Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

SLS/Orion

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The GAO is concerned (as well it should be, even though Congress doesn’t give a damn):

Space Launch System: “Based on current budget estimates, program officials have expressed concern that the first launch in 2017 could be delayed.” GAO says that the program will reach Key Decision Point-C (KDP-C) this month (April 2014) and at that point NASA will establish cost, schedule and performance baselines for the initial (70- ton) version of the launch vehicle. GAO highlights funding risks associated with the flat budget profile under which NASA plans to spend $6.8 billion between FY2014 and 2018, and calls the schedule “aggressive.” It also worries that two years after the program was established, “many of the SLS program contracts remain undefinitized.”

Orion: “The mass of the spacecraft remains a top program risk.” GAO says the spacecraft being designed to take humans beyond low Earth orbit aboard the SLS could be as much as 2,800 pounds overweight at launch for the first exploration mission (EM-1) in 2017. The maximum lift-off mass for that mission is 73,500 pounds, GAO states.

Well, one solution to the overweight problem would be to launch without crew. There’s no need to, since they can go up commercially. That way you can remove the escape tower, which adds many thousands of pounds to the vehicle. Not that it should even be built at all, of course.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Phony IRS Scandal And The DOJ

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It’s looking worse than we suspected,though the persecution of Catherine Englebrecht raised a lot of flags:

Was there a full-fledged plan to use the full power of the federal government to take the abuse, delay and invasive questioning of conservatives to a new level after President Obama’s re-election? Was there a plan to criminalize the mere act of being a conservative activist? Was there a plan to drum up false charges of “lying” on applications in order to put conservatives in jail?

Lois Lerner’s communications with the Justice Department strongly suggest that there was. The disclosure provides strong, compelling evidence that Obama’s re-election had emboldened many, including government bureaucrats like Lois Lerner, to believe that they could move forward unchallenged to criminalize Americans for exercising their constitutional rights.

I also believe that the players in this scam had identified a target to single out, harass, investigate, silence, destroy, and send to prison. Her name is Catherine Engelbrecht.

Lerner’s email on March 27, 2013, suggests that there was an idea moving within the bureaucracy to hit one or just a few Americans, and prosecute and imprison them, to scare others out of political engagement.

“One IRS prosecution would make an impact and they wouldn’t feel so comfortable doing the stuff,” Lerner wrote to IRS staff. “So, don’t be fooled about how this is being articulated – it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity.”

It was all about conservative 501(c)(4) orgs. Liberal groups were left entirely alone. This was to be a leftwing reign of prosecutorial terror.

And just how high up did it go?

[Update a few minutse later]

The IRS did the bidding of congressional Democrats to silence conservatives.

Nixon asked the IRS to go after his political enemies,and it refused, but that was an impeachable offense. Obama didn’t even have to ask.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Cliven Bundy

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Why we should have sympathy for him:

The new head of the BLM is a former Reid staffer. Presumably he was placed in his current position on Reid’s recommendation. Harry Reid is known to be a corrupt politician, one who has gotten wealthy on a public employee’s salary, in part, at least, by benefiting from sweetheart real estate deals. Does Harry Reid now control more than 80% of the territory of Nevada? If you need federal authority to conduct business in Nevada–which is overwhelmingly probable–do you need to pay a bribe to Harry Reid or a member of his family to get that permission? Why is it that the BLM is deeply concerned about desert tortoises when it comes to ranchers, but couldn’t care less when the solar power developers from China come calling? Environmentalists have asked this question. Does the difference lie in the fact that Cliven Bundy has never contributed to an Obama or Reid campaign, or paid a bribe to Reid or a member of his family?

Based on the evidence, I would say: yes, that is probably the difference. When the desert tortoises balance out, Occam’s razor tells us that the distinction is political.

Yup.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

More On The One-Way Discovery

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Mark writes about the judge’s latest order:

…some climate alarmist was in a bit of hurry with his rewriting and those “seven other organizations” became “seven organizations”. But, whether seven or nine, they have all “proved Mann innocent”. In fact, there has only been one investigation of Michael E Mann – the one that was the subject of my original “defamatory” post; the joke investigation by Penn State set up by a now disgraced college president currently facing 30 years in the slammer for obstruction of justice. That’s the only investigation. Yet somewhere along the way Mann grasped that, as with his non-existent Nobel Prize, if he simply declared himself “investigated” and “exonerated” by multiple bodies on both sides of the Atlantic, most of the people in his Climate Bubble would never bother checking.

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