And health extension: interesting new web site. Note that one of the founders is Gary Hudson.
Space Safety Follies
Chris Gebhardt (who I met in real life at Vandenberg on Sunday) has the latest in progress in Commercial Crew.
TL;DR: All these numeric safety goals are utterly arbitrary and will be waived when necessary, as they were on Shuttle every single flight. https://t.co/p9JBD4WPlH
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) June 27, 2017
The Congressional Budget Mess
An interesting history from Yuval Levin.
SpaceX
Eric Berger says it’s getting tougher and tougher to be an honest critic of the company. There comes a point at which dishonesty is all they have.
Trump And Russia, The State Of Play
Byron York lays it out. As far as I can tell, Obama was doing more to help Putin subvert the election than Trump was. And what are the Democrats who are blocking witness testimony trying to hide?
[Update a couple minutes later]
More thoughts from Don Surber. As Glenn asks, then why is Mueller hiring over a dozen more prosecutors? What’s the crime, and who is the target?
[Update a couple more minutes later]
Chaffetz: Congress has to look over Mueller’s shoulder. They certainly need to bring him in to explain himself. And the Justice Department should assign someone else to the hopelessly compromised obstruction investigation.
A Deep Mystery
Why can’t someone who won’t identify what gender they are get laid?
IDK, the pics kind of speak for themselves, regardless of what they call themselves.
Military Uses Of Space
The issue, simmering for decades, is finally heating up. I haven’t read it yet, but Steve Freeland has a new paper out. An Australian law professor, he (as does his nation) supports the Moon Treaty (or did when I had beers with him a few years ago in Lincoln.
Today’s Launch
We just got back from Vandenberg (spent time wine tasting up there before coming back to LA). Elon has posted a sped-up video of the landing. Amazing how fast things happen at the end.
Thermostats
Our Honeywell died, so I’m looking at thermostat reviews, and holy moly can you spend a lot of money for a thermostat that does things I have no use for. I guess if I lived in an area of weather extremes, and had both air and heat, I might care about having a vacation option that would heat or cool the house before we got back from a trip, or the ability to control it from my phone, but I really really don’t want my house to be part of the Internet of things. We don’t have A/C, and it never goes below freezing here, so I can’t see any reason to not simply go to Home Depot and replace it with another cheap ($40) digital 7-day programmable thermostat.
The Alexandria Shooting
Showed the Left’s cultural bullying at its worst. Mary Katherine Hamm is en fuego:
Finally, to cap the week, the FBI offered a bizarre assessment of the shooting that ignored the plain significance of all of the established facts of the case to declare it a “spontaneous” attack with “no target.” What perverse standards. A Republican congressman is fighting for his life in a hospital thanks to a partisan attacker, but let’s examine on national TV several times over how he kind of had it coming because of his politics.
Republicans literally had guns held to their heads, so they should renounce their rights to armed self-defense?
Republicans were victims of a multiple assassination attempt, and it warrants half the coverage of the assassination attempt on a Democrat six years earlier?
Republicans were shot by a partisan political adversary, so they should be careful how much they celebrate electoral wins?
It all revealed once again the overweening cultural hubris of the American Left, which has been in control of so many institutions and the prevailing political narrative for so long, it can’t conceive of Republicans as victims even when they’re being shot. Many of them are cultural bullies convinced of their righteousness, and as Reid did, they’ll kick you when you’re down after being shot on a baseball field. Why, it’s enough to drive you to hire a giant, coarse, shameless bully of your own and make him president.
Want more Trump? This is how you get more Trump.
Meanwhile, my neighbor Kurt Schichter says spare me the principles lecture.