Tag: politics

Today’s blacklisted American: The Spectator magazine, by Google’s YouTube and Vimeo

12:11 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled at Facebook and Instagram
Doesn’t exist at Google, YouTube, or Vimeo.

They’re coming for you next: Simply because an interview by The Spectator with Trump lawyer John Eastman discussed the many indications of election fraud and vote tampering in the November election, both Vimeo and Google’s YouTube decided that the video needed to be banned, forever.

YouTube said that the video violated its policy on misinformation. When the Steamboat Institute attempted to post the video under a different title, YouTube removed it again and revoked Steamboat’s ability to post videos for a full week. Vimeo also removed the video, saying that they ‘do not permit content that seeks to spread false or misleading information about voting.’

Steamboat was finally able to upload the interview to the Canadian video platform Rumble. You can watch it here and decide for yourself if this video is as dangerous as Big Tech claims.

As usual for these big tech censors, they cite no specific examples of “false or misleading information” expressed during the interview. They just claimed it existed, and banned everything.

It is important to also understand that the interviewer, Amber Athey, repeatedly pressed Eastman about his statements and position. The goal was not to allow him to simply sell his position, but to provide the viewer a legitimate discussion of the facts, pro and con, and thus allow that viewer the ability to decide for themselves whether Eastman’s concerns about the election have some merit.

This however is not good enough for YouTube or Vimeo. And they banned this Spectator interview at the same time they allowed with no complaints far more egregious lying and misinformation being spread by Democrats and leftists on their platforms:
» Read more

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SpaceX in FCC filing outlines first orbital flight plan for Starship

9:40 am

The flight plan for Starship's first orbital flight
Click for full images.

Capitalism in space: This week SpaceX filed the flight plan for the first orbital flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket, taking off from Boca Chica and landing in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

The images to the right are from the filing, which also states:

The Starship Orbital test flight will originate from Starbase, TX. The Booster stage will separate
approximately 170 seconds into flight. The Booster will then perform a partial return and land in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 20 miles from the shore. The Orbital Starship will continue on flying between the Florida Straits. It will achieve orbit until performing a powered, targeted landing approximately 100km (~62 miles) off the northwest coast of Kauai in a soft ocean landing.

No date is listed as yet, though the filing suggests they are aiming for a launch before the end of the year. It also appears that though both Starship and Superheavy will make controlled vertical landings, both will target locations in the ocean. It could be that SpaceX plans to place its two refurbished oil rigs at both of those locations, but this is not stated in the filing.

Achieving this flight before the end of the year remains a serious hill to climb, though if any company could do it, SpaceX is the most likely.
» Read more

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Tampering and serious discrepancies found in Arizona election audit

4:00 pm

The audit of the more than two million votes cast in Maricopa County, Arizona, in November 2020 is not yet complete, but auditors in the past week have revealed that they have already uncovered significant evidence of tampering and major discrepancies that throw great doubt on the victory given to Joe Biden.

First, the auditors forced the county election board to admit that the voting machines were not protected by a password at the administrative level, thus allowing anyone to change anything on every machine, during the vote count.

That doesn’t prove fraud or election tampering, it only proves that it was amazingly easy for it to happen.

Second, it appears from further work that something very fishy was going on. The auditors for example have discovered that Maricopa County officials illegally tampered with the voter database records before turning them over to the auditors, including the deletion of an entire database.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Conservative commencement speakers at all American universities

11:24 am

Today's modern witch hunt
Burning witches: What most colleges want to do to conservatives.

Blacklists are back and academia’s got ’em: Though for years universities have routinely favored leftist or Democratic Party politicians in picking their annual graduation commencement speakers, 2021 is turning out to be a record year in academia’s effort to blackball conservatives.

In its annual survey, Young America’s Foundation [YAF] said that of the 100 top schools that have identified their speaker, 37 are featuring notable and national liberals and one a conservative. By comparison to other years, the group said that 2021 may be the worst-ever showing for conservatives.

You can see the full list here [pdf]. As noted at the YAF announcement,
» Read more

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Senate committee mandates NASA award 2nd lunar lander contract

9:25 am

More crap from Congress: A Senate committee has approved a new NASA authorization that requires the agency to award a second lunar lander contract — in addition to the one given to SpaceX — even though that authorization gives NASA no additional money to pay for that second contract.

This provision was inserted by senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington). Washington state also happens to be the state where one of the rejected companies, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, is located. I wonder how much cash Bezos’ has deposited in Cantwell’s bank account.

This provision not only does not give NASA any cash to build two lunar landers, what NASA dubs the Human Landing System (HLS), it forces NASA to violate other laws.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Mom criticizes school board, gets blacklisted by Facebook & Instagram, fights back and wins

11:49 am

The Bill of Rights cancelled at Facebook and Instagram
Doesn’t exist at Facebook or Instagram.

Blacklists are back and Facebook’s got ’em: When Gordana Schifanelli, a mother in a Maryland school district who is also an immigrant from communist Yugoslavia, created webpages criticizing the pro-Black Lives Matter indoctrination being introduced in the schools by school superintendent Andrea M. Kane, both Facebook and Instagram moved quickly to censor her, while others attempted to destroy her career.

The response from Big Tech and leftists in her community would have made Tito proud, Mrs. Schifanelli said referring to Josip Broz, the late dictator of Yugoslavia.

First they shut down her personal Facebook page.

“So I said, ‘OK, I’ll create my own,” she said. Facebook and Instagram shut down the “Kent Island Patriots” and “Maryland Eastern Shore Patriots” pages, too. When her 17-year-old son tried to start a Facebook page, he was blocked, she said.

The people seeking to censor Mrs. Schifanelli’s opposition to left-wing politics, many of whom did not have children in the public school system, attacked her as a racist. They leveled their accusations with the Maryland Bar Association and at the U.S. Naval Academy, where she teaches economics and law twice a week.

Another target of theirs did lose his job, and he is a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit.

Unlike many of the other stories I have chronicled in this daily column, this one has ended with what looks like a total victory for Mrs. Schifanelli.
» Read more

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NASA: Commercial demand exceeds supply at ISS

9:03 am

Capitalism in space: According to NASA officials, the number of private commercial tourist flights being proposed exceeds the availability of docking ports at ISS.

“We are seeing a lot of interest in private astronaut missions, even outside of Axiom,” said Angela Hart, manager of commercial low Earth orbit development at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “At this point, the demand exceeds what we actually believe the opportunities on station will be.”

Opportunities for private astronaut missions are limited by what NASA calls the “traffic model” for the ISS, or the schedule of vehicles arriving and departing the station. Commercial crew missions are limited to two docking ports on the station, one of which is occupied by the vehicle that transported the current long-duration crew on the station. The other is used by commercial crew vehicles during crew handovers, cargo Dragon missions and private astronaut missions.

That restricts the opportunities for private astronaut missions. “About two is about all you fit in there with the rest of the traffic,” Dana Weigel, deputy manager of the ISS program at JSC, said.

The solution should be obvious to all. Private launch companies that wish to use ISS have to launch either their own docking ports, or their own modules with docking ports. This is Axiom’s plan, with its own module scheduled to arrive sometime in ’24. A secondary solution would be for private companies to launch their own space stations, independent of ISS. This would not only sidestep the problem of the bottleneck at ISS, it would free such a company from the charges NASA imposes for using ISS.

Meanwhile, it appears that Axiom is countering those new NASA’s charges for its ISS flights. From the article:

Thanks to an exchange of services between NASA and Axiom, it will actually be NASA paying Axiom for the Ax-1 mission. While Axiom is acquiring services such as crew supplies and on-orbit resources, NASA will be purchasing “cold stowage” space on the Crew Dragon spacecraft to return cargo to Earth at the end of the mission. NASA will pay Axiom $1.69 million for the mission, although Hart noted there will be other charges to Axiom for training and launch services, some of which are still being negotiated.

Suffredini said that, on later missions, Axiom will seek to reduce its reliance on NASA services. “We have a goal that, by after our third flight, we will provide all of those kinds of capabilities” that it is currently purchasing from NASA.

I wonder if that third flight will occur after the launch of Axiom’s module.

4 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: The Catholic Church

12:24 pm

Cancelled Bill of Rights
No longer applies to the Catholic Church.

They’re coming for you next: In the past year the schools and churches of Catholic church nationwide have experienced numerous repeated acts of vandalism, violence, and arson, all expressing hate and a desire to deny it and its practitioners the right to express their religious beliefs.

At least 67 incidents occurred across 25 states since May 2020. … Incidents include arson, statues beheaded, limbs cut, smashed, and painted, gravestones defaced with swastikas and anti-Catholic language and American flags next to them burned, and other destruction and vandalism.

The article at the link provides a detailed list of the sixteen attacks from January to April 2021 alone. For a list of the attacks in 2020, go here, which also provides an update adding four more attacks in just the first week of May.

This is all reminiscent again of Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, when Jewish businesses and synagogues were targeted in much the same way. » Read more

19 comments

The atomic hydrogen in Mars’ atmosphere

10:14 am

Atomic hydrogen in Mars' atmosphere, as seen by Al-Amal

The two photos to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, were taken by the ultraviolet spectrometer on the UAE Mars orbiter Al-Amal (“Hope” in English) on April 24 and April 25.

During the 10 hours 34 minutes between the images, the Hope probe moved from being over the planet near noon and viewing the entire dayside (top) to being over the planet at dusk and seeing both the day and night side (bottom). These images will be used to reconstruct the 3D distribution of hydrogen and learn more about its production through the process of splitting water molecules by sunlight and its eventual escape to space.

This data will eventually allow scientists to more precisely measure the total water loss to space that Mars’ experiences annually, which will also allow them to determine approximately how much water the planet has lost over the eons.

2 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Anyone in Hollywood who is white

11:36 am

A banned race in Hollywood
A banned race in Hollywood.

Blacklists are back and Hollywood’s got ’em: Warner Brothers has decided its next Superman will be super-woke and must star a black Superman.

More important, the studio has decided that in order to make the film the “super-woke” concept they envision it must only hire blacks to make it. Not only has the studio hired a black writer to write the script, it is insisting that the director and crew must be black also.

The Hollywood Reporter proudly makes note of the fact that they are looking for only black people to do it all, and are looking for a black director. The piece unabashedly excludes the film’s producer J.J. Abrams as a candidate purely because it would be “tone-deaf.”

Nor is that all. Hollywood also wants the focus for all its future superhero films to be “diversity” and racial oppression rather those evil and quaint old concepts of “truth, justice, and the American way.”
» Read more

22 comments

NASA and Axiom finalize contract for private tourism flight to ISS

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: NASA today announced that it has signed the order detailing the first commercial tourism flight to ISS by Axiom, set for no earlier than January ’22.

The spaceflight, designated as Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1), will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and travel to the International Space Station. Once docked, the Axiom astronauts are scheduled to spend eight days aboard the orbiting laboratory. NASA and Axiom mission planners will coordinate in-orbit activities for the private astronauts to conduct in coordination with space station crew members and flight controllers on the ground.

Axiom will purchase services for the mission from NASA, such as crew supplies, cargo delivery to space, storage, and other in-orbit resources for daily use. NASA will purchase from Axiom the capability to return scientific samples that must be kept cold in transit back to Earth.

SpaceX will transport the four Axiom astronauts to and from ISS in a Dragon capsule, as yet undetermined.

According to yesterday’s Space News article, the contract for this flight had been signed prior to NASA establishing its new much higher prices for the use of ISS.

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NASA officially increases prices for commercial use of ISS by 700%

11:07 pm

Capitalism in space: Though there were some revisions to the price list that NASA released in March, the revised price list for use of ISS by private companies and released at the end of April did not change significantly, and now officially increases prices for commercial tourist flights to ISS by about 700%.

The price list can be found here.

The result of the new policy is a much higher price charged by NASA to companies conducting private astronaut missions. Under the old policy, the life support and crew supplies for a hypothetical four-person, one-week mission to the ISS would cost $945,000, a figure that doesn’t include stowage, data or power. Under the new policy, the cargo, food and supplies charges for the same mission would be more than $2.5 million at the low end of the quoted cost ranges, plus $10 million in per-mission fees.

These prices will not apply to the Axiom commercial tourist flight scheduled for early ’22 because that contract was signed beforehand. Nor do they apparently apply to any visits to the private module that Axiom is building to attach to ISS.

Nonetheless, these prices will almost certainly drive business away from ISS and NASA, especially because many of these costs, such as the upmass and downmass cost of passive cargo, should really be charged by the private commercial companies, SpaceX and Boeing, that are providing the transportation. NASA has nothing to do with that and is merely skimming some money off the top of other people’s achievement.

Expect therefore more free-flying tourist missions that do not dock with ISS, such as SpaceX’s Inspiration4 flight scheduled for launch in September. We should also expect an acceleration in the construction of private stations that will compete with NASA and likely charge less.

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