Bullet Points:
** Your hard-earned tax dollars fund the salaries of federal bureaucrats and support public-sector unions, which negotiate sweetheart deals between bureaucrats and management. Federal bureaucrats feverishly renegotiated those deals just before President Donald Trump entered office, attempting to block his reforms. Now, the Trump administration demands that each agency provide an accounting of the money it spent negotiating collective bargaining.
** Jules knows the rainbow’s secret and shares it here.
** Prominent Democrats are leaning into podcasting now because they genuinely believe that Kamala Harris only lost the election due to the influence of right-wing podcasters and bloggers. Democrat elites are desperate for someone to attain Joe Rogan’s popularity by echoing DNC talking points. Liberal elites are making the same mistake they did in 2016 when they attributed Trump’s victory to Facebook propaganda. The reality is that left-liberals still control mainstream media, entertainment, and academia. Big Mike (Michelle) Obama’s various podcasts are made possible by enormous investments in production and marketing. Yet, their organic audience is smaller than that of niche YouTubers who make commentary videos as a hobby.
** Eight public Universities in Maine have caved to President Donald Trump’s order and will no longer allow trans-identifying men to compete in women’s sports. Fox News reported that a statement from the United States Department of Agriculture said that the University of Maine System (UMaine) will follow the Trump administration’s order barring trans-identifying men from competing in women’s sports after university funding was paused amid the state’s continued refusal to comply. The high schools in Maine will still allow boys to play in women’s sports, but you take your wins where you can.
** (h/t Claudio) (link) A discussion of newer formulations for solid rocket propellant and new launch systems for the battlespace. They may also be packing a more lethal warhead on these rockets, but the article didn’t go there.
** Overtime – Eric Daugherty tweeted, “Trump says he will pay the astronauts stranded in outer space overtime out of his pocket.
“DOOCY: They didn’t get any overtime. $5 per day per diem, that’s $1,430 in extra pay. Can the administration fix this?
“TRUMP: No one mentioned this. If I have to, I’ll pay it out of my own pocket, OK? I’ll get it for them. I like that.” And he won’t tax the OT.
** Not fast enough – An FBI agent who accused the first Trump admin of political bias and claimed that former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani “may have been compromised” by Russian agents was arrested at JFK International Airport on Monday before he could flee the country.
** CBS tweeted, “President Trump’s dismantling of Voice of America will pave the way for U.S. adversaries to tell an anti-America narrative, VOA Director Michael Abramowitz told Nancy Cordes in his first interview since VOA’s full-time staff and contractors were placed on administrative leave.”
Mollie Hemingway beat me to the punch, tweeting, “Don’t worry, CBS, no one can push an anti-America narrative as well as you do.”
** Far-Left Greenpeace International must pay $660 million to Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners and subsidiary Dakota Access LLC for inciting illegal activities during anti-pipeline protests.
** The South China Morning Post: “A compact, deep-sea, cable-cutting device, capable of severing the world’s most fortified underwater communication or power lines, has been unveiled by China – and it could shake up global maritime power dynamics. The revelation marks the first time any country has officially disclosed that it has such an asset capable of disrupting critical undersea networks.
The tool, which can cut lines at depths of up to 4,000 meters (13,123 feet)—twice the maximum operational range of existing subsea communication infrastructure—has been designed specifically for integration with China’s advanced crewed and uncrewed submersibles, such as the Fendouzhe, Striver, and Haidou series.
Developed by the China Ship Scientific Research Center (CSSRC) and its affiliated State Key Laboratory of Deep-sea Manned Vehicles, the device targets armored cables – layered with steel, rubber, and polymer sheaths – that underpin 95 percent of global data transmission.
While it was created as a tool for civilian salvage and seabed mining, the dual-use potential of the tool could send alarm bells ringing for other nations.”
** I am SURE the TDS haters will find a way to say this is pure Nazism, bc, well, TDS/Orange Man Bad…I can’t wait to find out how. I don’t think Joe Sixpack realizes how much he has been taken to the bank by the Globalists. He senses it but doesn’t quite understand it. If this deal comes off, it will be authentic to many. You have got to know the Leftist elites want this deal to succeed like they want a hole in the head. Expect Leftist Judges to do all they can to block it, but the rats are swimming, and the water level is rising. It sucks to be a Swamp critter right now…Trump has been in office for 2 months.
“The only fully new deal appeared to be an investment by Emirates Global Aluminium in what would be the first new aluminum smelter in the United States in 35 years, the White House said, adding the plant “would nearly double U.S. domestic aluminum production.”
** The Air Force “may need to look at service life extension, potentially, of the KC-135,” Gen. John D. Lamontagne said in a prerecorded interview with Defense One streamed March 20. “Recapitalization of the tanker fleet is a priority,” he said, but “it’s going to take a really long time” to acquire replacements for the youngest KC-135s, all over 60 years old. “We have continued to upgrade the KC-135, and we need to keep doing that,” Lamontagne said. “If we recapitalize the KC-135 to the tune of a squadron a year—which is typically how we acquire platforms—we’ll be flying the KC-135 into the 2050s. … I think that’s where we’re headed.”
Space War
“The United States is approaching a turning point in space security and needs to step up its game before Russia and China close the gap in capabilities, a U.S. Space Force general said. Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein spoke at the 16th annual McAleese “Defense Programs” Conference in Arlington, Virginia, warning the Space Force needs to rethink how it defends the country’s satellites.
Guetlein argued that the Space Force should shift its focus from managing spacecraft in support of defense infrastructure on the ground to growing its ability to keep pace with the on-orbit weaponry being developed by the country’s adversaries. “We are in the process of pivoting from what used to be a service focused on providing the most exquisite space services on the planet to the warfighter and the nation,” Gen. Guetlein said, “to make it a warfighting force capable of protecting and defending our capabilities in and through space.” (more here)
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS)
One of the seven small federal agencies that President Donald Trump ordered downsized or eliminated on Friday was rife with corruption, with its employees hiring friends and relatives, commissioning paintings of themselves, and using government credit cards to indulge in constant luxuries.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) occupied a nine-story office tower on D.C.’s K Street for only 60 employees, many of whom worked from home before the pandemic. Its managers had luxury suites with full bathrooms; one manager would often be “in the shower” when needed, while another used her bathroom as a cigarette lounge. FMCS recorded its director as being on a years-long business trip to D.C., so he could have all of his meals and living expenses covered by taxpayers simply for showing up to the office.
FMCS is a 230-employee agency that serves as a voluntary mediator between unions and businesses. As an “independent agency,” its director nominally reports to the president. Still, the agency is so tiny that, in effect, there is no oversight at all—and it shows, becoming a real-life caricature of all the excesses that the Department of Government Efficiency has alleged take place in government.
A reporter spent a year investigating the agency a decade ago and found egregious and self-serving violations of hiring, pay, contracting, and purchase card rules. He could not discover why the agency existed other than to provide luxurious lifestyles for its employees. Endless junkets to resort destinations, which employees openly used to facilitate personal vacations, were justified as building awareness of the agency in the hopes that someone would want to use its voluntary services.
FMCS seemed, quite clearly, to exist for the benefit of those on its payroll and not much else. One employee said, “Let me give you the truth: A lot of FMCS employees don’t do a hell of a lot, including myself. I’ve stayed because I don’t feel like working that hard, plus the location on K Street is great, plus we all have these oversized offices with windows, and management doesn’t seem to care if we stay out at lunch a long time. Can you blame me?”
Identify the Aircraft
1
2
Not a B-2 – getting sorties in over Yemen
3
Identify the Missile System
4
Identify the Armor
5
Parting Shot
A Three-hour Tour…
End
1 is a French Bréguet 460 Vultur 1930’s. 5 or so built.
2 is B-21 Raider
Yes!
Let’s hear it for the Three Hour Tour!
X2 @ Moloaa Bay on Kaui, seeing that very blonde brunette dialoging live on set with the professor sure would have been a hoot. The intro and closing footage was filmed in the Bahamas and coconut island near Hilo. ( wiki)
They went on a three hour tour. Got caught in a storm, got lost. Nowhere does it say how long they were caught in the storm nor how far they travelled while caught in said storm.
–
So the premise that the Minnow could only be 48 miles or so away from its home port is a fallacy. She could have crashed on some local islands or been pushed all the way to the middle of Micronesia or up to the Aleutians or down to the Galapagos or to the west coast of the Americas.
–
It’s a simple ‘Not Enough Data’ problem. As in, “How far did The Minnow travel on its Three Hour Tour before being washed up on the Beach?” Not enough data. Not at all. Bad question.
–
Better would be to find the island of marooning, then talk to the survivors and see how many hours they were caught in the storm, and then work back to find an answer. Surface speed could be very variable as most likely the boat did not travel a straight line from home port to marooning island. Same with miles travelled, straight line distance does not, in a real world, equate to actual surface miles travelled during said storm.
–
And then, of course, there is the ultimate answer. “It’s in the Script” is a valid answer to any question regarding a tv show. Like in “Star Trek Voyager,” why did the ship not have power for the replicators but had all the power for the stupid holodeck (both systems using roughly the same technology as the transporters, which also worked.) If you say, well, different voltages and amperages and wattages and ohms and other technobabble, then I scoff at you, loudly, because any good electro-sparky-weenie can, with knowledge of incoming power parameters and needed power parameters, cobble together a correct converter, and once a temporary power converter is in place, then the ship’s sparkies can program the correct parameters into the replicator/manufacturer and produce a seriously rugged semi-permanent converter and then can spend time making a very robust heavy-duty converter. Otherwise the answer is, of course, in the script. Because it is. Handwavium. Lack of mental powers of the writers. So in the script.
Voyager – they once got that Super Dooper Drive and tried it out. Could only run it for X amount of time before things started going bad. So the took down the whole thing and went back to the old drive. Why didn’t they run the new drive for X minus some time interval. Stop and do the tourist thing in the new area. Then go on again. They could have explored AND gotten back to Earth a lot sooner. The writers had no clue how to handle high tech.
Voyager, by the end of the first season, should have looked like some bubba rednecks got ahold of it. Meaning that other peoples’ tech would be cobbled in, welded on, hooked over and such.
–
By the last season, maybe the oval saucer section and the engine nacelles would mostly look somewhat original, but the engine struts, the lower hull and anything else would be overly bodged and futzed and rat-rodded and…
–
Or, most likely, would look like a completely different ship.
–
But the writers and producers had no imagination. Get that? A sci-fi show with no imagination.
–
And, yes, with sooperdooperdrive, to go back to the bubba redneck thing, treat it like nitrous in smuggler cars or water in aviation engines. Gives short bursts of improved performance. But used too long will detonate something bad, really bad, oh so really bad, like firing the engine through the vehicle bad or catastrophic extremely rapid unexpected thermal/gaseous disassembly of just about anything connected to the engine.
–
But, no. That would require constant futzing with the models and CGI. But it would have been an excellent continuing story line. Kind of like the use of a brassiere in place of a spring in a pump on the USS Sea Tiger in “Operation Petticoat.” Janeway coming onto the bridge and asking “What’s not working this day?” or the engineers, after something goes… very wrong and the magic smoke is released, “Well, that didn’t work.” Or…
The only valid question about Gilligan’s Island is: Ginger, or Mary Ann?
Both.
Identify the Aircraft:
1. Bréguet 460 Vultur
2. Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider
3. NHIndustries NH90-NFH
Identify the Missile System:
4. RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile
Identify the Armor:
5. Sabrah light tank
Exactly
Maine; See something good can come out of Atlantica! Hey, left coast, Portlandia, buckle up! Can you feel the Bern? I can, all the way from Moscow, I can hear the bell toll, clear to his 3rd residence on Lake Champlain Islands. WTP revolution, ” a future to believe in” are the red headed mothers @ school board meetings that ” Won’t Back Down”
For your driving pleasure,
” only one life, I’m gonna stand my ground…”
Pearl Jam, live from Missoula 5.28.03
https://youtu.be/XlsWFZ0vBZg?si=SRQUaI3JygZ6c09T
IDA-
1. Breguet 460 Vultur
2. Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider
3. NHIndustries NH90 NFH
IDMDS-
4. MK-144 or RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) system
IDARMOR-
5. Sabrah light tank
Well done!
Awesome ” reporting” h/t L.L.
Incredible graphics as well! That a.i. assist of the autopen and 2028 sparkles bright.
VOA;
One of my best friends developed and maintained short wave NGO towers and equipment on Palau. In 2021, the O’Biden regime flipped the light switch of VOA Admin. The voice of liberty and unalienable rights that was broadcast for decades behind the iron curtain and SE Asia went darkerthanever. MLGA ( Make LIBERTY Great Again )
Is there possible reform for NPR and VOA, or will the reset require casting a whole new liberty bell?
To quote Jesus – don’t put new wine in old bottles. I don’t see a future for the democrat propaganda machines. I recall when FBIS (Foreign Broadcast Information Service) was a thing. I used to pour over those translated feeds – for years. They were very useful and AI could translate on the fly without a need for human labor. Maybe that will become a thing again?
I would make an uneducated guess that a trunk of fiber could be / has been installed to Virginia NG *ye to secure FBIS location(s) for T.P.T.B. that have WTP’s best interests as priority. To address the dog* directives; will certain @gencies such as sea ey* eh be eval’d but not made public? Is Congress/ committee addressing the Pentagon dark budget just show talk?
The graphic on missions to orbit is impressive, but the tonnage to orbit is even more impressive to me. SpaceX put around 87% of every pound put in orbit by all those other companies or countries. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/05/spacex-launching-87-90-of-all-orbital-payload-in-2024.html Musk says he expects they’ll reach 90% of every payload pound into orbit this year, and that’s without Starship. He goes on to say, “Once Starship is launching at high rate, probably >99%. Has to be or we can’t build a city on Mars or base on moon.”
~
“We file almost no patents, so nothing stopping competition from copying us.” https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1792689139470704718?
~
One of the things that gets me is that reusability has been an obvious solution forever, but nobody had the balls to work toward it as diligently as SpaceX did. It was safe and secure to build things like that crap-fest SLS (Space Launch System) on a cost-plus contract. Virtually no reuse, just “use it and toss it in the ocean,” and a contract that has never had a single thing delivered on time or on budget. As long as Uncle Sugar was paying for it, there was no pressure to do more for less.
Exactly, nobody including the government (paying cost+10%) cared how much money they spent. USGOV would deficit spend a trillion to Boeing and never blink an eye. Musk changed all that and as he said (linked above and mentioned elsewhere), he doesn’t bother with patent. By the time you’ve copied him, he’s moved on. Reusability would matter to anyone who was spending their own (as opposed to other people’s) money. Musk is also correct that it requires large lift capacity to get above low orbit (space station) in any meaningful way for any sort of sustained operation.
.
I may be the only person on this blog who Musk has interviewed, so I’ll take it a step farther. He’s a visionary guy who isn’t afraid to take a risk. He cares about money to the extent that it gets him through the project, but money and power is not his motivator. I turn 70 this year and I don’t think that my capacity to work 24/7/365 would last. I’d burn out. I also don’t need the money (though he pays in stock primarily with a 5+ year vestment) and I’m enjoying my life as it is without the drama that working for him entails. I have great respect for Elon Musk – huge respect.
Incredible LL, appreciate the behind the scenes viewpoint…validates what I believe about the man.
Ah, patents. Heinlein dealt with the concept of patents in his story about the invention of Ship Stones (energy storage devices.) The inventor spent years inventing said devices and then when he was planning on patenting them, his wife asked him why? “Because reasons” wasn’t good enough for wily wife, as she said basically “Why give someone, in 17 years, the ability to recreate what you created? If you keep the process secret, and make it so they can’t reverse engineer it, then nobody will be able to recreate it and you’ll have the monopoly.” (greatly condensed and from my memory so not word-for-word.)
–
SpaceX and Tesla are doing so many advanced things that only by someone stealing all aspects of the technology, from finished projects to the programming of the machines that make the finished goods to the understanding of all the processes involved, a complete 100% espionage job, can they recreate exactly what SpaceX and Tesla are doing.
–
As to reusability, I’ve read a lot of the post-Apollo Moon Mission reports and such. NASA was, if continuing on with Apollo capsules and some variations of Saturn, going to 70-90% reusability of Apollo capsules and 100% reusability of 1st stage F-1a engines and possibly the whole 1st stage. 2nd stage engines probably recoverable at about 75% and 3rd stages 100% reusable as would be ept ikn low earth orbit for use for building stations and such, with unneeded engines being returned to home for reuse.
–
And then the Dems hit with all the cutbacks and pushing that turd of a Shuttle. That’s what killed innovation.
–
As to the SLS, NASA originally thought of using the venerable F1 engines from the Saturn days. Budding, energetic and enthusiastic engineers went around scanning any and all pieces of F1 hardware that they could find, and using modern computer modelling and CNC equipment, turned the million parts and welds of the F1, which were lovingly hand made by hand by very unvirgin machinists and welders, into 40 pieces that could be bolted together, at a 2000’s cost of maybe $500,000 an engine, with each engine being pretty much 100% reusable and, really, at $500k a piece, not a big loss if not recovered. So, instead, NASA went with a 100% reusable engine, the SSME/RS25 from the Shuttle days, itself a trumped-up J2 engine from the 2nd and 3rd stages of Saturn, that only costs $75 million a piece, and will throw away the engine with no recovery. Get that? Government efficiency at work there. Take a $75 million dollar engine that mostly costs so much because it’s reusable and throw 4 of them away after every launch, rather than being frugal and cheap and only disposing of $2 million a launch.
–
Flaming bung-holes, all. And we wonder why SLS is megabillions over-budget and behind schedule.
The Bernie/AOC shitshow was in my town this week. They held a rally at the Teachers College (UNC) that filled the parking lots. The University is a blue pimple on the reddest county in the state.
The internet pundits are proclaiming AOC as the new face of the Democratic Party. That should keep them irrelevant during the next election cycles. In fact, she is the perfect Democrat. Once a broke bartender, now worth a million plus, she is an inspiration to the rest of the grifters.
I think that it’s splendid for the donkeys to push for AOC (who has donkey teeth if you hadn’t noticed) as their brain trust and their leader. What a wonderful idea. Somebody as dumb as Kamala – but she’s a minority and a woman, which they know is a winning combination. She’ll be worth 100 million by the next election cycle.
Local news comments in the Tucson area regarding AOC and Bernie weren’t very complimentary…..
It’s interesting how many democrats have settled in Tucson.
Holding rally’s in all the places that are ruining each state with all the heads full of mush (h/t Rush)…how predictable.
>>BREAKING<< Democrats have declared that they will no longer buy dolphin-safe tuna following the recovery of SpaceX 9, wherein dolphins welcomed the SpaceX Dragon capsule back to Earth.
You joke, but those folks are going full crazy…your satire may just come to fruition. The real bet isn’t that it might be said but which Democrat will say it?
👍
Solid rocket motor fuel: Castelion Corp., new company composed of former Space-X folks has a lease on some land near my domicile, in which to do development and testing of SRMs. Cannot wait to hear the roar and see the plumes!
Just for fun, I found and read the book “ I G N I T I O N ! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants” by John D. Clark. Them scientists and engineers have been fooling around with some STUPID DANGEROUS products in the search for more energetic fuels. Way too much energy in energetic, IMHO.
Waiting for a range report :)
“I G N T I O N !” is a great book. Long out-of-print, but you can find the pdf version with a little searching.
a (perhaps interesting) sidenote:
not every corporation/business venture mentioned in VM is beyond the average investor
but quite a number are either a privately-held corporations or traded on a foreign market exchange
This may not be the best time to buy gold.
Since the Hydra-6 purchase fell thru (still trying to get my full deposit back from Ebay)…I NOW WANT #4…mount that puppy on the tall outcrop in full view of Hwy287 and those wishing to do harm may think twice about breaching the front gates.
***
Note to self: DO NOT become an astronaut, the pay stinks and when some irresponsible buffoon sitting behind the Resolute Desk telling everyone they are the Party who cares decides to leave you stranded floating above the planet for months on end until a private space travel company jumps in and offers you a ride home to terra firma. $1400 for OT? How about $140,000.
I get $64 a day, but I have to buy my meals
.
We got $25 when OOT…told the Principles they needed to do a little more plus pay for fuel. Every once in a while I’d take the crew out for a decent meal…work away is hard enough, eating a burger or burrito in your hotel room every night needs some mitigation to maintain morale. Jobsite Keurig helped…and I only supplied good coffee, life is too short for a lousy cup of joe. (Clearly not all of us get those epic meals abroad like LL – Heh)
👍
** will all 230 employees of the FMCS be prosecuted to the full extent of the law? for what crimes (other than pulling the proverbial wool over)?
** will Jules consider holding (perhaps 3-week) classes in situ/locum? including stay at a local?
** solid vs liquid fuel propellants: just been wondering if anyone has done any further research into gravity since Galileo Galilei droped his balls off the Leaning Tower of Pisa. neutraliztion of “gravity”? “anti-gravity”? hate to be thought of as a scifi nut which I’ve been since the spending the rainy summer of ’48 in cold, dreary New Hampshire (found a copy of Astounding in my counselor’s shelves – should be prohibited reading material for an imaginative 7 yo)
** Is the PRC announcing/threatening that they now have the ability to disrupt all international communication, both via cable and satellite signal jamming, bringing advanced Western nations back to the 19th Century giving rise to the nuncii again
A Clear and Present Danger.
Exactly.
Watching To Catch A Smuggler…aside from the drugs and other illegal items, which is massive, on top of sirect threats as you outline, the amount of Chinesium counterfeit stuff the major airports (JFK, LAX, and MIA) confiscate is in the hundreds of millions of street value, especially when there’s a major sporting event. Counterfeit Super Bowl rings were going for $50k apiece, even with misspellings (funny how the most major sporting event symbol is a huge piece of jewelry). Usually this stuff is poorly packed in that crappy cardboard, so usually easy to spot. Never knew the level of what people try to bring into the USA…or export, like firearm parts to outfit some foreign terrorist/drug shop in Argentina.
“Counterfeit Super Bowl rings […] with misspellings”
I can see the inscription now: Super Bowel LVII Champion
—
It’s a dork who laughs at his own jokes, but: That’s so stupid I made myself laugh. /hangsheadinshame
Heheh…it was similar, “Guper Bowl…”
Ah, counterfeits from India, right?
Mollie Hemmingway is doubtless correct about CBS, but to be fair, they were quoting (or paraphrasing at least) VOA Director Michael Abramowitz.
Is there a swampier creature than Abramowitz? I looked up his VOA biosketch page.
“A graduate of Harvard College, Abramowitz is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the George W. Bush Institute Advisory Council. He was formerly a Marshall Memorial fellow at the German Marshall Fund and Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.” Plus a 25-year career at The Washington Post, and a former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Levine Institute for Holocaust Education.
—
How many magical key words does Abramowitz have anyway? Harvard, Council on Foreign Relations, Marshall Memorial fellowship, WaPo, Holocaust. I have no idea what the Berlin Prize is or how important it is, but I don’t see how it could make him more of an insider (of The Cabal that totally does NOT exist) than the preceding key words would indicate. As VOA Director, Abramowitz’s job description is essentially that of Chief American Propagandist (I use the word in its non-pejorative sense). Is his CV the CV of an America-first person, or the CV of a Globalist person?
Globalist
Sums it up, which will be PDJT’s next round: To weaken the globalist hold on just about everything, which will be his largest battle. Covid was a both a test and a culling PsyOp as the elites never suffered, in fact, they prospered while the little people took it in the shorts.
Regarding that Chinese underwater cable cover, no, it wasn’t designed with real commercial application. It’s for actively disrupting active underwater cables during a military action. The possibility that it could be used to salvage unused cabling is icing on the cake.
–
And, really, it’s Chinesium. They say it can do this and that and the other thing, but can it, really?
–
How many remember the truck/launchers toting the new hotness supersonic/transonic carrier-killing cruise missiles during ChiCom Military Parade Day? The ones where the sides of the supposedly supersonic/transonic missiles wobbled like they were paper or cardboard stretched over a frame and painted?
–
Never trust China. China is Asshole.
X2
Speaking of armor, we’re all looking forward to Fortress Europa without the US.
RAM – Rolling Airframe Missle.Same platform used with Phalanx (often combined).
I used to work there. I always enjoyed going into the program building and watch them test system upgrades. Watching something that big move that fast is very impressive.