice lawyers.

Overall, this and other recent court rulings against the Obama administration give me hope that we are still a nation of laws, not men, and that we will weather this bad period and come out of it intact as a free nation.

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Senate Republican leaders ready to cave to save Obamacare

11:36 am

In the mistaken belief that a court ruling against Obamacare subsidies would damage Republicans, Senate Republican leaders have written a bill that would nullify the court ruling and save Obamacare.

With several Senate Republicans facing tough reelections, and control of the chamber up for grabs, 31 senators have signed on to a bill written by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) that would restore the subsidies for current Obamacare enrollees through September 2017. But the administration would have to pay a heavy price — the bill would also repeal Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates and insurance coverage requirements. …

But even if Johnson could somehow persuade Obama and Senate Democrats to accept his plan — a herculean task — the bigger problem will be his Republican colleagues in the House. The growing divide between the two chambers leaves the GOP in an awkward spot. The court could gut Obamacare in June, handing Republicans a long-sought victory they couldn’t achieve legislatively. But without a backup plan that the whole party supports, the GOP has no way to blunt the political damage if millions of Americans lose the ability to pay for their health insurance.

The madness here is in somehow assigning any blame to the Republicans. They didn’t write this law. They aren’t at fault if it goes down. The only political damage that will occur if the Supreme Court rules against subsidies will be against the Democrats. To think the Republicans will be hurt by this is plain stupidity, which isn’t surprising coming from a Senate leadership run by Mitch McConnell with the help of John McCain.

The Republicans should be arguing that, following a court ruling against Obamacare, the best solution would be to repeal the law outright and start over. Period. That is what the public wants, and has wanted, in poll after poll now for seven years, beginning two years before the law was even passed and continuing even as the law has increasingly gone into effect.

If the Democrats refuse to agree to a repeal than they will be the ones once again causing the problem. The Republicans shouldn’t be afraid to make this clear.

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The Russian investigation into Progress failure stalled?

8:47 am

Internal disagreements appear to be hampering the investigation into the Progress launch failure in late April.

The investigation had been leaning to pinning the failure on the disintegration of the Soyuz third stage oxygen tank. Others, however, are now claiming that the disintegration itself was caused by an improper separation of Progress from the rocket. The result is that the investigation has delayed the release of its findings.

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Berlin July 1945 in color

6:01 pm

An evening pause: For Memorial Day, on which we not only honor the war dead but we are supposed to refresh our memories about why we fought in the first place. This color footage of occupied Berlin shortly after surrender shows the devastation after World War II. Though it is tragic to see, I will be honest and admit that I feel little sorrow. The Germans brought this upon themselves by plunging the world into two world wars, and in the second used it as an excuse to commit unspeakable genocide. In order to make sure they would never do it again, and would instead become a part of the civilized world, it was necessary to hit them as hard as these images show. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin all understood this. So did the entire populations of all three allies.

If only we had the courage today to do the same to the petty dictators and Islamic fanatics in the Middle East. They are as brutal, as violent, and as bigoted as the Nazis were, and will soon have atomic weapons at their disposal to use as they wish. To really bring them to heel they need to be given the same harsh lessons we gave the Germans.

I fear however we will not have the courage to do so until after they drop some nuclear bombs on a few cities.

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Corruption in the Russian space industry

8:52 am

A slew of stories in the Russian press today illustrate again the deeply ingrained problems that country has, both in corruption and in its ability to produce a quality product.

The last story describes the overall scale of the corruption, which is not confined just to the space sector, but can be found in many industries. The aerospace industry just happens to be the most visible outside Russia, and thus the most embarrassing. Yet,
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“If they are white kill ‘em all.”

9:30 am

Feel the leftwing love: The student who organized a demonstration last month where people were encouraged to stomp on the American flag has written a 4,700-word essay in which he enthusiastically calls for the murder of all whites.

Quoting former Nation of Islam leader and New Black Panther Party chairman, Kallid Abdul Muhammad, Sheppard wrote of whites, “we give them 24 hours to get out of town by sundown.”

“I say, if they don’t get out of town, we kill the white men, we kill the white women, we kill the white children, we kill the white babies, we kill the blind whites, we kill the crippled whites, we kill the crazy whites, we kill the faggots, we kill the lesbians, I say god dammit we kill ’em all,” Sheppard continued. “If they are white kill ‘em all.”

Some might say that this guy is merely a fanatic and that I am wrong to associate him with the left. I would simply note that his racist opinions come right out of the gender and ethnic politics the left has been pushing for the past two decades. If he isn’t leftwing, he is at least a child of that movement.

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Patriot Act renewal fails in Senate

9:37 am

A victory for freedom: Due largely to the effort of Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), the Senate failed on Friday to pass even a one day extension of the Patriot Act.

The failure was a major defeat for Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who had pushed for a full renewal that kept in place all of the government’s spying programs created under the law.

I would not be hopeful, however, that we have seen the end of this unconstitutional law. I fully expect the Senate to agree on Monday to the House bill, which puts restrictions on the spying but still keeps many of the Patriot Act’s intrusive features.

More on this political battle here.

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Japan to upgrade its ISS cargo freighter

9:15 am

The competition heats up: Japan has decided to upgrade its HTV cargo freighter to ISS by cutting its weight by 30% and reducing the cost to build it by half.

Without doubt the success of the U.S. in quickly building two private and relatively inexpensive freighters, Dragon and Cygnus, has influenced this decision. The managers in Japan have realized that the HTV is not efficient and could be streamlined, and they are trying now to do it.

Isn’t competition a wonderful thing?

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Russian executive acknowledges SpaceX is beating them

9:03 am

The competition heats up: The chief executive of one of Russia’s largest aerospace centers admitted during a television appearance on Friday that their country is losing market share to SpaceX.

“The commercial launch market has changed over the past few years. New players have emerged, for example the American company SpaceX. Few people believed that a commercial project would be able to break into the market and create a competitive product, create a carrier [rocket] that’s competitive in terms of price and quality. But this has happened and we have to reckon with it,” he said. “It’s true that we have reduced our presence in the commercial launch market in recent years.

The irony here is that all of the decisions by Putin and the Russian government since SpaceX’s arrival — most especially the decision to consolidate the entire aerospace industry into a single corporation controlled by the government — have actually worked to limit Russia’s ability to compete.

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PBS news anchor admits she is a Democratic stooge

6:08 pm

Even as PBS provided no coverage of the George Stephanopolis scandal, PBS news anchor Judy Woodruff admitted on air last Friday that she had contributed $250 to the Clinton Foundation, supposedly to provide charitable aid to Haiti.

It is unconscionable for any legitimate journalist to give any money to any organization run by a politician. If she wanted to help Haiti, there were many better charities, especially since the Clinton Foundation only gives 6% of its donations to charity, keeping the rest for Bill and Hillary. She did it to let them know whose side she was on.

Meanwhile, PBS’s reasons for not covering Stephanopolis’s own payoffs to the Clintons are downright absurd:

I asked the NewsHour’s executive producer, Sara Just, for the reasoning behind not covering the Stephanopoulos story on the air. She said: “We had an online piece but for broadcast we didn’t think it met the bar as a story for our limited on-air news hole that day.”

In other words, we can’t cover this because it exposes a fellow journalist as a Democratic Party shill, and we can’t allow the public to know that. We have to help ABC and Stephanopolis make believe they are objective journalists so that they, like us, can help Democrats get elected.

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Health insurance premiums continue to skyrocket under Obamacare

11:36 am

Finding out what’s in it: As happened last year, the premiums health insurance companies charge will go up as much as 51%, as declared in the twelve states where next year’s premiums have been proposed.

Obviously this is all the fault of the Republicans for not supporting Obamacare. The Democrats and Obama were helpless because of this opposition, forced to write the law all by themselves and then shove it down our throats.

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Fascist gays attack business for providing them services

11:13 am

Fascists: A Canadian jewelry provided polite service for a lesbian wedding, but was then threatened with boycotts and violence because he dared put up a sign stating his personal opposition to gay marriage.

Let’s understand what happened here. This Christian jeweler agreed to custom-make engagement rings for a lesbian couple, knowing that they were a couple, and treated them politely. But when they found out what he really believed about same-sex marriage, even though the man gave them polite service, and agreed to sell them what they asked for, the lesbian couple balked, and demanded their money back — and the mob threatened the business if they didn’t yield. Which, of course, he did.

You understand, of course, that this is not about getting equal treatment. The lesbian couple received that. This is about demonizing a point of view, and driving those who hold it out of the public square. Just so we’re clear about that.

The goal in all these cases has never been about guaranteeing that homosexuals get fair and equal treatment. No, the real goal, clearly revealed in this case, has been to destroy any opposition, verbal or otherwise, to the homosexual agenda.

Freedom for me but not for thee.

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Patriot Act snooping prevented no terrorism

10:40 am

Even as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) fights to save the snooping authorized under the Patriot Act, the FBI has admitted that no terrorism cases at all were solved using that information.

So, what use would the government possibly want with such private information? Could it be that it could eventually have some political uses instead, useful for squelching any grassroots opposition?

Nah, our government would never do such a thing. Why, we only have to look at the IRS as proof!

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House passes revisions to space law

8:12 am

The competition heats up: The House yesterday passed a major revision to the 2004 space law in an effort to encourage commercial private development in space.

Most of the revisions were requested by the industry itself, and generally eased government interference. As usual, the opposition came from Democrats who wished to maintain as much power for government as possible.

The bill still needs to be approved by the Senate and signed by the President. The Obama administration has expressed “concerns” but has also not opposed the bill.

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Russians delay next Angara launch to replace Briz upper stage

11:24 am

The competition heats up? The Russians have delayed until late 2016 the first test flight of the heavy-lift version of their new Angara rocket so that they can fly it with its own new upper stage, rather than using the trouble-plagued Briz upper stage used on Proton.

In other words, they want to dump all the components of the Proton as soon as possible. Whether this will solve the quality control problems that seem to be systemic to their aerospace industry however remains questionable. If I was a commercial satellite company I would have as little faith in Angara, until it has proven itself through a number of launches.

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Rogozin pins Proton failure on “moral degeneration”

2:31 pm

In a speech before the State Duma, Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin blamed the “moral degeneration” of the top leaders of their county’s aerospace industry for Saturday’s Proton launch failure.

“With such degeneration in the leadership of the enterprises, there’s no surprise at such a high degree of accidents,” said Rogozin who said that “space bosses have long gone into their own space.” … The vice premier expressed those that the force of “legal gravitation will lead them [those responsible for the failure of the Progress and the Proton] to where they should be,” RIA Novosti quoted him as saying.

In other words, expect more arrests and prosecutions. Meanwhile, there is little evidence that Rogozin or Putin are doing anything to make their space industry more competitive and thus capable of generating the profits necessary to keep it afloat.

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The rage builds, even in a posh DC suburb

9:03 am

A stealth write-in campaign defeated a long-time incumbent on the town council for Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Read it. Everything about this story — the reaction to the election by incumbents and their supporters, the reasons the challenger kept his campaign quiet, why he ran in the first place — illustrates the growing fury that ordinary Americans are feeling toward the people presently in power, even at the lowest levels of government. There is contempt for the general population by those in charge, and that general population is becoming increasingly rebellious about it.

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Stephanopoulos admits he is a Democratic stooge

9:50 am

Why I consider television news a Democratic Party cesspool: George Stephanopoulos admits that he had donated $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation, even as he conducted interviews condemning critics of that foundation, without disclosing his donations.

Meanwhile, ABC News has absolved Stephanopoulos of any wrong-doing, which is not a surprise, since from the perspective of television news Stephanopoulos didn’t do anything wrong. He supported the Clintons and the Democratic Party, both by how he reported the news and conducted his interviews, and now with money itself. This is exactly what a television news anchor is supposed to do in today’s modern television propaganda machine: Help Democrats get elected.

If you get your news information from this news source, you either are incredibly naive, or are a Democratic stooge yourself.

Update: The amount of money Stephanopoulos donated to the Clintons is actually $75K, not $50K as first reported.

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House Science Committee approves changes to space law

9:37 am

In a series of party line votes, the House Science Committee has approved a number of changes to the laws that govern the private commercial space industry.

Almost all of the changes were advocated by the industry itself, so in general they move to ease the regulatory and liability burdens that has been hampering the industry since the 2004 revisions to space law. While it is very unlikely commercial space can ever get free of strong federal regulation, these changes indicate that they can eventually get some of the worst regulations eased.

I should note also that, as expected, the Democrats opposed any easing of federal power. To them, all things must be controlled by the government, and to ease any regulations is to commit the most horrific of crimes. Note also that the Democratic lead in this opposition came mostly from Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-Maryland), who has announced her intention to run for the Barbara Mikulski’s senate seat. This mark-up hearing thus gives us an idea of the future impact of Edwards should she win.

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NASA announces bold plan to still exist by 2045

8:50 pm

Heh.

“It may seem impossible now, but we hope to realize the vision of establishing a human presence in NASA deeper into the century than ever before imagined,” Bolden added.

When questioned about the plan’s viability, Bolden told reporters that while certain doubts remain, the project was nonetheless an absolutely crucial undertaking for NASA. Bolden further emphasized that the Fortuna Program’s goal was technically achievable on paper, and could feasibly be accomplished in a real-world scenario so long as everything “goes perfectly” for the space agency.

“The first critical step toward reaching our goal is to still be here by the year 2020,” said Bolden, adding that the plan allowed absolutely no room for error. “From there, we will move on to the next phase of the mission, which is to implement an intensive 10-year plan to remain operational. If we meet that goal in 2030, then there’s no reason to believe NASA won’t make it to 2045.”

Read it all. As far as I can tell, there really hasn’t been much difference between NASA’s past two decades and what this Onion piece proposes for NASA’s next three decades.

In fact, after you read the Onion piece above, then read this Orbital ATK press release about the successful results from the solid rocket booster test firing in March. As successful and as legitimate as the engineering was for the booster test, why does the press release sound so much like the Onion article?

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Speak free or die

3:29 pm

The rage builds:

Oh, you came so close. For so long, we wrongly imagined that your lies about racism, sexism, Islamophobia, and all the rest were just part of some big misunderstanding. Sure, we knew you were wrong, that we were being falsely accused, but we thought you were at least sincere, if misguided. Except now the mask is off.

Racism? You don’t care. Ask Clarence Thomas about your love of minorities who don’t toe your line.

Sexism? You don’t care. Ask any of Bill Clinton’s victims, who you eagerly sacrificed to save your progressive knight.

Homophobia? Poverty? Corporate abuses? Civil rights? You care nothing about any of them. You leftists just want control. You trash gays who get between you and power, and ignore the gays being murdered in the Middle East because that oppression isn’t useful to you. You keep the poor poor and addicted to your paltry handouts so you can maintain a docile voting bloc. Corporate abuses are terrible right up until the big companies start paying off your candidates. And civil rights? Gimme a break. The First Amendment stopped being useful back in January 2009, so now you’re eager to drown it like Mary Jo Kopechne.

We’re done. You fascists, whether Islamo- or liberal, want to shut us up? Then you better be ready to rumble, because submission isn’t one of the options. We will speak free or die.

Read it all. It illustrates how alike the Islamic fanatics and the liberal fascists have become. There really is no difference, and if freedom-loving Americans bow to either or both they will then turn on themselves in a new war of hate.

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The liberal bias of pollsters

12:04 pm

In a strained attempt to explain the failure of pollsters to predict the election results yesterday in Great Britain, pollsters and pundits seem unable to see the elephant in the room that explains their problems.

And what is that elephant? Take a look at this list of bad polling predictions provided by Nate Silver, the mainstream media’s big polling guru because he correctly predicted both Obama victories:

  • The final polls showed a close result in the Scottish independence referendum, with the “no” side projected to win by just 2 to 3 percentage points. In fact, “no” won by almost 11 percentage points.
  • Although polls correctly implied that Republicans were favored to win the Senate in the 2014 U.S. midterms, they nevertheless significantlyunderestimated the GOP’s performance. Republicans’ margins over Democrats were about 4 points better than the polls in the average Senate race.
  • Pre-election polls badly underestimated Likud’s performance in the Israeli legislative elections earlier this year, projecting the party to about 22 seats in the Knesset when it in fact won 30. (Exit polls on election night weren’t very good either.)

Does anyone notice a trend? I could also reference other elections that pollsters badly predicted, such as the Sandinista defeat in Nicaragua in 1994, the Republican victory in 1994, Bush’s victory over Kerry in 2004 and practically every vote for or against the European Union. And there are others. For a bunch of so-called intellectuals who claim to be experts in predicting human behavior, they seem very oblivious to the obvious.
» Read more

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Tory victory in UK even better than predicted just yesterday

10:57 am

The final tallies of the election in Great Britain have given the conservatives an outright majority.

They don’t have to form a coalition with anyone to form a government. Moreover, this is after months of listening to pollsters and pundits insisting they would at best achieve a tie with the left, and most likely get kicked out of office.

Read it all. The results strongly suggest that, except for the separatist movement in Scotland, conservatives rule Britannia.

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Obama administration admits it defied a judge’s injunction

9:28 am

The law is such an inconvenient thing: Lawyers for the Obama administration admitted yesterday that Homeland Security had continued to issue work permits to illegal aliens even after a judge’s injunction had specifically ordered them to stop.

The Justice Department lawyers said Homeland Security, which is the defendant in the case, told them Wednesday that an immigration agency had approved about 2,000 applications for three-year work permits, which was part of Mr. Obama’s new amnesty, even after Judge Hanen issued his Feb. 16 injunction halting the entire program.

Top Obama officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, had repeatedly assured Congress they had fully halted the program and were complying with the order.

The judge has been considering sanctions against the lawyers for previously misleading them on a related matter. To my mind, he is being remarkably kind. The Obama administrations actions here are a direct violation of the law. He is within his rights to charge these lawyers and a number of high officials in Homeland Security with contempt, and have them serve time in prison.

In fact, this contempt for the law by the Obama administration is not going to stop until someone is put into jail for a bit. That would make a lot of people think twice before they followed orders from above that were blatantly illegal, as these orders clearly were.

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Tory Party unexpectedly wins big in Great Britain

5:05 pm

The rage builds: Conservatives in Great Britain have won a much larger victory in today’s election than polls or pundits had predicted.

The article attributes the surprisingly big win to a variety of factors. Yet, this election reminds me of the Israeli election, which the polls and pundits all said would be a tie, or go to the liberal parties. Instead, Netanyahu’s rightwing party won big.

Both elections, plus other recent elections in the U.S., suggest to me that there is a growing disconnect between the electorate and the intellectual class who makes these predictions. With such a disconnect, don’t be surprised if the candidate who wins the election in 2016 is the one who is least liked by that pundit class.

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Michigan voters resoundingly reject tax increase proposed by Republicans

1:13 pm

The rage builds: Eighty percent of Michigan voters rejected a tax increase proposed by their Republican governor and legislature and backed by a gigantic almost $10 million advertising campaign.

The colossal defeat of Prop 1 is even more intriguing since it had the backing of both the Republican and Democratic parties as well as the governor, who campaigned for it in the final weeks. With a few exceptions the mainstream news media also overwhelmingly favored the measure, with the state’s three statewide print and online news sources (Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News, MLive) all calling for a “yes” vote.

The defeat came despite the fact that a scattered opposition was massively outspent. According the most recent reports the election committee Safe Votes Yes raised $9.6 million to get the measure passed, mostly coming from road builders but also from other special interests that appeared to have no direct stake in the outcome, such as large utilities (who have separate issues of their own pending before the current Legislature).

“The distance between voters on one side and the mainstream media and political class on the other is both startling and unprecedented,” said Jack McHugh, the legislative analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, in an email. “According to MIRS News the measure passed in just three communities, two of which (Ann Arbor and East Lansing) are considered by many to be elitist and disconnected from the mass of Michigan voters (Kalamazoo was the third community).”

The proposition was pushed by a Republican governor and a Republican legislature. The voters bluntly told them to go to hell. I ask: When will Republicans wake up and start doing what the voters want, rather than what they think the media, their liberal friends, and their big money backers demand? The public wants government trimmed, cut back, shrunk, and reorganized to be more efficient. They do not want more taxes, as they know that the government is already taking far more money from them than it really needs.

Elections like this tell me that the 2016 election is likely to be a shocking surprise to our society’s elite community.

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