Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 @MarinaMedvin
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“How dare those Jews rescue their hostages!” — WaPo, outraged.
8:22 PM · Jun 8, 2024

Everything about that headline is carefully crafted to mislead. For one, the claim that "more than 200 Palestinians killed" is completely unverified. Those numbers come directly from the Hamas-controlled "Gaza Ministry of Health." Also absent in them is any admission of how many of the dead were combatants, either because they were members of Hamas or chose to fire on the Israeli forces.

Then there's the labeling of the operation as an "Israeli hostage raid." This was not a "raid," a word that typically produces impressions of aggression (i.e., a bombing raid). It was a rescue in which self-defense was used while securing the safety of the four hostages.

That's nothing, though, compared to what one BBC reporter did while interviewing Jonathan Conricus, a former IDF spokesman.

Brian BJ @iamBrianBJ
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The prize for most stupid question of the day goes to.... the bbc for asking the following question:

Should the @idf have warned Palestinians before launching the rescue operation ?

Listen to how @jconricus handled that one Show more

4:31 AM · Jun 9, 2024

After allowing Conricus to share his reaction to the rescue, the reporter's first question wasn't about why these hostages were being held by civilians. It wasn't about how the families felt when their loved ones returned after such a daring mission. It was to immediately pivot to "the death toll among Palestinians." //

Long story short: The mainstream press is awful. There is no low its members won't stoop to, and that includes becoming propagandists for terrorists. ///

In one sense, the BBC reporter actually gives an opportunity to defuse and debunk some of the criticism that IDF is going to get.

KEY POINTS

• Plaintiffs argue that what's commonly known as the COVID-19 vaccine isn't a vaccine at all (because it doesn't prevent transmission), but is a therapeutic, so it cannot be mandated by law.
• At the U.S. District Court level, a judge ruled that a 1905 Supreme Court ruling (Jacobson v. Massachusetts) related to mandatory smallpox vaccination allowed the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
• The 9th Circuit panel ruled that, taking the Plaintiff's pleadings as true (which they must at this point in the proceedings), Jacobson does not apply and that employees cannot be forced to receive "treatment" they don't want to receive.
• The ruling rejected LAUSD's claim that the suit is moot since the district had rescinded its mandate two weeks after oral arguments in this appeal went very poorly for the district, and gave a detailed timeline of LAUSD's continued attempts to manipulate the legal proceedings.

To fully appreciate LAUSD's manipulative tactics, you have to understand the timeline... //

Leslie Manookian of Health Defense Freedom Fund, one of the plaintiffs in the case, noted in a 2023 opinion piece that there's an unresolved conflict between Jacobson and another precedential SCOTUS case, Cruzan vs. Director, which held that medical treatments may be refused even if they might save a recipient’s life. And, she states, in Jacobson "the court decided that vaccines could be mandated in clearly defined and limited situations, such as a deadly smallpox outbreak. But COVID is not smallpox. What’s more, Jacobson allowed those who declined the vaccine to pay a fine — Jacobson did not allow the state to force a vaccine on unwilling recipients on pain of losing their livelihoods."

Public health officials, including former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, have admitted for years (even before LAUSD's resurrected mandate on August 13, 2021) that the COVID-19 mRNA shot does not prevent transmission of the virus and was ineffective against the Delta variant.

And just this week former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted under questioning from Congress that the COVID vaccine didn't stop transmission of the virus. //

In the decision Judge Ryan D. Nelson (a Trump appointee), detailed the unimpressive and unethical tactics used by LAUSD and its attorneys. //

It's important to note that the court did not find as a fact that the mRNA COVID shot is a treatment and not a vaccine, and did not find as a fact that it does not prevent the spread of COVID-19, as proceedings have not reached that stage; the court was simply ruling on a procedural motion as to whether the suit was moot and whether LAUSD's motion for judgment on the pleadings was properly decided.

In some of the biggest news to come out of the war between Israel and Hamas in months, four hostages were rescued from Nuseirat, a "refugee camp" in the middle of the Gaza Strip. //

The operation to rescue these hostages happened despite a relentless effort by the Biden administration to force Israel into a "ceasefire" that would remove the IDF from Gaza. Given the success of this operation, Israel's resolve will likely only be strengthened to forge ahead until the mission is completed, and that includes the destruction of Hamas as a military and governing power.

Russ Smith
2 hours ago
Like underwear, racists come in colors and sizes.

Democrats started the KKK, fought for the right to own another human being in the Civil War, implemented Jim Crow, & implemented the crime bill of 1994.

Democrats are the racist party of this country. Democrats spent the first century of this country's existence refusing to treat black people like human beings, and the second refusing to treat them like adults.

The trip to Normandy became a multi-day function for the Biden administration after the awkward mess of yesterday’s D-Day honoring ceremony, as Matt Margolis reported here on P.J. Media. At the last minute, Biden reportedly changed his plans to visit the American cemetery in Brittany for a photo opportunity, which wouldn’t ordinarily cause much of a stir. In this instance, he displaced thousands of young Americans who were supposed to play at a parade scheduled long before Biden’s visit. The event was canceled to accommodate President Biden.

More than 2,000 musicians, mostly comprised of school-aged children, from around the U.S. and Australia made a trip to Normandy that spanned more than four days and five historical sites to honor the historic D-Day in what would have been an unparalleled educational experience in a wreath-laying ceremony and parade. Families paid their own way to Europe to watch their children perform for the fallen heroes at the cemetery, only to learn they wouldn’t be allowed access once Joe Biden decided to travel to Brittany. //

For an administration with a reputation for putting its own personal gains ahead of its constituents, Biden storming the Normandy American Cemetery is another in a long line of blunders that turned an attempt at PR into a sad moment for his people. As of this writing, the Biden administration has not apologized to the performers or the veterans in attendance.

Coordinated attacks on SCOTUS’s integrity, led by Democrats and their allies in the corporate media, try to deceive Americans into believing partisans hijacked the highest court in the land and ideologically fractured it into near-dysfunction. The prominence of unanimous opinions and even more unanimous judgments not only discredits this notion but suggests a far more concerning narrative about the politicization of lower courts.

Since its inception, the Supreme Court has wielded its authority to deliver decisions rooted in bench agreement. In recent years, especially, justices “defied critics” with “historic unanimity” on cases that circuit, appeals, and state supreme courts decided in defiance of the Constitution. Of the 32 cases already decided in the 2023 term, 21 of the judgments were agreed upon by all of the presiding justices. Many of them signaled justices’ concern that lower courts abused their ruling power to violate the Constitution. //

The Supreme Court’s recent string of unanimous decisions not only serves as a reminder that corporate media are deliberately deceptive, but also suggests that lower courts are abusing their power to achieve partisan and, more importantly, unconstitutional results.

Anders - who was a lunar module pilot on the Apollo 8 mission - took the iconic Earthrise photograph, one of the most memorable and inspirational images of Earth from space.

Taken on Christmas Eve during the 1968 mission, the first crewed space flight to leave Earth and reach the Moon, the picture shows the planet rising above the horizon from the barren lunar surface.

Anders later described it as his most significant contribution to the space programme.

The image is widely credited with motivating the global environmental movement and leading to the creation of Earth Day, an annual event to promote activism and awareness of caring for the planet.

Speaking of the moment, Anders said: "We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing that we discovered was the Earth."

Ben Shapiro @benshapiro
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What an enormously stupid and vile comment. Trump is not Hitler. And voting is not storming a beach under a hail of machine-gun fire to free millions from the tyranny of the Nazis.

Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton
Eighty years ago today, thousands of brave Americans fought to protect democracy on the shores of Normandy.

This November, all we have to do is vote.
2:16 PM · Jun 6, 2024 //

These delusions of grandeur are astonishing and pathetic. This is what happens when people, devoid of religion and purpose in life, try to project their emptiness onto politics. No, you aren't like D-Day veterans because you showed up to vote against the bad orange man. To even suggest that is insane. That I even have to say that is a sad testament to just how far the Democratic Party has fallen. //

WestTexasBirdDog
16 hours ago
Actually Hillary is totally correct. We do need to vote this November, but not with the result she wants.

RNC Research @RNCResearch
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ABC: Putin says the U.S. supplying high-precision weapons to Ukraine for strikes on Russian territory is "direct participation in this war" ... does that concern you?

BIDEN: "I've known him for over 40 years."

11:35 AM · Jun 6, 2024

Steve Guest @SteveGuest
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Joe Biden just said that he has known Vladimir Putin for "over 40 years."

Either Biden is lying or he is admitting he was in contact with a KGB agent since 1984 or Biden’s brain is so cooked that he doesn’t know what on earth he is talking about.

11:51 AM · Jun 6, 2024 //

Rascally > Min Headroom llme
15 hours ago
Weren't some of the classified documents he had in his garage and at the Penn Center from his time as a Senator 40 years ago? The time when Dem Senators were afraid Reagan was going to start something and were trying to bolster and help Russia...? //

jester6
18 hours ago edited
If you take what Biden said at face value, it would be bad, but if you look at this objectively, it's much worse.

I don't think anyone, including Putin, thinks Biden is making these decisions. He is a puppet of the Neocon Hawks in the Deep State (both Republican and Democrat) who want to keep pushing Russia. Some people call it the Blob.

That means the people calling the shots collectively (there probably is no one decision-maker) are inaccessible to their Russian counterparts. So we are dancing on the edge of war, and there is no means for diplomatic dialog.

If things deteriorate, we could find ourselves in a situation like the Cuban Missile Crisis, except with no way for Kennedy and Kruschev to talk.

In June of last year, a 14,000-panel 5.2 MW solar panel farm called the Scottsbluff Community Solar Array in Nebraska was blasted by baseball-sized hail. There wasn’t any question that the array would be brought back online because the power company had no choice. Leaving it would have been a PR disaster worse than having the array destroyed by hail.

It took 7 months to bring it back online. //

Solar releases a nasty thing called nitrogen trifluoride. And, what, pray tell is NF3’s impact on the environment? It is reportedly 17,000 times worse for the atmosphere than the dreaded CO2.

And there are other inconvenient facts like 80 percent of the silicon torn from the earth during the mining is eventually lost making crystalline silicon. A cancer biologist named David H. Nguyen noted that toxic chemicals associated with solar farms include cadmium telluride, cadmium gallium, copper indium selenide, and a bunch of other nasty toxins. Sometimes you have to wreck the environment to save it.

Solar acolytes will grudgingly admit that there is a chemical downside to manufacturing solar panels – like a byproduct called silicon tetrachloride. It’s toxic and, if not handled properly, will cause severe burns. If it is inadvertently combined with water it can create hydrochloric acid. But hey, they are made in China so, never mind. //

Northeast of Edward Air Force Base sits the tiny town of Boron. The surrounding desert is home to desert wildlife including the Joshua tree. It will soon be home to a vast solar farm owned by Aratina Solar Center. Joshua trees can survive 200 years in the desert heat but they won’t survive in Aratina’s heat sink of a project.

About 3,500 Joshua trees will be uprooted and destroyed to make room for the solar farm. Aratina (owned mostly by a private equity group known as KKR). To mitigate the bad press, Aratina is shredding trees on-site rather than piling them like so many corpses. //

On completion, the project will blacken about 2,300 acres but it will generate power for up to 180,000 homes. //

Sometimes you gotta kill a tree, to save a tree.  

The nuclear establishment never fails to disappoint.

When it comes to spent nuclear fuel, the stupidest thing we can do is argue for deep geologic disposal.

This is trebly idiotic.

1) It puts already mined, valuable material in place whence it is difficult to impossible to recover.

2) It is a horrendous waste of resources.

By making nuclear more expensive, we guarantee there will be less nuclear. Less nuclear means more fossil, more pollution, and more CO2.

3) It convinces everybody that aged spent fuel is uniquely dangerous. Why else would you spend billions of our money in this manner?

In fact, 600 year old spent fuel is just another poison. You must swallow this glass for it to harm you.

Bacon is probably more dangerous. You are much more likely to eat that carcinogen.

This set of slides outlines a plan for handling spent nuclear fuel
which makes sense. The nuclear establishment will reject it,
because they are far more interested in extracting taxpayer money, than they are in providing cheap, pollution free, low CO2 electricity.

This is criminal selfishness.

This slide deck is an introduction to the Sigmoid No Threshold (SNT) radiation harm model.

It depends on the Radiation Damage and Repair presentation.

3. CAT 3406E

Why We Like It: It’s good to be The King! It is amazing how many people bleed yellow and rightfully so in most cases. There have been some catastrophic failures in the Caterpillar line of engines; the 3406E is not one of them. The CAT 3406 comes in the A,B,C and E models and then evolved into the CAT C15 then CAT C15 Acert engine. This was a very successful engine for CAT as it was really the first evolved electronic engine that was done right.

2. Cummins 855 Big Cam

Why We Love It: How could you not immediately fall in love with this engine from the name alone? Kind of rolls off the tongue eh?! The Cummins 855 Big Cam was the last real mechanical variable timing engine mass produced by Cummins in the 1976. The Big Cam replaced the small cam 855 and was the first engine by Cummins to meet the Clean Air Act and noise regulations of that time. There were four generations of the Cummins Big Cam 855 engines, last produced in 1985 and was replaced by the N14. We love the 855 Big Cam because of the raw horsepower it puts out as well as its reliability. You can easily run a Cummins 855 Big Cam 700,000 miles before an overhaul.

1. Detroit Diesel Series 60

Why We Love It: Hands down the Detroit Diesel Series 60 is the best diesel engine ever produced for the class 8 world. Fun fact of the day: the Detroit Diesel Series 60 was mostly developed by John Deere although how much of an influence Deere had is debatable.

With the first three Starship launches, the FAA license required SpaceX conduct a mishap investigation with federal oversight if the rocket failed to reach its destination intact. The outcome of the last test flight—Starship's breakup over the Indian Ocean—triggered such an investigation by SpaceX. //

But this approach isn't congruent with SpaceX's roadmap for Starship development. SpaceX's iterative approach is rooted in test flights, where engineers learn what and what doesn't work, then try to quickly fix it and fly again. A crash, or two or three, is always possible, if not likely. The FAA is making an adjustment for this week's mission.

"As part of its request for license modification, SpaceX proposed three scenarios involving the Starship entry that would not require an investigation in the event of the loss of the vehicle," the FAA said in a statement.

Based on language in the code of federal regulations, the FAA has the option to approve these exceptions. The FAA accepted three possible outcomes for the upcoming Starship test flight that would not trigger what would likely be a months-long mishap investigation.

These exceptions include the failure of Starship's heat shield during reentry, if the ship's flap system is unable to provide sufficient control under high dynamic pressure, and the failure of the Raptor engine system during the landing burn. If one of these scenarios occurs, the FAA will not require a mishap investigation, provided there was no serious injury or fatality to anyone on the ground, no damage to unrelated property, and no debris outside designated hazard areas.

This change is quite significant for the FAA and SpaceX. It shows that federal regulators, suffering from staffing and funding shortages, are making moves to try and keep up with SpaceX's rapid, and often ever-changing, development of Starship.

"If a different anomaly occurs with the Starship vehicle, an investigation may be warranted, as well as if an anomaly occurs with the Super Heavy booster rocket," the FAA said. //

Bannerdog Ars Praetorian
8y
410
Only SpaceX can say, "not all of our rockets crash".
Hopefully someday, "none of our rockets crash*". //

taxythingy Ars Centurion
7y
397
Subscriptor

uhuznaa said:
Just using somewhat contaminated preburner exhaust for pressurization the oxygen tanks (hot oxygen with some steam and CO2 in it) would be much simpler and lighter though than having pure propellant go through heat exchangers first. Best part is no part and so on. It would be a quite typical approach for them.

At least all the valve and filter clogging in the last flight is hard to explain otherwise, where was all the ice coming from? Usually filters are just for protecting the engines (especially the pumps) from ingesting random debris ending up in the tanks but to have the filters of several engines clogged by ice there needs to be quite a lot of that. It's a mystery to me where all this ice came from. If you use clean oxygen for pressurization and purge the tanks with dry nitrogen before tanking there just should be no ice anywhere.

(They could tap hot methane off the nozzle cooling but there is no source for clean hot oxygen gas except using a dedicated heat exchanger just for that, and it seems the ice was in the oxygen tanks.)

The oxygen is super cooled to improve density and is getting close to the triple point (within 20K) at tank pressure, where solids can form. The general understanding is that solid O2 forms, probably at the liquid gas interface (boil off is cooling it further) and that then settles to the tank bottom as a slush. This is more likely to occur after the main burn when the tank is near empty.

On relight, that has to be filtered out, else it will either block the injectors or otherwise run rough.

The Shuttle had filters, but that was more for debris, if I remember correctly.

Joe Karwacki
@JoeKarwacki
·
Follow
HOT MIC: @SenJoniErnst to @SenJohnKennedy following the Senate GOP border press conference -- "Bottom line, never trust a man whose uncle was eaten by cannibals."

😂😂😂

3:12 PM · Jun 4, 2024 //

AngelBlue
3 hours ago
the cannibals ate the wrong Biden.

On January 15th, 2022, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (Hunga Tonga for short) erupted underwater, in the territory of the Pacific Kingdom of Tonga. Hunga Tonga triggered a tsunami that prompted warnings around the Pacific basin and sent shock waves all around the planet.

Hunga Tonga also, being an undersea eruption, shot about 150 million tonnes (yes, metric, I know) of water vapor into the atmosphere. Water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas - much more so than carbon dioxide. //

Note, though, that the impact of Hunga Tonga - 150 million metric tons (that's 165 million or so good American tons) had some measurable effect in northern Australia and may result in milder winters for a few years to come across the northern hemisphere. That doesn't seem like a world-ending catastrophe. //

What does Hunga Tonga tell us? That everything that happens has an effect, but also that there's no reason to panic and, essentially, throw away our modern, technological lifestyle. A volcano's output makes us feel pretty puny, and well it should. But the Earth abides, its cycles can't be easily altered, and right now we're in a warming trend coming out of the Wisconsonian glaciation, which peaked about 20,000 years ago. Before that glaciation was the Sangamonian Interglacial, which began about 125,000 years ago and during which the Earth was, again, warmer than now; in fact, the Sangamonian would have been a pretty pleasant time to live in. //

Humans have done amazing things to clean up the planet since I was young. There's more we could do - nuclear power, for instance - but the bleating of the climate scolds should be disregarded. Calmer heads should prevail. Hunga Tonga is a lesson in that. We can have both - clean air and water, a decent climate, and a modern, technological society powered by abundant, reliable, and cheap energy. And bear in mind, the climate scolds seem little concerned about their own effect. They will retain their private jets, their yachts, and their filet mignon with spotted owl appetizers. It’s not the climate they are pushing for – it’s power, the power to control what the hoi polloi say and do, and that’s for sure and for certain.

As global governments push for a rapid transition to electric vehicles and to wind and solar power, they are creating a demand for copper that threatens to undermine the very goals they seek to achieve.

According to a recent International Energy Forum report, electrifying the global vehicle fleet would require the opening of 55% more new copper mines than are already needed, and twice the total amount of copper that has ever been mined throughout human history over the next three decades. //

Since copper is a core component in electronics, raising the cost of copper makes it far more difficult for developing areas of the world to access energy. Copper is a crucial component in electric vehicles. A typical EV requires nearly 200 pounds of copper, or about four times the amount needed for a combustion-engine vehicle. //

The energy industry is facing government mandates for wind and solar. A typical 3-megawatt wind turbine requires 9 tons of copper, more than the weight of a school bus. Wind power requires more than seven times the amount of copper to produce the same amount of energy that natural gas or coal does, and five times the copper as nuclear power. //

Policymakers pushing for a rapid shift to EVs and renewables are also responsible for the red tape in mining for critical minerals. Without more mining, the planned EVs won’t be built. Even Chinese critical materials won’t get America all the way to its EV targets.

Causing a false entry to be made in a company’s records is a misdemeanor offense in New York, subject to a two-year statute of limitations. The statute says, however, that if the false business entry was made for the purpose of concealing the commission of, or intent to commit, “another crime,” then it is a felony offense, which has a longer statute of limitations. //

Although this was a state prosecution, Bragg brought in Matthew Colangelo, a high-ranking official from the Justice Department, to serve as lead prosecutor in the case. Colangelo previously had served as acting associate attorney general, the third-highest position within DOJ. //

Third, although the indictment alleged that Trump caused a false business record to be entered on the company’s books for the purpose of concealing the commission of, or intent to commit, “another crime,” the indictment didn’t say what that other crime was. And Bragg refused to say what it was when asked about it during a press conference.

Trump’s legal team filed a motion for a bill of particulars, asking Merchan to compel the state to disclose what the other crime was so that Trump’s lawyers could prepare his defense adequately. Merchan refused.

Indeed, it was not until the charge conference shortly before closing arguments that the prosecution team disclosed its speculations about what that other crime might be. And it was not until the prosecutor gave his closing argument—after Trump’s lawyer already had made his and sat down—that he finally said anything to the jury about what the other crime was. //

Fifth, Merchan’s pretrial ruling severely limited what Brad Smith—a former member of the Federal Election Commission and one of the nation’s leading authorities on federal campaign finance laws—could say from the witness stand. Smith was prepared to testify that Trump’s $130,000 payment to Cohen to reimburse the lawyer for the payment to Daniels was a personal expense, not a campaign expense, which didn’t violate campaign finance laws.

Indeed, Smith would have testified that if Trump had paid this money out of his campaign coffers rather than out of his own pocket, that would have been a federal campaign finance violation. Merchan wouldn’t allow Smith to say any of this from the witness stand. His testimony was going to be so limited that the Trump legal team decided it was worthless to call him as a witness, and so they didn’t. //

Eighth, there is a strong argument that neither Bragg as the DA nor Merchan as the judge had jurisdiction to put anyone on trial—much less a former president—for alleged violations of federal campaign finance laws. Nothing in the Federal Election Campaign Act gives state court prosecutors and judges jurisdiction over such matters.

And, according to a 2023 memorandum of understanding between the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department, the FEC “has exclusive jurisdiction over civil enforcement of the federal campaign finance laws” and the Justice Department “has exclusive jurisdiction of criminal enforcement of the federal campaign finance laws, including related criminal offenses.”

Here, both the FEC and DOJ investigated the matter and declined to pursue it.

Commit snafu slapped an irrevocable Apache 2.0 license on confidential API Docs. //

The documents also suggest Google has whitelists that will artificially boost certain websites for certain topics. The two mentioned were "isElectionAuthority" and "isCovidLocalAuthority."

Due to the sheer volume of the complaints, Pryor deemed the situation exceptional and ordered the clerk to post the order to the website rather than attempting to send a copy to each complainant.

Pryor also notes that four of the complaints received since May 16th have been considered and dismissed for lack of sufficient evidence of any misconduct. //

Leslie McAdoo Gordon 🇺🇸 @McAdooGordon
·
Nothing Judge Cannon has done is judicial misconduct.

Falsely accusing a judge of misconduct & encouraging others to do so IS misconduct by a lawyer, however, in most jurisdictions.

Glenn Kirschner @glennkirschner2
Judge Aileen Cannon's Pro-Trump Bias Is Showing: Here's a step-by-step guide to filing a Judicial Misconduct Complaint with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Because #JusticeMatters https://youtu.be/0MXVfiTa3KM?si=if3qYyfWIHZhUA2q
4:46 PM · May 12, 2024. //

Donner’s Party
8 hours ago
When Merchan disregards Due Process, the Rights of the Defendant to Call Witnesses, on his behalf, doesn’t even insist that the prosecution name the crime, and prods the jury to find the defendant guilty for any reason out of four,(without any chance they won’t find him guilty), he’s a hero!
Cannon insists that the prosecution abide by the laws, that THEY are sworn to enforce, and SHE’s the Villain!
Yeah, we are ripe, bring on the Rapture. //

Fishin'withFredo
5 hours ago
Over 1000 complaints since May 16? Orchestrated is an understatement. Cannon has been the only objective judge in this entire fiasco.