Tag: politics

The maker of “Innocence of Muslims” has been sentenced to a year in prison for parole violation.

5:24 pm

The new America: The maker of “Innocence of Muslims” has been sentenced to a year in prison for parole violation.

It might have been a crappy film and the filmmaker might have been a bum and a liar who did violate his parole. No matter. That is not really why he was arrested. In the new America he was arrested and sent to prison because he dared make a film that offended Muslims and that the Obama administration did not like.

In the new America don’t offend the government, or they will find a reason to jail you.

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Bankruptcy

10:20 pm

It appears that Barack Obama has won another four years in office. Despite what many consider to be one of the weakest and most incompetent presidencies in history, the American people have decided to stick with this man. Even worse, the Democrats look like they will gain seats in the Senate, even though it was the Democratic majority in that Senate that has refused to pass a budget — as required by law — for the last three years. For that dereliction of duty, the American people have decided to reward them with more power.

Overall, it appears that the polls that favored Democrats in their sampling were actually capturing the tone of the country. The public wants big government and a restriction in freedom. 2010 was a fluke, not a trend. I was wrong.

We are stuck with Obamacare. We are stuck with trillion dollar deficits. We are stuck with bankruptcy. I have little hope now for the near future. It will probably take fifty years or more to fix the problems that the past four years and the next four years will create.

This is not even a conservative perspective. No policy can survive, even good leftwing policy, when the government is bankrupt. And with trillion dollar deficits the new normal, we are guaranteed that the government will go bankrupt. And it will take everything else down with it.

Even worse, this willingness of the American public and its intellectual class to ignore this reality, to make believe that trillion dollar deficits don’t matter, suggests an intellectual bankruptcy that is even more appalling. For you can’t fix a problem if you refuse to face it.

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Schoolhouse Rock – No more Kings

6:01 pm

An evening pause: In honor of today’s election, a little history lesson from Schoolhouse Rock from 1975.

We’re gonna elect a president! (No more kings)
He’s gonna do what the people want! (No more kings)
We’re gonna run things our way! (No more kings)
Nobody’s gonna tell us what to do!

Rockin’ and a-rollin’, splishin’ and a-splashin’,
Over the horizon, what can it be?
Looks like it’s going to be a free country.

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We ain’t going away

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I posted this video song the evening of election, 2010. I think its point remains the same today, the eve of election day 2012. The people do not go away, no matter how much the elite leadership of society wishes they might. Even in a dictatorship they hover over everything.

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The proposed IRS tax form every American will have to fill out when Obamacare goes into effect.

4:11 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A proposed IRS tax form every American will have to fill out when Obamacare goes into effect.

This form is not from the IRS, but it is based on the actual law, and is I think a reasonably good facsimile of the kind of information the IRS will require when the individual mandate goes into effect and the IRS will have to determine whether you have health insurance or need to pay higher taxes because you don’t.

I especially like the section of the form that asks these questions:

  • Are you claiming a religious exemption from the individual responsibility mandate?
  • Are you an incarcerated criminal and therefore exempt from the personal mandate?
  • Are you an illegal immigrant and therefore exempt from the personal mandate?

All three exemptions exist, though the Obama administration has already made it clear that the first will only be available to actual religious organizations, and even there the exemption will be limited. However, if you are a criminal or illegal immigrant (also a lawbreaker) you are exempt from this law, though you receive all its benefits.

As I’ve said, Repeal this turkey! And vote out every idiot that supported it.

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An openly gay volunteer for a Republican running for Congress in Wisconsin was severely beaten in his home after receiving threatening and obscene messages from the husband of the Democratic candidate.

2:23 pm

Democratic civility: An openly gay volunteer for a Republican running for Congress in Wisconsin was severely beaten in his home after receiving threatening and obscene messages from the husband of the Democratic candidate.

The Democratic candidate is also openly gay, and it was his husband who sent the messages, some of which are also include racial insults of the Republican candidate’s Mexican-American wife.

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This is the first time since 1988 that climate hasn’t been mentioned in the presidential debate cycle

12:46 pm

Good news: “This is the first time since 1988 that climate hasn’t been mentioned in the presidential debate cycle.”

When you try to sell government policy based on crisis, and that crisis doesn’t take place as predicted, and in fact is shown to be based on fraud and dishonesty, the sales job will eventually fail. Thus, better to forget the whole thing and make believe it never happened.

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An Italian court has convicted seven earthquake scientists of manslaughter for their failure to properly warn the public prior to the L’Aquila earthquake.

1:22 pm

An Italian court has convicted seven earthquake scientists of manslaughter for their failure to properly warn the public prior to the L’Aquila earthquake.

The court also sentenced the men to six years in prison, which is two years more than the prosecutor recommended.

The more I have read about this case, the less I have been in sympathy with the scientists. While it is absurd to expect any scientist to be able to precise predict the occurrence of an earthquake, in this case some of the individuals convicted had issued statements that actually go against basic earthquake science in order to give the public a false sense of safety. They claimed that the increased level of seismic activity suggested a reduction in the risk of an earthquake, when all research actually indicates the exact opposite.

Some additional details here.

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The filmmaker who made the anti-Islamic movie falsely blamed by the Obama administration for the Libya attack has now been in jail for a month.

9:51 am

Freedom of speech is so 20th century: The filmmaker who made the anti-Islamic movie falsely blamed by the Obama administration for the Libya attack has now been in jail for a month.

The movie had nothing to do with the Libya attack. And even if it caused the riots in Egypt, who cares? I thought there was something called the First Amendment, a law to protect the speech rights of U.S. citizens. Yet, Barack Obama and his entire administration have done everything they can to blame the movie, not their own foreign policies, while going out of their way to squelch this man’s freedom.

But remember those binders!

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“This is the election where black folk sit down and say ‘NO MORE!’ and we stay home.”

4:13 pm

“This is the election where black folk sit down and say ‘NO MORE!’ and we stay home.”

Read the whole article. It is detailed, and I think gives an accurate portrayal of the present political attitude of the black community. And this is in Chicago. Blacks might not be ready to vote Republican, but they apparently are finally beginning to realize that the Democrats aren’t their saviors.

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The Cuban government announced today that it will allow its citizens to freely visit other countries for the first time in over a half century.

8:24 am

The Cuban government announced today that, beginning January 13, 2013, it will allow its citizens to freely visit other countries for the first time in over a half century.

This quiet announcement reminds me of what happened in East Germany in 1991. The government then made a quiet announcement saying it would allow travel outside its country, and within days the Berlin Wall was literally being torn down by its citizens. Shortly thereafter East Germany ceased to exist, absorbed into Germany itself, and the communist bloc fell apart.

Hopefully, we shall see the same thing happen to the Cuban dictatorship.

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The new blacklist

6:08 pm

The new blacklist.

As columnist Maggie Gallagher pointed out during the furor over Proposition 8, “Targeting an entire business because one person associated with it made (in their personal capacity) a donation to a cause is brand new.” Some gay activists are one step away from claiming that if someone disagrees with them, they shouldn’t be allowed to work anywhere. The original Hollywood blacklist never went that far, but you won’t see any movies made about the current intolerance of supporters of traditional marriage. [emphasis mine]

Read the whole article. It very clearly illustrates the reality today that if you disagree with the gay movement in any way, they are increasingly demanding that you should not be allowed a job anywhere, and your career, life, and family should be destroyed.

That doesn’t sound like the actions of an oppressed minority, does it?

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The new ebook edition of Genesis

12:56 pm

I am thrilled to announce that the new ebook edition of my first book, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, is now officially available for sale for only $5.99 from Mountain Lake Press. The direct link to Mountain Lake Press’s sales page is here and on the right. Within two weeks the book will also be available at all retailers, but if you buy it direct from Mountain Lake Press, I will make a little extra money, which would be very much appreciated.

In creating this ebook edition I made sure that all the graphics from the original but out-of-print hardback were included. Valerie Anders, the wife of astronaut Bill Anders, added her own thoughts in a new foreword. I also added a new introduction discussing how the history of space exploration has evolved since the book’s initial publication in 1998. As I noted,
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Telescopes of the future

11:27 pm

Two stories were published on Thursday about two very different future space telescopes. Both are worthwhile, but the differences between them illustrate how the industry of space astronomy — like manned space — is evolving from Big Science and government to small, efficient, and privately built.

First there is this story describing how the nonprofit B612 Foundation’s project to launch an infrared telescope by 2017 had passed its first technical review.
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