Tag: politics

Obamacare premiums skyrocketing again

3:48 pm

Finding out what’s in it: The Obama administration today admitted that Obamacare premiums will skyrocket next year as the number of insurance companies available to consumers continues to decrease.

Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less. Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles. “Consumers will be faced this year with not only big premium increases but also with a declining number of insurers participating, and that will lead to a tumultuous open enrollment period,” said Larry Levitt, who tracks the health care law for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Democrats wrote this monstrous stupid law. They forced it through Congress without a single Republican vote. Everything that has gone wrong since was predicted then, in 2010, by conservatives. Yet today, the public is still voting for these same Democrats.

We truly are facing the coming of a new dark age.

In related news, all the major hospitals in Chicago, home base for Obama and a Democratic Party stronghold for more than a century, have pulled out of Obamacare.

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TMT hearing a fiasco

8:00 pm

The initial hearing in Hawaii for the second permit application of the Thirty Meter Telescope today appears to have been a complete fiasco, designed to extend the proceedings as long as possible, ad infinitum.

Confusion reigned as Thursday’s hearing got underway in a Hilo hotel banquet room. Various telescope opponents complained about the scheduling and location of the hearing. One lawyer wanted to know the process for making objections. More than an hour went by before the first witness, environmental planner Perry White, was called to testify.

All witnesses will be allowed to provide a 10-minute summary of written testimony already submitted. But before White could provide his summary, there were various objections about qualifying him as an expert. Nearly two dozen people— many who are individual telescope opponents who don’t have lawyers representing them — will have a chance to cross-examine each witness.

Cross-examination of White will resume Monday.

It is very clear to me that Hawaii is stalling, designing the hearings so that they will last forever. TMT will never get built in Hawaii. It is time to say bye-bye and go somewhere where knowledge and technology is treasured.

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Two Trump advisers push for National Space Council

10:38 am

In a somewhat vague op-ed today, two Trump space policy advisers, former Congressman Robert Walker and University of California-Irvine professor Peter Navarro, recommend the re-establishment of the National Space Council to coordinate the U.S.’s civilian space effort.

Despite its importance in our economic and security calculations, space policy is uncoordinated within the federal government. A Trump administration would end the lack of proper coordination by reinstituting a national space policy council headed by the vice president. The mission of this council would be to assure that each space sector is playing its proper role in advancing U.S. interests. Key goals would be to would create lower costs through greater efficiencies. As just one example, a Trump administration will insist that space products developed for one sector, but applicable to another, be fully shared.

Here, it makes little sense for numerous launch vehicles to be developed at taxpayer cost, all with essentially the same technology and payload capacity. Coordinated policy would end such duplication of effort and quickly determine where there are private sector solutions that do not necessarily require government investment. [emphasis mine]

This analysis of the op-ed at SpacePolicyOnline.com gives some history of the National Space Council, as well as range of opinions about its usefulness.

Opinions in the space policy community about the value of such a Council run the gamut. Opponents argue it is just one more White House entity that can say “no” to any idea, but without the clout to say “yes” and make something happen. Supporters insist that a top-level mechanism is needed not only to effectively coordinate government civil and national security space programs, but to bring in the commercial sector and develop a holistic approach to space.

Walker and Navarro clearly share the latter opinion. They say the Council would “end the lack of proper coordination” and “assure that each space sector is playing its proper role in advancing U.S. interests.”

I however want to focus on the highlighted text above from the op-ed. This language appears to suggest that these advisers do not think it efficient for NASA to buy rockets and spacecraft from competing private companies, as it is doing with its cargo and crew ferries to ISS. If so, their advice will mean that a Trump administration will eliminate the competition that has been so successful in the past decade in lowering NASA’S costs and getting so much more done.

Yet, in the very next paragraphs Walker and Navarro say this:
» Read more

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Three GOP offices have now been attacked

3:08 pm

The third Republican offices in the past two weeks was attacked today.

An Indiana Republican Party office was vandalized last week after someone tossed two bricks through the window, officials said Monday. That news comes just a day after a Republican headquarters in North Carolina was firebombed. The Sunday blaze injured none, however, a perpetrator also spray painted the message “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else” on a nearby building.

An office in San Antonio used by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign was burglarized on Wednesday, FOX29 reported. Police detained a suspect around 5:30 a.m. and authorities believe that person targeted other buildings in the area, too.

The third case was a burglary, so it might have nothing to do with politics. Nonetheless, it is fascinating how the press and the Democrats always scream that Republican supporters are dangerous and could become violent at any time, incited by the evil words of Donald Trump, but somehow almost all the acts of violence we see are committed against conservatives.

In related news, “We could have died”.

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The intolerant religion of peace

11:05 am

No matter how peaceful and friendly and tolerant the majority of Muslims might be, their religion continues to attract and generate the most intolerance and hate and violence worldwide. Below are just a few stories in the past 24 hours that illustrate the increasingly vicious nature of Islam:

This is only three stories. If I wanted, I could have listed dozens, from all over the world, all giving examples of Islamic hate for and violence against anyone that is not a practitioner of that religion.

In the first story, the UNESCO declaration that these Jerusalem sites are exclusively Muslim didn’t only rub out thousands of years of Jewish history, it also wiped out thousands of years of Christian history as well. As has been historically typical of Islam, it cannot tolerate other religions. When Islam conquered Israel it did not respect the site of the Jewish Second Temple, it instead immediately built its own temple on top of it, claimed ownership, and has since worked to exclude Jews and Christians from the site. Now Muslim countries are trying to use the UN to strengthen their claim and to justify their effort to remove all Jews from the Middle East, an effort that is well illustrated by the .third story.

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Vanishing Obamacare plans

9:41 am

Finding out what’s in it: More than a million people are losing their health insurance plans this year as insurers increasingly flee Obamacare.

The number above was determined by

At least 1.4 million people in 32 states will lose the Obamacare plan they have now, according to state officials contacted by Bloomberg. That’s largely caused by Aetna Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and some state or regional insurers quitting the law’s markets for individual coverage.

…Nationwide estimates of the number of people losing their current plans are higher. For example, Charles Gaba, who tracks the law at ACASignups.net, estimates that 2 million to 2.5 million people in the U.S. will lose their current plans, compared with 2 million a year ago. Gaba’s estimate is based on insurance company membership data.

For the people losing plans, there are fewer and fewer choices. One estimate by the Kaiser Family Foundation predicts that for at least 19 percent of the people in Obamacare’s individual market next year there will be only one insurer to choose from.

Obviously, the solution is to ask the people that wrote this bad law to fix it. We should all vote Democratic on election day, and help make this disaster even worse!

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Kaguya data released at last

9:06 am

Seven years after the mission ended Japan has finally released the full catalog of images and videos taken by its lunar orbiter Kaguya.

No explanation for the long delay has been provided. Overall, this is just another example of what to me appears to be a bloated, bureaucratic, and slow to move Japanese space program. Their rockets are expensive, their planetary probes have had repeated problems, and they seem to be very uninterested in stepping up their game to compete in the increasingly competitive international race to explore and settle the solar system. That it took them more than seven years to release this data is quite shameful.

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No more manned Soyuz purchased by NASA after 2019

11:21 pm

The competition heats up: Both Boeing and SpaceX better get their manned capsules working by 2019, because NASA at this point has no plans to buy more seats on Russian Soyuz capsules after the present contract runs out.

Even as the commercial crew schedules move later into 2018, NASA officials say they are not considering extending the contract with Roscosmos — the Russian space agency — for more launches in 2019. The last Soyuz launch seats reserved for U.S. astronauts are at the end of 2018.

It takes more than two years to procure components and assemble new Soyuz capsules, so Russia needed to receive new Soyuz orders from NASA by some time this fall to ensure the spacecraft would be ready for liftoff in early 2019.

The second paragraph above notes that even if NASA decided it needed more Soyuz launches, it is probably too late to buy them and have them available by 2019.

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The first nation in space?

8:29 am

A science research center has announced it is forming an independent nation in space which anyone can join.

If you are 18 or over and have an email address, you can apply to become a ‘citizen’ of Asgardia today. At the time of this writing, more than 4,900 people have signed up, including at least one Popular Science editor. “When the number of those applications goes above 100,000 we can officially apply to the UN for the status of state,” said Ashurbeyli, adding that Asgardians would not have to give up citizenship in their countries of origin.

The group hopes to launch its first satellite in 2017 or 2018. How it will avoid being under the jurisdiction of any other country remains to me a mystery.

Eventually, when there are thriving reasonably self-sufficient colonies in space, circumstances will demand that they declare their independence from what is becoming an increasingly oppressive Earth culture. Until then, declarations like Asgardia are nothing more than publicity stunts that are not going to go anywhere.

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NASA to offer port on ISS for private modules

3:58 pm

The competition heats up: NASA to offer port on ISS for private modules.

Several companies have previously expressed an interest in adding a module to the ISS for commercial or NASA use. In April, Bigelow Aerospace said it had made an unsolicited proposal to NASA to add one of its B330 modules under development to the ISS. In August, the company received an award from NASA’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) to study that concept in more detail.

Axiom Space, a company led by former NASA station program manager Mike Suffredini, announced in June plans to develop a commercial module that could be added to the station as a precursor to a standalone commercial space station. Suffredini said in July that his company planned to respond to the NASA RFI.

Another venture that received a NASA NextSTEP award in August was a consortium called Ixion, which includes NanoRacks, Space Systems Loral and United Launch Alliance. Ixion will study converting a Centaur upper stage into a commercial ISS module.

This confirms my belief that ISS will not be retired in 2024, but will slowly transition to private hands and will be steadily replaced by new private modules as old ones wear out.

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Obama makes another empty space commitment

1:06 pm

In an op-ed today, President Barack Obama made another one of those Presidential Kennedy-like space commitments, this time proposing that the U.S. send humans to Mars.

We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America’s story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time. Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between government and private innovators, and we’re already well on our way. Within the next two years, private companies will for the first time send astronauts to the International Space Station.

Obama in his op-ed spends a lot of time claiming credit for the recent resurgence in the American space industry. Though his administration does deserve some of the credit, in that they continued and expanded the commercial space initiative first started in the Bush administration, the bulk of the credit here really must be given to the private companies that did the actual work. SpaceX and Orbital ATK took enormous financial risks to make their rockets and capsules fly. They made it happen, proving at last to a generation that had lost faith in private enterprise and freedom that relying on private enterprise and freedom really is the best way to do things.

Meanwhile, I would not take Obama’s proposal very seriously. We will have a new president in just a matter of a few months, and that president will make his or her own decisions. Moreover, it really won’t matter that much what that next president proposes anyway. The real story will be with private individuals and private companies, forging their own dreams as they search for ways to get into space in a profitable manner.

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More madness from our intellectual betters

9:29 am

Below is another collection of links I have been gathering since last week, illustrating the intellectual bankruptcy that presently dominates American society and the so-called elite culture that is supposed to lead us.

I wish I could say that these stories are the exceptions that prove freedom and the demand from western civilization that we always seek the truth is still thriving in America, but if I did I’d be lying. These stories reflect the close-minded and oppressive attitude that is permeating our intellectual climate and is acting to squelch freedom and the ability of people to express alternative points of view.

The first three stories illustrate the hate of western civilization that dominates modern intellectual culture. The last three stories illustrate its close-mindedness. For example, consider the James Madison University speech guide:

Student leaders of this year’s freshman orientation at James Madison University were given a list of 35 things they should avoid saying, including phrases such as “you have such a pretty face,” “love the sinner, hate the sin,” “we’re all part of the human race,” “I treat all people the same,” “it was only a joke,” “I never owned slaves,” and “people just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps,” among other expressions.

Meanwhile, a police chief (who happens to be black) is banned from speaking about the use of forensics in police work because he has had the nerve to publicly criticize the racist Black Lives Movement. We can’t have that!

The worst aspect of these stories is the lack of resistance to these totalitarian measures. If I was attending James Madison University, my response to that speech guide would be to start wearing t-shirts with those banned phrases blazoned across the front, while chalking those phrases everywhere on sidewalks. I do not get the sense that today’s students have the same courage. In fact, the story on trigger warnings suggests that today’s students are wholly in favor of this oppression, and get upset if anyone dares express a dissenting view to them.

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The arrogance of today’s government class

12:38 pm

A new survey of Washington staffers and bureaucrats has found that they not only have an incredible contempt for the public they are supposed to serve, but their general knowledge of that public is mostly wrong.

Presented with simple multiple-choice quizzes, the bureaucrats failed badly. For instance, 65 percent of the DC insiders guessed that median household income is lower than it is in reality (about $52,000 a year). Almost four out of five respondents underestimated the percent of the population that is white (which is 78 percent of Americans). Sixty-four percent of those surveyed underestimated the cohort of Americans (age 25 and up) who have a high school diploma: It’s 85 percent. And 80 percent of respondents guessed that the rate of homeownership is lower than it is: 67 percent.

…Officialdom overestimates, by an average of 8 percentage points, the proportion of Americans who support increasing government spending in the areas of education, crime prevention, welfare and child care. This is blob bias: the mistaken belief that Americans want to direct more and more of our income to the blob so it can (fail to) solve more of our problems.

…Asked to estimate how much knowledge Americans have about various issues, the bureaucrats gave answers that were frankly contemptuous. According to government officials, 72 percent of Americans know “very little” or nothing about government aid to the poor. Eleven percent of officials think Americans know nothing — absolutely nothing — about science and technology policy, and another 60 percent think we know very little. Sixty-three percent of officials think we know little or nothing about environmental policy. According to the bureaucracy, 6 percent or less of Americans know “a great deal” about any of the nine issues sampled.

Read it all. The survey reveals a governmental class that is ignorant of the nation it rules, and contemptuous of that nation based solely upon that ignorance. It also confirms my impressions when I visited Washington in June for a policy conference.

I fear that the culture of Washington is becoming increasingly hostile to and insulated against the choices of the American electorate. I fear that they will one day soon decide to team up with the politicians they like to use the concentrated power we have given them in Washington to reject those choices, even to the extent of tossing out the Constitution and the democratic legal system that made the United States once the freest and wealthest nation in the history of the human race.

I hope I am wrong. I pray that I am wrong. I think we might very well find out in the coming year.

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The war with Islam explained

9:34 am

Link here. The author, very obviously well educated in both the Islamic religion as well as recent Islamic history, describes the real religious meaning of phrases like “Allahu Akbar” and “la ilaha illa Allah” and in the process outlines quite clearly the power-hungry goals of Islam, based on the religion itself.

This is also why “Allahu Akbar” and “la ilaha illa Allah” – both statements of faith that embody the religious concept of the supremacy of Islam and of Allah – are mistranslated. First it was the struggle to establish the supremacy of the monotheistic Islam over the pagan idols of seventh-century Mecca. Then it was a struggle for supremacy over other religions, including monotheistic ones, in the Arabian Peninsula, resulting in the expulsion of non-Muslims, as related in the compilation of hadiths on behalf of the Prophet Muhammad: “I shall take out the Jews and the Christians from the Peninsula”[5] – a ban that is in force to this day against non-Muslim religious institutions. Later it was a struggle against other religious empires, such as the Persian and the Byzantine. However, the rendering of “Allahu Akbar” in the U.S. media as “God is great” omits the aspect of superiority in the word Akbar (which but means “greater” or “greatest,” not merely “great”) and blurs the specific reference to Allah rather than to another deity. In the same vein, “la illaha illa Allah” is often translated in the U.S. media as “There is no god but God” (rather than “There is no god but Allah”). Omitting the supremacy of Allah over all other deities is a mistranslation, and moreover leads to a logical fallacy – reminiscent of Carrollian nonsense verses.

One of the reasons for such mistranslations is the fact that in the modern Western world the struggle for supremacy among religions has almost completely ceased, and to the extent that it still exists, it is nonviolent. Therefore, statements of religious faith that embody a continuing historical struggle for divine religious supremacy lack a modern religious/cultural conceptual basis through which to be understood in the West, and consequently lack a linguistic equivalent. The American media, facing the risk of not being understood in translating these Islamic concepts, prefer to provide an approximate translation, even though these are inherently misleading.

This is not to say that “Allahu Akbar” is uttered only by jihadis continuing the age-old struggle for the supremacy of Islam and of Allah. Over the centuries it has come to be uttered by non-religious Muslims as well, and even by Christian Arabs. In many cases, it carries a variety of meanings – ranging from admiration for what is perceived as a wonderful act of Allah to an expression of shock and horror in the face of calamity.

A translation should always reflect the context, the speaker, and his intent. But what often happens in the U.S. media is that when “Allahu Akbar” is said by a jihadi, it is translated as if said by a non-religious Muslim or a Christian Arab. This is utterly wrong. And when such mistranslations occur time and again, whether intentional or out of ignorance, it results in a profoundly apologetic misrepresentation of the concept, and its cultural and religious meaning.

Note the history as described. Even if there are millions of Muslims who do not wish to conquer, oppress, and eliminate other religions, the fundamentals of Islam end up causing it to do these exact things, eventually. And these fundamentals are once again today driving the religion’s power elites. Woe to us here in the west if we do not heed this reality.

I strongly suggest my readers read the entire essay at the link. He documents his points in great detail, and quite thoughtfully.

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China considers moves against North Korea

11:14 am

It took them long enough. Faced with news that North Korea is preparing for a sixth nuclear test, China policy makers are now considering various options for removing North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.

According to the Korea Times, Professor Zhe Sun told a security forum in Washington that the Chinese were debating how best to deal with the North Korean leader. ‘Some Chinese scholars and policy makers began to talk about supporting “surgical strikes” and “decapitation” by the U.S. and South Korea as one policy option,’ he said.
Satellite images of North Korea’s nuclear test site shows activity at all three of its tunnel complexes, fuelling speculation of another test ahead of a key political anniversary next week
Professor Zhe Sun told a security forum in Washington that the Chinese were debating how best to deal with the North Korean leader ‘More radical proposals indicate that China should change the leader, send troops across borders and station in DPRK, force DPRK into giving up nuclear and beginning opening up and reforming.’

North Korea has never been able to do anything without the support of China. That China has allowed them to get this far in their nuclear weapon and missile development has been an enormous mistake. That they might now be finally realizing this means that we could see some drama there very shortly.

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The childishness sweeping America

10:08 am

I find it incredibly depressing to repeatedly post the number of crazy, insane stories I read each day that document the descent into fascism that I see happening in the United States. So, this week, rather than post them as I found them, I have been accumulating them to post them all at once. I do this partly to save my own sanity, but more importantly to lend impact to them all. These stories illustrate the childishness and immaturity of too many Americans who unfortunately are also being given too much power and undeserved respect.

Quite simply, the behavior illustrated by all these links as that of a bunch of spoiled brats, throwing temper tantrums because they aren’t getting their way. Unfortunately, these brats also generally control our culture today, so no one is allowed to call them for what they are. If you do, you will get slammed, verbally, financially, and even violently. (Note that I once worked in academia, and do so no longer. I leave it to my readers to guess why.)

The video below the fold, from the third link above, nicely illustrates the immaturity and intolerance shown by all these stories. Watch as a tattooed student with a weird hairdo (proving she must be for diversity!) rips down the announcements of an event she simply considers “offensive.” The event was a lecture being given by Christina Hoff Sommers entitled “Where feminism went wrong.” The student is offended that anyone would suggest such a thing, and therefore it must not happen! (I guess some diversity isn’t allowed.)

I also encourage everyone to watch the video at the seventh link, second from the bottom. If you can stomach it, you will see a stark illustration of the hate that moves these children.

The worst aspect of all these stories is how this childish intolerant behavior is becoming increasingly violent and aggressive. Unfortunately, our society does not seem to know how to stop it, and thus I expect it to only grow worse in the coming years, no matter who wins this coming election.
» Read more

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IRS renews harassment of tea party groups

9:23 pm

Still working for the Democratic Party: Despite repeatedly saying it has stopped its harassment of conservatives, the IRS this week issued a new set of invasive questions to one tea party group that has been waiting since 2012 for its non-profit application to be processed.

Worse, the IRS did it publicly, and in the process released confidential information.

More jarringly, the IRS then publicly released one of the sets of questions it sent to the Texas Patriots Tea Party — a move the group’s lawyer says puts secret taxpayer return information, supposed to be protected, out in the public. Tax experts say the IRS may be on safe legal ground, since the filing was made as part of a court case, and that’s one of the few narrow exceptions to strict IRSprivacy laws.

Still, the move to release the information has inflamed an already tense class action legal battle between the IRS and tea party groups who feel the agency is still targeting them more than three years after it promised to cease. “The IRS has taken the unprecedented step of publicly filing actual return information,” said Edward Greim, who is handling the case on behalf of more than 400 groups targeted by the IRS. He said the questions asked by the IRS show the agency has not ceased the intrusive questioning that landed it in trouble in the first place back in 2013.

This behavior tells us more about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party than the IRS itself. When the scandal initially broke, Obama expressed outrage and anger that such harassment was happening, but from the beginning has literally done nothing to end it. Instead, the IRS has stonewalled every investigation and court suit, including continuning its harassment of the President’s opponents. That could only be happening if the man running the executive branch, Obama himself, approved that behavior. In addition, the investigations have found that numerous Democratic members of Congress not only demanded this harassment, they continue to help the IRS in its stonewalling.

Expect worse should Hillary Clinton win the election. Her track record when she was first lady was actually worse than Obama’s.

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Space letter wars in Congress!

6:34 pm

Turf war! A bi-partisan group of Congressmen, in response to an earlier letter by ten Republican senators questioning SpaceX’s ability to complete a thorough investigation of its September 1st launchpad explosion, have issued their own letter of support for the company.

In a letter to the heads of the Air Force, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration, 24 members of Congress said that it was proper that SpaceX was leading the investigation. “Accidents are unfortunate events, and accident investigations should not be politicized,” wrote the bipartisan group led by Rep. Bill Flores (R-Tex.). “We encourage you to reject calls for your organizations to abandon established, well-considered and long-standing procedures.”

Ain’t democracy wonderful? It seems that SpaceX might have rounded up its own crony Congressmen to battle ULA’s crony Congressmen.

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Agriculture Secretary demands Americans reduce their food portions

2:54 pm

We’re here to help you! The Obama administraton’s agriculture secretary on Monday called for Americans to stop wasting food by reducing their food portions.

Vilsack declared that “first and foremost, America can stop wasting food.”

“We can reduce portion sizes, we can have a more informed consuming public,” he said. “The USDA is providing an app that allows you to sort of go online and figure out if something’s been in the refrigerator for a couple of days, is it still OK to eat that type of thing? And if we can’t reduce it or reuse it, then we need to recycle it. So that’s one strategy that we’re working on.”

He was trying to outline ways to solve future food shortage issues as well as landfill shortages. However, this is really a case of the pot calling the kettle black. For example, I wonder if he has ever looked at the food that is routinely wasted at every Washington function at the fancy buffet tables that are made available to every participant. I doubt it. I suspect that food alone could probably feed the populations of several third world nations.

Morever, what business is it of his to tell us how much food we are allowed to eat? Since when did the federal government gain this power? Worse, I expect that every proposal that the government will try to solve the problem is only going to make it worse. Instead, the government should just shut up, get out of the way, and allow competition, freedom, and necessity to find solutions, quickly and in the most efficient manner.

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Libertarian VP candidate praises Hillary Clinton

5:06 pm

No wonder all those mainstream newspapers are endorsing them: When asked if if Gary Johnson was more qualified to be president than Hillary Clinton, the Libertarian Party’s candidate for vice president, Bill Weld, expressed almost unqualified enthusiasm for Clinton.

When asked by NBC’s Chuck Todd if Johnson is more qualified for the presidency than Clinton, Weld responded that he is “not sure” if “anybody is more qualified” than Clinton for the position. Weld made the remark after expressing his displeasure with the idea of Donald Trump assuming the office.

It increasingly seems to me that Johnson and Weld’s sole purpose is to provide an option for those mainstream Republican RINO’s who hate Trump for irrational reasons and don’t want to vote for Hillary Clinton. The Libertarian candidates appear to give them a moderate choice (emphasis on the word moderate) that is also acceptable to the Washington crowd. I mean, really, how could anyone show up at a cocktail party in Silver Spring, Maryland after supporting Trump?

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Black Lives Matter protesters shut down debate at university

8:53 am

Brownshirts: A mob of Black Lives Matter protesters shouted down a planned debate on the movement by the debate club of the University of Michigan, preventing it from happening.

Holding signs with statements such as “my life is not a debate” and “black lives are not up for debate,” as well as chanting “Black Lives Matter,” hundreds of protesters filed into the room where the Michigan Political Union, a non-partisan parliamentary forum that facilitates discussions about contemporary issues, was just beginning its debate Tuesday night.

Michigan Political Union’s President student Joshua Strup had attempted to hold the door into the venue closed as those at the debate heard the crowd of protestors approaching, as the room was already filled to capacity, but to no avail. The protesters burst through and stood along the room’s four walls as well as the walkways between chairs.

Comments and yelling ensued between the protesters and Strup, as well as student moderator Carlos Owens, both of whom attempted to quiet the crowd. But the protesters would not be silenced. They shouted out a series of chants after they entered the room, including “racists hurt race relations,” “black lives are not up for debate, and neither is mine,” and “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” After their shouting spree, they laid on the ground to conduct a die-in demonstration. Thereafter, whenever a debate participant tried to speak, they would shout over them. Much of their comments were laced with profanity.

“You’re irrelevant [because] you’re white,” one protester shouted as student debater Jacob Roodvoets attempted to issue the speech he had prepared.

These bigoted fascists will not only not allow anyone to even discuss publicly the merits of their movement, they make it very clear that they are epitomize bigoted racism, ranking everything by race and preferring blacks over whites.

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Office politics delays Russian ISS module

8:33 am

It appears that the reason work has stalled once again on Russia’s long delayed next module for ISS, the Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM), is literally because of office politics between government officials.

According to industry sources, the management at the military certification authority apparently ran into worsening relations with the leadership of the space industry.

In other words, there was some spat between the military guy and the space guy, and in revenge the military guy used his authority to stop all work.

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Republican Congressmen question SpaceX’s investigation

10:49 pm

The knives are out: Ten Republican House members have sent a letter to the Air Force, FAA, and NASA questioning whether SpaceX should lead the investigation into its September 1 launchpad explosion.

The Congress members said the investigation responses raised “serious concerns about the authority provided to commercial providers and the protection of national space assets…. Although subject to FAA oversight, it can be asserted the investigation lacked the openness taxpayers would expect before a return-to-flight,” the letter says. “We feel strongly that the current investigation should be led by NASA and the Air Force to ensure that proper investigative engineering rigor is applied and that the outcomes are sufficient to prevent NASA and military launch mishaps in the future.”

…The letter also includes a list of questions for each agency including whether the Air Force will reconsider certification of the Falcon 9 rocket for national security launches; whether NASA will reevaluate the use of the Falcon 9 rocket for its commercial resupply and upcoming commercial crew missions; and whether the FAA would reconsider issuing licenses to SpaceX after its September launch pad explosion.

More details here, including the letter’s full text. Congressman Mike Coffman (R-Colorado), whose district interestingly includes ULA’s headquarters, is heading this attack.

I find this a typical example of why conservatives are disgusted with the Republican Party. It claims it stands for private enterprise and less regulation, but the first chance these guys get, they demand more government control in order to benefit the crony companies they support. Nothing in this letter will make SpaceX’s operations safer. The only thing any of its demands will accomplish if enforced will be to damage the company, thus aiding its competitor ULA.

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Republican budget deal backed by more House Democrats than Republicans

7:38 pm

Betrayal: The just passed budget deal worked out by the Republican establishment got more Democrats to vote for it than Republicans.

The continuing resolution spending deal that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed at 9:56 p.m. on Wednesday night, won more votes from Democratic members than from Republican members. 172 House Democrats and 170 Republicans voted for the spending deal, according to the roll call published by the Clerk of the House. 75 Republicans and 10 Democrats voted against it. 5 members did not vote.

More betrayal: The continuing resolution is set to expire on December 9, 2016, thereby allowing a lame duck Congress and President to negotiate a new budget, after the election, when they will be able to spend money any which way they want, for their crony friends.

What good is a Republican majority if its leadership is going to work hand-in-glove with the Democrats to pass Democratic Party proposals, while also working to make corrupt backroom deals that bust the budget? No wonder the outsiders cleaned the floor with the Republican establishment’s favorite son, Jeb Bush. No wonder Donald Trump became the Republican party’s presidential candidate.

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The end of freedom

10:52 am

Below is only a small sampling of the many stories I have been reading in the past two weeks that clearly signal the end of freedom and western civilization. Tolerance for opposing viewpoints is dying, even as our academic community descends into insanity.

The last story is especially depressing. The head of a university advocates the idea that students shouldn’t be forced to hear ideas they don’t like, that they shouldn’t be exposed to any thoughts or statements that might offend them. He then proceeds to insult and denigrate anyone who disagrees with him. This is a man in charge of a university! I read this, as well as the other stories, and realize that the coming dark age is coming far sooner than anyone imagines.

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Keeping the Deep Space Network working

9:12 am

According to this article in the journal Science, planetary scientists are increasingly worried about the future of the Deep Space Network (DSN), operated by JPL and that they use to communicate with their unmanned planetary probes.

For most of its life, the network, run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, has been metronomic in its reliability. Its three sites, spaced 120° apart around the globe, all have a 70-meter dish built in the 1960s or ’70s, and several newer, 34-meter dishes, which can be arrayed together to match the larger dishes’ downlink performance. The network allows continuous contact with spacecraft anywhere in the solar system—or beyond it, as in the case of Voyager 1, which officially entered interstellar space in 2013. Currently, 35 missions rely on the DSN.

Ironically, the glitches this past December and January largely stemmed from problems with the network’s newest 34-meter antenna, DSS-35, in Canberra, which began operating in 2014, NASA says. Rain and dust compromised an instrument that helps aim it, several other pointing components overheated, and contaminants leaked into a cryogenic refrigerator used to cool an amplifier. NASA says these problems have mostly been fixed, and the Canberra station’s reliability will increase when its next 34-meter antenna, DSS-36, begins operating on 1 October.

Staffing issues have also compounded the hardware problems. In January, the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, which measures the boundary between Earth’s magnetic field and the solar wind, was, like Cassini, having trouble connecting to DSS-35. Communications could have shifted to another Canberra antenna. But on 22 January, a snowstorm shut down the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. No one was there to reconfigure the spacecraft, and so the retrieval of a day’s worth of data was delayed.

While there has been a tendency to take the DSN for granted, much of this article seems to me to be a lobbying ploy for more money, budget increases that really aren’t needed that desperately. Almost all the problems listed in the article as well as in the quote above are not really from budgeting problems. In the first case above the failure came from a new antenna, showing that funds had been provided to upgrade the network’s equipment. The second case above was simply a problem caused by an unusual snowstorm.

Moreover, the article noted how Europe has finally built its own network to provide communications for its own planetary probes as well as redundancy to the American network. In addition, the U.S. is negotiating partnerships with several other countries to further supplement its DSN.

In other words, there really isn’t a problem here. The article is informative about this often ignored but essential component of planetary research, but when you read it ignore the pleas for more cash.

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