Tag: policy

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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DEA steals life savings of innocent man

5:04 pm

Theft by government: In another example of civil forfeiture, DEA agents confiscated the life savings of a man heading to California based on no evidence.

There was no evidence of a crime, the man was never charged, but three weeks later he still has not gotten his money back.

Sean Waite, the agent in charge for the DEA in Albuquerque, said he could not comment on the Rivers case because it is ongoing. He disputed allegations that Rivers was targeted because of his race. Waite said that in general DEA agents look for “indicators” such as whether the person bought an expensive one-way ticket with cash, if the person is traveling from or to a city known as a hot spot for drug activity, if the person’s story has inconsistencies or if the large sums of money found could have been transported by more conventional means.

“We don’t have to prove that the person is guilty,” Waite said. “It’s that the money is presumed to be guilty.” [emphasis mine]

Read the whole article. This is entirely unconstitutional. The fifth amendment to the Bill of Rights expressly forbids the taking of private property “without just compensation.”

But hey, the obvious solution is to give the federal government more power! That’s what Obama and Al Sharpton want. They must be right!

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Federal government demands NY strip Times Square of billboards

5:01 pm

We’re here to help you: Federal officials have ordered New York to remove the billboards that make Times Square famous or else the state will lose $90 million in federal highway funds.

The edict comes from a 2012 law that makes Times Square an arterial route to the national highway system. And that puts it under the 1965 Highway Beautification Act, which limits signs to 1,200 square feet. It took the feds until now to realize that Times Square was included.

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Scientist abandons research due to protests and lack of support

9:32 am

The fascists win again: Tired of the constant abuse from animal rights activists as well as the unwillingness of his institution and colleagues to support him, a researcher has decided to abandon his neurology work.

The researcher was cleared of any wrong-doing in his treatment of his research monkeys. Nonetheless, he has written a letter to a number of scientists who did support him, explaining his decision.

“I am no longer willing or able to accept the never-ending stream of abuse from animal activists toward myself and my co-workers while seeing them encouraged to increase their aggressive activities by the tolerance and very slow reactions of scientific organizations. There is a clear lack of consequences for illegal actions such as infiltration, violation of privacy, theft of documents, and even intentionally caused distress to animals in order to film supposed animal torture or abnormal behavior,” the letter states.

Logothetis’s letter also faults his scientific colleagues in Tübingen for distancing themselves from the controversy. The neighboring Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology posted a disclaimer on its website emphasizing that there are no monkeys at the institute, he notes, and colleagues at the nearby Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research refused to issue a declaration of support.

The letter was not intended to be made public, Logothetis told ScienceInsider, and he regrets that it has been circulated beyond the people to whom he addressed it. He stresses that the problem of inaction is not specific to the Max Planck Society. “In my view organizations worldwide must change strategy immediately. Filing charges against infiltrators should be a ‘must’ whether or not radical activists manage to escape consequences in the first trials. In our case, there was more than enough evidence to support a number of accusations,” he says.

This kind of reminds me of a lot of situations these days, where obvious law-breakers — from minority rioters to feminist rape accusers to Islamic terrorists — are allowed to get away with abuse and illegal behavior simply because their “cause” is considered righteous in some way by our modern leftwing state religion.

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Obamacare exchanges in trouble

10:03 am

Finding out what’s in it: Nearly half of the Obamacare exchanges that were set up by state governments are in financial trouble.

Many of the online exchanges are wrestling with surging costs, especially for balky technology and expensive customer-call centers — and tepid enrollment numbers. To ease the fiscal distress, officials are considering raising fees on insurers, sharing costs with other states and pressing state lawmakers for cash infusions. Some are weighing turning over part or all of their troubled marketplaces to the federal exchange, HealthCare.gov, which is now working smoothly.

Note how the only solution suggested is to raise fees, which will end up raising the costs for consumers. These exchanges cost billions to set up, and even now do not have enough money to work right? I am not surprised, as they are a government monopoly, just like the entire Obamacare law, with no competition or incentive to do better. The result is increased cost of medical treatment, with no benefits for anyone.

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Indecision at Virgin Galactic over engine design

9:53 am

In the heat of competition: Sources at Virgin Galactic suggest that the company has still not made up its mind on the type of engine it will use on SpaceShipTwo.

Messier sums up the situation perfectly:

The lack of clarity about SpaceShipTwo’s main propulsion system is highly unusual. It’s difficult if not impossible to think of another space project that was uncertain about its primary propulsion system after nearly a decade of development.

Increasingly I do not see this spaceship ever flying, which saddens me. They had a ten year head start over everyone else, and have squandered it.

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Hawaii agency withdraws support for TMT

9:47 am

Maybe it is time to get out: The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), which had approved the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in 2009, has formally withdrawn its support.

I think the testimony to OHA by the opponents of the telescope says it all:

Thursday’s vote followed a day of emotional testimony at OHA’s offices in Honolulu.


“We have compromised and negotiated 13 times already, and enough is enough,” said testifier Mehana Kihoi. She said scientists did not understand the significance of the mountain to Hawaiian people. “These are people with no sacred place, no connection, no culture,” she said. Kihoi had spent more than 28 days occupying the mountain with other protesters and choked back tears as she described the spiritual experience of being there. “When you place your hands and your bare feet into the soil, you feel that warmth, you feel her heart. At 3 a.m., when … you feel her breath come down and sit on your bones, you know that she is alive.” She called on trustees to oppose the project: “Money comes and goes; our aina [land] is forever.”

Longtime Native Hawaiian activist Walter Ritte said stopping the TMT was no longer enough and that Hawaiians needed to take a stronger stand on the mismanagement of the mountain summit. “They’ve misused it to the point that they need to get all of those telescopes off Mauna Kea,” he said. “It’s a matter of principle.” [emphasis mine]

The comments of the first woman reveal an underlying bigotry and hatred of non-Hawaiians. The comments of the second person reveal a hostility to science and the advancement of knowledge that is most striking.

My instinct is to tell them to go to hell and to pull out all the telescopes, and financial support, to the islands. Maybe a tourist boycott should be started, since they obviously find non-Hawaiians and Western culture so offensive. We’d suddenly discover that these self-righteous claims are as shallow as I’ve described, bigoted and small-minded. Suddenly Hawaiians would be begging Westerners to return to the island.

My second and stronger instinct is to also tell them to go to hell, and to push through construction so that we do not bow to this kind of bigotry.

Unfortunately, our society no longer has the courage to do either. We will bow to these demands, and bigotry will win again.

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An update on Sarah Brightman’s astronaut training

9:30 am

The competition heats up: New detailed photos of Sarah Brightman’s training for her September tourist trip to ISS have been released.

The photos appear to dispel the rumors that Brightman might be replaced with her backup tourist for the flight to ISS.

Some might consider this flight nothing more than a publicity stunt. While it surely is that, for Brightman it also is a dream come true. And the publicity will not simply be good for her career, it will do wonders to sell the idea of space tourism and space exploration.

In fact, there is never really any downside to freedom and allowing people to follow their dreams, and this tourist flight to ISS will prove it.

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The IRS targeting of conservatives is ending says inspector general

11:37 am

A new audit by he IRS inspector general has concluded that the agency has taken “significant actions” to end the harassment of conservative groups.

The agency’s inspector general says the IRS is doing a better job processing applications for tax-exempt status. His report said the IRS has eliminated intrusive, unnecessary questions, and has cleared a backlog of applications that had languished for months and years.

One of the reasons these harassment tactics have stopped is that most of the IRS management involved in the scandal has been replaced. I wouldn’t rest easy, however. The majority of federal employees are liberal Democrats, and many would be glad to lend a helping hand to that party if they could. Right now they are being careful because they know they are being watched. The second we stop watching them is when we can expect them to start some form of harassment of conservatives again.

And anyone who thinks I am being paranoid I think is being naive.

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“American cities are by and large Democratic-party monopolies [and] the results have been catastrophic.”

12:13 am

Link here. As the author bluntly notes, in referencing Baltimore in particular,

Yes, Baltimore seems to have some police problems. But let us be clear about whose fecklessness and dishonesty we are talking about here: No Republican, and certainly no conservative, has left so much as a thumbprint on the public institutions of Baltimore in a generation. Baltimore’s police department is, like Detroit’s economy and Atlanta’s schools, the product of the progressive wing of the Democratic party enabled in no small part by black identity politics. This is entirely a left-wing project, and a Democratic-party project.

When will the Left be held to account for the brutality in Baltimore — brutality for which it bears a measure of responsibility on both sides? There aren’t any Republicans out there cheering on the looters, and there aren’t any Republicans exercising real political power over the police or other municipal institutions in Baltimore. Community-organizer — a wretched term — Adam Jackson declared that in Baltimore “the Democrats and the Republicans have both failed.” Really? Which Republicans? Ulysses S. Grant? Unless I’m reading the charts wrong, the Baltimore city council is 100 percent Democratic. [emphasis mine]

Like Detroit, Atlanta, St. Louis, Chicago, and a host of other major metropolitan cities that are disasters for the middle class and the poor, Baltimore has been run by Democrats as a one-party monopoly for literally generations. The disasters we are seeing there have nothing to do with Republican policies, and everything to do with the terrible and failed policies of the progressive left. They are to blame, but they keep trying to spread that blame around.

It is time for Americans to see them for what they are — failures — and to stop voting for them. Republicans certainly don’t have all the answers, and should certainly be fired quickly if they fail to serve the public, but Republicans also have had nothing to do with the failures of the inner cities.

The most important thing a free person has is the freedom to choose. I pray that inner city Americans, both black and white, finally realize that it is time to choose differently.

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IRS Inspector General finds another 6,400 lost Lois Lerner emails

7:07 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: Emails by Lois Lerner that IRS head John Koskinen has sworn were lost forever and could never be recovered have miraculously been rediscovered by the IRS’s inspector general and will be turned over to Senate investigators.

Or as one of the leaders of one of the conservative groups that the IRS (and Lerner) had deliberately targeted for harassment noted, “I wouldn’t believe John Koskinen or Lois Lerner if they told me the sky was blue.”

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Two thirds of Obamacare recipients have to repay subsidies

2:12 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Two thirds of taxpayers have had to repay a significant portion of the subsidies they received through Obamacare this year when it came time to do their taxes.

And it ain’t gonna get better, only worse.

But don’t worry, it is really the Republicans’ fault for not writing or voting or even conceiving of this Democratic Party law. The Democrats are perfectly innocent of any blame at all for writing it, forcing it through (against the wishes of a majority of the population), and doing so without even reading the damn bill in the first place. If we vote for more Democrats and more laws like this, things have just got to get better!

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Progress freighter in big trouble

10:09 am

A Progress freighter launched by Russia to ISS on Tuesday was placed in the wrong orbit, has not deployed its radar antennas needed for rendezvous, and is not responding properly to commands on the ground.

Whether it is in the wrong orbit might be an incorrect report, but other sources demonstrate clearly that the spacecraft is tumbling out of control. Based on all these reports, it does not look good for this vehicle. The crew on ISS, including the two astronauts on a year-long mission there, might have to do without these supplies.

Meanwhile Russia is proceeding with its plans to consolidate control of all aspects of its aerospace industry under the banner of a single government “super-corporation” run by Roscosmos. Considering the number of technical failures they have had with spacecraft and rockets in the past five years, it seems to me that this is the worst approach for solving these problems. Then again, Russian culture strongly favors a top-down authoritarian approach, so it might work better under this Soviet-style approach.

I don’t believe it, but we are going to find out in the coming decades.

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Supreme Court rejects Obama’s contraceptive mandate again

9:25 am

The law is such an inconvenient thing: The Supreme Court has thrown out another lower court decision that had favored the Obama administrations’ Obamacare contraceptive mandate imposed on Catholic businesses.

What is telling about this is that the Obama administration keeps fighting these cases, even though it is very clear from all its rulings that the Supreme Court has rejected the mandate as hostile to religious freedom. What they should do is sue the court for dismissal and stop trying to impose the mandate in all cases. But they don’t. This is not only a waste of resources, it indicates that Obama and his administration really don’t wish to follow the court rulings, and instead want to impose their will regardless. By fighting this case by case, they are hoping to wear down the religious.

In essence, the Obama administration is thus reveals itself hostile to the law itself.

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IAU contest to name 20 exoplanets moves forward

9:08 am

Under pressure from many circles to open up its processes for naming objects in space, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has started a contest to allow non-profits and “registered clubs” to compete to name 20 exoplanets.

Each organisation can submit one naming proposal, for one ExoWorld only. The number of names that need to be submitted depends on which system is selected. For single- and multiple-planet systems, a name for each planet must be submitted, as well as one for the host star. In the 20 ExoWorlds list, five stars already have common names. Consequently, these five stars cannot be considered for public naming. There are 15 stars and 32 planets (47 objects in total) available for naming. The name of the 20 host stars are explained and personal messages from some discoverers are also available here.

To participate in the contest, clubs and non-profit organisations must first register with the IAU Directory of World Astronomy. The deadline for registrations has been extended to 23:59 UTC on 1 June 2015.

You will note that this contest is not open to the public, but to clubs and organizations that the IAU approves. This is typical of the IAU, which wants to retain its power to name everything in space. They are thus keeping this whole process close to the vest and tightly controlled.

In the end it won’t matter, as the names will eventually be chosen by those who go there, or by those who make the discoveries. It would be nice, however, if the IAU would simply recognize this fact.

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Russians cancel effort to fly humans from Vostochny by 2019

8:51 am

The heat of competition? In order to meet a government deadline to launch humans from their new spaceport at Vostochny, the Russians had planned, though now cancelled, a single manned launch there in 2019, using a new rocket.

Their cancelled plans had included two prior test flights of the rocket with Progress freighters.

If cargo missions were successful, the one brave crew would ride into orbit from the new spaceport, knowing that in case of a serious problem with the rocket, the descent module of the spacecraft would parachute into deep forest of the Russian Far East or somewhere in the Pacific.

After “satisfying” this political goal with a single crew, all manned Soyuz and cargo Progress missions would then revert back to Baikonur for a safe ascent trajectory. The Soyuz spacecraft would continue flying two missions annually from Baikonur, until the veteran spacecraft’s final launch in 2025. In 2021, Soyuz spacecraft missions originating from Baikonur would switch from Soyuz-FG to Soyuz-2-1a rocket.

The Russians have now decided, rather than rush this first flight on the new rocket, to hold to the slower schedule.

This story is important to the United States. I think we must definitely end our dependence on the Russians before they make the switch to the new rocket. Based on the levels of poor quality control and corruption seen recently in Russia, I have grave doubts the new rocket will fly reliably at first. It would be a mistake to buy its use to put Americans in space.

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Russia launches criminal investigation at Vostochny

4:42 pm

The Russian government has launched a large-scale investigation into the disappearance of 300 million rubles ($6 million) at their new Vostochny spaceport.

The criminal case was opened on the charges of large-scale embezzlement, the interior department said. According to a pre-investigation check, an agreement was signed in October 2014 between the client represented by the state special construction company and a contractor on fulfilling contractual work for building roads as part of the Vostochny cosmodrome infrastructure development, the interior department said. “The client under the contract made an advance payment of 300 million rubles to the contractor. However, the contractor did not start work and did not return the advance payment,” the interior department said, adding the investigation was continuing.

It appears the Russian government is finally tightening the screws at what appears to be widespread corruption at Vostochny.

I suspect the real problem here is not that the contractor pocketed some money illegally, it is that the contractor pocketed too much money illegally. Had he simply skimmed off a bit off the top but made sure construction proceeded, Putin and his gang would have gladly looked the other way. They skim off enough of their own too y’know, on numerous other projects. Skimming off so much that the project isn’t even built, howver, is unacceptable!

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FBI found to have routinely faked incriminating data

3:00 pm

Does this make you feel safer? For more than two decades before 2000 the FBI’s forensic unit gave flawed and misleading testimony in almost every case in which its experts testified.

This study was launched after the Post reported that flawed forensic hair matches might have led to possibly hundreds of wrongful convictions for rape, murder, and other violent crimes, dating back at least to the 1970s. In 90 percent of the cases reviewed so far, forensic examiners evidently made statements beyond the bounds of proper science. There were no scientifically accepted standards for forensic testing, yet FBI experts routinely and almost unvaryingly testified, according to the Post,”to the near-certainty of ‘matches’ of crime-scene hairs to defendants, backing their claims by citing incomplete or misleading statistics drawn from their case work.” [emphasis in original]

But hey, let’s extend the spying authority of the National Security Agency, as is being pushed by Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), leader of the Republican Party. What could possibly go wrong?

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Russia slashes spending on space

5:22 pm

In the heat of competition: Economic hard times have forced the Russian government to cut spending on its space program by more than a third.

The cuts have mainly come from abandoning their effort to build a heavy lift rocket to compete with SLS. They might not realize it, but I think this will be a blessing in disguise, as they will no longer be wasting money building a giant rocket that will have little value in the competitive launch market. Instead, they will focus their investment on Angara, which has the possibility of earning them a profit.

Meanwhile, however, they still have to deal with the quality control problems and corruption that appears to permeate Russia`s entire aerospace industry: Russian defense rocket fails and crashes immediately after launch. I have posted the video of the crash below the fold. It appears that the rocket was successfuly propelled from its launch silo, but then its rocket engines never ignited.
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The building rage is not just against Democrats

10:00 am

People who read my website only intermittently might get the impression that I am partisan and specifically hostile to the Democratic Party. This is false. I am an equal opportunity opponent to anyone that likes oppression and the use of government to impose it.

Some stories today, describing the actions or opinions of some of the so-called conservative or moderate leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties, illustrate clearly that we still need a major house-cleaning in Congress if we are to get this out-of-control monster under control:
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Liberals may regret their new rules

9:40 pm

Link here. Two quotes:

Which brings us to America in 2015. It’s becoming a nation where an elite that is certain of its power and its moral rightness is waging a cultural war on a despised minority. Except it’s not actually a minority – it only seems that way because it is marginalized by the coastal elitist liberals who run the mainstream media.

Today in America, we have a liberal president refuses to recognize the majority sent to Congress as a reaction to his progressive failures, and who uses extra-Constitutional means like executive orders to stifle the voice of his opponents. We have a liberal establishment on a secular jihad against people who dare place their conscience ahead of progressive dogma. And we have two different sets of laws, one for the little people and one for liberals like Lois Lerner, Al Sharpton and Hillary Clinton, who can blatantly commit federal crimes and walk away scot free and smirking.

Today in America, a despised minority that is really no minority is the target of an establishment that considers this minority unworthy of respect, unworthy of rights, and unworthy of having a say in the direction of this country. It’s an establishment that has one law for itself, and another for its enemies. It’s an establishment that inflicts an ever-increasing series of petty humiliations on its opponents and considers this all hilarious.

That’s a recipe for disaster. You cannot expect to change the status quo for yourself and then expect those you victimize not to play by the new rules you have created. You cannot expect to be able to discard the rule of law in favor of the rule of force and have those you target not respond in kind.

And this:

When you block all normal means of dissent, whether by ignoring the political will of your opponents or using the media to mock and abuse them, you build up the pressure. In 30+ years as an active conservative, I’ve never heard people so angry, so frustrated, so fed up. These emotions are supposed to be dissipated by normal political processes. But liberals are bottling them up. And they will blow. It’s only a matter of how.

Liberals need to understand the reality that rarely penetrates their bubble. Non-liberal Americans (it’s more than just conservatives who are under the liberal establishment’s heel) are the majority of this country. They hold power in many states and regions in unprecedented majorities. And these attacks focus on what they hold dearest – their religion, their families and their freedom.

What is the end game, liberals? Do you expect these people you despise to just take it? Do you think they’ll just shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, I guess we better comply?” Do you even know any real Americans? Do you think you’ll somehow be able to force them into obedience – for what is government power but force – after someone finally says “Enough?

Read it all. I can’t quote it all, but every word carries a wisdom that the left — as well as the status quo Republican establishment — better heed before it is too late.

As I’ve said before, the rage is building.

I am also reminded of this scene, below the fold, from the 1966 masterpiece A Man for All Seasons:
» Read more

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More strikes at Vostochny

9:09 am

Another worker strike has broken out at the new Russian spaceport at Vostochny by workers who say they have not been paid their wages.

The strike itself is not the significant fact here. The significant fact is that even though the project has been under the close supervision of Putin himself since September, the wages were still not paid. Supervisors have been pocketing wages even as very high Russian officials have been publicly demanding that they get the construction back on schedule. And this story suggests that they continue to do so.

The entire situation implies a very extensive level of corruption at all levels of the Russian infrastructure, something that will make it very difficult for them to accomplish much in their future efforts in space.

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TMT construction postponed again

7:49 am

The builders of the Thirty Meter Telescope have temporarily extended the suspension of construction originally demanded by Hawaii’s governor.

The tone of the article, especially the comments by the governor, suggests that the state is accepting the reality that they have no legal right to stop construction, and are making that fact very public. Instead, the govenor is now beginning the public relations campaign to make construction possible despite the protests, including negotiating some other givebacks to the protesters to shut them up. Sadly, those giveback appear to be the decommissioning of some other working telescopes as well as some increased restrictions on access to the mountain by the public.

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A real report of Hillary’s first campaign stop

11:37 am

Forget the press. Forget the spin. Read this report by an ordinary college student of her attempt to participate, as an “Everyday Iowan”, in Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign event. With great pictures.

My point here is not to lambast Clinton (of which this event is the least of her problems). My point is to lambast the press. This campaign stop was not much different than the campaign stops and photo events of all politicians, staged and managed and completely divorced from reality. Sadly the press goes along and reports the staging. This report, created by an amateur, instead gives us the reality of the event, something that the press should be doing.

Instead, our mainstream press plays along with the politicians. They should be ashamed.

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The distortion of the global surface temperature datasets

11:33 am

Link here. Goddard does a good job of illustrating the differences between the measured and reported climate temperature datasets, and how the reported numbers are consistently shifted to make the past cooler than measured and the present hotter than measured.

He often attributes this bias to dishonest tampering with the data to support the theory of global warming. He might be right, but it is important to remember that you shouldn’t necessarily assign malice to things that are just as easily explained by human error or stupidity. In this case he also notes that almost all the weather stations that have been decommissioned in the past few decades have been located in rural areas. To replace their data, global warming scientists average the data from nearby stations, most of which are in urban areas that exhibit warmer temperatures because city constructs tend to cause local warming. The result? The recent datasets tend to show a strong trend upward.

What is causing a cooling in the datasets from prior to 1970 however is not explained by mere error. The data hasn’t changed. Someone must be deciding to adjust it downward, for reasons that are simply not justifiable.

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The skewed view of American inside the progressive bubble

10:10 am

Link here. The author captures well the cultural and intellectual chasm that exists between the modern American elite community, mostly leftwing, and the rest of American society. Sadly, that chasm is very clearly demonstrated by how most reporters are covering the emerging Presidential campaign. Read it and note the differences in how they approach both sides: They greet the Republicans with skepticism and scorn. They have private off-the-record dinners with Hillary Clinton.

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