Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Clinton Foundation

5 Comments

Is it just a huge international money-laundering scheme?

It sure looks like it.

[Update a while later]

Hillary’s cynical song of self:

You know already that if Mrs. Clinton runs for president as an Elizabeth Warren-style populist she won’t mean a word of it, any more than she would mean it if she ran as a ’90s-style New Democrat or a ’70s-style social reformer. The real Hillary, we are asked to believe, is large and contains multitudes.

In other words, she’s singing a Song of Herself. She will say, do, and be pretty much anything to get elected. And the rest of us are supposed to fall in line because we prefer our politics to be transactional not principled, our politicians to be opportunists not idealists, and our national creed to be “do what you gotta do” not “upon this rock.” This is what might be called the Clinton Bargain: You can always count on their self-interest trumping other considerations, so you never have to fear that they can’t be bought.

The only question is who is doing the buying.

If you’re not a subscriber, do a Google search for “Hillary’s Song Of Self” and it should give you a readable link.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Progress

32 Comments

Apparently, after yesterday’s successful comsat launch by SpaceX, the Russian cargo mission to ISS is failing, or has failed. Wrong orbit, undeployed antennae on Kurs, spinning or tumbling, unable to contact from ground-station passes. With Cygnus still out of business, if they can’t deterrmine root cause, this puts all the responsibility on SpaceX to resupply in June. If that mission fails, they may have to think (once again) about abandoning ship, after a decade and a half of continuous occupation. And once again, this demonstrates the need for redundancy and resiliency, and why it would he stupid (as Palazzo, and Shelby, and others continue to push for) to go to a single provider for commercial crew. It’s also a reminder that, even after all these decades, spaceflight is not routine.

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, hearing now that the initial TLEs were incorrect, and the orbit is all right. That doesn’t mean they’ll be able to get to the station, though, given the control/communications issues.

[Update a while later]

Here‘s what looks like the manifest for the mission. It’s looking unlikely that it will be delivered.

[Early afternoon update]

OK, looks like the initial TLE was correct. It’s got a low perigee, and won’t last more than a day without a boost. I wonder if this will turn out to be a booster, or separation problem?

[Update a while later]

Interfax is now reporting a problem with the third stage. Which means Soyuz flights are iffy again, until they figure out what happened.

[Update mid-afternoon]

OK, now they’re saying that the original TLE was wrong, and it’s not far from the correct orbit. And that the prime suspect is now the primary flight computer.

[Wednesday-morning update]

It’s sounding pretty bad. They can’t contact it, it’s out of propellant, and it will enter in a few days. The JSpOC is tracking almost four dozen pieces, yet to be cataloged. Sounds like something happened at the end of the third-stage burn, or at separation. And it’s not clear what the implications are for Soyuz flights.

[Update a few minutes later]

Anatoly Zak has a pretty comprehensive report.

[Update a while later]

Jeff Foust describes the issues with resupply, and how much margin they have.

I’d note that while no one other than me is talking about it, this is likely to delay the next Soyuz flight, currently scheduled for May 26th, if they haven’t resolved it by then.

Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Climate “Denial”

8 Comments

Making nonsense of it:

It is clear from all this that Cook et al. are UNFCCC/IPCC ideologues. There is nothing wrong per se with ideology; it is the ideologues that are the problem – absence of doubt, intolerance of debate, appeal to authority, desire to convince others of the ideological “truth”, and a willingness to punish those that don’t concur. They need to look in the mirror and understand their own motivated reasoning.

Phil Plait is such a disappointment on this topic.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Space Habitats

2 Comments

NASA is finally taking a sensible approach to Congress’s unrealistic goals:

“What we’re trying to do is maximize commercial applications of these technologies while getting an impact for our requirements as well,” says Jason Crusan, director of advanced exploration systems in the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) directorate at NASA headquarters. “There may be commercial applications for habitation in low Earth orbit at some point. We’d like to understand what industry thinks about that. At the same time we have real requirements for habitation in deep space, and there have been some commonalities in that.”

NASA (for now) has to waste billions on SLS/Orion, because it’s the law. They’ll continue to do so in the hope that it will satisfy the fools on the Hill, while doing sensible procurements for hardware they actually need to get beyond earth orbit.

Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Climate Change And Extreme Weather

11 Comments

People like Seth Borenstein were excited to link to this paper yesterday.

“This new study helps get the actual probability or odds of human influence,” said University of Arizona climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck, who wasn’t part of the research. “This is key: If you don’t like hot temperature extremes that we’re getting, you now know how you can reduce the odds of such events by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Lead author Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university, and colleague Reto Knutti examined just the hottest of hot days, the hottest one-tenth of one percent. Using 25 different computer models. Fischer and Knutti simulated a world without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and found those hot days happened once every three years.

Then they calculated how many times they happen with the current level of heat-trapping gases and the number increases to four days. So three of the four are human caused, the team said.

This is crap science, because it’s based on crap models, that have been failing.

Interestingly, even Kevin Trenberth agrees with me:

“The paper is interesting and has some results that may be reasonably OK,” he said. “However, the paper is based almost entirely on models with little or no validation or relations to the real world. None of the models do precipitation realistically, and some are quite bad.”

You don’t say. Garbage in, garbage out.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Latest Clinton Scandals

55 Comments

Will they (finally) be the end of the Clintons?

I’d like to think so, but I’ve been disappointed repeatedly at the complete acceptance of criminality and corruption from the Clinton gang by their party. I can guarantee you of one thing: They think they’ll continue to get away with it, because they always have.

[Monday-afternoon update]

The fall of the House of Clinton?

I hope so, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, she’s clearly lost Ron Fournier:

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to know that foreign companies and countries expected something in return for donating to the Clinton foundation rather than the countless other charities not connected to the U.S. presidency.

You don’t have to be a lawyer to know the Clintons violated ethics rules.

You don’t have to be a historian to know their ethical blind spot has decades-old roots.

You don’t have to be a political scientist to know this behavior contributes to the public’s declining trust in its leaders.

But to believe this is just about the actions of a book author, the mainstream media, and Republicans, it helps to be a Clinton.

Let’s hope that’s not enough this time.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Recent Democrat Fascism In Wisconsin

1 Comment

Will the Supreme Court take the case?

Because both a separate federal ruling in a different case, and a state court ruling as part of the investigation, have halted the investigation for now, this Supreme Court decision will not directly affect the current status.

But, the nature of the case necessarily involves the underlying ability of states to regulate campaign coordination and how that ability interacts with First Amendment rights.

That is a huge issue, which the Justices may decide to reach as part of a ruling if they take the case. That’s what has Democrats so scared about this case — they fear it could turn into another case of the magnitude of Citizens United, in which the Supreme Court again upholds the constitutional rights of citizens to express views cooperatively.

Let’s hope.

[Update early afternoon]

What did the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel know, and when did it know it?

At the time of the raid, Archer saw an individual that she believed to be a reporter, standing in her lawn. But the question became: How would a reporter even know that Archer’s home was being raided? Someone had to tip the Journal-Sentinel off. But under Wisconsin law, disclosure of a search warrant’s issuance, prior to its execution, is a Class I felony and could also violate the judge’s secrecy order of the John Doe investigation itself.

People should be doing jail time for this. A lot of high-level Wisconsin Democrats. And maybe journalists, too.