Tag: politics

NASA to use giant SLS rocket to launch cubesats

9:50 am

The giant SLS rocket that NASA is building for billions will be used to launch eleven tiny 30 pound cubesats into deep space.

With room for 11 small shoebox-sized CubeSats on the first test flight of NASA’s behemoth Space Launch System, agency officials have turned to scientists, industry and students to fill the slots in time for launch in 2018. NASA has selected three CubeSats developed by internal government teams for flight on the SLS demonstration launch, and officials announced last week two more top candidates that could be manifested on the mission.

These will be the first cubesats ever sent beyond Earth orbit. Using SLS to get them into space, however, is very incongruous, since the very concept of cubesats is small and cheap, while SLS is everything but.

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Indiana pizza parlor to reopen despite violent threats

9:07 am

The owners of the pizza parlor in Indiana whose owners have said they will not cater a homosexual wedding have announced that they are about to reopen.

The article quotes both the father and daughter extensively about this controversy. Read it. It will once again reveal who the real bigots are in this story, and it is not these people.

One detail from the story is very interesting. The owners plan to donate some of the money raised for them to the Washington florist who is under attack for the same reasons.

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Governor orders one week shut down of Thirty Meter Telescope project

8:46 am

Bowing to the demands of about two dozen protesters, the governor of Hawaii has ordered a one week halt in the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Mauna Kea.

You can read statements from the governor, the protesters, and the telescope’s project manager here. Make sure especially you read the statement by the telescope manager, as it outlines in great detail the negotiations over the past seven years between the telescope and the local community. This project was not forced upon them. They discussed it and agreed to it. As the statement notes,

Following an appeal of the permit and further contested case proceedings, the TMT project has proceeded in full compliance with the law. The TMT site was selected with great care and respect. There are no archaeological shrines or burial sites within TMT’s project site. Comprehensive research by expert hydrologists confirm there is no threat to the aquifer.

This is the same story we’ve seen for the past half century with every telescope that has been built in territories where the local native population has some say in construction. Years of negotiation are ignored just as construction is about to begin by a small number of protesters demanding a halt. The protesters always claim a combination of religious and environmental concerns. In every case, these so-called passionate demands somehow vanish after they are promised some additional cash.

It would a terrible tragedy for Hawaii, and the human race, if this $1.4 billion telescope ends up getting canceled because of the complaints of a handful of people who to my mind are behaving like extortionists. It will also be unfortunate if the government bows to this extortion and rewards them for this behavior.

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Congress moves to require NOAA to use private weather satellites

4:31 pm

The competition heats up: The House Science Committee has approved a bill that would require NOAA to begin using private satellites to gather weather data.

NOAA officials, most recently at a Feb. 12 hearing of the House Science environment subcommittee, have long said the agency is open to buying space-based weather data from aspiring commercial providers, so long as the companies can certify their data are up to NOAA standards. Currently this is impossible because NOAA has published no standards.

That would change if the Weather Research and Forecast Innovation Act of 2015 (H.R. 1561) becomes law. The measure sets a legal timetable for NOAA to publish the standards and competitively select at least one provider to sell the agency data to determine whether it can be easily folded into the National Weather Service’s forecasting models.

Watch what they do, not what they say. NOAA might claim it would use private providers, but without providing those standards it has given itself an easy way to reject everyone, which is exactly what they have done for years. This bill would force the issue.

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Another global warming advocate demands the arrest of skeptics

10:32 am

Fascist: Continuing in what is becoming a pattern for the left, another global warming advocate has called for the arrest of anyone who dares question the existence of human-caused global warming.

You can read his entire rant here. This quote is especially telling:

Those denialists should face jail. They should face fines. They should face lawsuits from the classes of people whose lives and livelihoods are most threatened by denialist tactics.

Let’s make a clear distinction here: I’m not talking about the man on the street who thinks Rush Limbaugh is right, and climate change is a socialist United Nations conspiracy foisted by a Muslim U.S. president on an unwitting public to erode its civil liberties.

You all know that man. That man is an idiot. He is too stupid to do anything other than choke the earth’s atmosphere a little more with his Mr. Pibb burps and his F-150’s gassy exhaust. Few of us believers in climate change can do much more—or less—than he can.

This is why, at this time especially, I refuse to cede any further power to government and its allies. A significant percentage of our population is in favor of using that power to oppress their opponents. Give them any more power and they will do it.

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Obama lets stand Iran’s goal of destroying Israel

5:03 pm

Whose side is Obama on? During an NPR interview, President Obama said that it would be a “fundamental misjudgment” to require that Iran recognize the Jewish state of Israel as part of the nuclear deal.

Israel meanwhile is required to make deals, give up land, restrict its military strengths, and do nothing when attacked. Iran, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Hezbollah, and a host of other Islamic terrorist organizations can have the goal of killing all the Jews so that we can make nice with them.

Madness. It is all madness, and it is the same kind of naive madness that put us into a bloody world war in the 1930s that killed millions.

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$10 billion wasted on military projects

10:56 am

Government marches on! In the past decade the Pentagon’s Missile Defence Agency has wasted $10 billion on defense projects that were either impractical and impossible.

I can’t provide any single quote about the absurd stupidity of these projects because the article is filled with so many. Read it all and weep. However, here is one quote which indicates who we should blame:

President George W. Bush, in 2002, ordered an urgent effort to field a homeland missile defense system within two years. In their rush to make that deadline, Missile Defense Agency officials latched onto exotic, unproven concepts without doing a rigorous analysis of their cost and feasibility. Members of Congress whose states and districts benefited from the spending tenaciously defended the programs, even after their deficiencies became evident.

You are probably thinking the fault lies with Bush and Congress for proposing foolish programs and then funding them even after they were revealed to be obviously foolish, because they provided pork for congressional districts. You are wrong. Though Congress and Bush certainly share the guilt, the really guilty party is the American public, which has been voting in favor of pork for decades.

We get the government we deserve. Until we stop electing candidates (from either party) who promise pork, we will continue to get pork, and waste, and a society that is steadily going bankrupt.

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Colorado: Discrimination by gays good! Discrimination by Christians bad!

10:00 am

The state religion rules! In Colorado, the same civil rights office that punished a bakery for refusing to participate in a homosexual wedding ruled this week that a gay bakery can refuse to bake cakes with anti-homosexual messages on them.

This is more proof that the discrimination claims of the pro-homosexual movement are a lie, that the real goal is to persecute religious Christians.

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Kansas Republicans forbid welfare recipients from buying luxury items

9:53 am

We’re here to help you! In order to prevent welfare recipients in Kansas from using their welfare checks improperly, state Republicans have placed a $25 per day limit on benefits, and forbid the use of that money to buy anything in liquor stores, or from fortune tellers, swimming pools and cruise ships.

This is why you don’t depend on government, or ask them for help, or give them any power over you. As soon as you do, they stick their hands into your business and tell you how to live your life. It might be stupid for a poor welfare recipient to buy a ticket on a cruise ship, but damn it, it’s their life, they should be free to live it as they wish.

There is one benefit of this policy however. It might convince some recipients who can to get off welfare and go to work.

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Unpaid Russian workers at Vostochny go on hunger strike

9:35 am

Because they haven’t been paid in months, 26 workers at Russia’s new spaceport in Vostochny have started a hunger strike.

This sure indicates that Russia isn’t going to get this spaceport ready for its first launch this year. And even if that launch does go off as planned, it does indicate some deeper problems that are going to haunt Russia’s space efforts in future years.

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The establishment of a state religion called progressive liberalism

4:51 pm

The battle over forcing businesses to participate in same-sex marriages is actually an attempt by the left to establish a state religion called progressive liberalism.

It is important to note that Madison was making this case [in arguing for the first amendment in the Bill of Rights] not in the context of arguing for permitting the free exercise of religion but rather in the context of arguing against the establishment of any religion by law. His point was that no one ought to be compelled to affirm as true a religious tenet he took to be false and that no one should be compelled to participate in a religious rite that violated his own understanding of his religious obligations. [emphasis mine]

The author goes on to point out how the effort by the left to require businesses to participate in same-sex weddings is exactly the same as what Madison feared, the creation and imposition of a state religion, except in this case the state religion calls itself secular and has few if any links with God.

Read it all. When I read it my mind went “Bingo! He has hit the nail right on the head.”

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Liberals are the New McCarthyites—and they’re proud of it

11:16 am

Link here.

Some of the hallmarks of the original McCarthyism are popping up in today’s variant. Media companies were pressured in the 1950s not to hire people suspected of Communist ties. Today, pressure is being applied to isolate or sideline scholars who disagree with climate-change policies. In the 1950s, people accused of heretical views were sometimes unfairly attacked or threatened. Today, people who oppose gay marriage sometimes see their jobs or businesses put at risk. Ask Brendan Eich, who was forced to step down last year as CEO of Mozilla for making a six-year-old donation to a measure opposing same-sex marriage. Or the owners of the Indiana pizza parlor who had to close their doors after threats mounted when they said they would serve any customers in their restaurant but wouldn’t cater a gay wedding.

Read it all. It has become increasingly obvious in recent years that the left is no longer interested in civil debate. Disagree with them, and their answer is to try to destroy you.

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Judge demands that IRS hand over list of targeted conservative groups

9:47 am

A federal judge this week ordered the IRS to reveal its list of almost 300 tea party groups it targeted for harassment in 2012.

A federal judge ordered the IRS this week to turn over the list of 298 groups it targeted for intrusive scrutiny as the agency defends against a potential class-action lawsuit by tea party groups who claim their constitutional rights were violated. The IRS had argued it shouldn’t have to release the names because doing do would violate privacy laws, but Judge Susan J. Dlott, who sits in the Southern District of Ohio, rejected that claim and ordered the tax agency to turn over any lists or spreadsheets detailing the groups that were targeted and when they filed their applications.

From the article, it is very clear that the Obama administration and the IRS has been stonewalling this scandal and that it also appears to be succeeding in that stonewalling. The reason? Our so-called independent mainstream press is working for the Democratic Party, and has been helping the IRS build that stonewall. By not following up aggressively on these stories, they have allowed the story to die politically.

Then again, the 2014 elections suggest the issue has not died with the educated public that votes during mid-terms. It is the uneducated public that votes during presidential elections from whom the leftwing press has tried to bury the scandal. We will find out if they have succeeded come 2016.

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Death threats from homosexual activists put family in hiding

9:33 am

Fascists: A family in Indiana is now in hiding having received numerous death threats after the daughter, owner of a pizzeria, said they would not cater a homosexual wedding.

If a homosexual couple wants to get married, that’s their business. It is not their business to force others to participate in the wedding. To then gang up like a mob to try to destroy anyone who disagrees with them is to behave like a NAZI storm-trooper throwing bricks through the windows of Jewish shops during Krystalnacht.

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New Jersey pardons mother of concealed carry charges

3:31 pm

The single black mom who faced prison because she had a Pennsylvania concealed carry license and happened to drive into New Jersey and innocently told this fact to a cop has now been pardoned of all criminal charges by Governor Chris Christie.

As I wrote earlier, everyone should simply avoid any contact with fascist states like New Jersey, at least until they change their laws about guns.

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The GAO discovers another out-of-control NASA project

6:56 pm

Government marches on! A new GAO report has found that NASA’s effort to upgrade the ground-based portion of its satellite communications system, used by both military satellites and manned spacecraft, is more than 30 percent over budget, with its completion now delayed two years to 2019.

Worse, the GAO found that this problem program was actually one of three that have had budget problems. And that doesn’t include the disastrously overbudget James Webb Space Telescope.

In its latest assessment of NASA’s biggest programs, the U.S. Government Accountability Office identified the Space Network Ground Segment Sustainment (SGSS) as one of three — not counting the notoriously overbudget James Webb Space Telescope — that account for most of the projected cumulative cost growth this year. The others are the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, which launched March 12, and the Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2, mission, the congressional watchdog agency said.

The last two projects are part of the climate focus that Obama imposed on NASA.

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It’s National Hate Week!

4:31 pm

Link here.

Today, we’re all hating on Indiana. Who will be the left’s Emmanuel Goldstein next week?

Evidently, the sole function of the media these days is to subject the public to a steady stream of manufactured events: “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot”; nuclear power kills; Lena Dunham’s rape by a college conservative at Oberlin; the “mattress girl” raped at Columbia University; Jon Stewart is funny; a fraternity gang-rape at the University of Virginia; and a law protecting religious freedom will lead to separate water fountains for gays in Indiana.

The whole country has to keep being dragged through these liberal hate campaigns, but as soon as the precipitating event turns out to be a gigantic hoax, the truth is revealed like a bedtime story being read to a child: The ending is whispered and the narrator tiptoes out of the room.

Read it all. It will help you distinguish between real news and modern leftwing propaganda, based on lies, being promoted by our modern mainstream press.

Meanwhile, that pizzeria whose owner said they wouldn’t cater a same-sex wedding, though they’d be glad to sell pizzas to homosexuals, has been forced to close because of death threats, including one threat on twitter from a high school coach who thought it a good idea to get together and burn the place down. She has since been suspended from her job.

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Russian government takes over Vostochny construction

8:38 am

The Russian government has once again increased its supervision of the construction of the Vostochny spaceport, now 120 days behind schedule.

They want to launch the first rocket from the spaceport by December of this year. The story also describes how contractors have been ordered, by Russia’s deputy prime minister himself, to stop leaving delicate new equipment in unprotected environments, as the equipment has been delivered before the buildings they are supposed be stored in have been finished.

Where the equipment will be put is not said. The boss has ordered it, however, so it better happen!

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