Tag: politics

JC Penny faces bankruptcy due to Wuhan panic

5:47 pm

The beatings will continue until morale improves: J.C. Penny is now facing bankruptcy because it will unable to meet a due date on a loan because of store closures forced on it by state governors, panicking over the Wuhan flu.

Like many traditional retailers, J.C. Penney’s business has been under pressure in recent years amid declining store traffic and a shift toward digital outlets. The company’s struggles were compounded in recent weeks after the coronavirus pandemic forced the closure of 850 J.C. Penney stores.

With turnaround plans temporarily shelved due to the pandemic, J.C. Penney executives are considering filing for bankruptcy, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. While the retailer has enough cash on hand to weather the store closures, bankruptcy protections would allow J.C. Penney to restructure its upcoming debt payments. The company owes nearly $4 billion in long-term debt.

The article did not say how many employees are presently out of work because of the shut down of JC Penny stores.

I think I will start posting these stories, as I see them. There are a lot, and they illustrate that the shut downs are hurting far more people than the Wuhan flu.

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Trump bows to bureaucrats, unveils a never-ending 3-phase program to end shutdowns

4:00 pm

The house arrests will continue indefinitely: Though the country’s fifty governors are in charge of the nationwide house arrest and the only ones who can really end it, President Trump today unveiled a 3-phrase program to use as a guide for ending those state shutdowns.

The new guidelines are aimed at easing restrictions in areas with low transmission of the coronavirus, while holding the line in harder-hit locations. They make clear that the return to normalcy will be a far longer process than Trump initially envisioned, with federal officials warning that some social distancing measures may need to remain in place through the end of the year to prevent a new outbreak.

Places with declining infections and strong testing would begin a three-phased gradual reopening of businesses and schools — each phase lasting at least 14 days — to ensure that infections don’t accelerate again.

In phase one, for instance, the plan recommends strict social distancing for all people in public. Gatherings larger than 10 people are to be avoided and nonessential travel is discouraged.

In phase two, people are encouraged to maximize social distancing where possible and limit gatherings to no more than 50 people unless precautionary measures are taken. Travel could resume.

Phase three envisions a return to normalcy for most Americans, with a focus on identification and isolation of any new infections.

Essentially Trump has accepted the rules demanded by the nation’s health bureaucrats. The Bill of Rights and Constitution, meant to protect private property, personal freedom, and religious practice, will continue to be suspended and against the law until these petty dictators decide otherwise.

And even when they declare we can go back to “normal,” they want a program to hunt down infected individuals and label them as “unclean” (my term but quite accurate) so that they won’t be able infect the clean. For those individuals, all rights will still be suspended, possibly forever.

Meanwhile, the numbers continue to suggest that the total deaths from this disease will end up comparable to a somewhat normal flu season. Some might then argue that these deaths are in addition to those flu deaths, but that is incorrect. Most flu deaths occur in older and already sick populations. The Wuhan virus targets these same populations. Someone who dies from one would have been just as likely this year to have died from the other. Thus, the overall mortality will probably not change significantly, if at all, in 2020.

We never shut down the country and suspended the Bill of Rights during past similar flu seasons. In fact, it would have been considered insane to do so. I think it is insane now, suggesting that the real epidemic sweeping across the global is mass hysteria, based on an irrational fear fueled by a partisan press and Democratic politicians who are focused solely on attacking Donald Trump and endlessly seeking ways to hurt him, even if it means putting millions of people out of work and bankrupting the economy.

Moreover, there is tentative evidence that suggests the shutdowns are irrelevant to the spread of the disease. Regardless, these shutdowns were never meant to stop it, only to give the health system breathing room so it would not be overwhelmed by too many patients. That has not happened, meaning that the shutdowns are now unnecessary.

It is time for them to end, now. And if the government won’t back down, then maybe it is time for Americans to tell them to go to hell and go back to work anyway, as suggested by Sarah Hoyt.

Ignore their plans. Their plans are not for our good. The goal is to have everyone out of the house and doing the most productive thing they can by May 1st.

May First (Yes, I know, stealing the commies holiday is grand) is now National Hit the Streets Day. If you can get out of the house and work, do so. Open your shop, serve coffee on our front lawn, I don’t care. Be outside. Do something productive. And if you can’t do something productive AT LEAST BE OUTSIDE. Out in the street. Out in the park. Both of which are paid for by your taxes, btw.

May 1st, get out. Wear SOMETHING yellow (Hong Kong, the gillets jeunes, which though not like us also are fighting attempts at tyranny.) Snek optional.

Because we’re Americans. They govern by the consent of the governed. We don’t need their consent to exercise our natural rights.

As she adds, “They can’t arrest everybody.”

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Rocket Lab steals Arianespace customer

9:04 am

Capitalism in space: It turns out that a new launch contract won by Rocket Lab this week was actually a payload that was originally going to fly on Arianespace’s Vega rocket.

What Tuesday’s announcement did not include was the fact that the Japanese company [Synspective] shuffled this launch from a Vega rocket onto Electron. The Vega rocket, which had its first failure in 15 launches last July, has yet to return to flight. The spaceport it launches from in French Guiana remains closed due to the coronavirus.

Synspective had signed a major agreement with Arianespace last year to launch what is hoped will become a 25-satellite constellation. It appears that because of the Vega rocket failure, along with its higher price, Rocket Lab is going to get that business instead. That Rocket Lab can provide Synspective a dedicated launch, to the orbit of its choice, also encouraged the switch.

The background of this deal suggests that Rocket Lab’s future is bright, assuming New Zealand and the United States are ever allowed to go back to normal as free and open countries.

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Space Force hypes unspecified Russian anti-satellite test

8:52 am

Yesterday Space Force officials released a scathing press release condemning a so-called Russian anti-satellite test, calling it “a threat” while providing zero details about what the Russians actually did.

I saw the press release and realized it was nothing more than an effort by the new Space Force to justify its existence and to possibly encourage more funding from Congress. Until they release some details about the test itself, the story simply doesn’t merit coverage.

Our compliant and brainless media today however immediately jumped on the Washington swamp bandwagon with numerous stories reinforcing and supporting the Space Force lobbying effort. Here are a few examples:

All of these articles buy into the Space Force agenda, with practically no skepticism. All provide lots of quotes from a variety of Washington “experts” backing the Space Force position, insisting that the Russians are evil and have now demonstrated a new capability that requires a big U.S. response. None provide any further detail about the test itself, meaning that no further information on it was available, and that their stories were nothing more than a xerox of that empty Space Force press release.

Only this story from C4ISRNET described the press release properly, giving no play to these so-called “experts” because any quotes they would provide were merely a transparent lobbying effort for the Space Force. Instead, the article provided this much needed background:

Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation, said the test is likely of the Nudol, a ballistic-missile system capable of taking out satellites in low earth orbit. He warned not to overreact, as the system has been tested several times in recent years. According to the CSIS Aerospace Security Project’s Space Threat Assessment 2020, Russia conducted its seventh test of Nudol in December 2018.

As to why military leaders issued the statement, Weeden said it is “part of the DoD being more public about what’s going on in space, which is good. But it also seems the only thing they’re doing about it is using it to justify more U.S. spending on our own counterspace capabilities.” [emphasis mine]

In other words, this test is nothing unusual, and was being hyped by the Space Force in order to garner a bigger budget for the new agency.

Sadly, this is par for the course. Our entire society is presently shut down because medical “experts” in Washington and the mainstream leftist press did the same thing with COVID-19, hyping what was clearly nothing more than a new disease variation of the annual flu season so much that they convinced American public it was another Black Plague. The result: a new Great Depression, millions out of work, and the end of American freedom, all for the benefit of those Washington “experts” and that leftist press.

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Judge rules health dept must give names of all COVID-19 patients to police

1:56 pm

The law is only for the little people: An Illinois judge has ruled that the county health department must give the full list of patients infected with the Wuhan virus to the police, immediately making void all federal and state privacy laws designed to protect our health records.

On Friday, McHenry County Judge Michael Chmiel entered a temporary restraining order mandating that the Health Department disclose to police the names of those actively infected with COVID-19.

…The Health Department refused to reveal the names, prosecutors stated in a news release. Health departments have typically cited privacy concern in withholding such information, specifically the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

What this also means is that if you have been infected with the Wuhan flu, you are now a second class citizen in McHenry County, subject to increased police surveillance and restrictions, regardless of your rights. And your health records are now out of your control, and being freely distributed to government officials.

This story is hardly an outlier. Government officials nationwide are now using the Wuhan flu as an excuse to make them immune from all laws, free to do anything they want in order to increase their power ad infinitum.

If Americans do not resist this abuse of power now, very soon we will not have even the hint of a free nation that we presently retain.

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Economy crashes in March due to Wuhan lockdowns

9:46 am

Never let a crisis go to waste: Retail sales in March dropped a record 8.7%, almost entirely due to the nationwide lock downs and business closures imposed by the government on what government officials have arbitrarily determined are “nonessential” businesses.

The Census Bureau said though “many businesses are operating on a limited capacity or have ceased operations completely,” it had “determined estimates in this release meet publication standards.”

Last month’s decrease in retail sales reflected depressed receipts at car dealerships, with light vehicle sales crashing in March. With millions at home and crude oil prices collapsing amid worries of a deep global recession, gasoline prices have dropped, which weighed on sales at service stations in March.

In addition, the closure of non-essential retailers knocked sales at clothing, sporting goods and furniture stores.

There were also steep declines in receipts at restaurants and bars, which stopped in-person service and moved to take-out and delivery service. Though some businesses, including restaurants, have shifted to online sales, the volumes were insufficient to close the gap from social distancing measures. [emphasis mine]

I wonder if the families that run these “non-essential retailers” consider their livelihoods to be “non-essential.” Somehow I don’t think so.

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New York falsely inflates COVID-19 death toll with no evidence

9:25 am

U.S. Wuhan virus deaths, as of April 14, 2020

Yesterday the nationwide death toll from the Wuhan virus suddenly jumped after several days of decline. The graph on the right, created using the numbers at this link, illustrates this. Until yesterday it clearly looked as if the epidemic was finally subsiding, and that the peak had occurred as expected several days ago.

Why the jump? Well it turns out the reason is because government officials in New York decided to add thousands of recent deaths to their total, based on no evidence of coronavirus, at all.

The city decided to add 3,700 people to its death tolls, who they “presumed” to have died from the virus, according to a report from The New York Times. The additions increased the death toll in the U.S. by 17%, according to the Times report, and included people who were suffering from symptoms of the virus, such as intense coughing and a fever.

The Times stated: “A limited number of tests have been available, and until now, only deaths where a person had tested positive were counted among those killed by the virus in New York.”

The report stated that Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio decided over the weekend to change the way the city is counting deaths.

In other words, de Blasio is falsely inflating the numbers. And I can guess why. The drop during the past few days indicated that this manufactured crisis was beginning to end. That cannot be tolerated, as these government officials are still in the process of cementing their totalitarian control over their citizens. More time is needed! Let’s balloon the totals to magnify the crisis beyond reality!

The symptoms described could easily apply just as much to the flu. Moreover, just because someone has a cough or fever does not mean this is what killed them. They don’t say, but I bet some of those individuals clearly died from other causes.

This is fraud and corruption at its worst.

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State governments announce demands before releasing citizens from house arrest

9:56 pm

A variety of state governments, having now enjoyed their first taste of unrestrained power over their citizens, have begun issuing their odious requirements before they will end the shut downs imposed due to the Wuhan virus, shut downs that are imprisoning their citizens in their homes, destroying businesses, and putting millions out of work.

Those requirements as stated are essentially impossible to meet, and will thus cause these shut downs to continue forever.

For example, the fascist Democratic governor of the fascist state of California has now released the six demands that must be met before it will consider lifting the house arrest it has placed on its citizens.

The actual order can be found here [pdf] The demands, all of which insist on heavy future surveillance and odious limits on the freedoms of California’s citizens, all violate the Bill of Rights, and all have been imposed by degree, with no election or legislative action. They state that before the government will release its citizens from house arrest, the government must have, to quote:
» Read more

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Trump halts payments to WHO

5:15 pm

President Donald Trump today announced that he is halting the U.S. contribution to the World Health Organization (WHO) as a result of its poor response to the Wuhan flu.

Trump declared that the United States would undertake a 60-to-90 day investigation into why the “China-centric” WHO had caused “so much death” by “severely mismanaging and covering up” the coronavirus’ spread, including by making the “disastrous” decision to oppose travel restrictions on China.

The United States is the WHO’s largest single donor, and the State Department had previously planned to provide the agency $893 million in the current two-year funding period. Trump said the United States contributes roughly $400 to $500 million per year to WHO, while China offers only about $40 million. The money saved will go to areas that “most need it,” Trump asserted.

This type of action is what has differentiated Trump from the politicians from either party since Ronald Reagan was president. All the presidents since Reagan would have, at best, called an investigation (fake in truth) and in the end done nothing to change anything. Trump has repeatedly put the hammer down hard on international organizations like WHO that fail to do their job, or act as agents for foreign governments.

That money can certainly be put to better use than giving it to the bureaucrats at the UN, almost all of whom are avowed enemies of the United States and of freedom.

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Bloomberg News killed story, fired reporter, critical of China

10:31 am

Modern journalism: According to NPR, Bloomberg News killed an investigative story about China’s Communist Party elites and their high lifestyles — eventually firing the reporter — out of fear its publication would get their business kicked out of China.

Former Bloomberg News correspondent Mike Forsythe was part of a Bloomberg team that published an “award-winning investigation” in 2012 into the accumulation wealth by China’s ruling class. He was part of an ongoing effort in 2013 “focusing on Chinese leaders’ ties to the country’s richest man, Wang Jianlin. Among those in the reporters’ sights: the family of new Chinese President Xi Jinping. The story gained steam throughout 2013.”

The “story never ran,” NPR reports. The reason? NPR obtained audio of Bloomberg News founding editor-in-chief Matthew Winckler from a private conference call:

“It is for sure going to, you know, invite the Communist Party to, you know, completely shut us down and kick us out of the country … So, I just don’t see that as a story that is justified … There’s a way to use the information you have in such a way that enables us to report, but not kill ourselves in the process and wipe out everything we’ve tried to build there,” [emphasis in original]

This is the new organization owned and run by a former presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, Mike Bloomberg. And Bloomberg is still spending millions to support Democratic candidates across the country.

I however wonder what country he is working for. It certainly does not appear to be the U.S.

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Intuitive Machines reveals details of lunar landing mission

9:28 am

Capitalism in space: Intuitive Machines (IM), one of a handful of private companies that NASA has awarded contracts to build lunar landers of the agency’s science instruments, yesterday revealed the landing site and launch date of its first mission to the Moon.

IM will launch the Nova-C lander in October 2021 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The target landing site is Vallis Schröteri (Schröter’s Valley) in the Moon’s Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms). The company said the site is “flat, free of craters and rocks, and has abundant sunlight” throughout the 14-day mission.

Five NASA payloads and others from commercial customers will be aboard, but IM did not specify what they are. Nova-C can take 100 kilograms to the lunar surface and provide 200 watts of power. Nova-C is based on NASA’s Project M lunar lander and Project Morpheus, which were designed, developed and tested by Johnson Space Center to demonstrate planetary landing technologies. The core team that developed Morpheus left government and founded IM.

Because the lander belongs to Intuitive Machines, not NASA, they have the right to sell their spare payload space to others, increasing their profits above what NASA will pay them. This shifts control of the mission from NASA to the private company, and in the long run will encourage the development of a private unmanned lunar landing industry.

Nor is IM alone in this. NASA has purchased landers from Astrobotics and Masten, with Astrobotics aiming for a 2021 landing and Masten in 2022. Both also have spare payload space, and are offering this to others.

I expect at a minimum some universities will make a deal. Rather than have their students build an orbiting cubesat for training and education, now they can have them build a science instrument that will land on the Moon.

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First manned Dragon mission slips to end of May

9:12 am

Capitalism in space: According to NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, the first manned flight of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule will now occur at the end of May, not mid-May, and will last two or three months.

“I think we’re really good shape,” Bridenstine said in an interview Thursday. “I’m fairly confident that we can launch at the end of May. If we do slip, it’ll probably be into June. It won’t be much.”

The article at the link also reveals that the two astronauts will spend between two to three months on board ISS, not two weeks as originally planned.

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A scientist picks apart the COVID-19 models, and finds them wanting

1:14 pm

Link here. What he does is what everyone not involved in writing these models (most of which predicted wholesale disaster if we didn’t impose martial law worldwide) should have done. This quote alone tells us the dishonesty of these models:

More surprisingly perhaps, the Imperial College paper published on March 30 states that ‘Our methods assume that changes in the reproductive number — a measure of transmission — are an immediate response to these interventions being implemented rather than broader gradual changes in behavior’ [emphasis in original]. That is to say: in this study, if the virus transmission slows it is ‘assumed’ that this is due to the lockdown and not (for example) that it would have slowed down any way. [emphasis mine] But surely this is a key point, one that is absolutely vital to understanding our whole situation? I may be missing something, but if you are presenting a paper trying to ascertain if the lockdown works, isn’t it a bit of a push to start with an assumption that lockdown works?

In other words, they shaped their prediction so that a lockdown was required to prevent millions of deaths, ignoring the extensive knowledge scientists have about how viral epidemics routinely die out because of the normal spread of infection throughout the population, depriving the virus new and safe hosts to populate.

Or to put it more bluntly, these models were political documents, not scientific research. They, like all the global warming models (that by the way have never succeeded in predicting anything), were aimed not at illuminating our knowledge but in influencing political action, and in this case the destruction of free societies worldwide.

Some people not only deserve to be fired, some might justifiably be hung for the harm they have caused millions. And I am pointing at both the modelers and the politicians who didn’t do the proper due diligence required, and instead panicked, or decided this was a great opportunity to grab some extra power.

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Large ozone hole forms over northern hemisphere for first time

9:11 am

The uncertainty of science: For the first time since the 1980s, when scientists were first able to track the ozone layer and discovered the appearance of a winter ozone zone hole above Antarctica, scientists have detected the formation of a large winter ozone hole over the northern hemisphere.

The Arctic, which has more variable temperatures, doesn’t usually see the same ozone-depleting conditions, the researchers said. But this year, powerful winds trapped cold air in a “polar vortex” above the Arctic. That led to colder temperatures and more high-altitude clouds than normal. Hence, North Pole ozone-depletion began.

Fortunately, with the sun slowly getting higher over the Arctic, atmospheric temperatures are already beginning to increase, which means the conditions causing the ozone hole should soon change, the researchers said. However, if the hole continues to expand south, Arctic residents — like those living in southern Greenland — may need to apply sunscreen to prevent UV damage.

The article, as is usual for this topic, is filled with some ignorant assumptions about the south pole ozone hole that mirror similar ignorant assumptions related to global warming.

First, it assumes that one of the prime causes of the south pole ozone hole was the use of certain chemicals in spray cans, banned in 1987. This theory however was never proven, and had some very serious holes of its own. For example, the atmospheres of the northern and southern atmospheres are largely independent of each other. Almost all spray can use was in the northern hemisphere. Yet there no ozone hole occurred. No one has ever explained how northern hemisphere pollution only caused an ozone hole in the southern hemisphere.

Second, we have no data on the long term history of that south pole ozone hole prior to the 1980s. To assume human activity had caused it to suddenly appear in the 1980s was so large an assumption as to be ridiculous. More likely it was a normal winter event, on-going for eons, caused because the lack or reduction of sunlight hitting that layer prevented the ionization of oxygen molecules that turns them into ozone. Thus, no sunlight, no ozone, and you get a hole.

Third, though that south pole ozone hole has shown a 1% to 3% shrinkage, per decade, since the 1987 ban, that does not fit with what had been predicted in the 1980s when environmentalists pushed for the ban. Then, the hole was supposedly caused entirely by the spray cans, and once banned the hole would quickly dissipate. This very slow shrinkage seems instead nothing more than a long term variation of a normal yearly event.

Fourth, if banning the spray can chemicals would eliminate the ozone hole, why do we suddenly see a new hole in the northern hemisphere, decades after the chemicals were banned?

All in all, the data suggests that the ban was largely irrelevant to the comings and goings of the ozone layer. It might have been a good thing, but no one really knows.

But don’t worry. I guarantee some climate modeler will come along soon and tell us that this new hole was obviously caused by some new evil human activity, and demand that we ban it. It seems that is what our modern “science” modelers do.

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Boeing’s fall from grace at NASA

9:26 am

Eric Berger at Ars Technica yesterday uncovered a NASA report that outlined its selection process for awarding a contract for providing cargo to the agency’s proposed Lunar Gateway space station — eventually won by SpaceX — that gave Boeing’s proposal a terrible ranking.

Of the four contenders, [Boeing] had the lowest overall technical and mission suitability scores. In addition, Boeing’s proposal was characterized as “inaccurate” and possessing no “significant strengths.” Boeing also was cited with a “significant weakness” in its proposal for pushing back on providing its software source code.

Due to its high price and ill-suited proposal for the lunar cargo contract, NASA didn’t even consider the proposal among the final bidders. In his assessment late last year, NASA’s acting chief of human spaceflight, Ken Bowersox, wrote, “Since Boeing’s proposal was the highest priced and the lowest rated under the Mission Suitability factor, while additionally providing a conditional fixed price, I have decided to eliminate Boeing from further award consideration.” [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words could possibly be a death sentence for Boeing. The company has numerous other serious problems, including its commercial 737-Max airplane, its KC-46 Pegasus tanker for the Air Force, and of course its SLS rocket for NASA. For NASA to say that it will no longer consider Boeing in future contract bidding, especially since NASA has been one of Boeing’s biggest customers for decades, cannot be good for the company’s already badly suffering bottom line.

Berger also notes how much NASA’s attitude toward Boeing has changed since the agency removed Bill Gerstenmaier as head of its manned space operations. Gerstenmaier had apparently given Boeing the highest marks routinely, and appeared to have lost his ability to look at the company objectively. Moreover, his (and NASA’s) kid-glove treatment of Boeing for decades probably contributed to that company’s sloppy bid on the Lunar Gateway cargo contract. They were likely not used to tough questioning, and didn’t put the proper effort into writing their bid.

For the taxpayer and the American space effort, however, this report is wonderful news. It appears that NASA is breaking its tight and blind partnership with the big space contractors that has for decades handicapped the nation’s ability to get things built in space. These contractors have not been able to deliver, but because of their powerful allies on Congress, NASA has for years kowtowed to them in contract awards.

Now however it appears NASA’s management has become quite willing to reject these powerful companies, despite Congressional backing, in order to get the best deal and the best product, for the nation.

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Russians find serious problems with three Proton rockets

8:49 am

As a result of a new quality control inspection system, the Russians have discovered that three Proton rockets delivered for launch had serious issues, and have sent them back to the manufacturer.

Three Proton-M heavy-lift launch vehicles designated for launching satellites from the Baikonur Cosmodrome will be returned to the Khrunichev rocket manufacturer in Moscow so that low-quality parts can be replaced, a source in the space and rocket industry has told Sputnik.

The defective parts, believed to have been manufactured between 2015 and 2016, were said to have been discovered last month due to checks under a new quality control system introduced by Roscosmos. “Having analyzed the situation, experts came to the conclusion that the replacement of the [faulty] components on the three Proton-M rockets located at Baikonur could only be done at the factory,” the source said.

Two of the rockets have already been loaded up onto a train and sent back, with the remaining rocket to be sent back at a later date.

This is a follow-up on the March 11th story where they had discovered “mismatched” parts on a Proton. They have also had to replace an entire stage on a Soyuz due a malfunction detected prior to launch.

While it is excellent news that the Russians are now catching these issues before launch, that they continue to have such problems at the manufacturing level is not good.

Their problem is that in Russia they do not permit competition. The government works hand-in-glove with the established players to lock out new companies. Thus, no natural mechanism exists to weed out bad operations. They are trying to do it with tighter inspections, but in the end, that just adds cost and slows operations.

Meanwhile, in a related story, the manufacturer of Soyuz rockets has suspended operations because of fear of the Wuhan virus. The suspension probably makes some sense, as they have a lot of rockets (52) already built.

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Failed past predictions from a COVID-19 “expert”

11:13 am

Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College London epidemiologist and professor of mathematical biology that has been called the “gold standard” of disease modeling, according to the New York Times and Washington Post, and whose initial predictions that the Wuhan flu would kill more than two million people in the United States and half a million in the UK, has in the past routinely made absurdly wrong and vastly overstated predictions for numerous other diseases.

The article compared Ferguson’s predictions with the real data for the following:

Bird Flu: Ferguson predicted up to 200 million deaths worldwide. So far 455 people have died.

Mad Cow Disease: Ferguson predicted up to 150,000 deaths. So far 178 people have died.

Ferguson’s predictions for coronavirus have been as bad. His initial prediction of 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. is going to be so wrong that every politician and individual that cited it to justify the Wuhan panic should be made to apologize, publicly.

As COVID-19 numbers have come in, Ferguson downgraded his predictions, lowering his UK prediction from 500,000 to only 20,000. At this moment the death toll in the Great Britain is under 9,000. It is very unlikely it will reach Ferguson’s revised number. And even if that number ends up close to accurate, it just illustrates that Ferguson’s ability to predict is garbage. His only accurate number was issued on March 26, when almost anyone could have made a prediction of reasonable accuracy.

So we come to the fundamental question: Why have our press and politicians repeatedly relied on this quack’s predictions? Could it be that his over-the-top cries that the world is about to end might serve their interests, and not the general public’s? Might it be possible that they are using him to convince the pubic to give them more power? Could it?

These are valid questions. And the history of the past two decades justifies asking them, as the track record of our mainstream press and politicians during that time has consistently shown they are not interested in the public’s needs, but their own, exclusively.

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New study suggests lockdowns did nothing to change epidemic growth

2:59 pm

A new study produced by researchers at University College London, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard has found that the lockdowns imposed on populations actually accomplished little in slowing the growth of the Wuhan flu epidemic, and that social distancing appears to have been more than sufficient to do the job.

This information comes from the researchers’ twitter feed, and is about to be published. The key quote:

The mean daily case growth rate had _already_ been declining at this point. There was no additional decline in mean daily case growth after implementation of statewide restrictions on internal movement (“lockdowns”)

The researcher then try to make believe the lockdowns were still a good idea, denying their own results, but there it is for all to see. We have risked bankrupting our whole economy and thrown out our Constitution for no reason.

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COVID-19 vs other causes of death

10:57 am

Link here. The article freely admits that a new contagious disease is not the same as something like cancer and snakebites. It also notes the importance of putting this virus in its proper perspective, something unfortunately few are doing.

For example, about 4,700 deaths from the Wuhan flu have been recorded worldwide today. From all accounts we are also very near the peak of this epidemic. Compare this with other death rates:

According to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer, there were 9.6 million deaths from cancer in 2018. That works out to around 26,000 deaths a day worldwide.

17.9 million people died from all cardiovascular diseases in 2016 according to the WHO—this works out as 49,000 a day.

Ischaemic heart disease or coronary heart disease specifically was the cause of 9.4 million deaths worldwide in 2016, 25,840 a day.

In 2016 the WHO estimated that 1.6 million people a year die from factors relating directly to diabetes. This is about 4,400 a day. [emphasis mine]

There’s more. Read it all. And remember also that of the 4,700 or so deaths from COVID-19 today, many occurred because the patient was already sick from some other illness and, based on the skewed reporting system being used, might really have died from those illnesses, not the Wuhan flu.

It is very clear that the fears pounded into us by the leftist academic community, working in league with the Washington bureaucracy, are way out of line. As the article concludes:

To sum up where we stand today, April 9: Based on the pretext that we must “limit the spread” of the Wuhan virus, the American economic boom of the past three years has been reversed in a matter of days, millions have lost their jobs, tens of thousands of small businesses have been shuttered and will probably never reopen, and three-quarters of the American population has been subjected to some form of house arrest by state, county and city governments.

All over the country people are being fined or arrested and jailed for violating suddenly imposed restrictions on their every movement and gathering, often with the aid of their neighbors, who turn them in to the police, following instructions on how to be a snitch. Attendance at religious services has been forbidden altogether or limited to ten people, even in vast cathedrals, while “permission” is granted to crowd supermarkets and convenience stores, buy booze, purchase cannabis and have pets groomed.

America’s almost instantaneous transformation into a police state is based on “models” that “predicted” upwards of 2 million deaths from the Wuhan virus without “mitigation” in the form of a preposterous attempt to quarantine 330 million people. And the people have obsequiously bowed to every ridiculous command.

We have been scammed. It is time that the scammers paid, not innocent Americans. It will however take innocent Americans to make that happen, at the voting booth in November.

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Masten’s lunar lander wins NASA contract

9:46 am

Capitalism in space: Masten’s XL-1 lunar lander has won a NASA contract to bring a suite of science instruments to the Moon’s south polar regions, the launch targeted for December 2022.

The company also hopes to sell payload space on the lander to other customers.

Masten won a task order for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program valued at $75.9 million. Masten will deliver nine science and technology demonstration payloads to the lunar surface near the south pole by December 2022 on the company’s XL-1 lander.

The CLPS payloads, with a mass of about 80 kilograms, will serve as the initial, anchor customer for that mission, Sean Mahoney, chief executive of Masten, said in an interview. He said there are “hundreds” of kilograms of additional payload space available on the lander, and that the company is working to line up additional customers.

Masten is now the third private company with an active contract with NASA to land science payloads on the Moon. Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are the others, with their missions targeting 2021 for launch.

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A Long March 3B launch failure today

9:30 am

An attempt by China to launch an Indonesian communications satellite using its Long March 3B rocket failed today around the time the third stage was to do its engine burn.

Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, said the Long March 3B launcher failed after lifting off from the Xichang space center in the country’s southwestern Sichuan province at 1146 GMT (7:46 a.m. EDT). The liquid-fueled launcher took off at 7:46 p.m. Beijing time with the Palapa-N1 communications satellite, also known as Nusantara Dua. The Palapa-N1 spacecraft was heading for a position in geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator.

But the rocket malfunctioned minutes later some time during the planned burn of the Long March 3B’s third stage, Xinhua said. Wreckage from third stage and the Palapa-N1 spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere, according to the state-run media outlet.

Several videos shared on social media by people in Guam showed fiery debris moving across a moonlit night sky. The Offices of Guam Homeland Security and Civil Defense said in a statement that the debris was likely connected with the failed Chinese rocket launch. Authorities in Guam said there was “no direct threat” to the islands.

This is the second launch failure from China in less than a month. On March 16 the first launch attempt of China’s new Long March 7A rocket failed, for reasons that remain unclear.

How this might effect the inaugural launch later this month of China’s biggest rocket, the Long March 5B, remains unknown.

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Soyuz successfully launches three astronauts to ISS

1:18 am

The Russians early today successfully launched three astronauts into orbit, using their Soyuz-2 rocket and Soyuz capsule.

The crew, heading to ISS, is two Russians and one American, with the American the last purchased seat bought by NASA on a Soyuz. Unless they sign a new deal with Russia, the next Americans to go to ISS must fly on American capsules.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

6 China
5 SpaceX
5 Russia
2 Europe
2 ULA

The U.S. continues to lead China 9 to 6 in the national rankings.

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IHME lowers its death prediction for Wuhan virus again

2:25 pm

In what appears to be becoming an almost twice-weekly event, the scientists who created the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) model that the White House has been depending on to deal with the Wuhan flu epidemic have once again lowered their projected total deaths from COVID-19, from about 82,000 to 61,000.

Wednesday’s dramatic reverse in the model’s projection of U.S. deaths was made without a press release from IHME explaining the reasons for the reduction. It marks the second reduction in the model’s U.S. deaths projections since April 1, when it forecast 93,765 U.S. fatalities.

On April 5, the death projections were lowered to 81,766.

“Our estimates assume statewide social distancing measures are continuing in states where they have already been enacted, and for those states without such measures in place, it is assumed they will be will be in place within seven days,” IHME director Christopher Murray said on April 5. [emphasis mine]

Murray’s highlighted statement above gives the impression that these new lower numbers are because of the imposed “social distancing measures.” This is a lie. All their predictions, even their highest, always included such measures. Thus, their earlier predictions were simply wrong, and very badly wrong.

In only a week they have dropped their prediction by one third.

I must add that this is the same model that has vastly over-estimated the number of hospitalizations that would occur, to the point of absurdity. Instead of having so many coronavirus patients that hospitals were overwhelmed, hospitals have had numerous empty beds, even in New York.

If the deaths from the Wuhan flu end up around 61,000, that number will match exactly the number of total deaths during the 2017-2018 flu season. Remember how we shut down the entire economy then too? I don’t.

I will also make a prediction. The final numbers will still be far lower than the 61,000 they are now predicting, even though there is clear evidence that many states are exaggerating the number of Wuhan flu deaths, probably in order to justify their panic that has shutdown the country and is bankrupting millions. In the end, even with these overstated numbers, the totals (including the flu) will I bet end up not much more than a somewhat bad flu season, but not one far different than 2017-2018, the worst in many years.

If the voters don’t fire a lot of politicians come November for this disgusting travesty, then we are surely doomed to bankruptcy and tyranny in future years.

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Wuhan panic causes Space Force to delay launch

9:32 am

The Space Force yesterday announced that it is delaying the April launch by SpaceX of a GPS satellite until June, though they say in their announcement that they also still intend to get all three GPS launches off this year, as originally planned.

It seems they decided that since the in-orbit constellation is operating well, with lots of redundancy, they could afford to wait two months to launch this new upgraded GPS satellite.

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Lost freedoms and media lies

2:13 pm

The panic over the Wuhan virus is clearly doing irreparable harm to our freedoms. And worse, the loss of those freedoms is being celebrated and supported by the press, the very people who should be acting to protect them, for their own sake if not ours.

Consider for example this article, which documents how four of the ten rights in the Bill of Rights have been tossed out the window during the government imposed lockdowns over the Wuhan flu. It also notes that a more basic right, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, has been cancelled as well.

While this right is not listed in the Bill of Rights and instead appears in the Declaration of Independence, it covers all of our rights in a general sense and should be considered under attack. I have heard from friends who have been stopped at the border of their state and turned back by police; people with out-of-state plates turned away from grocery stores over the border that have supplies they need and can’t get in their own state; and people whose livelihoods are being destroyed by government edicts with no end date in sight. [emphasis mine]

As the author also notes, “anyone who has studied human history knows the ‘temporary’ loss of human rights is rarely temporary.”

The worst part of this article however is the incompleteness of the list of civil rights abuses. Consider these for example:
» Read more

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Russia hostile to Trump declaration to promote private enterprise in space

9:33 am

Russia today issued the first international response to the Trump executive order yesterday calling for private enterprise and property in space, and that response was decidedly negative.

Attempts to seize the territories of other planets are harmful to international cooperation, Deputy Director General of Roscosmos for International Cooperation Sergey Saveliev said on Tuesday. “Attempts to expropriate outer space and aggressive plans to actually seize territories of other planets hardly set the countries for fruitful cooperation,” Saveliev said.

He recalled that there were examples in history when one country decided to start seizing territories in its interests. “Everyone remembers what came of it,” Saveliev added.

Part of the goal of Trump’s order was to try to garner international support for the idea of allowing private property in space. The Russian response today suggests that they will not go along, and instead will use the words of the Outer Space Treaty to block such rights.

As I have been saying for years, the real solution is to pull out of the treaty. It forbids us from establishing our laws anywhere in space, which means future space-farers will be second class citizens, with their only rights determined by the UN, not the Bill of Rights.

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Trump signs executive order supporting private ownership in space

3:16 pm

President Trump today signed a new executive order reiterating the United States’ support for private enterprise in space, including the ownership of any resources mined or obtained from other orbiting bodies, such as the Moon and the asteroids.

The text of the order is here. It acts to underline previous laws passed by Congress supporting private ownership in space. It also does three things:

1. It makes it very clear that the U.S. will oppose any effort by the international community to impose the Moon Treaty in space. This U.N. law, which is not the Outer Space Treaty that has governed space since 1967, was never ratified by the U.S., and in fact was only signed by seventeen countries. Its provisions were hostile to private property and private enterprise, essentially making both impossible in space. Thus, today’s executive order states:

The United States is not a party to the Moon Agreement. Further, the United States does not consider the Moon Agreement to be an effective or necessary instrument to guide nation states regarding the promotion of commercial participation in the long-term exploration, scientific discovery, and use of the Moon, Mars, or other celestial bodies. Accordingly, the Secretary of State shall object to any attempt by any other state or international organization to treat the Moon Agreement as reflecting or otherwise expressing customary international law.

2. The order re-emphasized the U.S.’s commitment to allowing private companies to retain ownership of any resources they mine from other worlds. Though the Outer Space Treaty appears to allow this, there is some uncertainty, and because that treaty also forbids nations from claiming any territory to establish their sovereignty and laws upon that territory, establishing the ownership of mining resources under U.S. law remains unsure. Today’s order essentially states that U.S. law will apply to those resources:

Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons. Accordingly, it shall be the policy of the United States to encourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law.

3. The order makes clear that the U.S. will use all of its influence to convince all other space-faring nations to agree to this approach.

This last item might be the most important. If the Trump administration can convince all other nations to some new approach that allows for private property in space, the difficulties created by the Outer Space Treaty might be bypassed.

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COVID-19 model predictions continue to be too high

1:59 pm

Two stories off the wire today illustrate again the overheated and over-stated predictions of the computer models being used by federal and government officials are simply wrong.

The first prediction resulted in a panic that caused hospitals nationwide to cease all “non-essential” medical procedures out of fear they would overwhelmed with serious Wuhan virus sufferers. Instead, hospitals sit empty with little activity and some have had to cut staff and hours because the loss of the income from those “non-essential” procedures is bankrupting them. And in New York, the worst hit state, the model was four times too high:

The model projected that New York would need 65,400 hospital beds by April 4, but only 15,905 were actually used, according to former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson.

The second story reports that the IHME model that the White House and state governors have been relying on to justify shutting down the entire U.S. economy, bankrupting millions of small businesses, and putting millions of people out of work, has reduced its prediction for deaths from COVID-19 from about 93,000 to about 82,000, a number is still certainly too high based on the actual deaths so far. Earlier they were claiming hundreds of thousands could die.

Meanwhile, policy nationwide has been based on the assumption, clearly stated by Dr. Deborah Birx, head of the White House coronavirus task force, that “No state, no metro area, will be spared.”

The numbers however make this statement seem absurd. This state-by-state analysis today shows that the bulk of the problem is focused in the New York metropolitan area:

Thus, we can ascertain by these numbers that 53% of all U.S. Coronavirus deaths are coming from the two states of New York and New Jersey.

…If you throw out the numbers for the top five and bottom five states, removing the extreme highs and lows – the other 40 U.S. states (including Puerto Rico) will have suffered an average of 70 deaths from Coronavirus.

In other words, we have allowed our politicians to bankrupt us over an illness that has killed so few people in most of the country (most of which were aged and likely very sick already) that the numbers could almost have been considered rounding errors.

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