We’ll be seeing 90°F starting Tuesday with high humidity and higher temperatures being added to that starting on Wednesday which could last until Saturday. It looks like the the A/C here at The Gulch will be getting a workout leading up to the Fourth. In other words, a pretty normal summer week.
This also means I will check out the A/C in the trusty RAM 1500 as I usually have to add refrigerant to the A/C system every year or so. I didn’t have to do that last year so it wouldn’t surprise me if I need to take care of that this year. At least it is something I can take care of here at The Gulch.
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This isn’t news to any of us space geeks that have been paying attention to the news.
Boeing’s Starliner Is Such a Disaster That We Don’t Even Have Words
I don’t know if it is just Boeing or if it’s NASA or both that have led to this piece of junk.
Boeing's Starliner, originally intended to serve as an alternative to SpaceX's workhorse Dragon spacecraft, has been nothing short of a disaster.Not that it really matters all that much seeing as the ISS will only be in service for another 4 years (maybe) and the Starliner will have no reason to exist. NASA has spent a couple of billion dollars (that’s billion with a ‘b’) on this barely functional piece of junk.
It's been just over two years since the spacecraft launched to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams on board, a maiden crewed voyage following years of delays and major technical setbacks. But thanks to persistent issues with the thrusters and major helium leaks, the capsule stranded the duo in space for nine months, and eventually returned without anybody on board.
Since then, Boeing has continued to struggle to get its act together — over a decade and a half after it struck up its Commercial Crew Program contract with NASA. As Spaceflight Now reports, the long-awaited follow-up to the calamitous test flight — which won't even have a crew on board — still doesn't have an official launch date and could be as far as a year away.
It doesn’t help that Boeing is the aerospace company it used to be after McDonnell Douglas took it over years ago and changed from a ‘can do’ engineering company that also built airplanes and spacecraft to one that managed to screw up the venerable 737 airliner, the mainstay of commercial aviation for decades.
Rather than wasting anymore taxpayer money trying to make this hanger queen serviceable, it would be cheaper for NASA to buy Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX...or better yet, hire SpaceX to take care of all its manned mission requirements. At least SpaceX still has that “can do” mindset that used to be part and parcel of NASA in the past and can do it a heck of a lot cheaper than Boeing can.
As someone who has been space geek since Alan Shepard became the first American in space, I have to say that NASA has become one big disappointment.
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I saw this earlier last week and it took me a while to decide whether or not it was good news or bad news. Maybe you can figure out which it is.
Auto Glass Repair Businesses Suffer As Oakland Break-ins Decline
So, it’s good that people smashing glass to break into cars and trucks has declined, meaning less property crimes of that type in Oakland.
But it’s bad news for all the businesses that have been replacing all that broken glass because there’s not as much business as there was in the past.
I’m leaning more towards the “It’s Good News” side of the debate.
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I have to agree with those who think that SNAP benefits should not be eligible to be used for junk food.
Republican Texas Rep. Brandon Gill pressed a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) advocate Thursday on why taxpayers should pay for sugary drinks.Coca-Cola, Cheetos, Doritos, Twinkies, and thousands of other ‘junk’ foods are not necessary to meet the nutritional needs of SNAP recipients. That’s just more of our hard earned dollars going to waste and running up the size of the grocery tab while at it.
The House Oversight subcommittee examined waste, fraud and abuse in SNAP, a roughly $100 billion program that provides food for more than 40 million Americans. Gina Plata-Nino, director of policy and advocacy for the Food Research and Action Center, could not provide a straight answer on why tax dollars should cover SNAP recipients’ sugary drinks.
“You think they need Coca Cola to survive?” Gill asked. “You think that’s the most appropriate use of our tax dollars? … Do the American people need Coca-Cola to survive? You think there’s some Americans who need Coca Cola to survive? Is that your testimony? … I think most people can rationally say that you don’t need Coca Cola to survive, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I agree that we have a hunger crisis and that we need to address it by ensuring that people have the food resources that we need,” Plato-Nino said.
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I had to read this three times to make sure that it wasn’t a typo or an unlabeled Babylon Bee post. But it looks like it is legit.
Don Lemon Admits Trump Is a ‘Media Genius’ Who Played CNN Like a Fiddle
According to one of CNN’s more infamous ex-anchors, the network’s adversarial relationship with President Donald Trump isn’t actually quite as antagonistic as it seems.It seems they didn’t realize that Trump has always known how to play the media. He’s been doing it for decades. He understands how the media works, understands how politics works...though I will admit that he didn’t truly understand how Washington works at the beginning of his first term in office. (He more than made up for that during his second term when he hit the ground running and didn’t waste any time after taking the oath of office.)
Ex-CNN host Don Lemon — no stranger to recent controversy — recently appeared on the “What Now?” podcast, which is hosted by former “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah.
The two men covered a wide range of topics, all with a heavy leftist slant, but the conversation did get a bit critical of a nominally left-leaning network in CNN.
“Did you guys at CNN ever know that [Trump] was, like, playing you guys like puppets?” Noah asked Lemon. “Did you ever figure it out at some point?”
“Oh, yeah,” Lemon replied.
The 60-year-old Lemon continued: “So, I think, honestly, they maybe knew somewhere in the beginning, but it was good for business. Do you remember Les Moonves? He goes, you know, ‘Trump is bad for the country, but he’s good for business.'”
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it again – Trump is like a stage magician showing the rubes (the media and the Democrats) the shiny object in his right hand, using it to distract them while with the left hand he’s getting things done.
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In last week’s TOAS, I mention the underwhelming response to the opening of the new Obama Presidential Library.
Now to add insult to injury, it seems that none of the visitors to the Presidential Library could name a single accomplishment by The Won during his eight years in office.
On Thursday, Johnny Belisario, a producer for Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime, conducted a series of “man-on-the-street” interviews with visitors to the newly opened Barack Obama Presidential Center. He had one question: “What has been Barack Obama’s greatest accomplishment?”That’s sad. Just sad. For all of the things he has claimed he’s done, visitors couldn’t name a single one? I find that disturbing to no end.
The results were startling. Remarkably, none of the people interviewed — visitors who respected Obama enough to honor his legacy at his presidential center — could name a single success.
One middle-aged woman said, “Right now it is, you know, I can’t remember, it was a lot.”
A second woman replied, “I can’t think now. You caught me off guard. … Somebody help me out.”
“I’m gonna have to say just being there,” another responded.
I am certainly not going to claim it was Obamacare, something that has failed spectacularly and made medical even more expensive all while eating up hundreds of billions of dollars. I am not going to say it was all the “racial healing” he brought up again and again, because if anything, he set back race relations years, if not decades.
I will give him credit for one thing, that being the ugliest Presidential Library in US history.
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Fortunately for me it is going to be a short work week as I will be taking a couple of vacation days the extend the Fourth of July weekend. As such, it means I only have to deal with Monday and Tuesday at work, and almost all of that will be paperwork.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where preparations for the Fourth of July continue, the weather looks like it’s going to cooperate (mostly), and where the thought of Monday doesn’t bother me this week because I have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off.