The rabbit hole gets deeper

Update on post of 4-17-23:

It looks like another Continuing Resolution measure to fund the government will pass yet again. This is quite predictable. Whatever the GOP says, you can bet your bippy that they will not live up to it.

There's talk about removing the Speaker. That won't happen. None of this is on the level. It's all fake.

There's no harm in a shutdown. The House can pass funding bills separately for anything that is needed and is a priority. (They are already talking about funding Ukraine on a separate vote. Leaving out funding for Ukraine was a gimmick to pass the CR) They don't have to do CR's. They do CR's because they want to do CR's.

Threats are a just dog and pony shows for the gullible. All of this is fake.

I wrote my Congress critter about all this and his answer was that he supported it because they could do regular order. This isn't regular order. So you can throw what he said out the window. All these people are fakes.

the original post follows:

Updated on 4.17.23

Here's another case of treachery by those who were entrusted to protect our rights.

After censorship from the Democrats, the GOPs answer is even more.  Thanks for nothing .

Original post from 4.16.23

This is becoming alarming. All across the board, lying, treachery, and betrayal have become standard operating procedure.

Take the budgetary proceedings at the Federal level. There is a report that the speaker is working on a deal with the Democrats to cut back on spending. What cutbacks? The claim that he's doing this is a lie. Brandon won't even negotiate with him, yet he claims to be working on cutbacks? Who believes this? Evidently, many do because the Speaker's approval ratings are going up. Give me a break.

The Speaker is a Republican. Take note that the Republicans have been in charge for more years since 1995 than the Democrats have, but the budget disaster is worse than ever. The Republicans did get off to a good start in 1995 when they took over for the first time in 40 years, but since Gingrich was ousted, they are no better than the Democrats. What exactly is the difference? There IS no difference. It is all smoke and mirrors.

Another example is gun control. Just wait and see. The GOP will be in charge, and there will be gun control. They are already teeing up for a run at this in Tennessee. That state has the GOP running the show in toto, but there is going to be gun control? Again, what is the difference between the GOP and the Democrats? The Democrats would do the same thing if they were in charge. Why is it even being considered?

The Democrats take over the Tennessee legislature, and the GOP cries "insurrection". They mean it so much that they threw out the Democrats for a few days. Wow. How impressive! /sarc How is it that people can be fooled by such insincere and meaningless rhetoric? Are people really being fooled by this???? Even if they aren't, then why would they even attempt to fool the public?

It is almost as if the GOP exists for no other reason than to fool the public. That is what I mean when I say that lying, treachery, and betrayal have become the norm. There isn't even the attempt to do otherwise. What they do is a dog and pony show which is intended to fool the public into believing that they are doing something when they are most definitely not doing anything at all.

We are told on the so-called conservative media that the indictment of Trump will guarantee his reelection. It might be hard to do that when he is in jail. Make no mistake, they WILL put him in jail. Can he win an election in jail? Can he even run for office while in jail? Are these people serious? No, they cannot possibly be serious. It is just another attempt to deceive.

Someone can look at the news and see nothing but one lie after another. We live in Alice's Wonderland, where nothing is what it appears to be. How far down the rabbit hole we go is really beyond the limit of the imagination.







The Speaker's lies are lies because the House can refuse to increase the debt limit if they chose. They don't need the Democrats. They don't need the President. They don't need to negotiate with them. They could just refuse to increase the debt. The government would be forced to live within its means. But they have no intention of doing this at all. Hence the dog and pony show.

The attempt at gun control is a lie because the GOP knows full well that gun control will do nothing to stop gun violence.

The PR at claiming insurrection is a lie because they don't mean what they say. If they meant what they said, the GOP would have barred them from returning to the legislature for as long as they controlled the legislature. Which may not be long considering that the GOP refuses to do anything that they said they would do. That is just another one of their lies.

The Chesire cat was no "all there" any more than the GOP is. Looks like Alice in Wonderland here in the USA where everybody here isn't exactly all there either.

The Disastrous Sin of Lying

On the edge of destruction

Update:

Here's an AP write up of the case.

Bullet points: 1) Prosecutors refused a criminal fraud trial 2) no evidence of harm to the public 3) statute of limitation had run out 4) will seek to nationalize private property and assets without any evidence of harm

This post is a bit hard to organize. Let's say a thought is trying to form up, and then allowing itself to be expressed as a post.

A couple current events could serve as examples of something as of yet is unspecified. What does it mean? First event was the New Mexico governor overruling the law with respect to guns. The other event is that a New York judge just declared that Donald Trump committed fraud in overvaluing one of his properties in order to get a loan. The latter requires a bit more comment. I checked out the Federal law regarding fraud vis-a-vis the Bush 43 administration with repect to the claim of WMD in Iraq. What I found is that fraud requires the knowledge of something being false and this was used in order to obtain something that was out of reach otherwise. One would presume that all fraud is like that, so New York state law has to be similar to Federal law regarding fraud. What I'm getting at here is this event in New York was not in accordance with law. Therefore, there's two events here in which an official has gone beyond the law and has acted arbitrarily.

If one thing happens, it is an anomaly. If two things or more things like it happens, then something is going on. So what is going on here? What you have here is government officials acting outside the law. All public officials in the USA have to take an oath of office supporting the Constitution of the United States. They are SUBSERVIENT to the law, since the Constitution is the Supreme law of the land. If they go outside the law, they are acting in a CRIMINAL manner.

Let's take a little segue into the movies again, as I am inclined to do at times. It's something I saw recently about the Mafia figures depicted in the movie "Goodfellas". There was this character in the movie who was called "Tommy", who seemed like a major league psycho. Since the movie was based upon a real story, then this character was based upon a real person. It so happens that the real "Tommy" was even worse than the character in the movie. An example of what the real dude did was that he would kill somebody at random just because he considered himself to be a "bad dude".

What I'm getting at is this: If government officials start acting arbitrarily outside the law, then anything is possible. That would include just killing off people at their whim. Shoot, if you can kill Trump's interests in the state of New York on some arbitrary extralegal opinion of some judge, then anything is possible. That COULD very well include MURDER. Trump's business interests in New York state have been MURDERED BY A JUDGE.

Let's return to the New York situation. I read that there is a valid disagreement as to what the facts really are with regard to the value of the property in question. How can there be fraud then? If the facts of the situation are in dispute, there can be no fraud. That's because fraud has to have the facts in possession of the person doing the fraud. If there is disagreement as to what the true value really was, then there can be no fraud. Besides that, there was no harm done to the bank that gave out the loan that was based upon the value of the property in question. The loan was paid in full. Where's the injury??? How could the bank be defrauded when it received no injury? In other words, this judge just pulled this fraud judgement out of thin air. The judge is outside the law.

These are but two examples. I suspect that there could be many more. If public officials believe that they can act outside the law with no consequences to themselves, then order is breaking down. Anything is possible. This situation cannot be sustained. Something has to give. This is no small thing. This is an existential thing. If it isn't corrected, and corrected very soon, it will lead to chaos.

Spent the morning looking for this

There's a movie that you can watch on Tubi, which about the Prophet Daniel. There was a stretch towards the end of the movie in which Daniel is speaking to Cyrus the Great. In the movie, the character playing Daniel says something that is quite startling. He says that the Prophet Isaiah predicts his arrival a hundred and fifty years before it happens, and uses Cyrus' very own name.

That kinda grabbed me. I had to check this out. Not being a patient reader, I gave up trying to find it in the Bible, so I went to this guy. I watched a bunch of his videos, and here's the last one on Isaiah, and here it is. It's verified, by golly, by gosh. So it actually exists.

That's pretty impressive. Anyway, here's the stretch where Randal Smith discusses how Isaiah prosephied that Cyrus the Great would conquer Babylon, which led to the end of the Babylonian Captivity. The movie checked out.

Casino (1995) Movie vs. The Real Life Events That Inspired A Classic

This is a video that shows scenes from the movie "Casino", and compares it with real life events.

Here's a scene in which the Nevada commissioner denies "Ace" a license and bedlam breaks out. That Nevada commissioner is none other than the Democrat Majority Leader, Senator Harry Reid. The movie made it pretty clear that Harry Reid wasn't on the up and up.

Lots of corruption out there.

Why the Left And Deep State HATE Poland: ‘Learn from Poland, be like Poland’

They cannot win elections without cheating. The Polish way ends cheating. It also ends the misrule of the leftists and Deep State.

Rep. Thomas Massie: ..."DOJ has opened not one but two investigations of Elon Musk… These look like mafia tactics”

Yeah. But Massie enabled the spending spree when he signed on to the deal to raise the debt limit back in the spring.

Why continue to fund this out of control government?

Rep. Thomas Massie: “Elon Musk was a Democrat who admittedly supported Biden but then he became a critic of the administration and exposed the censorship regime. Now per public reports the DOJ has opened not one but two investigations of Elon Musk… These look like mafia tactics” pic.twitter.com/dLfAif9Djk

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) September 20, 2023

John Solomon reaches Biden on burner phone

Not exactly new "news", but it does show that there's something there. So much so that there's reports that Democrats are trying to get the impeachment dropped as a condition for another continuing resolution budget deal to keep the government funded.

Not exactly the kind of deal the GOP should ever agree to...

John Solomon is an American treasure.
Busts Joe Biden on his secret global burner phone. pic.twitter.com/CfvFnq460t

— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) June 28, 2023

Blue Origin's pedigree, second stage recovery IV

Updated post from 9/22/11:

Stoke space has been testing something that looked very familiar. It took a bit of searching to find this post from 12 years ago, so here it is.

A key here is that the Saturn IVB third stage of the Saturn V rocket that went to the Moon could almost reach orbit by itself. That was mentioned in the body of the original post.

New developments are such that this could be built, as well as other things that may make a really compact spacecraft possible. Amongst these developments are scram-jet engines, and air-breathing rockets. If these could be incorporated into a design; a relatively small spacecraft that could get to orbit with a usable payload--- could be possible.

But Stoke space doesn't necessarily have that idea. They may stick with the RTLS booster that SpaceX is developing as the first stage. Stoke is starting with the second stage first, though. They want to make it possible to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere while using the engine area as a heat shield. That's what jogged my memory.

Imagine a rocket weighing in about half as much as the Falcon 9 and carrying about as much payload, and it all being reusable. Could that be possible?

The Original Post is down here:



The title may appear to be an oxymoron, but stick with me.

I'll start with the present and work backwards in time.  Blue Origin is developing the New Shepard, which is a suborbital craft.  It appears to be designed for space tourism, not for space exploration.  Perhaps at some point, there may be more ambitious projects for this concept, but this is all I know for now.

The New Shepard is based upon the DC-X design.  It was developed in conjunction with Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative , and subsequently transferred to NASA in the Clinton era.  This craft was intended to start with suborbital flights and then orbital flights as experience and knowledge was gained.  It was intended to be a SSTO project, which had its roots in some research done in the Apollo Era, looking forward to post Apollo, now known as the Shuttle Era.


The DC-X really didn't get that far in achieving its goals.  But let's look at its origins, as we continue going back into time.   A European variant of an integral Single Stage to Orbit design, called BETA, was itself a consequence of a design that didn't get off the drawing boards.

Excerpt:
The BETA concept is characterized by the following features:

1. A short conical body (small length/diameter ratio, low c.g.) with heat-shield for re-entry
2. Use of the heat-shield as a plug-nozzle for performance increase
3.  A propulsion system consisting of 12 or more single high-pressure LH2/ LOX engines arranged around the central plug-nozzle (heat-shield)
4.  6 retractable legs for the final vertical landing phase.  

Space Future.com

The author (Dietrich E Koelle?) came to the following conclusions:

1. The development of a single stage ballistic space shuttle is feasible with the present technology.
2. The transportation cost Earth-to-Orbit can be reduced to some 200 $/kg or less.  
3. The single-stage concept allows new possibilities for launch ranges since no
   danger by expendable parts or stages has to be expected. This means that launches from and landings within Europe would be feasible.
   
4.  The BETA Concept seems to be a solution for specific European requirements since there is no manned space flight programme, there does not exist the 500 km/550 space station target orbit, and there is no requirement for a large cross range capability.
   

and,

"From the very principle the BETA Concept seems to be the final solution for the space transportation problem since it combines operational simplicity with lowest cost both for development and specific payload cost."

But it wasn't implemented.

But where did the BETA come from?  It was an updated version of Douglas SASSTO, from the Apollo Era.

The SASSTO was intended to put a small capsule into orbit by using ideas from S-IVB upper stage of the Apollo Era Saturn rocket.

Alright, now note this:

Bono noticed that the S-IVB stage, then just starting to be used operationally, was very close to being able to reach orbit on its own if launched from the ground. Intrigued, Bono started looking at what missions a small S-IVB-based SSTO could accomplish, realizing that it would be able to launch a manned Gemini capsule if it was equipped with some upgrades, notably an aerospike engine that would improve the specific impulse and provide altitude compensation.[2] He called the design "SASSTO", short for "Saturn Application Single-Stage To Orbit". [comment: emphasis mine, quite impressive that this rocket existed almost half a century ago.]

It appears that a renewed effort at an SSTO could achieve the results desired.  The inflatable heat shield could be used in place of aerospike engines, if these are too difficult to perfect.  They may even be used as a safety margin, since the mass of such a device should be small.

A second stage recovery wouldn't be necessary if there's no second stage.  You will need a powerful enough rocket to get to space, plus solve the knotty problem of finding a way to get back without destroying the rocket on reentry.  That's a technical problem that may be solvable.

Blue Origin may not be interested in tackling this problem, but somebody may be able to.  Anybody listening?

My two cents on this video about Texas' traffic

Having worked in the delivery business in the Houston area for about 30 years, I have some definite opinions of certain points in the matter.

The discussion in this video talked a bit about Houston's traffic. There's something there I'd like to discuss, hence the video embed.

The widest freeway in the USA, according to this guy, is what the locals call the "Katy Freeway". No doubt about it, it is a monster. But it is a failure as far as I'm concerned. More concrete isn't necessarily better. The odd thing about it was the last piece of new concrete that was added just as it was opening up back around 2006-2008 time period. I can't exactly remember when it opened, by the way. That's the reason for the spread out in time from 2006-2008.

When it opened, the freeway traffic pattern was beautiful. Traffic didn't back up at all, even during rush hour. But the smart folks wanted to add some toll lanes right down the middle of the thing. These didn't open up immediately. But when it did, it screwed up the traffic patterns. Why?

The toll lanes attraced the people who were in a hurry, and those who rode liked to ride the transit lanes. The transit lanes and the toll lanes shared the center toll lanes. Once this opened, more traffic was diverted on to it, and this traffic had to merge. It was this merging traffic that just ruined the traffic pattern for the entire freeway. In the end, all the new concrete did little to improve overall traffic flow. This is why I call it a failure.

Maybe it moved more cars during rush hour. But it didn't end the snarled traffic during peak rush hours. Rush hour might have been shortened. But that's about all they accomplished. It is a first rate example of the term "boondoggle".

"One of the most absurd things I've ever seen. An up back TD return!"

Texans fans will take it! Woo-hoo!

One of the most absurd things I've ever seen. An up back TD return! pic.twitter.com/apzAnnLR9R

— NFL Fashion Advice (@fashion_nfl) September 24, 2023