Tag: politics

SLS next dress rehearsal countdown scheduled for June 19th

8:44 am

NASA has now scheduled the next dress rehearsal countdown for its SLS rocket for around June 19th, with the rocket beginning its trip to the launch site on June 6th.

It appears the issues that prevented the completion of the dress rehearsal in April have all been addressed:

While inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), teams completed several major objectives, including assessing the liquid hydrogen system leak at the tail service mast umbilical, replacing the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) gaseous helium system check valve and support hardware, and modifying the ICPS umbilical purge boots. The addition of hazardous gas detectors above the upper stage allows for additional visibility into any potential leaks during cryogenic operations.

Other than the rollout on June 6th, all future dates remain flexible, depending on what happens step-by-step.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Teacher threatened with loss of license for expressing an opinion

1:17 pm

Marissa Darlingh: Her free speech not allowed in Wisconsin
Marissa Darlingh at the April 23rd rally: Her free speech forbidden by Wisconsin

They’re coming for you next: A Wisconsin teacher, Marissa Darlingh, has been threatened with loss of her teaching license by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) for speaking publicly — on her own time and as a private citizen — at a feminist rally on April 23, 2022 against the modern queer movement to introduce perverse sex instruction into elementary schools.

During that rally, Ms. Darlingh publicly expressed that she “oppose[s] gender ideology” in elementary schools and that young children should not be “exposed to the harms of gender identity ideology” or given “unfettered access to hormones—wrong-sex hormones—and surgery.” She argued passionately that she “exist[s] in this world to serve children” and “to protect children,” and does not support social or medical transition of young children. In the passion of the moment, Ms. Darlingh at one point said “[expleteive] transgenderism,” referring to the “gender identity ideology” that she believes harms children.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) issued Ms. Darlingh a letter on April 29, informing her that the agency opened an investigation to determine whether to revoke her educator license for “immoral conduct” at the April rally. The letter cites Darlingh’s use of profane language as well as her statements “oppos[ing] gender identity ideology from entering [her] school building” and her statements that she “do[es] not believe children should have access to hormones or surgery” as examples of her “immoral conduct.”

You can view the DPI letter here [pdf]. In threatening to take away Darlingh’s right to teach, it also gave her the option to end the public investigation if she would simply “surrender her license.” To do so DPI kindly included an agreement for her to sign.

In other words, “You sure have a nice looking resume. It sure would be a shame if something happened to ruin it.”

Darlingh not only did not surrender her license, she enlisted legal help from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), which immediately sent a letter to DPI [pdf] telling it to back off or face a lawsuit for violating Darlingh’s first amendment rights. The letter also took the offensive, closing with this demand:
» Read more

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Stratolaunch unveils first Talon-A test vehicle

9:24 am

The pylon and Talon test vehicle attached to Roc
Click for original image.

Capitalism in space: Stratolaunch yesterday released the first pictures of its first Talon-A test vehicle, dubbed TA-0, to be used to test in-flight the pylon on the company’s giant Roc airplane that the Talon-A will be attached to.

The photo to the right, reduced, enhanced, and annotated to post here, shows the test vehicle attached to the pylon which hangs from the bottom of Roc’s wing. From the press release:

The pylon, which was introduced during Roc’s fifth test flight on May 4, will be used to carry and release Talon-A hypersonic vehicles. The hardware is comprised of a mini-wing and adapter that is constructed with aluminum and carbon fiber skins. It weighs approximately 8,000 pounds and occupies 14 feet of Roc’s 95-foot center wingspan, allowing for adequate space between the aircraft’s dual fuselages for safe vehicle release and launch. The custom structure also features a winch system that will load Talon-A vehicles onto the platform from the ground, expediting launch preparation and reducing the need for ground support.

Although this first version of Talon-A will not be powered in flight, its future iterations will be rocket-powered, autonomous, reusable testbeds carrying customizable payloads at speeds above Mach 5. TA-0 will continue functional and integration testing in the coming months, culminating in a captive carry and vehicle flight later this year. After completing TA-0 separation testing, the company will transition to flying its first hypersonic test vehicle, TA-1. The team has also started fabrication of a third vehicle, TA-2, the first fully reusable hypersonic test vehicle.

The development and initial testing of Talon-A is partly funded from a contract with the Air Force. If successful, the Air Force will likely move on to purchasing actual hypersonic test flights.

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NASA blesses Starliner as ready for manned missions

9:04 am

Capitalism in space: In the post flight press conference on May 25th, NASA officials gave their official endorsement of Boeing’s manned capsule Starliner, making it clear they are ready to approve it for manned missions.

Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, was to the point:

“Putting the vehicle through its paces on this flight is really the only way to prepare us for the crewed flight test,” Stich said. “Once we work through all the data, we’ll be ready to fly crew on this vehicle.”

The “data” however includes two failed orbital thrusters on the capsule’s service module, and two failed attitude control thrusters on the capsule itself. While the capsule’s thrusters can be taken apart for analysis, because the service module is not recovered, burning up over the ocean, Boeing will have to try to figure out the cause of its thruster failures from the data and experimentation with a not-yet flown service module.

Even so, it appears NASA will not require Boeing to do another unmanned test flight. The capsule proved during the unmanned demo flight that it has more than ample redundancy in these thrusters, should some fail on a manned flight.

The plan right now is to get that next manned flight off by the end of the year, though it could slip into ’23 should it become difficult to pin down and fix the thruster issues.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Churches vandalized by leftists for their beliefs

12:41 pm

Today's modern witch hunt
What the left really wants: To burn Christians at the stake.

Genocide is coming to America: Four churches in Olympia, Washington, were vandalized during the May 21st weekend by Puget Sound Anarchists, a pro-abortion group that makes believe it is anti-authoritarian but is willing to commit violence against anyone who dares to express an opinion it does not like.

From an anonymous post on May 22nd on their own website:

A Mormon church, Calvary church, Harbor Church, and St. Michael’s Catholic church all received facelifts in the early hours of Sunday morning. We dumped red paint over the entryways and left messages of “If abortions aren’t safe then neither are you,” “Abort the church,” and “God loves abortion.”

…While a little graffiti may be a small gesture in the war against patriarchal religious control, we wish to highlight that it’s easy and fun to attack. Our enemies are vulnerable and easy to find. [emphasis mine]

In another post from July 2021, this group proudly takes credit for destroying and damaging a garage full of police cars, adding

Be bold! Sabotage is fun!

» Read more

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Astronomers: Shut down satellite companies so we don’t have to adapt!

9:31 am

The Hubble Space Telescope
Space-based astronomy, a concept apparently alien to astronomers

In an article published today in Nature, the astronomy community continued its crybaby complaining of the last three years about the interference posed to their ground-based telescopes by the tens of thousands of small satellites scheduled for launch in the next few years.

These quotes typify the apparent attitude of astronomers:

“This is an unsustainable trajectory,” says Meredith Rawls, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle. “At the moment, our science is fine. But at what point will we miss a discovery?”

…“It’s really quite horrifying,” says Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada.

…The growing threat of satellite constellations adds to other degradations of the night sky such as light pollution, says Karlie Noon, a PhD candidate in astronomy and an Indigeneous research associate at Australian National University in Canberra. “In the same way that our lands were colonized, our skies are now being colonized,” she says. “And this isn’t just Indigenous people.” She points out that companies have launched satellites without necessarily consulting the scientific community. [emphasis mine]

Oh the horror. Scientists weren’t consulted! The nerve of these companies!

In response, astronomers have decided their only solution is to enlist the UN to shut down these satellite companies.
» Read more

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Chinese expert calls for China to find ways to destroy Starlink constellation

11:27 am

A Chinese communications expert at its Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications has written a paper calling for China’s military to develop ways in which it can to destroy SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.

According to the South China Morning Post, lead author Ren Yuanzhen and colleagues advocated in Modern Defence Technology not only for China to develop anti-satellite capabilities, but also to have a surveillance system that could monitor and track all satellites in Starlink’s constellation.

“A combination of soft and hard kill methods should be adopted to make some Starlink satellites lose their functions and destroy the constellation’s operating system,” the Chinese boffins reportedly said, estimating that data transmission speeds of stealth fighter jets and US military drones could increase by a factor of 100 through a Musk machine connection.

I am sure China (as well as every other superpower — including the U.S. military) is already working on developing methods for either jamming or destroying Starlink. Doing either however is difficult because of the constellation’s nature: many small satellites all of which provide redundancy and are easily replaced. Even more depressing for these power-hungry government entities is the fact that Starlink is not the only constellation now in orbit, with many others soon to follow.

For example, consider the contracts that the NRO announced today with three different surveillance satellite companies, all of which have their own constellations. Getting rid of one is hard. All three is likely impossible.

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Pushback: Navy loses in attempt to fire officer who refused COVID shots

11:14 am

Total victory for Navy Lt Billy Moseley
Navy Lt Billy Moseley

Bring a gun to a knife fight: When faced with dismissal on a charge of misconduct because he refused to get a COVID shot, Navy Lieutenant Billy Moseley took his case before a Navy administrative separation board, and won a unanimous victory.

Anyone who has been in the Navy for at least six years is entitled to call for a separation board if threatened with dismissal. The board is made up of three Navy officers, and its decision is binding.

Younts [Moseley’s lawyer] argued at the board hearing that the mandate for the experimental COVID vaccines was not a lawful order since the military has not made fully FDA-approved versions of the vaccines available to military members.

The military defense attorney told Just the News that the attorneys for the Navy agreed with him that there are no FDA-approved vaccines available, only interchangeable vaccines. Younts added that if there are no FDA-approved vaccines available, then the president would have to authorize the experimental shots that are currently available, which hasn’t happened.

On Friday, the board voted 3-0 that Moseley’s failure to follow the COVID vaccine order did not count as misconduct and that he should remain in the Navy. Younts said that the board members weren’t convinced that the vaccine order was lawful.

According to the press release [pdf] from Younts,
» Read more

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Axiom signs deal with Italy to add an Italian module to its commercial space station

9:05 am

Capitalism in space: The commercial company Axiom today announced an agreement with the Italian government to begin design work on an Italian module that will eventually be added to its commercial space station, set to launch in ’24 as an addition to ISS that will eventually separate and fly independently.

The language of the press release is couched in a lot of vague statements, but this paragraph is the most revealing:

While the [agreement] is exploratory in nature, areas of cooperation outlined in the agreement include mutual definition of potential user requirements as well as technological solutions and operational concepts for an Italian module that could later be developed and integrated into the Axiom Space Station. The project could take the form of a public-private framework with the governance and business models developed over time. Other areas of cooperation include collaborative development and implementation of research supporting space exploration and technology, including advanced materials, pharmaceuticals, on-orbit manufacturing, space security, aerospace medicine, simulation and robotics, and other areas of mutual interest as determined by the two parties, as well as training and mission operations.

The deal will likely lead to Italy paying Axiom to build the module as well as provide that country support when it begins using that module for research and commercial development.

Nor is this Axiom’s only deal with other countries. Both Hungary and the UAE have signed agreements to fly in some manner with Axiom.

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NRO awards major satellite contracts to BlackSky, Maxar, and Planet

8:54 am

Capitalism in space: The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) today announced major satellite contracts worth billions of dollars with three different commercial satellite constellations, BlackSky, Maxar, and Planet, to provide it high resolution reconnaissance imagery over the next decade.

You can also read BlackSky’s press release of the contract award here.

The contracts are part of an NRO’s program, dubbed Electro-Optical Commercial Layer (EOCL), to shift from building its own reconnaissance satellites to buying the services from the private sector.

EOCL will support the mission needs of NRO’s half-million intelligence, defense, and federal civil agency users over the next decade. It will also help ensure long-term, continued support for the U.S. commercial remote sensing industry. EOCL is effective as of of May 22, 2022 with a five-year base and multiple one-year options with additional growth through 2032.

The five year contract with one year options through 2032 applies to all three satellite companies, and guarantees that all three will require extensive launch capabilities to keep their satellite constellations operating. The rising demand for rockets, both large and small, will thus continue.

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Pushback: Total victory for The Federalist against attempt by Biden’s Labor Board to silence it

12:16 pm

Total victory for Ben Domenech and The Federalist
Ben Domenech at The Federalist

Another past blacklisted American has come away with a triumph for freedom! In April 2022 I reported how the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) under the Biden administration and working with two leftist lawyers was attempting to silence the conservative news outlet The Federalist because of a very lame Twitter joke sent out by its publisher, Ben Domenech.

In his tweet, Domenech had joked that if any of his six employees dared considering unionizing “I swear I’ll send you back to the salt mine.” The NRLB claimed absurdly this was an example of “unfair labor practice.”

Domenech had hired the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) to defend him. At first it worked out a settlement whereby all charges would be dropped if Domenech would simply delete his tweet.

Domenech refused. As he said in explaining this decision to fight:
» Read more

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Chinese scientists plant seeds bred on Tiangong space station

9:45 am

The new colonial movement: Chinese scientists have now planted on Earth some of the 12,000 seeds that were bred on China’s Tiangong space station for six months and brought back to Earth in April.

The seeds, including alfalfa, oats and fungi, were selected by multiple research institutions last year. They were brought back to Earth by the Shenzhou-13 on April 16. Space breeding refers to the process of exposing seeds to cosmic radiation and microgravity during a spaceflight mission to mutate seed genes and then send them back to Earth to generate new species.

The goal is to see which seeds survive best in the harsh environment of space, which would thus make them better candidates for transport to other planets for planting.

While some of the results of this research will be published, much will not. China tends to keep what it learns close to the vest.

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U.S. and Japan agree to send Japanese astronaut to Gateway and the Moon

9:40 am

In a deal negotiated for signing this week while President Biden was in Japan, the United States and Japan have agreed to send a Japanese astronaut on a mission to the Lunar Gateway station, as well as begin planning for a Japanese astronaut to land on the Moon, all part of the Artemis program.

The agreement also confirmed the exchange of material from the countries’ two sample return asteroid missions, Hayabusa-2 and OSIRIS-REx.

None of this is a surprise. Not only was Japan one of the first to sign the Artemis Accords, Japanese subcontractors are already providing some of the life support equipment for Gateway.

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Pushback: Professor fired for having opinions wins total victory

11:59 am

University of Central Florida: Hostile to free speech
University of Central Florida: Hostile to free speech

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In January 2021 (in one of my first blacklist columns and just after Biden assumed power), I described how professor Charles Negy was fired from the teaching job he had had at the University of Central Florida for 22 years, merely because he had stated some obvious facts about BLM and affirmative action on his twitter feed.

The school claimed it did not fire him for these tweets (an obvious lie based on the events), but because of a supposed pattern of inappropriate classroom behavior obtained through anonymous tips, tips instigated by Negy’s tweets that by the way did not match any of the school’s previous assessments of his teaching.

Negy fought back, demanding his case be reviewed by an independent arbitrator, and has now won his case.

In the ruling on Monday, the arbitrator, Ben Falcigno, found that the university had failed to show “just cause” when it fired Dr. Negy because it had not given him a chance to change his conduct in the classroom or, alternatively, to show that he was incapable of changing his behavior.
» Read more

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Starliner successfully docks with ISS

5:38 pm

Starliner docked to ISS
Screen capture just after soft docking.

Boeing and NASA today successfully docked an unmanned Starliner capsule to ISS for the first time, completing the up-from-Earth portion of this demo mission to prove out this Boeing spacecraft as a future ferry to bring astronauts to and from the station.

The screen capture to the right, taken from the live feed, shows Starliner just after a successful soft capture docking. This was shortly followed by a hard dock.

They will open the hatch tomorrow after checking out the capsule’s linkage with ISS.

The docking itself was delayed by about 78 minutes, partly to time the docking during a period of good orbital communications and partly because of an issue with NASA’s own docking ring on the station that required engineers to reset it.

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Pushback: Five bowling alleys sue Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer

12:12 pm

Gretchen Whitmer, Democrat and would-be dictator
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Democrat and would-be dictator

Bring a gun to a knife fight: A coalition of five Michigan bowling alleys has sued Democratic Party Governor Gretchen Whitmer as well as the state’s Department of Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon for shutting down their businesses for more than a year during the Wuhan panic without providing them any just compensation.

You can read the complaint here [pdf].

Plaintiff’s chief counsel David Kallman told The Epoch Times after the appeals court hearing…
“Michigan is the only state in the nation where a governor’s public health emergency powers were overturned as unconstitutional. If we lose in the court of appeals, we will take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Scott Bennett, executive director of the Independent Bowling and Entertainment Centers Association, told The Epoch Times: “The governor’s actions were devastating to our industry. Things went from ‘two weeks to slow the spread’ to indefinite shutdowns.”
» Read more

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India delays launch of manned mission to do two abort tests first

9:37 am

The new colonial movement: India’s space agency ISRO has decided to delay the launch of its Gaganyaan manned orbital mission at least one more year (until ’24) in order to do two abort tests of the capsule.

“The first Test Vehicle for this purpose is ready and we will launch it in September this year. The human capsule will be sent up 15 kilometres, we will simulate an abort and then the capsule will be safely brought down by parachutes into the sea,’’ Somanath, who is also Secretary, Department of Space, said.

The second Test Vehicle will be launched in December this year, sent to a greater height and then brought back after a similar simulation is carried out.

The mission had originally been scheduled to launch in ’22, but was delayed significantly by India’s panic over Wuhan.

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Starliner reaches proper orbit despite thruster problems

9:08 am

Unbelievable: During the post-launch press conference last night Boeing officials revealed that, though the final burn to get Boeing’s Starliner capsule into orbit using its own thrusters succeeded, the thrusters did not function as planned.

Boeing Vice President Mark Nappi said a Starliner thruster failed after firing for one second as the spacecraft made a burn to enter orbit after separating from its Atlas V launch vehicle. The flight software switched to a second thruster, which fired for 25 seconds before shutting down prematurely. A third thruster took over and completed the firing, Nappi said.

The thrusters were made by Aerojet Rocketdyne, which also made the valves that did not work in the previous launch attempt in the summer of 2021. Whether the two problems are related is not known at this time.

A NASA official also noted that a cooling unit on the spacecraft operated “sluggishly during ascent,” but began working correctly once in orbit.

Right now NASA and Boeing are planning to proceed with the docking on ISS tonight at 7:10 pm (Eastern). It appears that though two thrusters have failed, they have ten more thrusters that can be used for further maneuvers throughout the mission. Furthermore, these thrusters are not used during the actual rendezvous and docking.

The live stream of the docking goes live at 3:30 pm (Eastern), and is embedded below. Until then enjoy NASA propaganda, some of it might be of interest.

Update: NASA has cut off coverage of the docking on the channel I had embedded previously. I have now embedded an active live feed.

» Read more

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Pushback: Two Alaska Airlines flight attendants fired for asking questions file lawsuit

1:57 pm

Alaska Airlines: Opposed to free speech and religious freedom
Alaska Airlines: Opposed to free speech and religious freedom
Picture credit: Quintin Soloviev

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Today’s blacklist story is a follow-up on a September 2021 story about two flight attendants — Marli Brown and Lacey Smith — who were fired by Alaska Airlines because they had the nerve to question the airline’s public support of a gay rights bill, and asked those questions on a forum the airline had itself arranged for employees to comment.

At the time the attendants, represented by the First Liberty Institute, had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which recently issued “right-to-sue” letters to both attendants.

First Liberty has now filed its lawsuit, which you can read here [pdf]. The suit is against both Alaska Airlines and the Association of Flight Attendants Association of the AFL-CIO that failed to defend both Brown and Smith. From the complaint:

On February 25, 2021, Alaska Airlines posted an article about its support for the Equality Act to an internal employee message board and solicited employee comments. The Equality Act is proposed legislation that would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” as protected classes to a variety of federal statutes and would curtail the applicability of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

In response, Marli and Lacey felt compelled by their Christian faith to post one comment each, asking about the impact of the Equality Act on civil rights for religion and women in the workplace.

Alaska Airlines responded to Marli and Lacey’s posts by immediately removing Marli and Lacey from their flight schedules, terminating their employment, and disparaging their religious expression and beliefs as “discriminatory,” “hateful,” and “offensive.”
» Read more

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Watching Boeing’s Starliner launch tonight

10:24 am

At 6:54 pm (Eastern) tonight a ULA Atlas-5 rocket will launch Boeing’s manned Starliner capsule on its second attempt to complete an unmanned demo mission to ISS.

NASA’s live coverage will begin at 6 pm on NASA-TV. I have embedded the youtube channel of this live stream below the fold. At the moment the station is broadcasting its regular NASA propaganda (some of which is actually informative). The launch’s actual coverage will begin at 6 pm (Eastern), and continue until the spacecraft is successfully inserted into orbit. Further coverage of the flight, including docking with ISS, will be as follows:

9 pm (Eastern) – Post launch press conference (time subject to change).

May 20
3:30 pm (Eastern) – Coverage begins of the rendezvous and docking to ISS, with the actual docking scheduled for 7:10 pm (Eastern).

May 21
11:30 am (Eastern) – Coverage of the opening of Starliner’s hatch, scheduled for 11:45 am (Eastern).

Boeing’s first attempt to complete this mission in December 2019 was forced to return to Earth before docking with ISS because of numerous software issues. Then, an attempt to launch again in August 2021 was scrubbed because numerous valves in the capsule’s service module failed to operate properly during the countdown. The company had to return the capsule to the factory to replace that service module as well as make some changes to the valves to make today’s launch possible.

For Boeing, these delays and fixes have cost the company a lot of money, since its contract with NASA is fixed price. This second demo mission will cost Boeing about $400 million, but even worse, the delays meant that SpaceX got some of the business with NASA and other private customers that it might have gotten had Starliner been operational.

Update: NASA has cut off coverage of the docking on the channel I had embedded previously. I have now embedded an active live feed.

» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Student expelled for not getting COVID booster, despite proof the booster for her was medically risky

1:06 pm

Diamond
Diamond “Ellie” Puentes, blacklisted because she believes
in “her body, her choice!”

They’re coming for you next: A student at Union College in New York, Diamond “Ellie” Puentes, was expelled from school because she refused to get a COVID booster because of the serious adverse effects she experienced after getting her second COVID shot.

More information here.

Worse, the school refused to accept her doctor’s note requesting she be exempt, or her hospital records describing the health issues she had experienced. From the first link above:

Union College’s Director of Health Services Angela Stefanatos asked her, “Are you here because you don’t want to get the booster or because you’re truly sick?”

Dr. Thomas Nelson, Puentes’ primary care physician, wrote a letter addressed to the college on April 11 regarding his patient’s concerns with the booster shot. He stated that Puentes was “in an unfavorable state of health, presumably caused by the vaccine itself.”
» Read more

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Pro-abortion advocates threaten to storm the Supreme Court, burn it down, and murder justices

12:33 pm

Real insurrection: According to a Homeland Security memo, pro-abortion protesters have been organizing to storm the Supreme Court, burn it down, and murder justices in protest should the court decide to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The threats also included attacking places of worship as well as anti-abortion clinics.

As is typical nowadays, Homeland Security tried to de-emphasize the seriousness of these threats of violence from the left by first hinting it was really a response to white supremacy and thus possibly justified, and then claiming such violence is really nothing more than constitutional protected speech. These two quotes from the memo from this Axios story illustrate this:

“Some racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists’ embrace of pro-life narratives may be linked to the perception of wanting to ‘save white children’ and ‘fight white genocide,'” the memo … says.

But the memo warns that this time, extremist acts could come from abortion-rights proponents as well. [However] “The mere advocacy of political or social positions, political activism, use of strong rhetoric, or generalized philosophic embrace of violent tactics does not constitute domestic violent extremism or illegal activity and is constitutionally protected.”

As always, our leftist government uses the premises of the left to excuse leftist violence. To them, the violence of the left is merely speech, while the speech of the right is violence, and must be silenced.

Should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, we should all be prepared for riots as bad or worse as those that occurred after George Floyd’s death. This memo is merely stating the obvious. Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 the left has decided that the only democracy and law it accepts is one in which it gets its way, every single time.

We should also be prepared for our government to do nothing to stop it, and if any rioters are captured to arrange their release as quickly as possible. These protests are certainly intended as a weapon to warp the results of November’s election, in favor of Democrats. Remember, the violent leftist protesters are merely the storm-troopers of the Democratic Party, used to promote violence in order to make possible the reelection of its politicians, by hook or by crook.

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NASA announces new possible launch dates for first SLS launch

10:13 am

NASA on May 16th announced the new possible launch dates for first SLS launch, outlining potential launch windows through the first half of 2023, with the first at the end of July 2022.

The calendar of launch windows through June of ’23 can be viewed here [pdf].

The July 26th to August 10th window is the one the agency is clearly targeting for that first launch, but it will not confirm this until after SLS successfully completes the next dress rehearsal countdown attempt in June. That the agency is now showing us potential launch dates in ’23 also suggests it is anticipating the possibility the launch could be delayed that much, especially if it determines it must replace the SLS’s two solid rocket boosters because they have been stacked unused for too long.

SLS was initially planned for a launch in 2015. It is now seven-plus years behind schedule, which is how long it took SpaceX to go from a blank sheet of paper to launching its Falcon Heavy for the first time.

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NASA bans American spacewalks on ISS because of chronic spacesuit issues

10:04 am

NASA's failed spacesuit
NASA’s failed Moon spacesuits

Because of repeated water leaks in the helmets of NASA’s complex spacesuits and the agency’s inability to fix the problem, agency managers have to decided to cease all American spacewalks on ISS until engineers can definitively solve the problem.

The problem first occurred during a 2013 spacewalk, causing a major investigation. Though engineers managed to gain some control over the problem, it was never truly solved. In the most recent spacewalk on March 23rd, astronauts found water inside one helmet after the walk was over. That suit will now be returned to Earth for inspection and engineering work.

This suspension of spacewalks likely delays four spacewalks planned this year to complete the upgrade to the station’s power system.

Meanwhile, NASA’s own program to build new spacesuits for its lunar missions has been an utter failure — costing more than a billion dollars over fourteen years and producing nothing — thus forcing the agency to turn to the private sector to get new suits.

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Pushback: Parents & teachers sue to prevent California schools from teaching anti-Semitism

3:14 pm

What really needs to happen
The time has come to clean house, without mercy.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: A group of concerned parents and teachers in California filed a lawsuit on May 12, 2022 to prevent a bigoted and anti-Semitic ethnic studies program from being adopted “under the radar” in Los Angeles schools.

You can read the full complaint here [pdf]. From the link above:

Advocates, including teachers union officials, public-school teachers and other ideologues, have formed the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, through which they hope to influence the teaching of ethnic studies in the state. The consortium, which disseminates teaching materials lifted directly from radical anti-Israel websites, rejects the idea that all cultures should be studied. It asserts that ethnic studies is about only four groups: Native Americans, black Americans, Chicanos/Latinos, and Asian-Americans/Pacific Islanders. That last group includes Arabs from the Middle East, but not Jews, who’ve lived in that same region for millennia.

The consortium’s materials, many of which have been taken offline in recent months, are filled with attacks on Jews and the Jewish state. They deny that Jews are indigenous to the Middle East and teach that Israel is a “colonialist” and “settler state” founded through “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid.” They falsely define Judaism, teaching that “Zionism is distinct from Judaism” and that Zionism isn’t a Jewish religious belief but an invention of the “late 19th century.”

Apparently, this “liberated” ethnic studies program — which is merely another example of leftist critical race theory — is an attempt to bypass state law, which rejected it and demanded by law that all schools teach students at least one ethnic studies class by 2030, but provide a wide balanced look at all issues. Because this “liberated” program violates this standard, instead considering the only valid ethnic groups who have been oppressed (by whites and Jews) to be Native Americans, black Americans, Chicanos/Latinos, and Asian-Americans/Pacific Islanders, it advises teachers to hide from parents the teaching of this material. From the complaint’s description of this program’s teaching materials:
» Read more

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Musk abandons the Democrats, will vote Republican in November

1:09 pm

In another example of the leftist Marxist Democratic Party losing long time supporters, Elon Musk revealed in a podcast today that he has switched his voter registration from Democrat to independent, and now plans to vote Republican in the upcoming election.

Elon Musk, admitting he had voted “overwhelmingly” for Democrats in the past, has changed his mind.

Musk is registered as an independent voter; he announced the switch over video link at a tech summit in Miami, Florida, hosted by the All-In podcast.

“I have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, historically,” Musk acknowledged. “Like I’m not sure, I might never have voted for a Republican, just to be clear. Now this election I will,” Newsweek reported.

Musk however is not alone. Donald Trump is actually a much more famous example, having been a typical New York liberal Democrat for decades, only to reject that party in the mid-2010s for its increasingly radical communist agenda. Trump discovered to his surprise (as has Musk) that the conservative Republican Party better reflected his personal philosophy. Both men represent large numbers of ordinary people, who see themselves as moderate liberals and now find disgusting the bigoted, hateful, and anti-American agenda of the Democratic Party.

The meme below that Musk himself posted in a tweet on April 28, 2022 illustrates this process most clearly.
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More Chinese space junk crashes in India

9:52 am

It appears that debris from an upper stage of a Chinese Long March 3B rocket, launched in September ’21, fell in India on May 12, 2022.

Local media reported that the objects crashed with “loud thuds that shook the ground” in Gujarat. There were no casualties or property damage, according to The Indian Express. The crashed objects were all discovered within a 15-kilometer radius, and among them was a black metal ball weighing around five kilograms, the newspaper said.

Though the sources objects have not been identified with certainty, they look like inner tanks from a rocket, and the only object that reentered the atmosphere on this date and also had an orbit that crossed this part of India was the Long March 3B.

This is second time in less than a month that debris from an abandoned Chinese upper stage has crashed in India. Both are thought to have come from Long March 3Bs. More important, both now prove that China has no protocols when it launches these rockets to de-orbit the upper stages in a controlled manner.

Stay tuned for more Chinese space junk heading your way. In the next seven months it will launch two Long March 5B rockets, the large core stage of which reaches orbit. In all of the previous 5B launches, that stage — big enough to hit the Earth — then quickly fell back in an uncontrolled and unpredictable manner. Fortunately, each time it crashed in the ocean, though the May 2020 deorbit ended up with some debris landing near villages in Africa.

Recent tests of the 5B’s core stage’s engine have suggested that China might have redesigned it to allow it to be restarted, which would allow them to control its deorbit. This fact however has not been confirmed.

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Today’s blacklisted American: School district investigates three children for using wrong pronouns

12:59 pm

Owned by government
What a Wisconsin school district apparently thinks of your kids.

They’re coming for you next: The Kiel school district in Wisconsin is now investigating three eighth grade children for daring to use the wrong pronouns. Worse, according to the evidence that the school itself presented, it appears the school and the investigating principal, Chad Ramminger, has been on a fishing expedition looking for any evidence it can find to punish the kids in question.

From the letter [pdf] sent to the school by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty:

During the interviews with our clients on April 26–27, Mr. Ramminger asked various questions, many of which were unrelated to the incidents described in the subsequently provided statement from the music teacher, suggesting a fishing expedition to find evidence of sexual harassment. And when one family considered
halting the interview to get a lawyer, Mr. Ramminger responded with something to effect of, “you could, but how would that look”? All of this leaves the impression that the District is weaponizing its Title IX process to strong-arm minor students into compliance with its preferred mode of speech. This is wrong and illegal.

The incident itself, as described by the parent of one of the kids, Rosemary Rabidoux, illustrates the tyrannical nature of the school and the girl trying to impose speech on others.
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