Archive for 2022

SPACE: Elon Musk Details Generation 2 Starlink Satellites.

The Gen2 satellite is considerably larger than the over 2,500 Starlink satellites orbiting 340 miles above the Earth’s surface. Gen2 satellites are 22 feet long and weigh 2,755 pounds, according to an interview with Musk on the YouTube show Everyday Astronaut on Thursday. The first-generation satellites weigh 573 pounds, or about one-fifth as much as Gen2.

“A lot of people talk a lot about how many launches per year there are to orbit, but this is not really what matters. I think what really matters is what’s the total useful payload to orbit per year,” Musk said. “‘Cause otherwise you could say if this were ocean ships, you’d be like comparing a dinghy to a supertanker.”

To get the much heavier Gen2 satellites into orbit, SpaceX will have to get its Starship heavy-lift rocket ready. The US Federal Aviation Administration is doing an environmental review of Starship and on Tuesday extended its self-imposed deadline an additional two weeks, suggesting that the final report is coming in mid-June.

That sure is convenient for Musk’s would-be competitor who is much more well-liked in Washington.

GREAT MOMENTS IN VIRTUAL SIGNALLING: Welp, this really didn’t age well.

Remember when the U.S government posted a pretty picture of a rainbow flag on its Afghanistan embassy account to show how much they are willing to fight for the gays and the transgenders?

Man, if only they had been willing to fight that hard for the people of Afghanistan.

To be fair, they did fight awfully hard to transmit the value of modern art to the people of Afghanistan:

Related: Ben Shapiro on The Anarchic Philosophy Behind ‘LGBTQI+ Pride Month.’

UPDATE: Since the US Embassy’s poster went over so well last year, the Marines are getting into the action today:

MORE ON THAT UVALDE DOOR THAT DIDN’T LOCK: “Most people are correctly saying that if we want to prevent future school shootings, we need to understand how they happen and what went wrong in new systems and training that should supposedly prevent these events. But that requires a thorough and competent investigation, a task currently seeming almost impossible when people are apparently either lying to cover their own backsides or are extraordinarily incompetent. (Perhaps a combination of both.) . . . And the fact that the school district police are no longer answering questions or cooperating with the investigation probably tells us all we need to know.”

As I said earlier, the media/pundit spin on these kinds of tragedies is that they reveal some deep flaw in the American soul, when it always turns out that we’re just governed by crooks and idiots. If there’s a flaw in our soul, it’s that we tolerate these people in power.

UPDATE: Of course: Uvalde school district police chief sworn in as city council member a week after mass shooting.

ROGER SIMON: Sussmann Jury Nullification Marks the End of American Justice as We Knew It.

American justice isn’t only dead, it’s decomposed. Long live totalitarianism!

We can join the world now. Au revoir, American Exceptionalism. We are China. We are Putin’s Russia. We are the European Union, drifting ever more swiftly into Davos globalism and the Great Reset. We are the Ayatollah’s Iran. We are Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and then some.

Most of all, goodbye to the rule of law. Was it ever there? I seem to have vague memories.

The jurors in John Durham’s trial of attorney Michael Sussmann—which resulted in the Clinton campaign lawyer’s acquittal—will be remembered, by those allowed to remember, if any, as the moment our already decaying justice system went completely south.

The D.C. jurors, revealed in the voir dire to have been completely biased in the first place, demonstrated that the English language itself—and the evidence available therein—was of no interest to them. They not only nullified a possible verdict, but they also nullified English by ignoring the email that Sussmann wrote then FBI attorney (now Twitter stalwart) James Baker the night before their meeting.

“I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. I’m coming on my own—not on behalf of a client or company—want to help the Bureau.”

Baker testified that Sussmann told him the same thing in person, yet billing records, and much subsequent activity, clearly show that Sussmann was lying. He was working for Hillary Clinton via the Perkins Coie law firm. Several years of ugly U.S. history flowed from that.

Did the jury care? Evidently not. Their decision was close to immediate.

Earlier: The stench from the Sussmann verdict. “This whole case was about a lie that was meant to help Hillary Clinton and hurt Donald Trump. That means there was a partisan political element at the very heart of the case. That would pose an uphill battle for Durham in any case since the trial was held in Washington, DC, where Trump received almost no votes. He is reviled there. Knowing that, the judge should have leaned over backwards to make sure the jury wasn’t overtly partisan. He did the opposite, and that’s unconscionable. He not only seated three donors to Clinton, he seated another who donated to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC may not have been a friend of Hillary’s but she was even more staunchly opposed to Trump. All four of those potential jurors should have been excluded.”

TAMMY BRUCE: Netflix’s Woke Warning.

The reasons for the Disney and Netflix disasters are varied, but both companies have publicly displayed a disturbing shift into the woke politics. When an economy gets tight and people have to make choices about where they spend money the first to be cut will be companies who have taken for granted and insulted American consumers for far too long.

On top of that, Netflix’s trouble may just be starting. CBS reports “Netflix acknowledged its problems are deep-rooted by projecting a loss of another 2 million subscribers during the April-June period.” That deep-rootedness is, in part, the woke activists they’ve hired and going on a woke programming binge.

But all of that seems to be changing.

It appears leadership at the streaming service have suddenly realized what the left has been feeding them isn’t health food—it’s cyanide. Netflix has acted to save itself and that means quickly and definitively ending it’s love affair with wokeism by laying-off at least 150 employees they had previously hired to work on woke programming and issued a memo to its staff rebuking censorship.

What a shame they haven’t yet ridden themselves of the wokest of them all.

IF YOU HAVE TO KEEP REMINDING UNDERLINGS OF YOUR AUTHORITY THEN YOU DON’T REALLY HAVE ANY: ‘Furious’ Biden Reminded Staff ‘He’s the One Who Is President’ after Gaffe Clean-Ups.

Democrat President Joe Biden snapped at his staff and reminded them that “he’s the one who is president” after they cleaned up after his gaffes, according to reports.

The information is from the latest of a series of leaks from Biden’s White House.

Biden has a small circle of close advisers who have not been leaking but with doomsday poll numbers pouring in, it is every man for himself.

Biden is said to be furious with his staff for constantly cleaning up and walking back his flubs.

He argues that it makes it look like an incompetent idiot who is not really in charge.

Well…

PUTIN ENLARGES NATO: The latest StrategyTalk. Jim Dunnigan and I discuss NATO’s reinvention and re-invigoration — courtesy of Vlad Putin. During the podcast we cover Sweden’s and Finland’s decision to quit pretending they are neutral.

NOTHING TO HIDE:

Related:

After something like this happens, we always get a lot of media airheads propounding on the deep moral flaw at the center of the American soul, only to discover that nope, once again the problem is that we’re governed by idiots and creeps.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Biden to Spend His Summer Lying Even More About the Economy. Team Puppet President has been wearing out this tired shtick for a while. While we’re all dealing with things like paycheck-draining trips to the grocery store and gas station, the administration insists on telling us that we just don’t understand how good we have it.”

Recovery summer!

SALENA ZITO ON THE RISE OF SEN. TIM SCOTT.

Tim Scott knows the hassle that comes with being both black and conservative. Recently “The View” host Sunny Hostin said that being a black Republican is an oxymoron, and Scott, who is the only black Republican in the US senate, just shook his head.

“The comments are ridiculous,” he said.

The GOP has “championed causes for underserved communities and minority communities that have been really hammered under President Biden,” he said, before pointing to rising inflation and how the average person can barely afford to put gas in the car, use energy in their house, pay for their health care and take care of any other expenses.

“Contrast that against what happened when we were in the majority for 2016 to 2020, where we saw African American unemployment go to the lowest level ever recorded in the history of the country,” he said.

“The only question I have for those pundits on TV is why aren’t they conservative?” he asked.

Their way pays better.

Plus: “As for being the only black Republican in the US Senate, Scott deadpans, ‘Let’s not forget that the Democrats only have two black senators. Let’s not pretend our margins are drastically different.'”