There was a very touching moment when Vice President Vance spoke of something "really amazing that happened to me in November of 2024." And that moment was? "Of course, I'm talking about when my seven-year-old chose to be baptized into the Christian faith," saying it was maybe "the proudest moment that I've ever had as a father."

The vice president also offered some insight into his and wife Usha's interfaith marriage.

But, as many of you know I am part of an interfaith marriage. My wife, though she comes to church with us almost every single Sunday, she is not Catholic herself and so the bargain that we have struck is that we will raise our kids Catholic, but we will let them choose the moment that they want to ultimately become baptized.

The move rescinds a mandate issued by former President Bill Clinton in 2000 that required federal agencies to provide language assistance for non-English speakers.

“Agencies will have flexibility to decide how and when to offer services in languages other than English to best serve the American people and fulfill their agency mission," a fact sheet obtained by The Hill reads. //

Shelley G
@ShelleyGldschmt
·
Follow
This is so much more important than people realize.

The necessary condition of being a nation is sharing things in common, such as language, culture and values.

Having English as our official language will be a great unifying influence in these times of polarization.
3:56 PM · Feb 28, 2025. //

It seems like a common-sense move that will benefit legal immigrants seeking to achieve the American dream. English proficiency is considered essential for integrating into U.S. society. It helps with community involvement, political participation, and daily communication.

Not to mention, English language proficiency, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — "determined by the applicant’s ability to read, write, speak and understand English" — is part of the naturalization process. //

Sarcastic Frog anon-fl4c
4 hours ago
Well...back in 1776 we were having a bit of a disagreement with Great Britain. After the ratifying of the Constitution in 1787 several of the founding fathers did NOT want English to be the official language. They argued back and forth, with English, German, French, Spanish (that didn't last long), and even Hebrew being considered. They finally decided that, since they couldn't agree on any of them, the US wouldn't have an official language.

A Statement from President Donald J. Trump

“We had a very meaningful meeting in the White House today. Much was learned that could never be understood without conversation under such fire and pressure. It’s amazing what comes out through emotion, and I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.”. //

Cletus Maximus
5 hours ago
The tone of this meeting needed to happen. How long has it been since someone literally got their ass kicked out of the Oval Office? This video should be in the curriculum for every business school. //

Skibum
5 hours ago
I suspect that Zelenskyy agreed to things in private and then tried to play tough in public for his home crowd. Boy did that prove to be a mistake.

Marc Thiessen 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦🇹🇼🇮🇱
@marcthiessen
·
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This is entirely Zelensky’s fault. Trump greeted him graciously, was ready to turn the page. Just said he wanted to get help Ukraine get it’s territory back. And Z comes in and gets into a fight in public? I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.
TV News Now
@TVNewsNow
🚨 WATCH: Here’s the FULL exchange of President Trump and VP Vance EXCORIATING Zelenskyy
Embedded video
6:14 PM · Feb 28, 2025

Jacqui Heinrich
@JacquiHeinrich
·
WH OFFICIALS TELL FOX:-

TRUMP KICKED OUT ZELENSKYY – HE DID NOT WALK OFF ON HIS OWN

-RARE MINERALS DEAL WAS NOT SIGNED.

• WH SAYS “UKRAINANS WERE BEGGING TO RESET” BUT RUBIO AND WALTZ INFORMED THEM ZELENSKYY NEEDS TO LEAVE WHITE HOUSE GROUNDS, RETURN WHEN HE’S READY FOR PEACE

-THE PRESIDENT AND US OFFICIALS FELT DISRESPECTED BY ZELENSKYY’S RHETORIC AND DEMEANOR

– CITED THAT HE WAS “SHRUGGING AND ROLLING HIS EYES” DURING THE CONVERSATION

**WHEN I WENT TO UPPER PRESS TO ASK WHAT WAS GOING ON, THE LUNCH THAT TRUMP AND ZELENSKYY WERE SUPPOSED TO DINE ON AND TALK OVER WAS SITTING IN THE HALLWAY. I’M TOLD WHITE HOUSE PRESS OFFICE STAFFERS WILL BE EATING IT.
6:52 PM · Feb 28, 2025

This was a colossal miscalculation by Zelensky. Trump has never accepted the idea that Ukraine is doing the United States a favor by fighting Russia as a way of justifying unlimited aid. Perhaps Joe Biden found that argument persuasive, but Joe Biden is not in office anymore. Russia is not going to invade the United States or any NATO country (if for no other reason than a lack of capability), and using that as a type of blackmail for support was never going to play.

Here's the deal. Fairness or being "right" doesn't factor into a situation like this. Zelensky is in a desperate spot, and Trump had largely acquiesced to a very Ukraine-friendly deal over the last few days (including lowering the repayment amount to just $90 billion). The negotiations were over. All the Ukrainian president had to do was show up, shake hands, smile for the cameras, and sign the deal. His attempt to lecture Trump and Vance for the cameras was an ego move that he didn't have the leverage to pull off.

Trump does not care about the press. You aren't going to bully him into a certain point of view by appealing to CNN or any other legacy news outlet. Whether that's fair or not is irrelevant. What's relevant is the reality of the moment, and Zelensky chose to pick a fight with Vance when it was completely unnecessary. Liz Cheney and David Frum may do performative outrage online, but they are not going to cut a check to Ukraine. Zelensky needed this deal and chose to blow it up for no good reason. What was the point of him even coming to the White House if he was going to publicly denounce any possible ceasefire?

What this really comes down to is how Zelensky handled this. If he has issues with Trump negotiating a deal with Putin, then he should express those behind closed doors, which is something Vance pointed out during the exchange. By trying to embarrass and undermine the U.S. president in public, he destroyed an already frayed relationship. In doing so, he might have cost his country its war. //

Claudius54
3 hours ago
"What the Heck Was Zelensky Thinking?"

Simple. He was thinking that he had leverage. ... he was mistaken. //

etba_ss anon-6tg1
2 hours ago
When you can't get along with Vance and Rubio either, the problem is pointing toward Zelenskyy. //

etba_ss
4 hours ago
Keep in mind, that Rubio has already pointed out that they reached a deal with Zelenskyy before. Then he left the meeting and went to the press and claimed he told them "no" and he isn't signing any mineral rights. Rubio called him a liar in public over the whole deal. Now they agree to a deal and instead of signing it, Zelenskyy pulls this stunt.

What an idiot.

Jesse Kelly
@JesseKellyDC
·
Follow
All else aside, how much does Trump respect @JDVance? It’s cool to watch. He doesn’t keep him on any kind of leash. He must think very highly of him.

I dig it.
6:37 PM · Feb 28, 2025 //

Mike Lee
@BasedMikeLee
·
Follow
Is @JDVance the GOAT Vice President of the United States?

A—Yes

B—No
Gunther Eagleman™
@GuntherEagleman
Vance is by far the best VP I've seen, ever.
8:37 PM · Feb 28, 2025 //

TexasVeteran
an hour ago edited
"Is @JDVance the GOAT Vice President of the United States?"

It’s the beard! He’s channeling Unconditional Surrender Grant! //

ThatGuy81
an hour ago edited
I didn't realize we were electing Terminater VP along with the lion of a president, but here we are and I am here for it.

This unusual photograph, taken during the second Apollo 12 extravehicular activity (EVA), shows two U.S. spacecraft on the surface of the moon. The Apollo 12 Lunar Module (LM) is in the background. The unmanned Surveyor 3 spacecraft is in the foreground. The Apollo 12 LM, with astronauts Charles Conrad Jr. and Alan L. Bean aboard, landed about 600 feet from Surveyor 3 in the Ocean of Storms. The television camera and several other pieces were taken from Surveyor 3 and brought back to Earth for scientific examination. Here, Conrad examines the Surveyor's TV camera prior to detaching it. Astronaut Richard F. Gordon Jr. remained with the Apollo 12 Command and Service Modules (CSM) in lunar orbit while Conrad and Bean descended in the LM to explore the moon. Surveyor 3 soft-landed on the moon on April 19, 1967.

The Dark Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
8y
11,841
The lander's four shock-absorbing legs have some give, sort of like the crush zone of a car, according to Will Coogan, Firefly's chief engineer for the Blue Ghost lander. The legs have an aluminum honeycomb material inside, and they connect to bowl-shaped footpads with a ball-socket joint to give the spacecraft some flexibility in case it comes down on a slope or a rock.

That's basically a copy of the Apollo landers. Apollo had crushable aluminum honeycomb in the legs and bowl-shaped feet attached to the legs with ball joints. The statistical analysis was that Apollo's system had a 99.9% of not fully crushing the honeycomb as long as the landing velocity was below 4 feet per second horizontally and 7 feet per second vertically (1.22 m/s and 2.13 m/s). All of the landings were well under those velocities:

https://arstechnica.com/civis/attachments/1740667805423-png.103726/

NASA Technical Note TN D-6850 Apollo Experience Report - Lunar Module Landing Gear Subsystem by William F. Rogers (June 1972).

D-6850 Apollo Experience Report - Lunar Module Landing Gear Subsystem

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19730010151/downloads/19730010151.pdf. //

EarendilStar Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
8y
148
SkyeFire said:
Lunar conditions are brutal. Two weeks of brutal daylight (plus unfiltered solar radiation) followed by 2 weeks of total darkness. A few lunar probes have managed to survive the night and reboot once they got some sunlight again, but none of them survived more than a few day/night cycles. The thermal swings tend to destroy the electronics and power systems.

This entire bath and forth made me realize I don’t know how the temperature swings of the moon and Mars differ. I was reading thinking “How is this thermal swing different than Mars, a place we operate electronics for far more heat cycles than this?”.
Allow me to share what I found:

Commonly accepted average temps for Luna:
-180°C to 105°C
Mars:
-130°C to 22°C

That’s quite the difference!
Does anyone know why Mars nights are warmer? Is it mostly due to ground surface absorption of radiation, and not losing most of it until the next day cycle? The (limited) atmosphere retaining some heat? ///

Shorter nights on Mars

Add these two lines to /boot/config.txt and reboot Raspbmc:

hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_drive=2

hdmi_force_hotplug=1 sets the Raspbmc to use HDMI mode even if no HDMI monitor is detected. hdmi_drive=2 sets the Raspbmc to normal HDMI mode (Sound will be sent if supported and enabled). Without this line, the Raspbmc would switch to DVI (with no audio) mode by default.

Open a terminal and run the following command:

 sudo raspi-config

This will open a terminal user interface (TUI) with several options to configure your Raspberry Pi.

Use the arrow keys to move down to the Advance Options. When the line is highlighted, press Enter. //

Check if you are using Wayland or Xorg with the following command:

echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE

JD Vance @JDVance
·
Pretty amazing. We’ve gotten too accustomed to our president hiding from the press.

Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh
🚨 NEW: Questions from the press taken in the first month, various presidents

🔵 Barack Obama: 161
🔴 Donald Trump [2017]: 199
🔵 Joe Biden: 141
🔴 Donald Trump [present]: 1,009

National Journal
2:35 AM · Feb 27, 2025. //

I believe I've remarked on this previously, but I want to take a moment to tip my hat to the current Trump administration for making full use of media — social and traditional — to continually get their message out to the American people. Rather than leaving Trump as the primary spokesman and leaving it up to legacy media to report on what he says and does accurately (ha!), this administration is wisely conducting a non-stop positive messaging assault via multiple telegenic and articulate surrogates. The entire Cabinet is regularly making the rounds and is highly visible on X, sharing tweets and videos of them actually doing things that make sense. This is a wise, effective strategy, in my view. It leaves the Democrats and their legacy media stenographers playing defense and looking rather silly in the process. //

GranpaNuke
18 hours ago
Your Morning Musing was spot on Susie....I had a similar thought yesterday after I read and commented on Trump's First Cabinet meeting:

"The Trump administration is executing a perfect end sweep around the front line of the main stream media. The speed with which they communicate the issues, and the use of the various means of mass communications schemes is something to behold. The legacy MSM just can't keep up with the information flow. They're stuck on stupid, lunging at the next shining object. They are in overload....and hopefully will remain in overload until they overheat and go up in flames....
I just remembered something a Naval Intel Analyst told my class at Destroyer School in Newport, RI. He was an expert on Russia (this was in the mid 80's). He said the Russian Intel folks had so much open sourced information coming in about the US Armed Forces and our capabilities, that they couldn't process and verify it all...they were overloaded and had a hard time separating the wheat from the chaff...
Seems like deja vu all over again..."

Shipwreckedcrew
@shipwreckedcrew
·
Follow
I love all the press coverage tonight of CJ Roberts' order from about 10:00 pm ET.

All the usual suspects -- AP, Reuters, ABC, etc., all refer to it as a "temporary" hold on the order that the Court entered.

No. The Orders are "Stayed" pending further order of the Court.

If the CJ Roberts thought the District Judge was within his authority to order the Executive to spend specific amounts on money on specific grants/contracts on or before midnight tonight, he could have simply done nothing.

Instead he said the Admin need not comply with the Order. //

Shipwreckedcrew
@shipwreckedcrew
·
Follow
So CJ Roberts steps in around 10:00 and issues a stay on the Order to Enforce His TRO entered by Judge Amir Ali in DC -- a District Court judge for all of 90 days.

Judge Ali's TRO had commanded that the Executive

While the "merits" of the withholding might be subject to some legitimate legal debate, when a higher court -- or the Chief Justice -- steps in so abruptly there is very often a key issue that the lower court judge is simply ignoring in his haste to "do right" -- and I think that is the problem here. The District Court lacks jurisdiction to entertain the claim or provide the relief requested -- whether the plaintiffs are entitled to it or not. Judge Ali brushed off the questions about jurisdiction in his fit of pique over what he saw as DOJ non-compliance with his Order. But there is a truism that all federal civil litigators know -- one that never occurs to legal reporter: "Jurisdiction is always at issue.". //

Has the Supreme Court finally gotten fed up with courts setting executive-branch policies? Based on last night’s intervention by Chief Justice Supreme Court John Roberts, the answer could be yes.

justpaul
3 hours ago
Taken as a whole, Behar's commentary is that she lied, she knew was lying, then she tried to deny that she was lying before addmitting that she was lying and asking that she not be held accountable for doing so.

Musk needs to sue not Behar, but ABC, who know full well what kind of person it is that they have employed to tell lies on air. And when they have to pay out $100,000,000 for the malicious libel and slander their employee peddles on their behalf, maybe then Joy will find that she has all the time in the world to work on that important memoir of hers.

Political-Paige
2 hours ago
So anyone born in Germany is a Nazi. And anyone born in Columbia is a cartel thug. And anyone born in Borneo is a cannibal.
That's how unregenerate racists see the world.
And she is a racist.

This backtracking from legal decisions pushed by Merrick Garland's hoodlums is a continuation of a long-running battle between the Marxist left that believes everyone is a member of a racial or ethnic group and Americans who believe we rise and fall to a great extent based on our own attributes unless the government intervenes. The left believes that statistical patterns can detect systemic racism even when, in this case, men and women of all races and ethnicities passed and failed the test.

It will take decades to undo the evil done by the left and to unravel this, to quote Chief Justice John Roberts, "sordid business, this divvying us up by race." But Trump and his appointees are making a valiant effort at changing the systems and dropkicking the people who worked them.

“We don’t think he acted alone,” Hagmann told The Post. “This took a lot of coordination. In my view, Crooks was handled by more than one individual and he was used for this [assassination attempt]. And I wouldn’t preclude the possibility that there were people at the rally itself helping him.”. //

Hagmann's argument about the need for "a lot of coordination" appears to be mere assertion; he has no evidence, or, at least, none he presents in the account. //

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) — part of a bipartisan task force looking into Crooks’ actions and his death — found that it although a Secret Service sniper took him down with the kill shot, it was a local SWAT officer who made the shot that initially took him down — something the FBI did not report at the time. //

Higgins, who has also been investigating Crooks’ assassination attempt for months, has not seen Hagmann’s geofencing data but downplayed its significance. He told The Post he believes Crooks acted alone and there was no conspiracy. However, he also said the FBI continually obstructed his investigation. //

Of course, it's difficult for the saner among us to comprehend what might set off someone like this. As the late, great Paul Harvey used to say when describing the acts of some criminal goblin, "If you could understand it, we'd have to worry about you."

The regulation, known as the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, was allegedly based on a provision of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. I say "allegedly" because that portion of the law is anodyne and aspirational, not a call for federal nannyism. //

The 2015 rules required cities and towns, in order to receive funding from HUD to document patterns of racial bias in their neighborhoods, to publicly report the results every three to five years, and to set and track goals to reduce segregation. Under the new rules, any jurisdiction that receives money from HUD must analyze its housing occupancy by race, disability, familial status, economic status, English proficiency, and other categories. It must then analyze factors which contribute to any prohibitive barriers in housing and formulate a plan to remedy the impediments. //

In my view, the rule had three functions. First and foremost, it used awarding Community Development Block Grants to allow advocacy groups to control all zoning decisions. Communities knew if they went against advocacy groups, they would face loss of funds and probably a costly court battle. Second, it was a way of declaring war on established communities and neighborhoods by using their demographics as a way of forcing the construction of no- or low-income housing units. Third, it was another way that the federal bureaucracy could be weaponized to punish political opponents by using lawfare. Oh, it also provided guaranteed employment for a consultant class that could be hired to help communities navigate the rule and its interpretations. //

So, a costly and destructive rule has been sent to the scrap heap. But we can't rest on our laurels. Just as Trump took down the Obama rule, Biden replaced it. We have to create a regulatory web that will take decades to unravel to prevent this kind of nonsense from happening again and shrink government so that even if a future administration wanted to create the rule, they wouldn't be able to enforce it. Yes, it would be easier for Congress to amend the Fair Housing Act, but I stopped believing in leprechauns a long time ago.

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
·
Gross! The ordinary people and the unlicensed peasants are able to speak with and even influence elites in DC who are running the government. The NYT is horrified.
3:36 PM · Feb 26, 2025. //

The article attempts to put reasons why these things should be there, but only makes it more obvious that Musk is doing the people's work.

And that's exactly what's happening here. Rufo and Raichik are oftentimes passed the information from people like you and me. Using their platforms that they built over time, they drag these things into the light where Musk can see it more clearly, then Musk gets his team on it and elevate it to someone with the authority to destroy it, sometimes that person being Trump himself.

It's not just these two, either. Musk doesn't just interact with influencers. He interacts with people of all stripes, taking their advice, listening to their suggestions, and acting accordingly.

And this is what truly drives the left bonkers.

The left values authority, and no one has more authority than over-educated elites. They're the ones who know best! How dare the unwashed take control of something they're not qualified to run?

But that's exactly how America functions.

Rep. Tim Burchett: Mr. Roman, are you aware that we are sending $40 million a week to the Taliban?

Gregg Roman: Yes, sir.

TB: Can you name other instances of foreign aid going to terrorist organizations?

GR: We have assisted Al-Shabaab in Somalia, there's been instances of the Hamzi network in Sudan, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Kata'ib Hezbollah, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria. Dozens of terror organizations have received indirect assistance from US foreign aid.

TB: Could you elaborate a little on the mechanisms in place to stop foreign aid from going to terrorist groups and why are they not working if we have any in place? (Goes on to explain a graphic display of terrorist weapons and explosives.)

GR: Let's use Gaza as our case study. $2.1 billion in American taxpayers' money to Gaza since October 7th when Hamas invaded southern Israel. USAID money was going in terms of an emergency use authorization to try to go to parties that USAID formerly had a relationship with in the Gaza Strip. That had to have been vetted by (Office of Foreign Assets Control) OFAC, they should have been vetted against the special designated terror list from the State Department and from other Treasury organizations. Waivers were granted because they said that there was an emergency use to have that money come into Gaza, thereby jettisoning the usual, typical screening procedures. As a result, 90 percent of aid that was going from the United States by way of its agents in Gaza ended up in Hamas-controlled areas.

This is EXCELLENT on the differences between a Democracy and a Republic.

Thinking and behaving like we live in a democracy will be our downfall.

Leslie Johnson
@bithits
·
Oct 21, 2024
The first true democracy was in Athens, Greece. It was a disaster. If 51% wanted you dead, you were executed.
If 51% wanted a war, they got it. And it did happen, often.

Truth Slinger X
@TruthSlingerX
·
Oct 21, 2024
That's why we have a Democratic REPUBLIC and the checks and balances that brings.

Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11
President Trump’s first cabinet meeting opens in prayer. Amen.

Generations of America’s leaders have leaned on the leading and providence of God. We need God to lead us now.

Thank you
@SecretaryTurner