A sad post about the state of “Zimbabwe.”
Socialism and tribalism are deadly, even murderous. They’re both specialties of the Left.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Crooked Hillary
The name should and will stick: She’s either criminal, or criminally incompetent, or both.
[Update a few minutes later]
The civil service system is broken: we had to find out about her emails from a hacker. #Transparency
Public-employee unions should be abolished, and we need reform of the civil service, which has become a one-party weapon against the people.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The ethics wall between Hillary and her foundation didn’t extend to her State Department staff. This is insane. Criminally insane.
Granny Clinton
Time to take the car keys away from her.
Unless, of course, she’s just lying. In which case it’s time for her to take a vacation in Club Fed.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The end of American exceptionalism (which the Left has always hated):
The question is whether Madison’s defenses failed and the factions are inside the wire. America for a long time beat the odds but recently things have taken a turn for the worse. It is no accident that many of America’s troubles have coincided with the growth of identity politics, special interest groups, foreign lobbying and corruption. If so they have spread their poison and created an American version of the “informal networks” that proved so fatal in other countries, as Madison feared.
Moreover, the American factional system operates in the worst possible way. The Clinton Foundation and private email scandal is a portrait of venality without competence. The peculiar characteristics of American factionalism have bred something singular; a phenomenon at once cunning yet stupid, both corrupt and inept. America is no longer exceptional, just another bum in the ring. Yet while Putin can often outwit Obama (and Hillary when she was in State), the Russian cannot seem to turn anything to lasting advantage. The outcome is a kind of impotence afflicting both sides.
2016 should have been an election charged with passion, but it is atmospherically deadening, as if many voters wished the candidates would just go away. If the 20th century was one in which people believed government could solve all the world’s problems, the 21st century is fast developing into one where government has become like the weather: chaotic, capricious and ultimately arbitrary — something everyone talks about but no one can do anything about.
The factions have filled political discourse with entropy. There it will remain until it settles around a new attractor. Until then, all that is left is to live out our lives in the shadow of a mysterious federal building that no intelligent life is known to inhabit, save for a lady rumored to be in periodic residence occasionally glimpsed trying to send a message on a BlackBerry before smashing it with a hammer.
Or wiping it, like, with cloth or something.
[Update a couple more minutes later]
Hillary’s terrible, no good, very bad week.
May all her weeks be like that.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Oh, and speaking of the competence of the “elite” left, Jill Stein missed a rally because her people booked her on a flight to the wrong city. Hey, as Ed says, who can tell one “c” city from another in Flyover Country?
Today’s FBI Friday-Before-Holiday-Weekend Email Drop
I am simply stunned at what came out of it, even the parts that weren’t redacted (one has to wonder how bad the redacted portions are). Here’s Ben Shapiro’s take:
Here’s the bottom line: this is obviously criminal activity. The FBI’s decision not to recommend indictment was a total fraud; they hid behind the fig leaf that she didn’t “intend” to break the law, which was not required by the law. Even so, there is no way in hell that any other human being would be treated with such deference regarding the question of intent. Either Hillary Clinton is either the most incompetent woman ever put in charge of a major governmental department, or she’s a criminal. There’s no in-between here. And we’ve been informed she’s the Most Competent Woman In Human History.
I wonder if we’ve finally reached a point at which even the MSM can no longer support this?
[Update a while later]
Comey was full of it when he said that she didn’t lie to the FBI. She’s been lying to everyone.
[Update later afternoon]
More from former intelligence analyst John Schindler: “Although the FBI’s press release is terse, the documents themselves indelibly portray the Democratic presidential nominee as dishonest, entitled, and thoroughly incompetent.”
But other than that, she’s great.
SpaceX And Mars
Eric Berger thinks the company needs to focus on Falcon 9.
I’m not sure that what happened yesterday can be attributed to lack of focus, but we won’t know until we find out what happened.
The Latest Clinton Corruption
I know you’re as surprised as I am to learn the Clinton’s used taxpayer dollars to subsidize their personal slush fund aka the Clinton Global Initiative.
This Morning’s Pad Incident
It seems to be news, so most of you probably heard that there was an explosion on the pad at LC-40 this morning, leading up to a static test fire for the upcoming launch of the AMOS satellite.
What we know so far: No one was injured, but the bird (a $200M payload) was lost. It’s a setback for Spacecom, which was about to be purchased by China pending a successful deployment. It happened prior to ignition, and SpaceX is calling it a “pad anomaly,” so it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the rocket itself. But it will be a setback in SpaceX’s aggressive fall schedule until they determine the cause and how to prevent it in the future, and repair the pad.
It’s worth noting that they won’t be launching crew from that pad, but from 39B. But Phil McAlister and Kathy Lueders will want to know if the abort system would have saved crew had they been on top of the rocket. The immediate interesting question to me is whether or not they had any warning. The rocket itself has failure onset detection systems to trigger an abort, but it’s unclear if the pad itself does, and how much warning they would have had to pull the D-ring on the Dracos. Phil and Kathy had also better brace for a very stupid Congressional hearing, and we can all expect to hear a lot of illogical nonsense about how SpaceX should forget about Mars, and how this proves that reusable rockets don’t work.
[Update a couple minutes later]
One point as follow up to that last graf: SpaceX had been requesting to fuel with crew aboard, and NASA had been considering it. That’s probably out the window now.
[Update a couple more minutes later]
There were nine more flights scheduled this year. That was always unlikely, but it’s certainly not going to happen now.
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, this is timely. The OIG has released a status report on commercial crew certification.
[Update a couple minutes later]
How this will affect Spacecom. Shares are down with the news. I’d call it a buying opportunity.
[Update a couple more minutes later]
Also worth noting that it’s been a bad couple days for launch. Long March had a failure yesterday, and the Chinese have been mum about it (as usual).
[Update a few minutes later]
Jeff Foust already has a story about the potential ripple effects for SpaceX, SES, and the rest of the affected industry.
[Update a few minutes later]
And here‘s Loren Grush’s story.
[Update a couple minutes later]
And from Miri Kramer.
[Update a while later]
The only good news to come out of this. https://t.co/mpnoJwuBZm
— Apostle To Morons (@Rand_Simberg) September 1, 2016
[Update a few minutes later]
Joe Pappalardo probably has the best take at this point.
[Update a while later]
Well, this is bad news.
Loss of Falcon vehicle today during propellant fill operation. Originated around upper stage oxygen tank. Cause still unknown. More soon.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 1, 2016
[Update a while later]
Aaaaaand here’s the video. I’ve heard that people felt it in Orlando. It may have been the largest explosion at the Cape in history.
[Update a few minutes later]
This is great news, if true.
It sounds like that there was
But I’m surprised they fuel the payload on the pad. I thought that storables were filled during integration.
[Update a couple minutes later]
OK, not such good news. Jon Goff reminded me that they use hydrazine for ACS in the upper stage. Though I’d still think they’d fuel that during horizontal integration, not on the pad.
[Late-morning update]
Here’s the full OIG report on Commercial Crew that just happened to come out today. I’ll probably do a separate blog post on it. I would note that the primary reason that it continues to slip, and that NASA has no apparently problem taking six months to do a two-week review, is that space, and American access to it, isn’t important.
[Update at noon]
[Late-afternoon update]
@jsmuir_ @SafeNotAnOption @PaulDalyROI @spacecom @stevenyoungsfn @wingod pic.twitter.com/TLDHgQN9Ge
— Astro Mouse (@AstroMiceRule) September 1, 2016
Why Didn’t She Destroy All Of The Benghazi Emails?
Because in addition to being corrupt liars, utterly indifferent to national security, she and her team are incompetent dolts. But that shouldn’t be news to anyone who’s been paying attention for the past quarter century. Which is unfortunately far too many people.
Is there any point at which the Democrats finally come to realize that she and they just aren’t up to the job? They can’t even do a decent cover up.
The University Of Chicago And Free Speech
Ken White has a better version of the letter to incoming frosh.
Yes. Despite the cries from the Left about “discrimination!!!11!,” freedom of association is important. But it doesn’t give you the right to censor a classroom or campus talk.
Getting Over “Apolloism”
I’m heading back to California tomorrow, for the first time in about six weeks (the longest I’ve been away from home since I moved back in 2009), but meanwhile, my long-awaited piece in The New Atlantis is on line.
[Update a few minutes later]
Sorry, that’s just a preview, unless you’re a subscriber. The full piece will be free on line in the future, but I’m not sure when.