atomic_fungus (atomic_fungus) wrote,
atomic_fungus
atomic_fungus

#6569: That's today's beginning, right there

Today's Rotten Chestnuts is about the current state of the Democrat party, and it says, "...when Stephen Douglas is your best case scenario it's about to start raining bullets." The context of this is a discussion of how the Democrat party is failing to operate, from a management or command-structure viewpoint.
Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the platoon leaders and they are--as much as it vexes me to write this--doing a good job. They're supposed to represent the viewpoint of their constituents on the national stage, and since their constituents are rabid antisemites and brainless hipsters, respectively, they're succeeding brilliantly. The problem is, they're not thinking up like a good platoon commander should, and so you get the schadenfreudily delicious spectacle of the entire Democratic Party concluding that a "resolution" against "hate"--the easiest gestural-politics slam dunk this site of "kittens are cute"--is just too extreme for the American people.
Stephen Douglas could have gotten that thing passed, he says, but....

Well worth reading.

* * *

Captain Marvel awesome, Infinity war "boring". That's how you know you're reading a review that you do not need to take seriously: when they refer to a movie as "boring" that had you on the edge of your seat the entire time.

The soyboy who wrote the review says that this movie is better than Iron Man. I mean, look at this drivel:
The simple answer of "saving the universe" doesn't cut it for this script, and Larson's character has to face off with various friends and foes to figure out an answer to that question that she actually believes in. Gosh, even typing that sentence makes me well up with emotion, thinking about the surprises and delights that Larson unearths for her character running up to the film's bombastic conclusion.
Translation: PLEASE WOMYN SEE HOW FEMINIST I AM PLEASE LET ME SEE A PUSSY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I DON'T MIND BUZZ CUTS ON WOMYN PLEASE

...holy shit. I think rereading that paragraph just cost me a few millmeters of length, if you know what I mean.

* * *

File this under "stopped clock". It is indeed so that Google especially is becoming--if it is not already--a monopoly, the kind of massive corporation that the antimonopoly laws were meant to prevent.

WTF if Microsoft including a browser in Windows 98 made them a monopoly, then Google sure as hell is one. "We have the #1 search engine on the Internet, the biggest email service, and about forty percent of the installed cell phone OS market. We also have this and this and that and the other thing."

* * *

Global warming is all about scientists getting government research money.

* * *

Democrats attempting to replace the voters. This should be stopped by the Senate; and even if it's not, the President will veto it.

I kind of wish that the right to vote was spelled out in the Constitution, explicitly, in the original document. The Founders left the franchise up to the states--because the original model for the US was essentially a confederation of independent states--and that endured until the federal government started gathering power to itself. But if they had simply stated that only citizens of the US may vote, that would make this Democrat ploy a lot harder to pull off.

On the other hand, though, the Founders probably envisioned a simpler tyranny than the one the Democrats are attempting to emplace.

* * *

This point seems obvious, no?
Since Mr. Clyburn dismisses the pain and suffering endured by people who are still living among us, his statement seems to obviate the need for us to pay reparations to black Americans, none of who are alive today who were once in chains. Thanks for that clarification, sir.
Yep! Thanks for that. The next time we hear talk about "reparations" we can mention this.

* * *

Reporters try to focus on the important bit.
The fact that the Democrats are circling the wagons around an open, undisguised anti-Semite who refuses to stop making anti-Semitic statements is mentioned only in passing; no, the idiot reporter thinks the real story here is that the Republicans are "pouncing" on it. News items like this are the best proof of media bias. Find me a story in the MSM wherein the Democrats are said to be "pouncing" or "seizing" on something and I'll eat a bug.
That is exactly so.

* * *

But perhaps "tenuous" is the word, after all.
Now, the indomitable Pelosi has just been beaten down by her own political party. Led by the anti-Semitic wing, comprising young Muslims, young socialists and the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Democrats forced Pelosi to back down, to cave to pressure.

She had wanted to pass a House Resolution condemning anti-Semitism, something that has lately taken up residence in Democratic minds and hearts. Faced with a backlash from the left, she watered down the resolution… to include every Democratic special interest group. So, Rep. Ilhan Omar won. Louis Farrakhan cheered. So did David Duke. The great Pelosi lost her own caucus.
Here's the problem: leftism always goes after the Jews first. ALWAYS. It's the first thing that happens in any country where socialism takes hold that there are also Jewish people: they go after the Jews. It's an extremely effective indicator of just how bad a movement is.

Just take a look at the history of Jews in Europe and Russia and the middle east. Anywhere there is a socialist movement and Jews, they are immediately at odds with each other--and if the socialists win, the Jews suffer terribly.

This is a bellwether moment for the Democrat party, the first time since WW2 that they officially went on the record as not giving a rat's ass about Jews. And that's not a good trend.

* * *

Illinois governor's new tax scheme is going to cost a lot of people too much money, and because these are the people who can afford to leave the state, it will increase the rate of exodus of producers, eroding the tax base further.

* * *

That will make for interesting events, won't it? "I love this story, because 1, I hate the Olympics and 2, I want conservatives to do well in 2020." Seconded.

The thing is, this will all run in one direction. It will be "trans"-women (who are biological men that identify as women) beating the hell out of biological women in all the womens' events. There will be no--or, at best, extremely few--counterexamples, where biologically female contenders beat biologically male contenders in the mens' events.

There will, I expect, be more than one new record set for womens' events.

I don't know what effect it will have on voting in the US, but it will rub peoples' noses in the whole transgender issue. One way or another they'll have to decide what they think about it. Ace thinks that will work well for Republicans; I'm not so sure, but I do know that it'll be damned entertaining to watch RuPaul's Drag Olympics.

* * *

Awesome. Dragon 2 made a successful landing, unscathed. The flight, docking, and recovery of the thing makes for a successful test.

The US can once again send people to space.

Realize something: the hiatus in manned American flights to space between the last Saturn and the first Shuttle flight was six years. If a manned Dragon capsule flies this year, the hiatus after the Shuttle will have lasted eight years. Nine, if they wait until 2020. And the only reason America can send people to orbit in 2019 is because of SpaceX, a private company. NASA didn't build this; they're still fucking around with feasibility studies and component tests.
Also resting on their laurels are other American launch providers...Boeing, Lockheed, ULA. The Delta IV and Atlas V looked *really* outdated compared to Falcon, and the ULA "Vulcan" launcher, which throws away the whole booster except for a propulsion/avionics module which is to be air-snatched prior to splashdown, is a half-hearted joke compared to the Falcon 9's recoverable boosters.
Any rocket which is totally disposable looks like an antique, thanks to SpaceX.

Especially since SpaceX just flew a totally-reusable and privately-owned spacecraft, one which can fly to orbit and come back to Earth and then be reused, just like its booster. And Dragon 2 will be reused for an in-flight abort test.

This is what the future of space travel looks like. And the view sure looks good.

* * *

To be fair, it was a good idea. But realistic SF is an extrapolation of current technology, and actual space rockets were already not far-fetched in the 1920s. Bear in mind that Goddard's first liquid-fueled rocket flew on March 16, 1926--we're just shy of 93 years from that date at this writing--and his treatise "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes" was published in 1919 after being written in 1916.

The state-of-the-art in technology was ripe for the development of liquid-fueled engines, else he would not have been able to do it; it was merely a matter of doing the necessary research to figure out the particulars.

* * *

Now for the fun stuff.

Today's XKCD:



I always knew there was more to it than that.

And:

Given what it says on the overhead, I too have to wonder how badly he failed. In D&D, a "critical fumble" occurs when you roll a "1" on the 20-sider, and then roll another "1" on your follow-up roll. I'd say that if you're trying to read a caliper, and something ends up on fire, that'd be a critical fumble, all right.

Heh.
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