Tag: Trump

The Vegas Massacre Exposé: What Really Happened?

9:11 am

Link here. The article reviews the state of the investigation and notes the endless numbers of issues with it, from contradictory public statements to mysterious police actions to questionable events. The author raises good questions, and shines a light on a story that reeks of corruption and dishonesty, at the highest levels of the FBI and federal government.

There are those who will immediately begin speculating wild conspiracy theories. The story doesn’t require crazy theories, only simple but harsh ones, as noted by the author, linking the Las Vegas massacre to ISIS and some ISIS-allied Saudi power-brokers who have since been defanged by the Saudi government, all with the covert approval of the Trump administration, which also agreed to keep those Saudi links to ISIS and the Las Vegas massacre secret in order to help that friendly Saudi government.

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Trump plugs private space at cabinet meeting

8:55 am

At the beginning of a cabinet meeting yesterday Trump spent some time talking about the recent successes in commercial space.

Three quotes of interest:

  • “Rich guys, they love rocket ships. And that’s good. Better than us paying for them.”
  • “I notice the prices of the last one they sent. It cost $80 million. If the government did it the same thing would have cost probably 40-50 times that amount of money. I mean literally. … I’m so used to hearing different numbers from NASA.”
  • We’re really at the forefront, nobody is doing what we’re doing. I don’t know if you saw, with Elon, the [Falcon Heavy] rocket boosters where they’re coming back down. To me that was more amazing than watching the rocket go up. ‘Cause I’ve never seen that before. Nobody has seen that before…. They landed so beautifully.

Not unusually, Trump gets some details wrong but understands the essentials, much to the terror of the big space contractors of SLS (Boeing) and Orion (Lockheed Martin). SpaceX will charge $90 million for the launch of a reused Falcon Heavy (using three reused first stages). Estimates for the cost of a single SLS launch are difficult to estimate. In Capitalism in Space I had estimated the project’s overall cost, based on Congressional appropriations, to be about $25 billion come its first manned flight, but that cost is likely going up because the first flight will be delayed. Trump’s numbers estimate a cost of about $4 billion for a single launch, which is a reasonable number considering SLS is not expected to launch more than once a year, and SLS’s annual appropriations, about $3 billion, which will not change once it is operational.

In other words, SLS is an overpriced rip-off, especially now that we have a cost-effective alternative.

Yesterday there were two op-eds warning everyone of the dangers of giving government money to SpaceX.

The first worries that Musk is a “master manipulator” and the king of “crony capitalism” and that we shouldn’t be blinded by this single Falcon Heavy success. Others, like ULA, are better companies to depend on. The second warns that the government mustn’t become so blinded by SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch that it decides to invest money in the company.

Both op-eds are laughable. Compared to the crony capitalism of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which have sucked almost $50 billion from the taxpayers for SLS/Orion while producing no flights, Elon Musk is a piker. And no one has ever suggested investing in SpaceX, like a venture capitalist. The Trump administration has merely proposed buying its rockets to launch future deep space missions, in order to save the taxpayers a lot of money.

There is real fear and terror in the bowels of big space and in the swamp in Washington. Elon Musk and the Falcon Heavy have put it there. Increasingly, it is becoming plainly obvious that SLS is a big over-priced boondoggle that we cannot afford, and Trump’s comments yesterday indicate that this fact is finally beginning to be politically acceptable.

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Trump to meet with North Korean leader

11:27 pm

President Trump has accepted an offer by North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-Un to meet face-to-face sometime in the next few months to discuss that nation’s nuclear weaponry.

The historic meeting was brokered by the South Korean government, which delivered the invitation to the White House and divulged the details outside the West Wing. “He expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible,” South Korean National Security Director Chung Eui-yong said of Kim. “President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong-Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization.”

According to Chung, the North also agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests during such future talks — a longstanding US demand.

There is progress here, but everyone should not assume much will come of this. The last time an American president, Bill Clinton, made a deal with North Korea, it was supposed to have ended North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. That certainly didn’t work, and Trump could be double-crossed just as easily.

Nonetheless, Trump appears to be having more success forcing North Korea to the table than anyone in decades.

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North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un meets with South Korean delegation

9:41 am

In a sign that he is backing off his previous and long maintained belligerent stance, North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un met with a South Korean delegation on March 5.

The above link is a press release by a North Korean news source, so it is hardly informative. This Reuters story has some information from the South Korean delegation:

Next month, North Korea and South Korea will have the first meeting between their leaders since 2007 at the border village of Panmunjom, said Chung Eui-yong, head of the South Korean delegation. “North Korea made clear its willingness to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and the fact there is no reason for it to have a nuclear program if military threats against the North are resolved and its regime is secure,” Chung told a media briefing.

Chung cited North Korea as saying it would not carry out nuclear or missile tests while talks with the international community were under way. North Korea has not carried out any such tests since last November. North Korea also is willing to discuss normalizing ties with the United States, Chung said.

This sudden willingness to talk, after more than a decade of war talk, strongly suggests that Trump’s hardline position, which subsequently forced China and others to follow, has had an effect.

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American embassy opens in Jerusalem in May

1:42 pm

In order to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israeli independence, the Trump administration today announced that the American embassy will officially open in Jerusalem in May 2018.

Officials told Fox News the embassy would initially be located in the neighborhood of Arnona on a compound that currently houses the consular operations of the U.S. Consulate General Jerusalem. Initially, the embassy will consist of the Ambassador and a small team. Nauert said that the Consulate General would “continue to operate as an independent mission with an unchanged mandate” from its Agron Road location.

An official also told Fox News that the hope is for the U.S. to develop only a “footprint” there in May, with a target of a fuller complement and facility by the end of 2019.

Much of this is therefore symbolic, but symbolism in diplomacy is often everything. More important, this action lends weight to the likelihood that Trump is firm in keeping this campaign promise, a campaign promise that every past Republican president since the 1990s failed to keep.

You might not like Trump, but an honest appraisal has to give him credit for one thing. He keeps his campaign promises. He said he’d cut taxes. He cut taxes. He said he’d shut down illegal immigration. Everything he has done indicates a sincere effort to do so. He said he’s cut regulation and neuter the EPA. He has done so, in a manner not seen by a president in my lifetime.

While I can certainly criticize Trump for a number of things, including his unwillingness to really cut spending and waste in the federal government, I would dishonest if I did not credit him for this.

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Trump: “Take the guns first, go through due process second.”

6:08 pm

Link here. Trump, who’s roots remain that of a liberal Democrat, suddenly sees nothing wrong with abandoning the fifth amendment to the Bill of Rights if it will get him brownie points with the leftist mainstream media.

Yet, burning the Constitution to avoid the massacre in Florida was never necessary. All that had to happen was for Florida simply enforce the law properly.

School and law enforcement officials knew Cruz was a ticking time bomb. They did nothing because of a deliberate, willful, bragged-about policy to end the “school-to-prison pipeline.” This is the feature part of the story, not the bug part.

If Cruz had taken out full-page ads in the local newspapers, he could not have demonstrated more clearly that he was a dangerous psychotic. He assaulted students, cursed out teachers, kicked in classroom doors, started fist fights, threw chairs, threatened to kill other students, mutilated small animals, pulled a rifle on his mother, drank gasoline and cut himself, among other “red flags.” Over and over again, students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School reported Cruz’s terrifying behavior to school administrators, including Kelvin Greenleaf, “security specialist,” and Peter Mahmood, head of JROTC. At least three students showed school administrators Cruz’s near-constant messages threatening to kill them — e.g., “I am going to enjoy seeing you down on the grass,” “Im going to watch ypu bleed,” “iam going to shoot you dead” — including one that came with a photo of Cruz’s guns. They warned school authorities that he was bringing weapons to school. They filed written reports.

Threatening to kill someone is a felony. In addition to locking Cruz away for a while, having a felony record would have prevented him from purchasing a gun.

All the school had to do was risk Cruz not going to college, and depriving Yale University of a Latino class member, by reporting a few of his felonies — and there would have been no mass shooting.

But Cruz was never arrested. He wasn’t referred to law enforcement. He wasn’t even expelled. Instead, Cruz was just moved around from school to school — six transfers in three years. But he was always sent back to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in order to mainstream him, so that he could get a good job someday! [emphasis in original]

The root causes for this mess have nothing to do with guns. Instead, the madness of Cruz was aided and abetted by insane liberal polices (created and pushed by the Obama administration) and instituted incompetently by liberal politicians, all of whom are named in the second link.

Right now, however, the liberal press and their Democratic allies are going to make a big push for gun control and burning the Bill of Rights as a major campaign stand for the 2018 elections. I am amazed by this, because I guarantee it will result in exactly the opposite of what they expect.

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Justice Dept faulted for lack of progress in Awan IT scandal

9:09 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The Justice Department has apparently worked to stall or stonewall the investigation into the Imran Awan IT hacking scandal that allowed Pakistani nationals access to secure computers of numerous Democratic congressmen.

The OIG [House Office of the Inspector General] alleged Imran Awan and his family members logged into servers of congressmen for whom they did not work, logged in using members’ personal usernames, covered their tracks, and continued to access data after they’d been fired.

Though the findings place the case squarely into the category of political cyber-crimes that have otherwise been high-profile priorities, the lead FBI agent assigned to the Awan case was a first-year agent, and not from one of the FBI’s big-guns divisions. The charges brought by prosecutors are so minor that Awan’s own lawyer speculated they could be a “placeholder” for future charges.

Server logs of government computers backed up the OIG’s findings. Yet six months after the initial charges, no additional counts have been brought, raising the question of whether the DOJ is seriously investigating the potential national security breach.

Read the whole article. It outlines in great detail how both the FBI and the Justice Department show no interest in prosecuting this case. The evidence is condemning, and it especially condemns Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which appears to have allowed the stonewalling to occur. Is he, and Trump, not legally in charge? Why have they sat on their hands and allowed this?

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Robert Mueller’s political document

5:41 am

Numerous pundits have commented in great detail and with far greater expertise than I on the indictments (pdf) last week issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller against thirteen Russians for wire and bank fraud, identity theft, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. (See here and here for two thoughtful conservative takes.)

As an American who cares about our democracy, however, I decided it was essential I read the indictment myself to form my own opinion about it. I advise every American to do the same, using the first link above to download it. My own personal take-aways are as follows:

1. It is a very good thing that Mueller indicted these Russians. Based on the evidence summarized by the indictment, they clearly committed crimes against Americans and the U.S. government. Moreover, those crimes were committed with the intent by foreigners to interfere with our political process, something we must never allow if at all possible, and punish if we can.

2. Still, I am very curious to learn how Mueller’s team obtained the evidence in these indictments. Reading the document suggests that they must have either had extensive wiretaps, or inside information. Unfortunately, as it is very unlikely that any of these Russians will ever go to trial (having apparently all fled back to Russia long before the indictment was announced), this is information we are likely never to get.

I am therefore also very puzzled by the timing of the indictment. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to issue it as soon as possible, and in a way that might have allowed the authorities to detain these individuals so they might be put on trial? Instead, the slow timing seems almost intended to allow them to escape, and thus prevent an actual trial from ever occurring. I wonder why, though I have my suspicions.

3. Despite the correctness of and the need for these indictments, Mueller’s indictment is first and foremost a political document. If you read it, it is quite obvious that its purpose was not to bring these Russians to justice, but to imply that Russia was working with Trump to get him elected, even though a careful analysis of everything the Russians did shows that this is not the case.

Why do I say this? The indictment spends numerous pages describing in incredible detail every single pro-Trump action taken by these Russians, from organizing social media campaigns to anti-Clinton protests to pro-Trump rallies, while providing only one or two very short summaries of the anti-Trump actions they took, thus giving the impression if you do not read the indictment closely that they were essentially a Trump operation. This however is false. Not only does the indictment lack any evidence of any links between the Russians and the Trump campaign, the details indicate strongly the non-partisan nature of the Russian strategy. While prior to the election it appears they favored Trump, once he was the candidate they shifted tactics to attack both him and Clinton. The goal was not so much to get Trump elected but to cause the most negative disruption to the American election process as possible. The indictment itself admits this, though almost as an aside. The first paragraph quote below shows the Russian strategy before Trump is the candidate, with the second showing their strategy afterward.
» Read more

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The first launch of NASA’s SLS rocket delayed again

10:59 pm

During the second meeting of the National Space Council today this tidbit was quietly revealed by NASA’s acting administrator:

Acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot acknowledged that the space agency’s heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System, would not make its first uncrewed test flight until 2020. The first crewed SLS-Orion mission is still due to take a trip around the moon and back in 2023.

Lightfoot also mentioned that NASA provide support for a 2020 commercial lunar landing.

SLS continues to be this ever receding but very expensive fantasy, scheduled for a future that never arrives, while spending enormous amounts of money that would be far better spent in other ways. The first launch, should it happen in 2020, would be three years later than originally planned, nine years after the initiation of the SLS project, and sixteen years after George Bush first proposed it. For this single unmanned test mission NASA will have spent about $25 billion. Meanwhile, I fully expect Falcon Heavy as well as Blue Origin’s New Glenn to fly numerous times, both costing mere pennies in comparison, and far less time to develop.

The article at the link is not focused on this tidbit. Instead provides a good summary of the National Space Council meeting itself. It increasingly appears, not surprisingly, that the Trump administration is going to focus on streamlining the space regulatory process for commercial space. It is also taking a look at the national security threats to U.S. military assets in space, posed by China and others, which are forcing the military and administration to review how it has been building these assets. Expect a continuing and accelerating shift by the Air Force to many frequently launched smallsats instead big but rarely launched behemoths.

It also appears to me that the Trump administration is treading lightly when it discusses the giant pork projects like SLS. It is partnering closely with all the private companies that build space assets, from the independent commercial space sector epitomized by SpaceX to the traditional big space companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Such a partnership will make it politically difficult to cut the pork that these traditional big companies depend on. Moreover, Trump appears to like these big government projects, as they represent how the U.S. has done space since the 1960s, allowing him to claim credit for a big space project, even if it never flies.

Posted from Beitar just over the green line in the West Bank. I head home late tonight.

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Off to Israel

9:24 am

I am about to leave on a ten day trip to Israel, which is why I have not commented yet on the Trump budget [pdf] and how it effects NASA and science.

The links above will give you a chance to form your own opinions, and to comment here. I will absorb them myself and post on the subject at some time I think during the trip, though in truth it generally doesn’t matter that much what a president proposes in his budget. Congress makes the decision, and usually ignores the president’s suggestions, especially if such ideas threaten their pork.

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The dying Palestinians in Syria

6:58 pm

Link here. If you want to really understand the corrupt and evil nature of the Palestinian leadership, you need only read this one article.

A Palestinian refugee camp has been under siege for more than 1,660 days. Hundreds of the camp residents have been killed, while tens of thousands have been forced to flee from their homes.

Those who have remained in the camp — mostly the elderly, women and children — live in unspeakable sanitary conditions and drink polluted water. More than 200 Palestinians from the camp, which has been under siege since 2013, have died as a result of lack of food or medicine. The conditions in the refugee camp, by any standard, are horrific.

Why have most of us not heard about the hair-raising “living” conditions that characterize this camp? Because it is not located in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. The name of the camp is Yarmouk, and it is located about five miles from the Syrian capital of Damascus.

More than 100,000 Palestinians used to live in the 2.11 square-kilometer Yarmouk camp before the civil war erupted in Syria in 2011. By the end of 2014, the number of the camp residents had plummeted to 13,000.

And what has Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas done about this?

While his people are being killed, starved, displaced and denied medical treatment in Syria, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas appears to be more concerned about US President Donald Trump’s recent announcement recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Picking a fight with the US administration has become a daily national sport for Abbas and his top officials in Ramallah. Hardly a day passes without another Palestinian Authority statement strongly denouncing Trump and his administration’s policies toward the Palestinians. But when it comes to the suffering of Palestinians in Syria, Ramallah is mute.

Palestinian leaders who hold regular meetings in Ramallah simply ignore the atrocities their people face in the Arab countries, especially Syria. Instead, the leaders devote most of their time to issuing condemnations of Israeli settlements and the Trump administration, as if Palestinians are not being killed by the thousands in an Arab country.

The 82-year-old Abbas, meanwhile, has made clear where his priorities stand. Instead of searching for ways to help his people in Syria and the Gaza Strip, where hospitals are facing a deathly shortage of fuel and medicine, Abbas has just spent $50 million to purchase a “presidential plane.” [emphasis mine]

Remember the last detail highlighted above the next time Trump announces that he is cutting funds to the Palestinian Authority. It is clear that any money given to them is not going where it should, and should therefore be cut off.

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Grassley-Graham memo confirms allegations in Nunes memo

11:39 am

Working for the Democratic Party: A careful analysis of the Grassley-Graham memo [pdf], released this week as a follow-up to the Nunes memo released last week, has found that it confirms the allegations of the first, and adds a few more.

More important, it clearly shows that the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Obama administration, and possibly the FISA court itself, abused their power to go after their political opponents.

The Obama Justice Department and FBI used anonymously sourced, Clinton-campaign generated innuendo to convince the FISA court to issue surveillance warrants against Carter Page, and in doing so, they concealed the Clinton campaign’s role. Though the Trump campaign had cut ties with Page shortly before the first warrant was issued in October 2016, the warrant application was based on wild allegations of a corrupt conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Moreover, the warrant meant the FBI could seize not only Page’s forward-going communications but any past emails and texts he may have stored — i.e., his Trump campaign communications.

With its verification by the Grassley-Graham memo, the Nunes memo now has about a thousand times more corroboration than the Steele dossier, the basis of the heinous allegations used by the Justice Department and FBI to get the FISA warrants.

What the Grassley-Graham memo tells us is that the Nunes memo, for all the hysteria about it, was tame. The Grassley-Graham memo tells us that we need not only a full-blown investigation of what possessed the Obama administration to submit such shoddy applications to the FISA court, but of how a judge — or perhaps as many as four judges — rationalized signing the warrants.

We need full disclosure — the warrants, the applications, the court proceedings. No more games.

Read it all. It is damning, and shows that the FBI was out to get Trump, with the approval of White House, the Justice Department, and the FISA court. They had no evidence, they knew they had no evidence, but they got a warrant anyway, and got it renewed repeatedly, allowing them to spy on the Trump campaign as well as later after he took office.

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