JULY 29, 2021 By Robert Busek
Rather than trying to reform an educational system that has betrayed us, we should starve it of access to its favorite fodder: our children.

The only winning move is not to play. //

We have experienced the shift in thinking in a personal way. After years of unabashedly voicing their concerns about our kids’ homeschool education, our extended family has been curiously (and blessedly) silent ever since COVID-19 started wreaking havoc on our educational infrastructure. For once, we are ahead of the curve, and it is thrilling. //

A funny thing happened when students began remote learning during lockdown: parents started paying attention to what their kids were being taught. Many were not pleased with what they discovered. They felt betrayed by the system to which they had entrusted their kids and their money. Quite a few are fighting back, much to the chagrin of teachers’ unions, administrators and their political allies.

Designed by Howard Hughes himself, and ridiculed as the “Spruce Goose” for its size and the material it was built out of, the Hughes H-4 Hercules should have had a long and storied service life. Yet it never took off as it was expected…

As the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built (only the LZ 129 Hindenburg airship from the famed Hindenburg disaster is bigger), the H-4 was a behemoth for its time, and indeed in our own, being far larger than anything built before or after it. //

Despite being built in the 1940’s, the H-4 held the record for the longest wingspan of any aircraft for over 70 years, holding it from 1947 (when the prototype first flew) to 2019, when the Burt Rutan-designed Scaled Composites Stratolaunch first flew.

That’s 72 years!

the Democrats are following the Cloward-Piven strategy to bankrupt the country and usher in a “socialist Utopia.” And why wouldn’t they since the modern Democrat Party is nothing but a collection of “democratic socialists” and Communists-by-other names (e.g., the 100-plus members of the “Congressional Progressive Caucus”)? They couldn’t care less about fiscal responsibility and living within one’s means.

The Democrats’ goal is to pass this giveaway to Democrat constituencies and then force a follow-on gigantic tax increase to pay for it (or at least some of it). Everyone – even the RINOs in Congress – know that is the standard Democrat tax-and-spend play, except this time the order is reversed: spend first then tax to pay for it. The Hologram’s tax plan announced in April totaled $1.8 trillion in new taxes. The remaining $1.7 trillion would be deficit spending, with a big spike added to the federal debt.

https://tricentennial.us/2020/04/03/is-the-cloward-piven-strategy-being-used-to-destroy-america/

In August 2019, former President Trump signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 that suspended the debt ceiling through July 31, 2021. //

Republicans need to use the debt ceiling to halt the Democrats’ spend-and-tax plans in order to prevent an economic tailspin in the country. That and the filibuster are just about the only tools left to congressional Republicans (besides enhancing election integrity laws in various states and electing fiscally conservative Republicans in 2022). //

The bill is going to come due at some point; there will have to be tax increases to pay for the deficits planned by the Democrats to finance their schemes. Those taxes will be the biggest negative impact on businesses and the economy in general moving into the future. The scale and scope of the federal government is so gargantuan that there will never be a return to fiscal discipline and a balanced budget unless action is taken now. A general economic slowdown is inevitable unless the out-of-control spending stops.

And it will require grassroots pressure to provide the Republicans with the spine and staying power needed to fight off the inevitable Democrat-media onslaught. //

Skeptical Techie
12 hours ago
One respectful correction. While Democrats were once the "tax and spend" party, that is no longer the case.

Now, the Party is the "spend and tax" party.

What came before was almost, ALMOST, at least a tip of the hat to fiscal responsibility or maybe a sort of fiscal acknowledgement. Now, blowing up anything resembling fiscal acknowledgement is THE POINT. Blow up the budget so as to FORCE draconian taxation and the attendant draconian control to collect such weighty taxes.

Each time we eliminate a data vendor like Amazon Web Services, we eliminate a potential 'cancel' moment that could paralyze our site. //

CaucusRoom.com is a social network designed to help conservatives gather, encourage and engage locally. We are a small but growing player among conservative platforms that see a need, and a business opportunity. Operating on the “Cancel Cloud” posed a liability to our company legally, financially, and technically. Now unshackled from Big Tech’s chains, CaucusRoom is better off in every respect.

If Microsoft has the most to win, it also has the most to lose – Salesforce's Slack love is as a CRM channel, where it will end up getting the metrics and aggregated channels anyway. Google and Amazon have the reach and the infrastructure to sell conferencing services on the open market, with open access points. And they are creatures built from open standards, unlike Microsoft. Google won mobile by being open. If it showed any sign of understanding conferencing, that'd be nice.

Pinning your hopes on an uneasy alliance getting on a war footing before a focused opponent has already won is not how any sane person would make a better world. But the evidence for hope is there. Just ask the veterans of the last war, and listen when they say – there is a better way. ®

With high profile audits of votes from the 2020 election are underway in Arizona and Georgia, what seems to be a spooked as well as woke US Department of Justice has sent a second sternly-worded memo to the states warning them that any attempt actually to verify the votes cast in 2020 carries the potential risk of violating the Civil Right Act. This is from BuzzFeed News so take its accuracy for what it’s worth… //

The hook the DOJ is using to stick its nose into what is an inherently and exclusive state function; the idea that auditing the results of a completed and certified election could trammel the civil rights of anyone, even someone who may have stolen an election, is just nonsense. At the same time, there is absolutely no doubt that the Gestapo waiting in the wings at Justice would leap at the chance, like flying monkeys from a castle wall, to harass and intimidate state officials trying to uphold state election law which the current regime finds inconvenient.

Why is the DOJ attempting to stretch the law in this manner? Why do they even care about the results of an audit which, worst casing it for the Democrats, can’t change anything?

This is my assessment.

2022 is a must-win year for the Democrats. //

There is a strong feeling across the nation that Joe Biden did not win but rather cheated his way into the White House by a massive influx of ballots of dubious authenticity injected into the system by partisan judges rewriting existing laws in favor of new “COVID voting rules.” This has inspired at least 17 states to pass new laws designed to curb abuses of mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, counting votes after election day, and all manner of other Third World bullsh** created by the courts out of whole cloth.

All that is needed is a showing of fraud in any of the audits underway to sink the Democrat falsehood that voting fraud is rare. (My personal view is that it is systemic and endemic in some jurisdictions.) If that happens, you will see more states enact laws to foil vote fraud. //

“If there isn’t a way for us to repeat what happened in November 2020, we’re f—ed,” said Nsé Ufot, CEO of the Stacey Abrams-founded New Georgia Project.

“What happened in November 2020,” of course, is widespread and flagrant vote fraud at every step of the process.

We have some candidates who have great name recognition but appear to have little else, and other candidates who have great substance and policy expertise, but less name recognition. A debate allows the better-known candidates to prove their substance (or reinforce their lack of it), and gives the lesser-known candidates a platform that can reach more California citizens. Finally, it is an opportunity for the citizen to see all the candidates in a new and different light.

Surprisingly a real-life scenario and not a plotline from The Simpsons

A reactor at Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in Taiwan malfunctioned on Tuesday morning, triggering an auto shutdown that resulted in the loss of 985 megawatts of power – all due to the misplacement of a chair.

The plant owner, state-run Taipower, said the incident did not cause any grid power outages, although the power supply light turned yellow from green, indicating the system was running at 6-10 per cent of operating reserve ratio.

Both the power company and the Atomic Energy Commission, a government agency for atomic safety, confirmed there was no concern about radiation release.

An investigation by the Association for Natural Energy pinpointed the cause: misplaced furniture. Staff working in the control room moved the chair to clean and, in the process, knocked the acrylic protective cover of a main steam isolation valve switch causing it to tilt, shift, and close, setting off a chain reaction that tripped the main steam turbine and stopped the reactor.

Taipower filed a report on the 6:30am oopsie and by 11:40pm the reactor was approved to restart.

On Monday (July 26), astronauts said goodbye to a cornerstone of the International Space Station and captured stunning images of the compartment burning up in Earth's atmosphere.

A Russian Progress cargo vehicle towed the module, called Pirs, away from the space station and down through Earth's atmosphere to ensure the module burned up completely and reduce the odds of any large chunks making it to Earth's surface.

"Quite a strange feeling to see a part of your ship fly away in mid-air (so to speak — no atmosphere here duh)," European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet wrote in a statement shared with the photographs on Monday. //

Russia had launched its Pirs module in 2001; since then, the module, which served as a port to the space station, hosted more than 70 different capsules and supported Russian cosmonauts conducting extravehicular activities, or spacewalks. //

To make room for Russia's new science module, dubbed Nauka, which launched on July 21 and will arrive at the station on Thursday (July 29), Pirs had to go. Yesterday's fiery retirement ceremony marks the first time a major component of the International Space Station has been discarded.

Socialism is all about control. To achieve control, the left uses a variety of techniques. For best effect, they sometimes combine techniques. Combining fear with envy can be very powerful. There’s even a parable of sorts about this effect. The bucket of crabs analogy goes something like this: If you have a bucket of crabs, they are all fat and happy at the bottom of the bucket—until one of them tries to escape. When one of them attempts to better his situation, the others pull him back down into captivity.

The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) is deftly using that combination of fear, calling it “safety,” along with the “bucket of crabs,” technique. Here’s how. The United States has produced a gymnastics phenomenon in the person of Simone Biles. This young lady, through dint of dedication, hard work and the quintessentially American attitude of being willing to “roll the hard six,” is performing routines that appear to defy the law of gravity. She is in such a class by herself, that the other crabs in the bucket have contracted with FIG, the gymnastics governing authority, to pull her back down with them. //

Scoring in high-level gymnastics is markedly different than in most other sports. Rather than athletes earning points throughout a performance, the decision-makers at the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) pre-assign scores to routines based on the difficulty of the skills involved. Then, judges evaluate execution in real-time, docking points from the potential total every time a gymnast makes a mistake during their program. //

Biles suggested that the FIG has serially undervalued her skills because "they don't want the field to be too far apart," she told The Times. If the FIG keeps her provisional scores low, Biles' thinking goes, th[a]n other gymnasts may have a fighting chance.

Yossi Gestetner
@YossiGestetner
Jan 6th was the worst attack on the Capitol since 1812? Odd because in 1954, five congressmen were wounded on the floor when 4 terrorists opened fire from the visitor area. (Prez Carter later commuted/reduced the sentences.)

https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2020/05/1954-shooting-at-the-u-s-capitol/ //

A lot of things happened on January 6th. What did not happen is a hitman directly ordering people to attack the Capitol, in this case, Donald Trump. During his speech, Trump specifically asked people to peacefully protest. That some of the protesters didn’t is ultimately on them for choosing not to listen. We have agency in this country, and people are responsible for their own actions.

Besides, there’s precious little evidence there was any intent to carry out a real “hit” that day. Those that entered the Capitol had ample opportunity to cause bodily harm to people inside and they didn’t. That includes police officers who stood in the hallways telling crowds to stay back. That the officers did that is commendable, but the reality is that they could have been easily overrun. That they weren’t is evidence that the crowds were merely looking to cause a scene, and that’s exactly what happened.