Comrade Blumenthal

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Dec 192021
 

US Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut did not just attend a Communist award ceremony, he gave a speech there and handed out an award.

Blumenthal Speaks at Communist Party Awards Ceremony

Blumenthal, one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, presented certificates of special recognition from the Senate to three winners of the “Amistad Award,” given annually by the Connecticut People’s World Committee, an affiliate of the Communist Party USA and the Marxist People’s World news site.

Once the news started coming out that Blumenthal was giving aid, comfort and awards to Communists, he tried the old “I’m shocked, SHOCKED to find Communism going on in here” bit.

U.S. Sen. Blumenthal says would not have attended New Haven awards ceremony if he knew it was tied to Communist Party

Go ahead and speculate about just how likely it is that he ended up at a Communist party affair without knowing it was a Communist party affair. He’s a freakin’ US Senator. Either he’s lying (and thus knew that he was aiding the Communists) and should be ejected from the Senate, or he’s a monumental dumbass and somehow he and his *entire* staff including security detail missed that little detail, and should be ejected from the Senate.

Imagine the response if a Republican Senator gave out at award at a US Nazi party ceremony.

 

And as it traditional for Communist sympathizers, Blumenthal is strikingly rich. This is from 2012, so imagine what he’s worth today after nearly a decades worth of additional grasping and graft:

Blumenthal at high end of Senate millionaires’ club

Blumenthal’s 2011 financial disclosure forms filed this week show the senator with an average net worth of $112 million, up from the previous year, when the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics estimated his average net worth at $73 million.

Perhaps Richard Blumenthal should be examined by the FBI for links (financial and otherwise) to Communist China. Maybe he and Eric Swalwell could share a deportation flight to Beijing. Maybe the US could trade them for Peng Shuai or Jack Ma, either of whom would bring far more benefit to America than Communist sympathizers and other traitors.

 Posted by at 11:23 am

Space Quest

 history, rockets, science, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Dec 192021
 

A ca. 1966 promotional film for NASA, describing the events of 1965 and planned future events.

Man, I’m jealous: for a brief time in the early/mid 1960’s, the future for space exploration looked spectacular. And then…

Now NASA seems wholly directionless. There’s SLS, a massively over budget, massively behind schedule rocket that has no program to support. the US can’t even make adequate quantities of plutonium to support a decent production run of RTGs for unmanned probes.

It’s not impossible that days like this could come again; SpaceX and Starship could make it happen. But while Apollo relied on a base of hundreds of thousands of employees and contractors, SpaceX relies on *one* *guy* to maintain focus. Something happens to Elon Musk, and it’s entirely possible that SpaceX will fall into the hands of suits who decide that wasting all that money on risky and seemingly unprofitable “advancement” ain’t worth doing.

 

 Posted by at 12:39 am

This is why we can’t have nice things

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Dec 182021
 

There is a hopeful belief that mankind is forever pushing forward. But history has shown that to not be the case: civilizations rise, they achieve great things (or not) and then they fall. If history was a nice smooth upwards-trending curve, the descendants of Greeks like Archimedes and Eratosthenes would right now be crossing the gulf between the stars or perhaps exploring higher dimensions many centuries post-Singularity. But golden age Greece fell, Rome fell, Byzantium fell, Persia, the Inca, the Aztecs, the Mongols, the Chinese Empire, the Japanese empire… everybody eventually falls or gets steamrolled.

Behold:

Demi Lovato Sings To Ghosts To Help Them Overcome Trauma Caused By Sexism

Lovato has been exploring their interest in supernatural life in recent docuseries Unidentified With Demi Lovato.  

Where are Penn & teller when you need them?

The fact that this sort of thing gets *anything* but mockery is as big an indictment of our society as the easy acceptance of nonsense fairy tales like “the wage gap” and “hands up don’t shoot” and socialism and astrology. We are dumb.

 Posted by at 2:34 pm

SN15

 art, awesomeness, rockets, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Dec 182021
 

SpaceX has recently released a video summary of their May, 2021, launch of the SN15 Starship test vehicle. it’s real, real pretty.

Giggitty!

UPDATE: huh, the video got yoinked. Looking at the SpaceX YouTube video library, it looks like it, might have been just a repost of this video from May:

Their live stream of the launch was buggy due to difficulties in sending the video down live:

 Posted by at 12:13 pm

Sure, let’s make ’em a state. What could go wrong?

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., news, politics, weapons, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Dec 172021
 

A recent gang shooting in San Juan, Puerto Rico left six dead. While this sounds like your average night in Chicago or Detroit, the uncensored video (in the tweet below, because this is a family-friendly blog) video shows that the description “a hail of gunfire” doesn’t quite do it justice. The people who wanted the other people dead wanted them *really* dead. As in “the writers of Marvel comics will have a hard time bringing these guys back” sort of dead.

A discussion of the event with a whole lot of blurring is in the YouTube video below:

I can only assume that the drug trade was involved in some way. And as bad as this incident was… imagine it transported to the streets of some American city that has just defunded the police. Note that the hit squad here used fully automatic weapons (most armed with high-cyclic rate pistols, likely Glocks, while the probable leader had a gold-plated AK-47), which are just as illegal in PR as they are in the US. So… yeah, another gun control success story.

 Posted by at 9:45 pm

New Revell 1/48 SR-71

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, models  No Responses »
Dec 172021
 

Looks spiffy.This is entirely different from the Testors kits from decades ago; a number of improvements are apparent. Recessed panel lines and separate engines with considerable internal detail are major improvements.

I haven’t heard if they are doing a YF-12A or A-12; conversion kits would be a chore.

 Posted by at 6:30 am
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