Tag: politics

Nigeria aims for manned space

9:36 am

The new colonial movement: Nigeria’s Minister of Science and Technology said this week that his country hopes to launch its first astronaut by 2030.

No details at all were provided, but it appears from the article that the focus here is to establish a bureaucracy, not design rockets or spaceships. I suspect they might be planning to pay a private company to put a Nigerian in space, but use this to justify creating a space agency that can be used as a vessel to provide jobs for all their friends.

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Saying “All Lives Matter” is now white supremacy

10:02 am

The coming dark age: A group of sixty professors at American University’s Washington College of Law have signed a letter claiming that to say “All lives matter” instead of “Black lives matter” is an example of “white supremacy.”

Dozens of professors from American University’s Washington College of Law (WCL) openly condemned an unknown student as a white supremacist for posting a sign with the catchphrase “All Lives Matter” on a faculty member’s door.

“The ‘All Lives Matter’ sign might seem to be a benign message with no ill intent, but it has become a rallying cry for many who espouse ideas of white supremacy and overt racism, as well as those who do not believe the laws should equally protect those who have a different skin color or religion,” the professors wrote in a statement to the WCL community.

For college professors to no longer recognize the plain meaning of words, and to instead assign a meaning of their own to those words, for their own political purposes, tells me that if I had a son or daughter attending this university I would pull them out immediately. Not only are students not being educated properly there, they are being taught nonsense and hate.

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New Horizons’ future research goals

9:15 am

On Monday at a planetary science conference Alan Stern, the project scientist for New Horizons, outlined the science goals in studying the Kuiper Belt should the spacecraft’s mission be extened through 2021.

The main goal will be the January 1, 2019 fly-by of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, estimated to be between 12 to 24 miles across. However, the proposal also includes the following:

“In addition to making a close flyby of MU69, we’re also going to be close enough in range to study quite a number of other small KBOs, and some large ones that are on the Pluto scale,” Stern said. New Horizons will be able to study them in ways that could never be accomplished from Earth. The closeness of the spacecraft will enable high resolution observations, and the ability to look for satellites that cannot be seen from Earth observatories or with the Hubble Telescope.

“Because we are looking back on the rest of the solar system, at the Kuiper Belt and the Centaur Population,” Stern said, “we’re going to be able to study another 18 or 20 small bodies to determine whether or not the recently discovered rings around the centaur Chariklo are a common occurrence, or something anomalous. And I don’t know of any other way over the next several years, except through New Horizons, that we can develop a data set like that.”

What I find amazing is that it appears from Stern’s remarks that NASA has not yet approved this proposal. Before the team discovered 2014 MU69, I would have been more skeptical about extending the mission, but since they will be able to do a close fly-by of a type of object never before seen, and considering the time and cost it takes to get to the Kuiper Belt, it seems foolish now to not approve this mission extension.

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An estimated $55 billion in Obamacare waste

9:31 am

Finding out what’s in it: Since its signing Obamacare has caused the government and public to waste approximately $55 billion.

Though most of that number, $45 billion, is an estimate of the amount of money businesses and people have been forced to spend filling out Obamacare paperwork and thus somewhat guesswork, the remaining $10 billion is based on hard data and real waste, such as handing out almost a billion in improper subsidies or spending $2 billion to construct a website that did not work.

But who’s counting? It is more important that we can go to bed at night knowing that the Democrats care about us, and will try anything, even if it is insane or completely stupid, to make us feel better about ourselves.

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DOD opens ULA investigation

9:12 am

The deputy inspector general of the Defense Department has notified the Air Force that he is beginning an investigation into ULA and the DOD over their relationship and contract.

He also made it clear that the investigation was sparked by last week’s comments by a ULA executive who subsequently resigned.

This is all a game. The Air Force and ULA have been colluding for years to squeeze out any competition. There is no one in Washington who needs an investigation to find this out. The inspector general will issue a report, the Air Force will admit its error and promise to do better, and they will then try to have things continue as they have.

The one difference, however, will be that SpaceX will be there, providing real competition. Thus, what matters isn’t the investigation by the inspector general. What matters is the existence of a competing company willing to put cost pressure on ULA and the Air Force.

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TMT leadership looks at alternatives to Hawaii

9:01 am

Though they have refused to comment publicly, the Facebook page for the Thirty Meter Telescope on Monday showed the telescope’s management visiting the Canary Islands, a potential alternative site to Hawaii.

Their Facebook post serves two purposes. It shows that they mean business when they say they must start considering abandoning Hawaii. It also might force the Hawaiian state government to stop dragging its feet in the permitting process that protesters have forced TMT to go through, a second time.

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Court again rules against IRS and Justice Department

11:13 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: A federal appeals court has condemned the behavior of IRS and Department of Justice lawyers for a misuse of the law and demanded they begin cooperating with the court.

Tea party groups have been trying for years to get a full list of nonprofit groups that were targeted by the IRS, but the IRS had refused, saying that even the names of those who applied or were approved are considered secret taxpayer information. The IRS said section 6103 of the tax code prevented it from releasing that information.

Judge Kethledge, however, said that turned the law on its head. “Section 6103 was enacted to protect taxpayers from the IRS, not the IRS from taxpayers,” he wrote.

Edward Greim, a lawyer at Graves Garrett who is representing NorCal Patriots, said they should be able to get a better idea of the IRS‘ decision-making once they see the list of groups that was targeted. “What we’ll be able to see is how, starting in the spring of 2010, with the first one or two groups the IRS targeted, we’ll be able to see that number grow, and we’ll even be able to see at the tail end their possible covering up that conduct,” he said. He said they suspect the IRS, aware that the inspector general was looking into the tax agency’s behavior, began adding in other groups to try to muddle the perception that only conservatives were being targeted.

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VA reinstates worker who committed armed robbery

10:11 pm

Our government at work: A VA worker has been reinstated with back pay after being fired for participating in an armed robbery.

It is worse than you think. The reason her union won her case was because the VA hadn’t fired other workers who had broken the law, so thus it was unfair to fire her as well.

A Department of Veterans Affairs employee in Puerto Rico was fired after being arrested for armed robbery, but her union quickly got her reinstated — despite a guilty plea — by pointing out that management’s labor relations negotiator is a registered sex offender, and the hospital’s director was once arrested and found with painkiller drugs…

Employees said the union demanded her job back and pointed out that Tito Santiago Martinez, the management-side labor relations specialist in Puerto Rico, who is in charge of dealing with the union and employee discipline, is a convicted sex offender. Martinez reportedly disclosed his conviction to the hospital and VA hired him anyway, reasoning that “there’s no children in [the hospital], so they figure I could not harm anyone here.”

The union’s position — that another employee committed a crime and got away with it, so this one should, too — has been upheld by the highest civil service rules arbiters, and has created a vicious Catch-22 where the department’s prior indefensible inaction against bad employees has handcuffed it from taking action now against other scofflaws.

And the intellectual elites in Washington wonder why people are angry and want to throw the bums out. In fact, that they remain clueless about this anger and continue to do nothing about this kind of obscene corruption in the government departments that they control is only more reason to throw them out. Maybe we should even consider bringing back that old American custom: to tar and feather them and ride them out of town on a rail.

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Emory University takes action to stop free speech

4:26 pm

The coming dark age: Students at Emory University are protesting the horror of having to see the words “Vote Trump” and “Trump 2016” written in chalk throughout the campus last week, and the university president, in total sympathy with these horrified students, has agreed to take quick action to prevent such horrors in the future.

The letter the university president wrote is worth reading in its entirety, as it illustrates forcefully the uselessness of today’s academic elite and the worthlessness of a liberal arts education at most of today’s colleges. Here is just one quote:

Yesterday I received a visit from 40 to 50 student protesters upset by the unexpected chalkings on campus sidewalks and some buildings yesterday morning, in this case referencing Donald Trump. The students shared with me their concern that these messages were meant to intimidate rather than merely to advocate for a particular candidate, having appeared outside of the context of a Georgia election or campus campaign activity. During our conversation, they voiced their genuine concern and pain in the face of this perceived intimidation.

After meeting with our students, I cannot dismiss their expression of feelings and concern as motivated only by political preference or over-sensitivity. Instead, the students with whom I spoke heard a message, not about political process or candidate choice, but instead about values regarding diversity and respect that clash with Emory’s own.

In other words, these poor students might have to admit that there is at least one person on their campus who disagrees with them and supports Donald Trump. We can’t have that! The president then goes on to outline some vague actions he is going to take to prevent such dissent from happening again. These students mustn’t be subjected to a free and open debate. It might cause them to think!

In related news, a Hispanic businesswoman who expressed Latino support for Donald Trump at one of his rallies is now being threatened and harassed at her business.

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United Arab Emirates teams up with Japan

8:49 am

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates Space Agency (UAESA) has signed a cooperative agreement with Japan’s space agency JAXA.

The details are slim, but I suspect it is similar to the recent UAE/India deal and involves the UAE providing some of its oil money in exchange for getting some of Japan’s technical help.

Update: My suspicions were correct. UAESA has purchased launch services from Japan Mitsubishi for its Mars mission, dubbed Hope, scheduled for launch in 2020.

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China shuts down its first space station

3:52 pm

Though still in orbit, China has turned off Tiangong-1, its first space station, launched in 2011 and since visited by three manned crews.

The news story, from the state-run Chinese news organization, notes that the module’s orbit will slowly decay and eventually burn up in the atmosphere. It does not say how the Chinese intend to control that re-entry, since Tiangong-1 is likely large enough for some parts of it to survive and hit the ground.

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SpaceX sets date for next Dragon launch

8:41 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX has scheduled April 8 for the next Falcon 9 launch, set to carry its first Dragon capsule since the launch failure last year.

Though this is the most important news contained by the article, its focus is instead on the various preparations that SpaceX is doing at its Texas test facility to prepare for this launch as well as the increased launch rate required for the company to catch up on its schedule.

Note that the Dragon launch will also be significant in that it will be carrying Bigelow’s inflatable test module for ISS, built for only $17 million in less than 2 years. NASA, ESA, or JAXA would have required at least half a billion and several years to have accomplished the same.

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Russia finally approves 10-year space plan

9:31 am

The announcement yesterday that Russia is trimming its space budget by 30% was actually part of the final approval of their ten-year space plan, under discussion and planning for the past two years.

Interestingly, the 30% cut was only the last reduction of many in the budget plan since it was first announced. Initially, they hoped to budget 3.4 trillion rubles for their aerospace industry over the next decade. The final budget approved yesterday is for 1.4 trillion. That’s a 59% reduction.

Considering that the reductions have forced them to abandon any plans for building a re-usable rocket, they will be increasingly hard-pressed in the next decade to successfully compete for business in the commercial market. While Russia stands still with its older designs, others will be developing new less costly ways to launch rockets. The business will go elsewhere, and they will actually have even less money to work with.

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South Korea commits almost a billion dollars to AI research

8:56 am

In reaction to the recent Go victory by a computer program over a human, the government of South Korea has quickly accelerated its plans to back research into the field of artificial intelligence with a commitment of $863 million and the establishment of public/private institute.

Scrambling to respond to the success of Google DeepMind’s world-beating Go program AlphaGo, South Korea announced on 17 March that it would invest $863 million (1 trillion won) in artificial-intelligence (AI) research over the next five years. It is not immediately clear whether the cash represents new funding, or had been previously allocated to AI efforts. But it does include the founding of a high-profile, public–private research centre with participation from several Korean conglomerates, including Samsung, LG Electronics and Hyundai Motor, as well as the technology firm Naver, based near Seoul.

The timing of the announcement indicates the impact in South Korea of AlphaGo, which two days earlier wrapped up a 4–1 victory over grandmaster Lee Sedol in an exhibition match in Seoul. The feat was hailed as a milestone for AI research. But it also shocked the Korean public, stoking widespread concern over the capabilities of AI, as well as a spate of newspaper headlines worrying that South Korea was falling behind in a crucial growth industry.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye has also announced the formation of a council that will provide recommendations to overhaul the nation’s research and development process to enhance productivity. In her 17 March speech, she emphasized that “artificial intelligence can be a blessing for human society” and called it “the fourth industrial revolution”. She added, “Above all, Korean society is ironically lucky, that thanks to the ‘AlphaGo shock’, we have learned the importance of AI before it is too late.”

Not surprisingly, some academics are complaining that the money is going to industry rather than the universities. For myself, I wonder if this crony capitalistic approach will produce any real development, or whether it will instead end up to be a pork-laden jobs program for South Korean politicians.

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NOAA head poo-poos private weather companies

10:58 pm

At a congressional hearing on Wednesday the head of NOAA expressed serious doubts about the ability of private companies to provide worthwhile weather data.

At a hearing of the environment subcommittee of the House Science Committee on NOAA’s fiscal year 2017 budget request, NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan said it was still too soon to determine if commercial sources of weather data, most notably GPS radio occultation systems, could augment or replace existing data sources. “In the weather domain, we believe it is a promising but still quite nascent prospect to actually have data flows from private sector satellites,” Sullivan said. “There have been a number of claims, there’s some hardware in orbit from at least one company that I’m aware of, but really nothing proven to the level that we require for ingesting something into the National Weather Service.”

This so much reminds me of past NASA administrators who repeatedly told us that private companies really couldn’t do the job of supplying ISS or launching humans into space, and that we really needed to leave that job to the government, which really knew better.

As it turns out, those past NASA administrators were wrong. Not only has private space done a very effective job at supplying ISS, they made it happen fast for relatively little money. And they are about to do the same in launching humans into space as well. NASA meanwhile has been twiddling its thumbs for decades in its efforts to replace the space shuttle while spending ungodly amounts of money and accomplishing little with it.

I have no doubt the same will be true with the weather. Allow private companies to compete for profits in providing the world with good weather data, and they will quickly do a far better job than NOAA. And the data will likely not be tampered with for political ends by global warming advocates in the government!

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Roscosmos budget slashed 30%

10:46 pm

How’s that consolidation working out for ya? The Russian government announced today that it will have to cut the budget for its space program by 30 percent over the next ten years due to the country’s deepening economic problems.

In line with its reduced funding, the space agency has agreed to delay a manned flight to the moon by five years – to 2035 from 2030 – and scrap plans to develop a reusable rocket, a potentially valuable cost-saving technology. A Roscosmos spokesman previously said the agency would reassess its plans after 2025.

Essentially, the consolidation of Russia’s entire aerospace industry into a single corporation run by the Russian government has produced a very expensive government program unable to accomplish much of anything for a budget of 1.4 trillion rubles ($20.4 billion) from 2016 to 2025. Sounds kind of like NASA, doesn’t it?

Give me competition over a centralized program any day, and see great things happen. Go with a centralized government program, and watch as the life ebbs from the creativity of everyone.

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ULA official resigns

8:48 am

In an update to the story last night about the head of ULA rejecting comments made by one of his chief engineers, that engineer has now resigned.

[Brett Tobey, formerly ULA vice president of engineering] resigned his position, effective immediately, ULA chief executive Tory Bruno said in a statement. ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing. “The views, positions and inaccurate statements Mr. Tobey presented at his recent speaking engagement were not aligned with the direction of the company, my views, nor the views I expect from ULA leaders,” Bruno said in the statement.

In other words, we can’t have too much honesty here. There are games that Congress and ULA play with each other to justify the billions in subsidies the government gives ULA, and to note these games in a straightforward way is to note that the emperor has no clothes. We can’t have that.

I hope Tobey finds a job at SpaceX.

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ULA head rejects his engineer’s remarks about Aerojet Rocketdyne

9:47 pm

The heat of competition: The head of ULA has disavowed his engineers’ remarks that plugged Blue Origin’s engine for the Atlas 5 while dissing Aeroject Rocketdyne’s.

The engineer was giving a talk at the University of Colorado this week where he made it pretty clear that ULA favors Blue Origin over Aerojet Rocketdyne, but had to make believe they were treating both companies equally in the competition to replace the Atlas 5’s Russian engines in order to keep the Air Force happy. Bruno is probably now doing some damage control, as the government still wants to justify the Aerojet Rocketdyne contract (whose only real purpose was as a government pork barrel jobs program). Considering all the money the Air Force and congressmen give to ULA, he has to keep them both happy. And telling the world that their Aerojet contract is a waste of government money is not a very good way to do this.

Nonetheless, he also admitted that Blue Origin is way ahead in development, and is thus most likely to win the competition anyway.

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Tea party Republican wins primary for John Boehner’s seat

12:02 pm

A conservative tea party Republican has won the primary for former House Speaker John Boehner’s congressional seat.

If anything should tell the Republican leadership that they aren’t doing what the voters want, even more than the presidential campaign, it is this story. Boehner did nothing but show contempt for the tea party Freedom Caucus in the House, doing anything he could to block them. In the end, they were instrumental in getting him ousted. And as the article notes,

Davidson’s win Tuesday could give those [tea party] lawmakers reason to dig their heels in as things escalate. They can make their case to Republican leaders that, sure, putting their foot down on a proposed budget that increases spending might hinder Republicans’ goal of passing a budget on time. But what they’re doing is really in the interest of a growing number of Republican voters. Look no further than this highly symbolic seat they just won.

Even though I have serious doubts about Donald Trump’s conservatism, his rise is just another indication that the voters are pissed off at the leadership in Congress, from both parties. That leadership had better change its stripes soon, or it will find others taking their place, as has happened with John Boehner..

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Conservatives to block gigantic budget plan

10:54 am

Good news: The conservative Freedom Caucus in the House is moving to block the new 10-year budget plan put forth by the Republican leadership.

And why you ask? The highlighted sentence below explains it all:

The fiscal blueprint, released Tuesday by Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price, R-Ga., relies on eliminating health care subsidies and other coverage provided by Obama’s health care law, sharp cuts to Medicaid, and reprises a plan devised by Ryan years ago that would transform Medicare into a voucher-like program for future retirees.


But as in past years, GOP leaders have no plans to implement the severe cuts recommended by nonbinding blueprint. [emphasis mine]

This budget plan is merely a tool to make us think they are cutting things, when they really have no intention of doing so. When they finally get down to writing the real budget the increases will be there, as will funding for Obamacare and many of Obama’s pet projects, as they have been in all the previous years since the Republicans took power in Congress.

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IRS given power to revoke passports

9:53 am

What could possibly go wrong? A new federal law, passed by a Republican Congress, gives the IRS the right to revoke your passport, even as another federal law will soon require many to use that passport for any airline travel, even within the United States.

What should happen is that both these laws should be repealed, now. Otherwise, I fully expect in the coming years that this new IRS power will be used to squelch opposition to those in power, just as the Obama administration used the IRS prior to the 2012 election to block conservatives from fighting his re-election.

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Another glorious Democratic leader speaks!

9:47 am

Dumb and dumber: In yesterdays Democratic townhall event, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton not only claimed that “we didn’t lose a single person” in the regime change in Libya, she seemed unaware that

ISIS is taking up blocs of territory in Libya now, too. So have al-Qaeda affiliates like Ansar al-Sharia — the group that sacked our Benghazi consulate nearly four years ago, thanks in large part to security decisions made by State under Hillary’s leadership. We didn’t give Libya a chance — we destroyed Libya, and left nothing but a viper pit of terror networks to replace it. And Hillary thinks this is a success story.

Be sure to watch the video of Clinton at the link, where she argues that the elections in Libya have worked, installing a moderate government. I guess it was that moderate government that killed our ambassador and three others in Benghazi four years ago.

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Obama shuts down oil exploration in Atlantic

9:38 am

Our lord and master: In a reversal the Obama administration has announced that it will ban all oil exploration in the Atlantic for the next five years.

Makes sense to me. By putting the squeeze on American oil companies it will force American industry to increase its dependence on the Arab oil barons, thus sending more of our wealth to the Islamic world. Moreover, this action will be very effective in further weakening the struggling American economy.

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Iran to launch satellite?

12:26 pm

Does this make you feel safer? Iran is preparing to launch a new ballistic missile capable of placing satellites in orbit.

The Simorgh rocket is a new development not seen previously. Its launch would also be a violation of a UN resolution forbidding Iran to do such research, but who cares about that? It wouldn’t be violation of the great deal Obama negotiated for us with Iran, a deal that they themselves never endorsed.

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Democratic fascists force cancellation of Trump rally

12:25 am

Fascists: Upset that a Republican candidate they disagree with planned to hold a rally in Chicago, thousands of protesters threatened violence at tonight’s Trump rally and forced Trump to cancel the event.

In a telephone interview after postponing his event in Chicago, Trump said he didn’t “want to see people hurt or worse” at the rally, telling MSNBC, “I think we did the right thing.”

But Chicago police said they had sufficient manpower on scene to handle the situation and did not recommended Trump cancel the rally. That decision was made “independently” by the campaign, said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

I am not a supporter of Donald Trump, but I will always defend to the death his right to speak. These protesters are merely an extension of the oppressive academic leftwing movement that tolerates no dissent, and does whatever it can to silence and squelch any opposition. That was their goal tonight, and they succeeded. And if you doubt my conclusions, consider this quote from the above article:

Veronica Kowalkowsky, an 18-year-old Trump supporter, said she had no ill will toward the protesters — but didn’t think they felt the same way. “I feel a lot of hate,” she said. “I haven’t said anything bad to anyone.”

Chicago community activist Quo Vadis said hundreds of protesters had positioned themselves in groups around the arena, and they intended to demonstrate right after Trump took the stage. Their goal, he said, was “for Donald to take the stage and to completely interrupt him. The plan is to shut Donald Trump all the way down.” [emphasis mine]

Sadly, it was Trump’s nonchalant encouragement of violence against protesters that helped inflame this situation. In some ways he is as guilty of misbehavior as are these protesters.

Update: Read this eye-witness account of what happened at the rally tonight, and weep for the death of free speech and freedom in America.

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The bigotry in the Democratic Party

10:53 am

The bigotry in the Democratic Party is not racial or ethnic. It is political. They hate Republicans so intensely that they are willing to let veterans die rather than work with Republicans to fix the problems at the Veterans Administration.

A federal employee union president is wracked with regret because veterans likely died at a time when she knew about gross misconduct within her Department of Veterans Affairs facility but didn’t tell congressional leaders because they were Republicans.

“If I would’ve gone to him two years ago, who knows what kind of lives could’ve been saved,” Germaine Clarno told a radio interviewer Monday, referring to the Republican leader of a VA subcommittee. Clarno, a lifelong Democrat and social worker at the Hines Veterans Affairs Hospital in Hines, Ill., has been president of the union representing doctors at the hospital since before the deadly wait-time scandal unfolded.

Several things about this story. First, my close reading of it does not indicate that this union official “is wracked with regret.” I think she is bothered, but not much more than that.

Second, as a union official she clearly works hand-in-glove with Democrats, who reciprocate that relationship. And in the case of the corruption at the Veterans Administration, that close working relationship between elected Democrats and unions was so strong that none of the Democrats this union official spoke to were willing to do anything to help sick vets, because to do so might do damage to the government unions and workers who were running the VA as their private little playground.

Third, the hatred of Republicans runs so deep in the Democratic Party and leftwing unions that not only were they unwilling to work with Republicans to help sick vets, they were willing to use the corruption at the VA to attack the very Republicans who had been the only politicians willing to deal with the problem. Consider for example this quote from the article:
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