Category: Uncategorized

Hinderaker: At Least Half-Right, Tonight.

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Tonight, John finally concurs that — in all of the most likely 2024 scenarios — the GOP top to bottom of the ticket… get slaughtered.

Utterly… obliterated, and almost solely due to guys like him fecklessly supporting… a madman and serial felon… for six CV plus years.

But he only blames the madman — not accepting any personal responsibility… for his own willing, lusty and it turns out… suicidal support of… Tangerine (up until just a few months ago, post two of the now four indictments).

So… quintessentially… vintage Hinderaker.

Hilarious.

You mage the bed, then shat in it… and now expect some maid to come along and wipe it all clean, for you?!

Good luck.

Just climb into that bed, that’s your own stink you smell. You earned this likely endlessly restless, pungent string of nights, man.

Out.

New Discovery: Our Local “Solar Max” Events Completely Change The “Weather” On Neptune — Even Across 2.5 Billion Miles Of Inky Blackness…

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This is a fabulous follow-on piece of NASA Hubble space discovery science.

After about two decades of observations, the team has shown a clear 12 year cycle pattern, in clouds on icy distant blue Neptune. The pattern is driven by eruptions, on our own Sol — also a 12 year pattern, but delayed — for two years of transit time, across the vast distances, to reach Neptune.

That is a startlingly wide-spread effect. Here’s the full NASA story:

…When it’s stormy weather on the Sun, more intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation floods the solar system. The team found that two years after the solar cycle’s peak, an increasing number of clouds appear on Neptune. The team further found a positive correlation between the number of clouds and the ice giant’s brightness from the sunlight reflecting off it.

“These remarkable data give us the strongest evidence yet that Neptune’s cloud cover correlates with the Sun’s cycle,” said de Pater. “Our findings support the theory that the Sun’s UV rays, when strong enough, may be triggering a photochemical reaction that produces Neptune’s clouds.”

Scientists discovered the connection between the solar cycle and Neptune’s cloudy weather pattern by looking at 2.5 cycles of cloud activity recorded over the 29-year span of Neptunian observations. During this time, the planet’s reflectivity increased in 2002 then dimmed in 2007. Neptune became bright again in 2015, then darkened in 2020 to the lowest level ever observed, which is when most of the clouds went away.

The changes in Neptune’s brightness caused by the Sun appear to go up and down relatively in sync with the coming and going of clouds on the planet. However there is a two-year time lag between the peak of the solar cycle and the abundance of clouds seen on Neptune. The chemical changes are caused by photochemistry, which happens high in Neptune’s upper atmosphere and takes time to form clouds….

Now you know… out, grinning — with grand nieces in tow, for the day, again!

नमस्ते

Hinderaker: Now Utterly Irrelevant.

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Last night, I mentioned that John doesn’t know remotely enough Georgia state level criminal law to be trusted to comment on Tangerine’s fourth indictment. He’s an idiot on the topic.

He proves it, anew tonight. But as a bonus, he throws in the idea that one person who opposes his dishonesty speaks for all Democrats, even as he offers zero evidence that the person who vexed him… even is a Democrat.

Charming. Hinderaker has reduced his blog to a middle school level, series of teenage boy taunts.

As I say — he’s become… irrelevant.

Out.

The Fifth Circuit’s Political Opinion Is… Meaningless. The Supremes Will Decide This.

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Just as we said in April 2023, the only time the long-existing federal rules on the so called abortion pill (FDA approved since early 2000; expanded in 2016) might change… (if at all) is after the Supremes rule, next year, thus:

Updated 04.21.2023 @ 7 pm Eastern — the time out is now permanent until the Supremes rule on any future appeal out of the Fifth Circuit. End update.

I am loathe to link Fifth Circuit’s nonsense — deciding that an FDA approval by a federal agency during the Bush43/Cheney first term (and never before challenged in 23 long years!) may be invalidated, four administrations later… on an APA claim… no less, is just… silly. It is trash-bin liner fodder, already.

So it is on to the Supremes, come mid 2024. Out.

नमस्ते

Texas GOP Gov. Abbott Is Now In An “International Treaty” Kettle Of Very Hot Water — And The Fire Is… Fully Banked! [Irony Edition: “Texas Will Pay For It!”]

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In an overnight federal court filing in West Texas, an updated, official US Survey map (said map now having been fully-ratified by the proper governmental authorities in Mexico, our fast international ally) has been offered by the US’s lawyers. See at right. [Also see one of my prior backgrounders on it all, here.]

The most salient import of this otherwise black and white map is really the dotted blue line. That is the agreed official, to the inch, border between our nations, on the Rio Grande. And as the black pylon markers indicate, almost the entire lower three-fourths of that anchored structure lies not just in a federal waterway (bad enough!)… but also is driven into the riverbed / land mass that belongs exclusively to… Mexico. This idiot built it… on Mexican property. Damn.

In sum, Mexico would be within its international treaty rights, to come raze the bottom three-fourths of it, tomorrow. And I take it, our federal government — one with exclusive authority over our international border affairs… would support that outcome.

Moreover, unsurprisingly — but in deliciously ironic fashion — the US may well support the government of Mexico — in CHARGING the State of Texas, and its lawless GOP Administration… for the COST of removal.

It was wrongful, as a matter of law, when erected by Texas.

So, instead of Tangerine’s crazy wall rhetoric, here two years on, we see “I’ll make Texas pay Mexico” as a reality — a fact based, soon to be court-endorsed… remedy.

“Whoa! Good shootin’ there, Tex!”

नमस्ते

Having Finally Seen “Oppenheimer” Overnight…

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I cannot shake two thoughts. One, most immediately, the guys at right are not to be trusted with them. Especially not… a four times indicted delusional 77 year old crook (with an irrationally vindictive streak as wide as his backside).

My second thought though is admittedly an easy piece of arm-chair quarterbacking, with the benefit of three-quarters of a century’s hindsight. Yes, day by day thousands of Allied and Japanese troops were still dying… but we only waited three days — between Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

This — even though we knew that the governmental decision system then prevailing in Japan was immensely slow, as to “big decisions”.

And we well knew these cities were primarily (inexorably) civilian targets, by the very nature of a city-leveling single blast, each. [By day two of the “Become Death” era, we had seen Little Boy’s mayhem.]

So — I am struck by that: why not wait a month? probably 200,000 Japanese lives in Nagasaki would not have ended, in horror. Yes, perhaps an additional few hundred each of Allied and Japanese soldiers would die… but Truman could have largely dis-engaged, while the Emperor weighed his fate.

All that said, I am grateful for the reputation repair (for Oppenheimer, even though he was a famously-complicated human — he had no interest in any form of treason). And I’m grateful for the unflinching look at small men, given too much power improvidently (Downey’s character).

It is — to me — clearly a warning: the small man at center right above cannot be trusted with those keys. Ever again. Out.

नमस्ते

What Mirengoff Gets Right — And Gets… Wrong, About Iowa/2024.

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Again Paul has a largely realistic piece — especially this tight lil’ bit:

…Trump arrived at the event around midday and was gone before 2:00 p.m. He declined to participate in Reynolds’ sessions….

I’ve seen lots of explanations for why Trump remains so popular among [MAGAts] even after losing the 2020 race, probably costing the GOP a Senate majority twice, sparking violence at the Capitol building in January 2021, and getting himself indicted, justifiably, for obstruction of justice and mishandling classified information….

But what he gets wrong… is that the four felony indictments… mean the main-line GOP will never vote for him in the general (and likely will refuse to nominate him at the ’24 GOP Convention).

So, he will run third party… and that is a cake-walk, no matter whom the Democratic nominee might be. So, in essence — Iowa and New Hampshire and even Florida or Georgia… won’t matter.

A cake-walk, for the Democratic Party to take all three main prongs, and to retain them past 2028.

Buckle up, buttercup.

Now, A New Horizons/NASA Check-In — At Nearly Two Decades On…

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We have followed the New Horizons mission for most of its 17 year life now. [As an example, here’s an earlier background one — from July 2015.] It has been a spectacular five billion mile journey, thus far.

It yielded amazing images of Neptune, and the first close up surface images of tiny Pluto, including the heart shaped ice formation, over a third of that globe (see below left), when properly oriented in space. About the size of a grand piano, she is now zipping on an upward trajectory, out of our orbital plane — headed to ever deeper Kuiper Belt objects. But that may be a decade more, of travel time. These distances are just… unimaginably vast. So, we will wait — patiently for the next 17 years… to pass.

In the mean time, this fall, she will point her camera backward, and down, to capture BOTH Neptune and Uranus in a single frame. True enough, that image will be very low res, but it will add to the data from both Hubble, and from citizen scientists — which we’ve already collected, thus:

…In September — in tandem with the Hubble Space Telescope — New Horizons will turn its color camera toward Uranus and Neptune. From New Horizons’ position in the Kuiper Belt, more than five billion miles from Earth, these unique images acquired from “behind” the two giant planets will provide new insights into the atmospheres above and the energy balance within both worlds.

“By combining the information New Horizons collects in space with data from telescopes on Earth, we can supplement and even strengthen our models to uncover the mysteries swirling in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “Even from amateur astronomer telescopes as small as 16 inches, these complementary observations can be extremely important.”

With New Horizons and Hubble focused on the details of the planets’ atmospheres and the transfer of heat from their rocky cores through their gaseous exteriors, observers on Earth can measure the distribution of bright features on Uranus or characterize any unusually bright features on Neptune. They can also track those features much longer than either spacecraft….

Now you know… enjoy your Sunday evening, one and all. I certainly will… gazing skyward, this evening, and remembering the Perseid meteor showers (ten to twenty per minute, visible with the naked eye, as of tonight), all part of my youth in the high Rockies… smile. Out.

नमस्ते

Scott Johnson Thinks (Wrongly!) That “Flashy Rhetoric” Will Win Out In Fifth Circuit, Over Well-Settled Black Letter Law. It Won’t.

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This morning, clearly despondent over the losses, on at least six fronts, of what the GOP thinks of as “culture wars”… Scott writes a howlingly unhinged piece about how… Louisiana and Mizzou will win over the federal government — after Judge Doughty’s insane 105 page nonsensical, internally-contradictory trial court “opinion”.

Uh-huh.

I think his is… silly.

So the state lawyer offered a couple of witty zingers. So what?

So the GOP members of the panel asked tough questions, designed to highlight the GOP position. So what?

No one on that side… dealt with the actual law: that a sitting administration may advocate, even forcefully, in the press for its policy positions. If a paper decides not to run an unhinged, non-scientific and thus dangerous anti-vax bleating… even if encouraged by the feds — it is not government censorship.

The NYT is a private company, just as FB and Twitter are. They make their own rules.

Get over it Scott.

This is a dead bang loser for Louisiana — and just to remind — here’s why.

Out.