Butch at home

It turns out that one of those "rescued" astronauts who returned from the ISS via SpaceX is a man of Christian faith. 

He's still getting used to earth's gravity but he's glad to be home. He says, "God is always good."

DOGE and Social Security

Antonio Gracias has been working on the DOGE team, recently looking into Social Security. He comes onstage with Elon to explain to an audience something surprising:

 

"New non-citizen social security numbers" dramatically grew during the last four years under the previous administration, from 270,000 in 2021 to over two million in 2024. That's an explosion, not just growth. About 1.3 million of them are already on Medicaid. Some actually voted in our recent election.

Antonio takes the time to honor the "very good people" working in Social Security who showed him what was going on, at their own risk. 

He says he's "pro legal immigration," and this chart is "not political. This is about the future of America."

Wiki on DOGE

If you wanted to find out what DOGE is, would you go to Wikipedia? Many would, because they think it is neutral and honest in reporting factual information in a non-partisan way. I wish that were the case. 

It has nothing good to say about this heroic effort to trim the federal budget. On the contrary, the reader only learns that DOGE is controversial, it inspires lawsuits, its claims to the discovery of fraud are false, its leader is ambiguous, it cuts good programs, it's a partisan political tool, etc., etc.

In short, Wikipedia's article is a hit job on DOGE and on Elon Musk. It reads like a partisan political tool itself. 

Wikipedia is the product of Katherine Maher's priorities. "Consensus" and "getting things done" come before truth on her priority list. Vital information is missing from the article. There's no effort to acknowledge the legitimate views of the people who support it.

Transparent DOGE

New tasks are accomplished every day at the Department of Government Efficiency, and they're published every day. You can go to the website and check on their progress--every day.

We who respect the responsible management of money are happy about this. We've known in a general way that the federal government was handling that management irresponsibly to some degree, but we discovered that it's much worse than we feared.

Take Social Security for example. Continuing work at DOGE reveals that the 3.7 million checks going out every month to people over the age of 120 (reported in this post) was just the beginning. 

Yesterday the website said that so far a total of 9.9 million people listed as over the age of 120 were receiving checks. Correction has been made, so those people are now listed as deceased, and the checks will stop. Whether that should be called "waste" or "fraud" doesn't matter. All of us should be happy it stopped.

It was unjust. The only people who are unhappy about the stopping of those checks are the cheaters who were cashing them.

DOGE staff

Six young men, quirky computer wizards, may have started this endeavor to make our government more financially sound, but DOGE staff is now professional. Their credentials from the private sector are impressive. Seven of them were interviewed with leader Elon Musk regarding their mission and their methods. 

They are working to take a trillion dollars out of the government's spending this year by eliminating fraud and abuse. Here's an example of fraud: over $300 million in loans was given to people under the age of eleven by the Small Business Administration, and another $300 million to people over the age of 120. 

The loans would have been questioned if the computer systems "talked to each other," that is, if the SBA system had been able to access the ages of those loan applicants in the social security system. It's clear to these DOGE staff what needs to be done: link up the computer systems.

One of these professionals was running his five businesses in Houston when he left to come help. Another is a CEO. Another is a co-founder of Airbnb. They're implementing, in Elon's words, "elementary financial controls." 

Scared of DOGE

Should Americans be scared of what DOGE is doing? There has been an effort to terrify Americans who legitimately depend on the government for entitlements. 

You may have heard some of these things (usually said or implied by politicians), but these fears have simple answers:

 1. "Unelected officials are running the Department of Government Efficiency!" Yes, although the president was elected by the people of the United States, the staff of DOGE were not elected by the people. 

But that should not alarm you. The federal government already had nearly two million unelected people working for it. 

2. "Maybe Elon Musk, the head of DOGE, will steal my social security checks!" He won't do that because he already is the richest person in the world, and he has several companies that are profitable. If he wanted more money, he could spend his time helping his companies.

3. "Entitlements like social security and medicaid will be cut!" The president has said more than once that they will not be cut. 

from Stream

Way too big

Everybody has known it for a long time: the federal government's spending habit has grown too big and needs trimming. Actually, what we need is not a simple trim but a huge haircut.

We spend enormously on education, but outcomes are mediocre; on health care, but outcomes are below standard; on welfare payments, but without prosperity.

All this spending put us so deeply in debt that many think we'll never recover. As you may have heard, the interest we pay on our debt at the national level surpassed the entire U.S. Defense budget last year. That's not sustainable. We need drastic remediation.

Exposed 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

The drive for justice is a reason for our new Department of Government Efficiency. When you and I fund the federal government with our tax dollars, we suppose that it's well-managed. But apparently the federal government is spending our money wildly, making payments that we would not approve--if only we knew about them. We want it stopped. Doge is investigating.

Some expenses are inefficient. The IRS manages about the same number of daily transactions as a bank. Banks budget about $20 million/year for operation and maintenance. The IRS budget for operation is $3.7 billion/year. That's seventeen times more than what a bank spends for about the same amount of work. 

Some payments are fraud. Social Security checks were going out to 3.7 million people who were listed as . . 120+ years old. Somebody was cashing all those checks.

Some payments are waste. $3 million for transparency and accountability in the cotton industry of Uzbekistan.

 from Doge

Exposed 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Wait, do people really want injustice exposed? For some, that depends on who did it. They'd be okay with injustice if it's done by someone on their own side.

Genuine justice calls for perpetrators to be called out, regardless of which political side they're on. Check out this attack on personal property, part of a wave of vandalism directed at Elon Musk's Tesla car company. The man may think he's justified in this crime because (in his opinion) Elon is bad. 

But that's not justice. And, fortunately, he didn't get away with it.

Exposed

All of us have a sense of "justice," a feeling that we should be treated fairly, according to what is right. We are frustrated when wrongdoing is covered up, when it's kept secret, whether it happens to us or to someone we care about. We want it exposed and set right.

(Of course, that drive for justice is much reduced when it comes to our own wrongdoing. We're not anxious for that to be exposed.)

What does God think about it? One appeal of Christianity is that God is going to set things right eventually. Part of Giuseppe Verdi's dramatic and beautiful requiem (1874) deals with God's final judgment:

Nature sickens with dismay,
Death may not retain its prey;
And before the Maker stand
All the creatures of his hand.
The great book shall be unfurled,
Whereby God shall judge the world;
What was distant shall be near,
What was hidden shall be clear.

New life

Some of us Christians became believers by conventional means of a church service, some can't remember a specific point in time when it happened . . and some of us were on a rocky road when we called out to God.

For some in God's family, that road was very rocky. These prisoners (video) were saved to new life in Christ right in the midst of harsh circumstances. What is so compelling as a true and dramatic life story? 

However God meets you in your own life, your spirit is re-born when you respond to Jesus. Be thrilled with the life change these prisoners have.

Respect them

 I have a movie recommendation for you. "Monuments Men" is currently on Netflix, the story of civilian men recruited during World War II to recover works of art and return them whenever possible. 

Statues and paintings were stolen by Hitler's armies from museums and churches all over Europe. Locations include Belgian cathedrals and Nazi-occupied France. The cast is full of stars whom you'll recognize.

The leader of these men (played by George Clooney) was passionate about finding these art pieces before they were lost or destroyed and explains why: "You can wipe out a generation of people, you can burn their homes to the ground and somehow they'll still come back. But if you destroy their achievements and their history, then it's like they never existed." 

It still happens today. Destroyers want to destroy statues, history, achievements. That's what they do.

Flying home

Follow-up to this post

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams (along with two others) have returned. Their mission to the International Space Station is finally at an end, having expanded from eight days to about nine months.

SpaceX launched Dragon Freedom spacecraft last Friday on a Falcon 9 rocket; it docked with the ISS on Saturday night, and yesterday it returned to Earth with Crew 9 about 6 pm EDT, with splashdown in the Gulf of America.

It wasn't a record for time served on the ISS. Several U.S. astronauts have spent more time there, up to a record number of 371 days. Butch and Suni were there for 286 days, though of course they weren't planning on it at the beginning. NASA missions are always understood to be a little flexible, depending on conditions. 

Cost of green

"Green" energy producers (solar and wind) and protection of our environment were the subject of three posts last week. An attempt to reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels is a huge, expensive, global wave that many call the "Energy Transition" toward "green" energy.

Bjorn Lomborg has been trying for years to alert the world that solar and wind power are wholly inadequate solutions to CO2-related climate problems.  

He posted on X a study published by Bloomberg NEF about the actual costs of these green power sources. The cost to the world has not been cheap, but rather enormous:

Stranded?

Follow-up to this post

As you know, two astronauts (photo) have been at the International Space Station for nine months instead of their original assignment of eight days. Now a small controversy has blown up around it because maybe they didn't have to be there all these months.

 

Elon Musk says he made an suggestion to the U.S. government last fall, offering to send SpaceX up to the ISS to get them and bring them home. But the president at that time would not allow it.

Elon speculates that they wouldn't allow it because of the political "optics" of the thing: he was aiding the rival political party during the presidential campaign, and they didn't want him and his company to look like a hero. 

Astronaut Wilmore says they knew nothing about the offer, but he believes it. Another article says ten times that the astronauts never felt "stranded", so they never needed rescuing--so Elon and the current president are spreading false claims.

Almost everything these days is political drama. 

Big turbine

China has the largest wind turbine in the world. It's been operating since 2023, and it produces more electricity than any other. Here's a picture of it among smaller ones in the sea:

But the scale isn't easy to grasp in this photo. You don't readily see that the hub is as tall as a 50-story building. The rotor diameter, that is the width of the circle swept by the rotating blades, is longer than two football fields at 827 feet.

Whenever its usefulness is done, its tough and huge blades will probably be processed into road-building asphalt or concrete. That's what China has started doing to mitigate the problem of recycling wind turbine blades.

from Electrik

Pave paradise

Ten of thousands of acres of Amazon rainforest have been leveled--by the country that is famous for protecting it, Brazil. A big dirt track is carved across the great, green jungle. 

Why would they do such a thing? To build a four-lane highway. And why do they need a highway across the rainforest? Brazil has 50,000 people coming to a big conference next November, so they want to ease the expected traffic.

What kind of conference is behind this environmental destruction? Here's the irony of the thing--it's the United Nations Climate Change Conference, where delegates will try to protect our planet's natural environment. 

from BBC

She let it go 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Larissa wasn't talked into changing her view of the world. No one argued her out of the radically feminist viewpoint. She wasn't talked into embracing genuine differences in women's and men's roles as a practical, workable solution to life.  But that's how she sees the world now.

It happened in a natural way.When she and her boyfriend started living together, they split the bills proportionately and the chores (laundry, housekeeping, etc.) evenly. But things changed when they became parents (image). 

Instead of going back to work, she stayed home and they married: "leaving that soft little creature who fit so snugly into my arms . . felt deeply wrong. I wanted to provide for this baby what he needed, and that was me. To do this, I needed Chris [her husband] far more than a bicycle or anything else."

They fell into doing the "tasks that made the most sense." Essentially she began to scoff at some feminist principles, like refusing to allow a man to hold a door for her. She gave up on male-coded tasks she had always tried to do.

They found that building a home and family was so hard that each had to do whatever they were good at. They needed each other.

from "How I Became a Wife"

She let it go

Larissa's mom gave her, a sixth-grader at the time, a framed print that said, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." She absorbed her mom's view of the world. It seemed to her that wives in general were sad, overwhelmed, repressed, miserable. Conclusion: you have no need of a man (image), so never marry.

Confirming that opinion, every marriage she knew about as a child ended in divorce including her that of her parents. Marriage was a trap and there was little or no important difference between women and men. She read books by feminists "who were busy deconstructing every idea foundational to family life, from gender roles to monogamy . . ."

"Why would girls play at mothers or wives when they could sit on the Supreme Court or fly to the moon?" It seemed "small and backward and insignificant."

But Larissa let it all go, all that training she had received as a child and then a young adult. She became a wife, by choice. How could that happen? Glad you asked.

 from "How I Became a Wife"

 (cont'd tomorrow)

Hail and solar

Serious problems remain to be solved with "green" power producers, wind turbines and solar panels. Both are sometimes deployed in very large "farms" and both are obviously vulnerable to weather. Sometimes the wind doesn't blow and sometimes precipitation falls.

A Texas solar farm of 3,000 acres was hit by baseball-sized hail a year ago resulting in damage to thousands of solar panels. There was enough impact to break the glass, potentially releasing toxic chemicals. 

Experts say that there's no danger to families who live in the area and use the ground water, but residents are uneasy anyway.

Another solar farm was hit by large hail in 2023 in Nebraska. These wide-open areas in central America are well suited for big wind and solar, but they're also subject to hail storms (image).

Flight test #8

Starship's flight test #8 was scrubbed last Monday, but it finally flew yesterday afternoon from Starbase in Texas. 

The ship itself separated from Super Heavy booster successfully. More than 30 cameras on the exterior provided beautiful views, and gave visual information to SpaceX engineers. 

But some of its engines failed over the ocean. It lost attitude control (started tumbling) and ended up in the dreaded RUD, rapid unscheduled disassembly, as it did on the previous test flight. 

Meanwhile, Super Heavy functioned beautifully. Its engines slowed its speed and directed it right into the "chopsticks" arms for a perfect catch seven minutes after launch.

Grandma arrest

Free speech is a human right in America and guaranteed by our constitution. Freedom to speak used to be respected in Europe more than it is today. 

This is one example. A 74-year-old grandmother stood quietly outside a hospital in Scotland holding the sign you see in this picture. She challenged no one.

 

Police handcuffed and arrested her, took her to the police station where she was searched, swabbed for DNA, had a mugshot and fingerprints taken, and then she was released. The process itself is intimidating. She says, "I'm worried about a society that's willing to lock up a 74-year-old grandmother for offering consensual conversation." 

Last month our vice president told European political leaders that it looks like free speech is "in retreat" in Europe. They were "outraged" that he would say such a thing!

from The Free Press

Almost home

Follow-up to this post

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are test pilots who flew up to the International Space Station last June on ULA's  spacecraft Starliner, its first astronaut-crewed flight. But NASA would not permit Starliner to carry them back home at the end of their one-week mission because they judged the craft unsafe due to technical problems.

Instead of spending a week there, it's been about nine months. They say they want to go home, and that's coming soon. 

SpaceX will launch Crew-10 to the ISS on March 12, and then Butch and Suni will get their ride back to Earth on SpaceX's Dragon craft, returning home next week (weather permitting) . . at last. Suni said in yesterday's news conference that her message to family is that she'll be home soon, so "Don't plan anything without me!"

COO

Space operations used to be the domain of governments only. But now there's a big private sector. In the private, non-government space business, there's no more important name than Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX.

photo

Super celebrity Elon Musk hired her as an engineer way back in 2002. As Director of Business Development, she successfully negotiated the contract (2008) with NASA to deliver commercial resupply services to the International Space Station. Promotion to the position of president followed. 

Gwynne is a superstar herself. She led the effort to build the Falcon rocket. Under her leadership, SpaceX was the first private company to successfully launch to orbit and recover a spacecraft and send one to the ISS . . plus all the recent SpaceX achievements. 

Test flight #8 of Starship may take place today, depending on conditions.

US in space

No day goes by without space operations of some kind, even though we don't commonly see them. Consider that roughly 10,000 satellites are in orbit around the world in use for GPS, communication, surveillance, military.

Cyber attacks and the jamming of our satellites are just a couple of threats that our enemies could employ. That's why the U.S. has a military branch dedicated to space operations, in an environment where there's no up or down, no left or right: the United States Space Force.

"We won't just think outside the box. We'll think outside the atmosphere."

Vibe shift 4

Follow-up to these posts

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos (photo) just made an additional change to the newspaper. In perhaps another example of the "vibe shift," he directed the opinion pages to write in support and defense of two new themes. He calls them "pillars," probably in the sense of American foundational values: personal liberty and free markets.

 

Not everyone is happy about it, so I have to wonder just what they have against personal liberty and free markets (rather than forced or coerced ones). When he asked his opinion pages editor to manage this new direction, the man chose to quit his job instead.

Other subjects will be addressed, but the policy shift is clear. "Viewpoints opposing those pillars," he says, "will be left to be published by others." 

from his X post

We see you, NCAA

XX-XY Athletics launched a video last October to ask Nike to support biological women's sports: "Will you, Nike?"

Now they've launched a new video that includes Riley Gaines: "We see you, NCAA." 

NCAA has linked their definition of who may qualify as female in women's sports to a birth certificate. But that does not yet actually protect women in the view of XX-XY Athletics. Birth certificates can be changed in 44 states.

Bjorn speaks

Continuing a few talks from Alliance for Responsible Leadership (ARC) conference:

Danish author Bjorn Lomborg started his own think tank, Copenhagen Consensus, to research the best ways to get results on solving the world's problems. He addresses issues in economics, climate, energy to tell the world to "Stop the climate doomism!"

• There's no way to improve incomes and lifestyles around the world using less energy
•  Growth everywhere requires cheap and abundant energy
• Climate is a problem, but isn't driving us to catastrophe
•  Solar and wind is not a cheap solution bc we need energy 24/7
• Eliminating fossil fuels ("net zero") is not happening, would be absurdly expensive 
• We will have to adapt to changing climate by innovating improved ways to produce power

Os speaks

Philosopher Os Guinness, now 83 years old, wrote or edited 30 books and has been a voice of influence for decades. He thinks and speaks about us, the people of Western Civilization, and how our culture is shaped by Christianity. 

From his talk last week at ARC's London conference:

• Lots of people are very uncomfortable with talking about religion, but it affects what everyone thinks and does
• A combination of Islamism and cultural Marxism has been trying to replace Christian faith (for over a hundred years)
• It has failed; it isn't good enough to be the foundation of our culture; it doesn't work
• Christianity is indispensable to our way of life, agreeing with Christian Ayaan, atheist R. Dawkins, and atheist T. Holland
• But we need leaders who go beyond mere approval of Christian principles - to genuine, powerful faith
  

 

Konstantin speaks

ARC's (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) conference in London presented some good people. Last week I mentioned the brave and admirable Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Konstantin Kisin, whose parents brought him to Britain from Russia, is another. He likes to joke about woke thinking.

Some lines from the talk of this combination comedian and clear thinker:

"I love this country, and that is how you know that I still haven't integrated into British culture!"

"DEI, a system of anti-merit discrimination, is being dismantled [in America] and in the global corporate world as well. Once again we can dream that our children will be judged on the content of their character [referencing Martin Luther King] . . and not the color of the square they post on Instagram."