Tag: policy

Today’s blacklisted American: World’s top vaccine expert censored by Twitter & LinkedIn and punished by the CDC

12:14 pm

No real scientists allowed!
The opinions of real scientists banned!

They’re coming for you next: Even as Martin Kulldorff, a Harvard medical professor and one of the world’s foremost experts on vaccines, has been repeatedly censored by Twitter and LinkedIn, he has been banned and punished by the CDC for daring to publicly dissent from its government lockdown and mask and vaccine mandate policies.

First, I think it important to know who Martin Kulldorff is. This article provides a succinct resume of his qualifications:

Dr. Martin Kulldorff is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a biostatistician and epidemiologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He helped develop the CDC’s current system for monitoring potential vaccine risks.

Then there is this opinion by one of his collegues:

Kulldorff is a “world-class” vaccine safety “superstar,” said Jeffrey Brown, a Harvard Medical School colleague specializing in drug and vaccine safety research. “His qualifications are spectacular,” Brown said of Kulldorff. “He’s an international expert in vaccine safety. No one on earth would question whether he’s qualified. … He’s a pioneer.”

And yet, he has now become a pariah on social media as well as at the CDC, all of whom are apparently no longer interested in a robust and honest discussion about COVID.
» Read more

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Spanish judge invalids agreement to build TMT in Canary Islands

9:05 am

The consortium attempting to build the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), blocked by protesters in Hawaii, has now had its back-up location in the Canary Islands blocked by a Spanish judge, who last month invalidated the agreement between the consortium and local authorities.

[A]n administrative court in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital of the Spanish archipelago, ruled last month that the 2017 concession by local authorities of public land for the tentative project was invalid. The ruling was dated on July 29, but only became public this week after local media reported about the decision.

In the ruling obtained by The Associated Press, Judge Roi López Encinas wrote that the telescope land allocation was subject to an agreement between the Canary Astrophysics Institute, or IAC, and the telescope’s promoter, the TMT International Observatory (TIO) consortium. But the judge ruled that the agreement was not valid because TIO had not expressed an intention to build on the La Palma site instead of at the Hawaii site.

In other words, it appears the agreement was ruled invalid because the TMT builders had not made a firm commitment about building at the Canary Islands.

At this moment it truly looks like TMT is dead. It has no alternative site, and its political support in Hawaii is nil. While the Democratic Party politicians that rule that state have mouthed support for it, almost all their actions since the protests began has been to help the protesters and stymie construction.

What I think will soon begin happening is that the partners in TMT will begin to back out, switching their support to the other large ground-based telescopes being planned, the Giant Magellan Telescope and the European-Extremely Large Telescope. Since these are both being built in Chile, the loss of TMT means that there will be no large ground-based telescope coverage of the northern sky.

The real solution? Stop building ground-based telescopes. Put them in space, where such political issues won’t exist, and the view will be unimpeded by either the atmosphere or the tens of thousands of new satellites expected to launch in the coming years.

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Blue Origin successfully completes another unmanned suborbital flight with New Shepard

8:47 am

Capitalism in space: Only one month after its first passenger flight, Blue Origin today successfully completed another suborbital flight with its New Shepard booster/capsule, this time flying 18 commercial payloads for NASA and others.

These details about the spacecraft itself I think are significant:

The New Shepard booster, Tail 3, and its associated capsule, RSS H.G. Wells, flew the mission. Tail 3 is dedicated to uncrewed science missions like NS-17, and this was Tail 3’s 8th flight.

…Blue Origin expects to fly one more New Shepard mission this year with sister ship Tail 4 and the crew-capable capsule RSS First Step

In other words, Blue Origin now has two working New Shepard spacecraft. This will allow them to eventually up their launch pace.

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Today’s blacklisted American gets an apology from Illinois regulators for threatening his medical license for opinions they didn’t like

2:39 pm

Today’s blacklist story is actually an update from my blacklist story two days ago about Dr. Jeremy Heinrichs, who because he had publicly expressed strong skepticism about the mask mandates being imposed by his state government in Illinois, had been threatened with the loss of his medical license by state regulators.

It appears those regulators have now quickly apologized for getting caught acting like jack-booted thugs.

“The initial response to your inquiry requested information that the Department does not need,” Dina Martin, an attorney with the Illinois Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, said in a letter to Henrichs’ legal counsel. The department had originally asked for “a detailed statement on your opinion about masks, and whether you support and will enforce a mask mandate based on your elected position as a school board member.”

“I sincerely apologize for the tone and content of those communications,” Martin said in her August 19 letter, obtained by Just the News.

It also appears that the regulators plan to drop their complaint investigation.

This is how you treat bullies. You don’t back down. You don’t apologize. And you certainly don’t hide in shame out of fear their unjustified attacks will hurt you. No, you fight back hard, and brightly expose them for all to see. Like all bullies they will immediately back off themselves, especially if their attack has no merit (which is almost always the case).

There is no indication however that the regulators who sent those improper initial communications have been punished in any way. I expect not. The Illinois government got caught this time, but has no intention of preventing this from happening in the future. If anything I expect the government has simply asked these employees to lay low for awhile and try the same thing again later, in the hope that others will be more easily intimidated.

To really fix this the voters need to fire everyone in these governments, from the Democratic Party elected officials who control Illinois to the lowest bureaucrat who thinks such behavior can sometimes be justified.

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Musk’s Boring Co offers to dig tunnel for resident transportation during launch closures

1:49 pm

Capitalism in space: Elon Musk’s Boring Company has proposed digging a tunnel so that people can still access Boca Chica’s beaches even during periods when SpaceX is doing launch operations and needs to close the surface roads.

The Boring Company (TBC) met with Cameron County officials to discuss the possibility of a tunnel project running from South Padre Island (SPI) to Boca Chica Beach.

The Boring Company pitched the idea of an SPI-Boca Chica tunnel to Cameron County administrator Pete Sepulveda Jr. and county engineer Benjamin Worsham early this summer. Cameron County officials have been thinking of giving people access to part of Boca Chica Beach even during closures.

The county has said it likely cannot afford to pay for such a thing, but Musk’s company is still proposing to do an in-depth study to find out what will be necessary to make it happen.

It could very well be that Musk might find some cash to help pay for this himself. The public relations would be excellent, and it would I think be the right thing to do. It is also possible that the local communities will have more cash themselves because of the booming economy SpaceX is bringing them.

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China completes two launches

2:23 pm

China today successfully completed two launches, using from different spaceports its Long March 2C and Long March 3B rockets.

The 2C launched a two demo internet communications satellites designed to eventually be used in a large constellation similar to the constellations of SpaceX and OneWeb. The launch also included a third unidentified communications satellite.

The 3B placed in orbit what is believed to be a military reconnaissance satellite.

Both rockets dumped their first stages somewhere in the interior of China. No word on whether those stages carried parachutes or grid fins to better control their landing, or crashed near habitable regions.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

29 China
20 SpaceX
13 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. still leads China 31 to 29 in the national rankings.

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Today’s blacklisted American: A man’s life destroyed because he visited the Capitol on January 6th

1:17 pm

Twitter's idea of debate
Show trials: The Biden administration’s goal for pro-Trump protesters

Genocide is coming: Because the Biden Justice Department is determined to throw the book at him, the life of truck driver Robert Reeder has been thoroughly shattered, losing his job and friends and even alienating his family, simply because he decided to participate in the protests at the Capitol on January 6th and got caught up in the chaos that ensued.

All the evidence suggests that Reeder, along with almost all the protesters on January 6th, did nothing particularly violent. Their actions were spontaneous (as an FBI investigation has reluctantly admitted), and mostly peaceful. Moreover, Reeder’s behavior, along with his fellow pro-Trump protesters, pales in comparison to the violence and rioting committed routinely by leftist protests from Antifa and BLM, for which they are never charged or punished.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Illinois threatens to cancel doctor’s license because it doesn’t like his opinions

3:46 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled in Illinois
No first amendment in Illinois

They’re coming for you next: State regulators in Illinois are threatening to take away a medical license of a doctor, Jeremy Heinrichs, because he has publicly challenged the mask mandate being imposed by his state government.

In a provided statement, Henrichs said: “I have considered authoritative medical evidence that questions the necessity of mandatory masking in our schools. As a result, the [Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation] has threatened my medical licensure unless I expressly support and enforce a mask mandate for all students.

“The [IDFPR] has commanded me to ‘toe the line’ or suffer personal and professional consequences,” he added.

…In a separate email, a state medical investigator, whose name was redacted from the email, said a complaint filed against Henrichs “appears to be a parent or concerned citizen who did not agree with the doctor’s opinion on the masking motion for schools. That would fall under the unprofessional conduct part of the medical practice act,” the email said. “What the medical disciplinary board wants to know is if the doctor will support and enforce the mask mandate by the Governor.”

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Why only NOW is there mounting concern over President Biden’s mental health?

12:36 pm


Biden as he forgets what truths we hold as self-evident in March 2020.

A Daily Mail story from last week reported on the growing concern of doctors and other health experts about the mental state of Joe Biden, the oldest American president ever.

Questions have been raised about US President Joe Biden’s cognitive wellbeing after a car crash interview over his handling of the unfolding Afghanistan crisis. America’s oldest president provided jumbled responses to questions and mixed up details about his son in an interview with ABC. The stumbles did not make the broadcasted version but were revealed when a full transcript of the interview was published overnight.

It revealed the President incorrectly stated his late son Beau Biden worked for the Navy in Afghanistan, before correcting himself that he served for the Army in Iraq. It follows a spate of gaffes and slips of the tongue since the 78-year-old ran his successful presidential campaign in 2019.

This story only highlights a growing slew of news stories and op-eds that have appeared recently during the ongoing debacle in Afghanistan, in both the right and leftwing press, that have noticed how President Biden appears repeatedly confused in interviews while showing signs that he does not quite understand what is going on around him.

Of course, for the press and the political class to recognize these facts now, after Biden has become president, is equivalent to closing the barn door after the animals have escaped. As I noted in October 2020, before the election, these cognitive issues have been obvious for the last two years, and had been getting steadily worse throughout 2020 during the election campaign. As I wrote then,
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Two smallsat orbiters to launch in ’24 to study Martian upper atmosphere

11:53 am

NASA has picked a twin orbiter mission being built by a partnership of the University of California-Berkeley and the private rocket company Rocket Lab to place two smallsats in orbit around Mars to study how the harsh environment of space might be causing the red planet to lose its atmosphere.

The entire project is dubbed ESCAPADE (an insanely contrived acronym) but the two smallsats have been dubbed “Blue” and “Gold.”

The mission builds on decades of experience at SSL in building satellite instruments and fleets of spacecraft to explore regions around Earth, the moon and Mars, specializing in magnetic field interactions with the wind of particles from the sun. Each of the two satellites, named after UC Berkeley’s school colors, will carry instruments built at SSL to measure the flow of high energy electrons and ionized oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules escaping from Mars, magnetic field detectors built at UCLA and a probe to measure slower or thermal ions built at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.

With twin satellites, it is possible to measure conditions simultaneously at two places around the planet, Lillis said, allowing scientists to connect plasma conditions at one site to the escaping ion flux at another. Over the course of the mission, the two satellites will change positions to map the upper atmosphere and magnetosphere of nearly the entire planet from an altitude of between 150 and 10,000 kilometers.

Maybe the most important aspect of this mission however is not what it will learn at Mars, but how it is being financed and built. NASA is only paying about $80 million, a tiny amount compared to most past unmanned planetary probes. The university in turn is buying Rocket Lab’s Photon satellite structure rather than building the satellites from scratch. It will configure the instruments to fit into that ready made satellite body, thus saving time and money.

By doing it this way NASA and the planetary science community is increasingly relying on private companies to provide them their planetary probes, rather than building such things by hand themselves, at much greater cost. The result is a growing and thriving private commercial sector that owns and builds its own planetary probes, for profit.

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Update on Starship/Superheavy preparations for orbital test flight

9:15 am

Starship prototype #20 being prepped
Screen capture from Labpadre live stream, available here.

Link here. In sum it appears that SpaceX is getting very close to launch, with the permit approval of the FAA increasingly becoming the biggest obstacle to progress.

Although the completion of all of this testing could take a long time, in Elon Musk’s mind, the path to returning B4 and S20 to being an integrated stack could be during this month.

A week ago, Musk tweeted that the “first orbital stack of Starship should be ready for flight in a few weeks, pending only regulatory approval.” Ultimately, once the vehicle is in its launch configuration, there will be a lengthy process of passing the aforementioned regulatory approval, with an environmental public comment period triggered ahead of launch. This has to be completed before the launch license can be granted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The screen capture above shows Starship prototype #20 sitting on the suborbital flight test pad, as workers on cherry-pickers work on its exterior. The orange, green, and white tiles are likely tile locations still needing some level of installation work.

Based on SpaceX’s normal pace of operations, the engine testing for both Starship and Superheavy will take several weeks, once both are ready for such testing. While Starship appears just about ready, Superheavy apparently needs more work. When SpaceX stacked both together on the orbital launchpad several weeks ago, it suggested both were closer to launch than they were. Their present status suggests engine testing will likely begin in September, with Starship at the beginning of the month and Superheavy at the end of the month. That would make a launch possible sometime in late October, assuming the federal government doesn’t decide to shut this entire operation down by refusing to issue a permit.

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Trump says he “single-handedly” decided to move Space Force command from Colorado to Alabama

9:19 am

On Friday former President Donald Trump stated that it was his decision to put the headquarters of the new Space Force in Alabama, not in Colorado where most military related space operations have been located for decades.

“Space Force — I sent to Alabama,” Trump said. “I hope you know that. (They) said they were looking for a home and I single-handedly said, ‘Let’s go to Alabama.’ They wanted it. I said, ‘Let’s go to Alabama. I love Alabama.’”

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Republican who represents Colorado Springs, said Trump’s remarks were “an admission” that the headquarters move “was based solely on politics and personal preference — not the Air Force’s basing criteria or national security.”

When this decision was announced in January, I then believed porkmeister Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) had forced it through, but it appears now that is wrong. It was Trump, but still for reasons of pork.

This was a bad decision, one that from the beginning was going to have both practical and political opposition. For practical reasons Colorado always made better sense as Space Force headquarters because it would require less relocation of assets. For political reasons it was flying in the face of a lot of well-established vested interests in Colorado.

Trump’s admission yesterday will likely provide the final bit of ammunition needed by Colorado politicians to get it overturned.

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