…competitive with natural gas.
That’s quite a trick, considering how cheap fracking is making gas.
[Update a few minutes later]
Wrong link, fixed now. Sorry!
The DC-X Story
Per Jerry Pournelle (who unfortunately couldn’t attend this past weekend, for reasons he explains).
Note: “Dr. Gould from North American” was my boss at the time.
Christians Murdered All Over Egypt
But there’s a new puppy at the White House!
The White House knows what it is doing. Shame is in short supply. Keep the low-information crowd fed with bread and puppies while evil flourishes. Any change in programing from puppies to religiously motivated murder will upset the White House narrative, and provide the terrifying images of White House appeasement.
They should have named it “Distraction.” It helps with the “phony” scandals, meltdown of ObamaCare, and sucky economy, too.
American Exceptionalism
Are we losing it along with our trust in government?
Enough breaches of trust — and I haven’t even started to hit all the scandals out there, by a long shot — and ordinary people will start to assume that the whole system is corrupt. And if that happens, people will quit following the law because they think it’s the right thing to do, and only do so to the extent they’re afraid of getting caught. Plenty of countries operate on that principle. They’re just not as nice to live in as countries where the law has moral stature. When government officials breach trust, they push us closer to that sort of third world condition. Which is why, when they’re found doing so, they should be punished severely.
It’s also why we should try electing, and employing, people with strong moral compasses of their own; government officials who will follow the law because they think it’s the right thing to do, rather than simply to the extent they’re afraid of getting caught.
Good luck with that. Bill Clinton showed that people don’t give a damn, or at least didn’t. Maybe they’ll start to figure out why integrity and probity are important in public officials, but I’m not hopeful. I think that the results of the New York City races (particularly the Spitzer outcome) will be somewhat revealing, at least for that electorate.
Public School Is Child Abuse
“At one thirty in the morning on a Saturday, I was awoken to a bomb sound going off,” Janczewski said, choking back emotion. “I went to the window to find my garage was on fire and engulfed in flames, my camper and the side of my house…If I wouldn’t have woken up, we could’ve all died.”
“Whoever’s done this has no remorse,” he told the Ogemaw County Herald earlier. “They have no soul.”
The family also had the letters “YWP” and “ITY” spray painted on the side of their house, which Janczewski thinks mean “you will pay” and “I told you.”
But why on earth would they be attacked for speaking out in defense of their son, Beck asked? He also added to the audience: “Do you want somebody who says 15-30 years for raping a child, an 8th grader, is a little harsh? Do you want them teaching your child?”
The whole system needs to be torn up by the roots.
Middle-East Strategery
Apparently, Obama’s brilliant, “smart diplomacy” plan for dealing with Egypt was to leave it up to John “Global Test” Kerry and Mohamed “Look The Other Way With Iran’s Nukes” El Baradei:
James Poulos, writing in Forbes, stated as early as July 6: “It’s very hard to see how much traction he could get as the voice of a new era in Egyptian politics. He’s running plays from a liberalization playbook that’s decades old — not just pre-Arab Spring, but pre-9/11, pre-Internet.”
Yet Obama trusted the long-time friendship of Kerry and ElBaradei. Then-Sen. Kerry and ElBaradei spent years discussing how best to block the George W. Bush administration’s policies on Iraq, Iran and North Korea during ElBaradei’s tenure at the IAEA. ElBaradei even helped former Sen. Kerry during his failed 2004 presidential campaign against then-President Bush by publicly confronting the U.S. president on several foreign policy fronts from his UN seat. Shockingly, on Oct. 25, 2004, just days before the U.S. presidential election between Kerry and Bush, ElBaradei was accused of trying to influence the U.S. elections in favor of his friend John Kerry by releasing a UN report on missing weapons in Iraq, a report ElBaradei held for weeks.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
Accountability
It’s not just Lois Lerner. Apparently, some of the State Department employees responsible for the Benghazi disaster have been punished with a paid vacation.
The Pima Air (And Space) Museum
OK, since I have to check out of my room, and I have a few hours to kill before my flight, I’m going to check it out, since I’ve never actually been there. Like Aviation Week (and space technology) I expect the “Space” part to be an afterthought.
[Update, waiting at the airport]
As I expected, the emphasis was on the “Air,” but there were a lot of pretty neat aircraft there. It was 104 degrees, but didn’t seem that bad to me (as it generally doesn’t in the desert, particularly in the shade). I was more put off from wandering far out in the field by the sun for which I had no sunblock than the heat itself. I pointed out to a docent that Gene Kranz never said “Failure is not an option,” at least while he was a NASA mission controller. He said he’d talk to the curator.
I also showed the book to the space docents, and they all wanted a copy. The gift-shop manager was out for the day, but I’ll email her. But it would look pretty lonely amidst the other books. Almost nothing about space –mostly aviation. But I did put it up on the shelf to see how it stood out. It did, a lot. I think we’ll be glad we spent extra time on the cover design.
[Update a while later, before boarding]
I forgot to mention that it happened to be Orville Wright’s birthday. There were remnants of a cake (I had a small piece). I got a picture of it, but not on my phone — on my good camera, and I don’t have a card reader with me, so I’ll have to post it later.
[Bumped]
The Stuxnet Leak
The trail leads to the White House.
I’m as shocked as you are, of course. They love to leak when it makes them look good. They only intimidate people into not talking (see Benghazi) when the opposite is the case.
We Need To Burn More Coal
At first glance, it would appear that the largest recent contribution to global warming is clean-air laws. Fortunately, China is continuing to help with their coal plants.