Source: Associated Press
“A tech billionaire performed the first private spacewalk hundreds of miles above Earth on Thursday, a high-risk endeavor reserved for professional astronauts — until now. Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman teamed up with SpaceX to test the company’s brand new spacesuits on his chartered flight. The daring feat also saw SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis going out once Isaacman was safely back inside. … There were a few glitches. Isaacman had to manually pull the hatch open instead of pushing a button on board. Before heading out, Gillis reported seeing bulges in the hatch seal. … Until Thursday, only 263 people had conducted a spacewalk, representing 12 countries. The Soviet Union’s Alexei Leonov kicked it off in 1965, followed a few months later by NASA’s Ed White.” (09/12/24)
https://apnews.com/article/spacex-spacewalk-private-polaris-dawn-87d4c78853f0249baf29631bedfac749
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“‘It never got weird enough for me,’ says Hunter S. Thompson — or, rather, Bill Murray as Hunter S. Thompson in 1980’s kinda sorta Thompson biopic, Where the Buffalo Roam. ‘I moved to the country when the boat got too crowded. Then I learned that President Nixon had been eaten by white cannibals on an island near Tijuana for no good reason at all.’ Thompson died by his own hand in 2005, no longer at the top of his gonzo game but still the reigning champion of American non-fiction (very loosely construed) and psychoactive substance ingestion (perhaps not quite as loosely construed). I woke up this morning thinking about Thompson, wondering if Election 2024 might just possibly have changed his mind on how weird it can get.” (09/12/24)
https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/18965
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
“Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and free speech.” (09/12/24)
https://www.thefire.org/news/podcasts/so-speak-free-speech-podcast/ayn-rand-objectivism-and-free-speech
Source: New York Times
“President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Thursday that a Russian missile struck a cargo ship in the Black Sea that was carrying wheat to Egypt, and a Ukrainian military spokesman said that the attack took place in Romanian waters. If confirmed, it would be the first such direct attack on a civilian vessel in open water since Ukraine established a new maritime export route last year. Mr. Zelensky said on social media that there were no casualties in the attack, which he said had happened overnight. He did not describe the extent of any damage. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the claim; and Russia’s defense ministry did not mention it on its Telegram channel.” (09/12/24)
https://archive.is/rzA52
Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“The restoration of normal politics will require two things: The removal of Donald Trump — that Krakatau of volcanic, incoherent, fact-free bombast — from public life. And the rekindling of an irrepressible conflict. It is between progressivism, of which Kamala Harris is full to overflowing, and actual conservatism, about which Trump is contemptuous. … This election pits someone whose current persona is obviously synthetic against someone whose dishonesty in the service of his egotism is scarily authentic. Now, however, traditional conservatives can envision the least unpalatable November outcome. They have an unenthralled understanding of government’s proper scope and actual competence. So, their preferred outcome would be the election of Harris, and of a Republican Senate to regularly remind her that most Americans disagree with most of what she believes.” (09/12/24)
https://archive.is/O4Nnl
Source: CBS News
“Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Thursday said there will not be another debate against his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. The former president in a Truth Social post claimed that he won his first debate against Harris on Tuesday night. He cited as evidence the fact that Harris’ campaign had challenged him to another debate shortly after the first one ended. … ‘When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH.’’ … ‘KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD. THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!'” (09/12/24)
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/12/trump-rejects-second-harris-debate.html
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“Why is Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, governor of Minnesota right now? Perhaps because government censors — functioning through agents like Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook — made it harder to hear his opponent, Dr. Scott Jensen, during Walz’s 2022 re-election campaign. A shift in a few percentage points would have tilted things in the challenger’s favor. But Jensen had made the government’s response to the pandemic — including the tyrannical policies of Walz’s state government — a central theme of his campaign. And in those days (as in these), all-out censorship of various deviations from the government line was de rigueur.” (09/12/24)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2024/09/12/the-ignorance-of-censorship/
Source: US News & World Report
“Turkey has opened an investigation into the death of a Turkish-American activist believed to have been shot by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank and will request international arrest warrants, Ankara said on Thursday. The body of the woman, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, will arrive in Turkey on Friday, the Foreign Ministry said. Israel has taken responsibility for the death of Eygi, who was killed last Friday while taking part in a protest against Jewish [squat] expansion in the West Bank. The Foreign Ministry said she ‘was deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli soldiers during a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with Palestinians.'” (09/12/24)
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2024-09-12/turkey-seeks-international-arrest-warrants-over-citizen-killed-in-west-bank
Source: Washington Monthly
by David Atkins
“Tariffs are Trump’s crutch response to almost any overseas problem, his elixir for international ailments. If a country doesn’t do what he wants, he threatens a tariff. But the 2024 version of Trump is even more radical, extreme, and dangerous on this issue than his 2016 and 2020 equivalents — because now, instead of wielding tariffs to compel countries to do his bidding, he promotes these levies as a domestic fiscal remedy allowing him to balance the budget and even eliminate income taxes without the drawback of higher retail prices. But tariffs do not work the way Trump says they do and cannot accomplish what he claims they can.” (09/12/24)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/09/12/trump-doesnt-understand-tariffs-but-he-knows-enough-to-be-menacing/
Source: Reuters
“The United States supports creating two permanent United Nations Security Council seats for African states and one seat to be rotated among small island developing states, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield announced on Thursday. The move comes as the U.S. seeks to repair ties with Africa, where many are unhappy about Washington’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, and deepen relations with Pacific Island nations important to countering Chinese influence in the region. … The United States does not support expanding veto power beyond the five countries that hold it, Thomas-Greenfield said.” (09/13/24)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-supports-two-permanent-un-security-council-seats-africa-2024-09-12/
