Category: Uncategorized

“DO Look Up!” — This Weekend — To Catch A Pre-Dawn View Of The Comet Nishimura. It Won’t Return Until The Year 2435…

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In the last hour or two, before sunrise this weekend — into Tuesday, if you look toward the northeastern horizon, low in the sky — near Venus at that time of night… you will seek the long hook of the constellation Leo, or the Lion. [I think Venus will be appear to be setting, as Leo is rising, then. See my illustration at right, derived from the wonderful and free Distant Suns iPhone app.]

Here are all the other sky-watching details you’ll want to know, from LifeHacker online:

…The universe is delivering a cosmic gift this coming week — a newly discovered comet will zip by earth to say hey before leaving our planetary neighborhood for more than 400 years. The green comet C/2023 P1, or “Nishimura,” is already visible in the predawn sky, but over the weekend it will grow brighter and should be visible without a telescope or even binoculars….

On Sept. 10, it will rise at 5 a.m. It will appear closer to sunrise each subsequent morning, until Sept. 17, when it will be invisible because of the glare of the sun. Tuesday, Sept. 12 is the sweet spot: That’s the night Nishimura will be closest to the earth — only 78 million miles from your house….

Excellent (that is well inside the Earth’s orbit distance — from the Sun). As you know, interstellar celestial events… always fire my imagination. It was essentially… ever thus (away from light pollution in the high Rockies of my youth, the night sky is literally powdered with wonders). Smile.

नमस्ते

UPDATE: That WA Public HS FB Coach?! A Quitter, On His Team — After One Game. Charming.

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Many here will recall the astro-turfed case that made it to the Supremes. Many will also recall that the 5-4 conservative majority held that… public prayers for a whole team, at the 50-yard line, at the end of each public high school football game… did not create a coercive environment for public high school student athletes who wanted to play varsity football, but did not wish to be peer-pressured into public prayers.

The Supremes didn’t say much about the impressionable kids, focusing instead on the aging coach’s “right” to use a public high school athletic event as a platform, to — in show-off fashion — exhibit his purported religious views. [Justice Sotomayor’s dissent is the better view here, BTW: “…A public school district is not required to permit such conduct; in fact, the Establishment Clause prohibits it from doing so….”] In Thomas-speak, then, the rights of one aging whyte coach should outweigh those of 50 or so impressionable youths.

Then… he was so busy doing the for-cash far right speaking tour stops… he did not reapply for about two years, to coach anywhere. He was reinstated this summer at the Bremerton (WA) High School… and just quit — after his first game.

Again — forget the commit he made to his impressionable young athletes.

He walked… out. He wants to live out of state. And presumably go back to speechifying, for far more money — for a few hours, one or two days a week.

Coaching it seems… is too much like… real work for him, now that he’s tasted the Hinderaker-allied think tank money — for doing essentially nothing. Not quite the Liberty University “movie of the week” ending Justice Thomas had imagined.

Charming.

I Think This Is… Designed To Distract From The Fact That His Fav, Kristi Noem… Wants To Be Trump’s 2024 Running Mate, As Veep.

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John must be completely… nonplused. So as ever — it’s distractions, tonight.

She was his great whyte far right GOP hope, in the category of female… for 2028.

Now… she’s damaged goods.

If Tangerine chooses her, she will be the second coming of Sarah Palin.

A punch line. Nothing more.

And we know… Hinderaker is privately… fuming, tonight.

Perfect.

[U] The Feds Tell Gov. Abbott “Spare Us The Foot Dragging. You Moved It Before, In Three Days.”

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GOP Gov. Abbott’s foot dragging will fail.

The Fifth Circuit will likely say that it will stay the removal after September 11, but it certainly is clear on the law, that Texas had no right to float it — and a move to the Texas state owned shore is in order. But we shall see. Here’s the Biden Administration position, on it all, just filed about an hour ago:

…The order on appeal (as of last night) directs Texas to, in coordination with the United States Army Corps of Engineers, reposition (not remove entirely) the floating barrier Texas built in the Rio Grande by September 15. PI Order at 41-42. Texas asserts that “a ruling by 12pm on September 11 is needed for ‘coordination’ with the Corps per court order, and with the State’s contractor, who confirmed that repositioning was possible in ‘four or five days.’” Mot. at 3 (citations omitted). Before September 11, then, Texas’s compliance with the district court’s order requires only preparatory work for the repositioning, including coordination with the Corps — which stands ready to coordinate with the State and its contractor when they are ready.

Even Texas’s purported September 11 deadline is dubious. Texas cites only a statement from its contractor at the preliminary-injunction hearing explaining how it was possible to move the barrier system “in just a matter of four or five days,” Tr. 102; the contractor did not say that it could not be moved in less time than that….

Texas by its own admission certainly does not need to move any buoys before September 11 in order to comply with the district court’s order, there is no good cause to administratively stay the order prior to September 11. And the United States is prepared to respond to Texas’s motion for a stay pending appeal at such time as the Court can consider the motion and response in time to rule expeditiously on Texas’s stay motion….

Late Thursday Evening Update: The Fifth Circuit, as expected, has entered a seven day stay, while the above coordination is sorted out. But it is not yet clear whether that will last beyond the initial, perfunctory, seven days.

Well… it will be good theater, watching that buffoon Greg Abbott squirm under the weight of the federal judiciary catching him… in bold-face lies. And, in unmistakeable contempt… for clear, long-standing, well-known federal law.

But to be clear, this is the human cost of delaying (even by seven days) the removal of the floating razor wire: Norlan Bayardo Herrera is dead. He would not be, but for Gov. Abbott’s razor wire. “The 20-year-old Honduran refugee drowned recently trying to cross the swift Rio Grande near Greg Abbott’s barbarous barrier. His story has been completely ignored by U.S. English-language news media. (Source: Univision, published in the Daily Mail)” — Will Bunch

नमस्ते

Astellas Has Moved To Dismiss — In Its Own HHS / CMS Suit — Since None Of Its Meds Are Subject To Mandatory Price Negotiations.

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There is literally no plausible basis to complain of a “harm” — in government price negotiations, when one’s drugs are not even being listed to be part of the “negotiations process”. None.

Clearly, Astellas got way out over its skis, on this one. [I might also opine that there is likewise no harm, in a free market economy like ours, in being told one must negotiate in good faith, on price, with an admittedly large purchaser.]

And, as we’ve long said, there is no constitutional right to force the government to buy one’s monopoly product, at one’s most preferred price. [Do take note, here Merck — breaking open the US patent vaults / cabinets, and then these government buyers… making some for themselves (i.e., declaring a humanitarian emergency), is within the federal agency powers, on older but still very high priced — and life saving meds. Like the ten on the current interation of the list.]

In any event, Astellas (quite wisely) has withdrawn its strike suit.

Astellas realized that it ought to, before the federal purchasing agencies seek — and win — awards of their own attorneys’ fees, for having to defend what is a patently frivolous federal lawsuit (with what are taxpayer funds, at least at the moment).

Onward, smiling. . . in time, this will be the outcome on all of them, Condor predicts… [sure — it is possible that in some 2025 or 2026 round, an Astellas drug will be placed on the list, but by then… Merck will have already lost].

नमस्ते

On September 24, On A Desolate High Plain, In Utah — The OSIRIS REx Mission Will Drop Off A Capsule Of Protoplanetary Material From Bennu…

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We’ve covered this throughout COVID-19 lockdowns and now, well-beyond. [Here is one of many prior backgrounders of mine.]

Later this month, a well-trained NASA team will trek into the Utah desert, to collect a parachuted return capsule from the OSIRIS-REx mission. Inside, we expect to find proto-planetary material (about 2 to 8 ounces of the stuff) from about four and a half billion years ago — not terribly long after planet shards were first beginning to clump together, in our own local group. Here’s the relevant blog entry, over at NASA:

…The sample of rocks and dust, which the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected from the asteroid Bennu in Oct. 2020, will return to Earth on Sept. 24, safely landing at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. The sample will give generations of scientists a window into the time when the Sun and planets were forming about 4.5 billion years ago….

Now you know — out, grinning. Prepping for some early winter myself, in the high Rockies, next week. Smile.

नमस्ते

Texas Gov. Abbott BACKSLAPPED, By West Texas Federal Dist. Judge Ezra! Texas Loses; “Floating” Razor Wire On Rio Grande Will Now Be Ripped Out.

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Well. Sanity made a comeback this afternoon in West Texas.

Gov. Abbott has been shown the gate — and a swift kick in the seat of his (wheelchair-bound) pants. . . by a very able Judge Ezra (a Reagan appointee, BTW — but a former US Marine!):

…Governor Abbott announced that he was not “asking for permission” for Operation Lone Star, the anti-immigration program under which Texas constructed the floating barrier. Unfortunately for Texas, permission is exactly what federal law requires before installing obstructions in the nation’s navigable waters. See 33 U.S.C. § 403.

Texas’s construction of the floating barrier has violated two of the three courses of conduct proscribed by Section 10 of the RHA. The first clause of § 10 prohibits “[t]he creation of any obstruction not affirmatively authorized by Congress, to the navigable capacity of any of the waters of the United States.” Id. The second clause makes it unlawful “to build or commence the building of any wharf, pier, dolphin, boom, weir, breakwater, bulkhead, jetty, or other structures in any port, roadstead, haven, harbor, canal, navigable river, or other water of the United States, outside established harbor lines, or where no harbor lines have been established, except on plans recommended by the Chief of Engineers and authorized by the Secretary of the Army….”

[T]he Court rejects Texas’s arguments and grants in modified form the relief the United States requests (Texas at its expense, must by September 15, 2023, reposition the barrier to the bank of the Rio Grande on the Texas side of the river)….

[T]he Court is directing that the buoy barrier be moved from the main waters of the Rio Grande River to the riverbank, rather than removal entirely from the river, so that the barrier does not impede or impair in any way navigation by airboats or other shallow draft craft along the Rio Grande River. The evidence has established that this can be done in a rather expeditious manner, as the Governor himself ordered movement of the buoy barrier, which the federal government maintained was in part in Mexican waters to a position closer to the United States side of the river…. [Ed. Note: There will be a final ruling removing it altogether,very shortly.]

On the bank — it should be noted, there — on solid ground, it may be very easily traversed, by draping heavy serapes and blankets over it, and or walking around it. What a stupidly cruel, and ultimately impotent… putz this Gov. Abbott is.

Sure… the moron may go ahead and appeal. But in the mean time, his obstruction of a federal waterway… will now vanish. If his Texas state employees don’t do so by September 15, the feds may simply destroy it, and send Texas the bill in full. Flawless.

नमस्ते

Mississippi? Funny, Hinderaker. Blue State California Is The Fifth Largest Economy On Earth.

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John Hinderaker ’s think tank claims Mississippi is a red state success story. Poppycock!

It’s just… silly. That state subsists on more federal aid money per capita than almost any other state (41% of its total budget — and it collects less tax than it takes in federal “transfer” payments). And… it is a tiny economy overall.

By way of example, as we’ve long proved, if Blue California was a country, it would be more powerful economically speaking, than all but five nations: only China, Russia, and Germany. (just ahead of India — with its far more vast population!). Obviously, the US itself would have a greater GDP.

So suck it, Hinderaker. Blue is more self sufficient (and vibrant) – by far.

And Tarrio got… 22 years, for his leadership of the Proud Boys’ attacks — on 01.06.21. Perfect.

Out.

[U] NY AG Office Moves For Sanctions — Against Tangerine’s Bad Faith Repetition Of Arguments He Long Ago Lost On…

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Well.

He is nothing — if not vexatiously predictable.

And NY AG Leticia James will win a monetary sanctions order, for Trump’s wasting taxpayer funds, in forcing responses to arguments that were long ago lost — as facially preposterous, in this same (and other similar) litigation in New York.

Perfect.

[Oh. And Proud Boy leader Tarrio just got… 22 years. Yep. Perfect.]

Out.

Noticed This — While This Week, My Bedside Reading Happens To Be… “The Historian”. Yikes.

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I won’t make too much of too little, here — for there is scant bio-science here. [And only slightly more archeology, as well.]

Mostly… only science fiction, really — and maybe a lil’ horror thrown in for good measure. Do read on, though — just the same:

…If reports from the time are to be believed, 17th-century Poland was awash in revenants — not vampires, exactly, but proto-zombies who harassed the living by drinking their blood or, less disagreeably, stirring up a ruckus in their homes. In one account, from 1674, a dead man rose from his tomb to assault his relatives; when his grave was opened, the corpse was unnaturally preserved and bore traces of fresh blood.

Such reports were common enough that a wide range of remedies was employed to keep corpses from reanimating: cutting out their hearts, nailing them into their graves, hammering stakes through their legs, jamming their jaws open with bricks (to prevent them from gnawing their way out.) In 1746, a Benedictine monk named Antoine Augustin Calmet published a popular treatise that sought, among other things, to distinguish real revenants from frauds.

Four centuries later, archaeologists in Europe have discovered the first physical evidence of a suspected child revenant. While excavating an unmarked mass cemetery at the edge of the village of Pień, near the Polish city of Bydgoszcz, researchers from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń unearthed the remains of what has been widely described in news reports as a “vampire child.” The corpse, thought to have been about 6 at the time of death, was buried face down, with a triangular iron padlock under its left foot, in a likely effort to bind the child to the grave and keep it from haunting its family and neighbors….

“To our knowledge, this is the only example of such a child burial in Europe.” The remains of three other children were found in a pit near the child’s grave. In the pit was a fragment of a jaw with a green stain, which Dr. Poliński speculated was left by a copper coin placed in the mouth, an ancient and common burial practice….

The book is one given to me by my mother some years ago… and it is a very worthy, if chilling, bedtime read — all these years on. Smiling… ever smiling. Out.

नमस्ते