2010 Will Mark the End of the NASA Space Shuttle Program: Here’s to a Good NASA Year

The space shuttle fleet is scheduled for retirement in 2010, unless they extend the program a little longer so that there isn’t as much downtime between the Discovery’s final flight and the first operational flight of the Orion space vehicle. 

Here is the published schedule for the final five flights:

February 7—Space Shuttle Endeavour will “…deliver the final connecting node, Tranquility Node 3, and the Cupola, a robotic control station with six windows around its sides and another in the center that provides a 360-degree view around the International Space Station.”

March 18—Space Shuttle Discovery will “…carry a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module filled with science racks that will be transferred to laboratories of the International Space Station.”

May 14—Space Shuttle Atlantis will “…will carry an integrated cargo carrier to deliver maintenance and assembly hardware, including spare parts for space station systems. In addition, the second in a series of new pressurized components for Russia, a Mini Research Module, will be permanently attached to the bottom port of the Zarya module.”  This mission will be the final flight of the Atlantis.

July 29—Space Shuttle Endeavour will “…deliver an EXPRESS Logistics Carrier-3 (ELC-3) and an Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) to the International Space Station.”  This mission will be the last one for the Endeavour.

September 16th—Space Shuttle Discovery will “…deliver the Express Logistics Carrier 4 (ELC4), a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MLPM) and critical spare components to the International Space Station.”  This is the final scheduled mission for the space shuttle program. 

I hope all of these missions go off without a hitch.  I think it’s safe to say that if they lose another shuttle prior to the scheduled retirement of the fleet, they’ll ground the shuttles permanently and send the hardware up to the ISS by other means.

Two of the shuttles are being offered up as museum pieces; one museum has put in a request for the Endeavour that NASA is considering.

I hope everything goes off without a hitch.

$10,000 Reward for Killers of Salvation Army Major Offered: Killers Still on the Loose

A $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the two murderers who killed a Salvation Army major in front of his three children on Christmas Eve continues to grow.

So far there have been no arrests in this horrific crime.   Hopefully the police are closing in; it sounds like they’ve gotten some tips.

Dems Should Pay Attention to What Greece is Doing: Their Reckless Spending May Put Us Into the Same Situation

Greece is making massive cuts to their budget in order to get their debt problem under control.

I hope the Democrats in Congress and in the White House are watching what the Greeks are doing and are taking some notes.  It’s what we should be doing right now too.

Murder of Salvation Army in Front of His Children on Christmas Eve is Heartbreaking: Police Need to Get The Killers and FAST

I was sickened to learn of the murder of a Salvation Army major in front of his three children on Christmas Eve.

The two killers confronted the major and demanded money, then shot him in cold blood as his kids watched in horror.

I feel sick.

Raising the Debt Limit Every Few Months is Making Our Financial Situation Even Worse: Congress & Administration Need to Cut Their Spending Immediately

Congress and the President aren’t cutting their spending the way that they should be, and are making our debt load even worse.

They can’t be talking about turning their attention to cutting the debt after they pass health legislation.  They need to postpone their debt-exploding health care reform bill and address the debt NOW, before it’s too late.

For months they’ve been saying that the debt exploded under the Bush Administration.  That’s true, but that’s no excuse for continuing this very bad practice.   They came in promising to restore financial sanity to Washington; it hasn’t happened, and I have no confidence in the current Congress or Administration to fix THE biggest threat to our nation.

We will have to look to the next Congress and Administration to get us out of the mess that no current Democrat is interested in fixing, in the least.   They’re competing to get as much bacon as they can.  Revolting!

Copenhagen Conference is a Circus: They Have No Business Agreeing to Any Protocols Until They Get the Science Mess Straightened Out

The Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change--or whatever the hell it is that they’re calling it—is the largest gathering of global warming alarmists on the planet, and they have no legs to stand on.

Their data has been criminally tampered with by global warming supporters in the scientific community, and then destroyed, leaving no evidence behind other than an e-mail trail that someone forgot to erase.

All it is is a gathering of neo-communists, environmental wackos, and malcontents who don’t want to see the world as it is; they’d rather waste time and resources trying to stop a naturally occurring process instead of adapting to the situation and moving things forward.  And spend money on their own causes too.

A little more responsibility in planning for the future would go a lot further rather than trying to stop global warming, which is going to happen regardless of what the wackos in Copenhagen decide upon.  This is like trying to stop the sun from setting.   They can spend trillions of dollars trying to stop it, but it’s trillions of dollars that they could be setting aside to relocate entire cities and communities that will be flooded out in the next hundred years.

That entire conference is doing a pretty good job of blowing a lot of hot air around. But that’s all that they’re doing, as well as arguing about a bad plan that won’t work, and is based on sketchy science.  I think this conference is premature, and ill-considered, given what they’re up against.

They ought to get with the program.

NO to Raising the National Debt Ceiling: It’s Time to Cut the Budget and Use the Savings to Pay Down the Debt

Congress is preparing to raise the debt ceiling again to avoid defaulting on the debt.  No, no, NO!  Congress and the Administration need to cut their budgets and use the savings to PAY DOWN the debt, not add to it.

Adding another $1.8 trillion to the borrowing ceiling is way out of line.  This government has no business spending more money than it has.

I have little faith that this and  future administrations will have the discipline to reign in spending the way that they need to, before we’re presented with a bill that we have no way of paying, without adding more debt.

We also need to be able to tell China off without fear of China saying “no” to our borrowing requests.  This is a symbiotic relationship that must be changed.  The current Administration seems to want to avoid talking to China about it’s human rights record because we owe the Chinese SO much money.

Better start the cutting party!

Since Reid’s Compared GOP Efforts to Block Health Care Reform to Efforts to Block the Stoppage of Slavery, Here’s A Comparison for Reid in the Same Vein

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has made some more outlandish statements about his GOP colleagues and others trying to slow down the runaway health care reform train recently. In the statement, he said that those efforts were comparable to the efforts to prevent emancipation of the slaves before, during and after the Civil War.

He left out a VERY important fact on his statement.

It was the DEMOCRATS of that era who blocked the emancipation of the slaves, and resisted the 13th Amendment. Radical REPUBLICANS pushed through those changes and ended slavery. Some progressive Democrats joined the Republicans in ending slavery.

I would like to point out that no Democrat who favored slavery back then is alive today; that was then. Not today.

It should also be noted that in the more recent civil rights era, when they were trying to pass additional civil rights legislation (the 1964 Civil Rights Act), the Democrats filibustered the legislation for 83 days, and included a 14-hour speech by Senator Robert Byrd.

For Senator Reid to say something like this is more proof that he’s in over his head, and his runaway health care train is heading for a major derailment. And WHY should the Republicans be the ones to change their minds? He can’t even get his OWN party on board his runaway train.

I’m actually enjoying watching Reid and President Obama squirm.

MSNBC Desperation on Global Warming Continues to Show: Now They’re Running Old Stories as if They’re Breaking News

MSNBC has a “breaking news” item on their web site today: “Rising Ocean Levels Could Threaten Maldives.”

No duh!

This is a re-run of a story that has already been gone through by all the news organizations, and is already common knowledge.  According to MSNBC, they’re running the story in advance of the Copenhagen summit on global warming.

They should be reminding the summit that the Maldives WILL be underwater and that they will need help in relocating their entire population.   But no, MSNBC is dedicated to stopping the rise of the waters.   MSNBC needs to get real and face the facts as they ARE, not as they want them to be.  And so should the politicians and the news media who support a failed theory.

Former WWE Wrestler "Umaga" Dies at Age 36: Heart Attack Suspected

Another former WWE talent, "Umaga" Edward Fatu, passed away at age 36 on Friday at a Dallas-area hospital.

He had been battling a lot of the same demons that have claimed other professional wrestlers and was suspended by World Wrestling Entertainment in June after failing a drug test.

I still don't think that these wrestling organizations are doing enough to change the culture that says that their athletes have to have huge muscular bodies in order to be considered "successful" and that drug abuse, in any form, is bad for their employees, and bad for business. WWE has moved forward with it's Wellness Policy, but it doesn't account for the damage that many of these wrestlers had done to themselves years ago.

Look at Eddie Guerrero; the former WWE great had undergone major struggles, but conquered his demons and had been drug and alcohol free for years; but the damage had already been done and he passed away at age 38.

Road Warrior Hawk is another example. He had turned his life around too, but the damage had been done years before and it caught up to him. Hawk passed away at age 45.

These wrestler deaths seem to come in clusters. I hope this isn't the start of a new one.

May he rest in peace.

Michigan Snowbirds Need to be Counted as Michigan Residents for 2010: State May Have Already Lost 11% of Population in Last 3-4 Years

The Michigan government is asking Michigan snowbirds, or residents who go south for the winter, to fill out their census forms when they get mailed out in February or March.   They need to indicate that they are residents of Michigan on the forms, and not residents of Florida or Arizona, or wherever they go during the winter months. 

The government estimates that 200,000 snowbirds were counted as residents of other states during the 2000 census; as a result Michigan lost a Congressional seat and about $2 billion over the last ten years.

If the estimates are correct, and we’ve lost 11% of our population, the results will be devastating, with the loss of billions in federal aid, and the proportionate loss of representation in Congress.

Accuracy in the census and the addition of the snowbirds will stem the heavy loss of workers in our struggling state.

If you’re a Michigan snowbird, please read the following from the State of Michigan:

LANSING - Lt. Governor John D. Cherry, Jr. reminds Michigan residents who leave the state for warmer climates during part of the year, commonly referred to as snowbirds, to make sure they are counted in Michigan for the upcoming Census in 2010.  Every resident of the United States should be counted by the Census just once and in the correct state. 
"Michigan residents who spend a smaller portion of the year at a residence in another state should be sure to fill out the Census form for Michigan," said Lt. Governor Cherry.  "There are dramatic financial impacts to Michigan, and we need to be sure that our residents are counted here and not in another state."

Unfortunately, Census forms that will be mailed in March do not have clear instructions for people with more than one place of residence.  This runs the risk of many snowbirds being counted in the wrong state.

Michigan snowbirds should follow these guidelines:

1.  Zero should be entered on the Census form received at the second residence, as the number of people residing there, and the rest of the form should remain blank.  It is also a good idea to write "usual residence elsewhere" on the form so that the Census Bureau will know the reason for entering zero.

2.  If other individuals are occupying the home in Michigan while permanent residents are away, those completing the Census form should include the permanent residents.

3.  If no one is staying at the Michigan home, residents should wait until returning to Michigan to complete the Census form.  If a form hasn't been received, Census personnel will contact residents between May and July.

For each Michigan resident who is missed by the Census or who is counted in a different state, over $1,000 in federal funds that should be allocated to Michigan each year will be spent elsewhere. 

"Just missing one person in the Census means a loss of at least $10,000 in funds to Michigan over the course of a decade," added the lieutenant governor.  "We can't afford to not be counted."

Michigan has more snowbirds than many other states, with an average of 2.1 percent of Michigan's residents identified as part-year residents.  Most of Michigan's part-year residents have their permanent homes in Michigan and spend the smaller part of the year in another state, which means they need to be counted in Michigan.

Obama’s Afghanistan Plan Will Work Only if Taliban & al-Qaeda are Degraded and Afghan Military is Upgunned to the Point That Taliban Can Never Match Their Firepower

President Obama has decided to increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan to 100,000 in the next six months before beginning a staged pullout starting in mid-2011.  It looks like he has a target of a U.S. troop pullout before the next U.S. presidential election.

His goals are ambitious and not without a lot of risk.  There has to be progress on many fronts, including progress in stabilizing Afghanistan’s government, guaranteeing basic human rights, reducing corruption in government, controlling the drug trade, and building up their military to the point that the Taliban and/or al-Qaeda will not be able to defeat them in sustained battle.  That’s the key.

I’m not sure if Congress will play ball, though. The left wants no troop buildup, the right wants no timetable.  I disagree with both sides.  There should be a temporary surge, and they should be talking inside the Administration about a withdrawal date.  Whether that timetable should be made public is a different story. 

They should let the surge go forward, with full funding, then start pulling back depending on what’s happening on the ground.  And the Afghan government should be given the same deal as the Iraqi government has been given: fight your own battles.  And we should be providing the tools that they need to get the job done.  The Afghan Army should be the strongest military force in the country, not the Taliban and not al-Qaeda.  And the same thing goes for the Iraqi Army in Iraq.

We owe it to the soldiers who have died there to make sure that their sacrifice wasn’t in vain.  And to make sure that we won’t be back in either country in the future, retaking the same ground AGAIN that’s already been paid for in blood.

MSNBC Declares We’re “Losing” Battle on Global Warming: No We’re Not—Global Warming is Being Redefined More Accurately Now and They Don’t Like It

After days of refusing to carry any stories that covered the contamination of all the gloom and doom research that the global warming crowd has been quoting for years, MSNBC started crying about it with a story proclaiming that the battle over global warming is being “lost.”

In other words, their version of global warming is getting trashed in favor of a more accurate and reliable accounting of what global warming actually is—a naturally occurring phenomenon that has gone on MUCH longer than humanity has been around.  And will still be going on until the day the sun consumes the planet.

But I’m happy to see that they’re now talking about the inevitable changes that will be coming, instead of trying to stop the changes.   It’s about bloody time too.  We can no more stop global warming than we can stop the sun from setting. 

Now, Senator Boxer is crying about charging someone who exposed the global warming data manipulations (that we all knew was going on) with a crime to cover up her and her compatriots’ own crimes of collusion and abuse of power with regards to falsifying global warming data and trying to sell the public a boatload of crap. 

And it’s also interesting to note that the manipulated data has mysteriously been destroyed.  Perhaps Senator Boxer and Speaker Pelosi should investigate THAT.