Boeing’s troubled capsule won’t carry astronauts on next space station flight

Source: SFGate

“Boeing and NASA have agreed to keep astronauts off the company’s next Starliner flight and instead perform a trial run with cargo to prove its safety. Monday’s announcement comes eight months after the first and only Starliner crew returned to Earth aboard SpaceX after a prolonged mission. Although NASA test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams managed to dock Starliner to the International Space Station in 2024, the capsule had so many problems that NASA ordered it to come back empty, leaving the astronauts stuck there for more than nine months. Engineers have since been poring over the thruster and other issues that plagued the Starliner capsule. Its next cargo run to the space station will occur no earlier than April, pending additional tests and certification. Boeing said in a statement that it remains committed to the Starliner program with safety the highest priority.” (11/24/25)

https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/boeing-s-troubled-capsule-won-t-carry-astronauts-21205640.php

Steve Trinward

Universal pre-K is an expensive experiment

Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Caleb O Brown & Colleen Hroncich

“Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman’s passionate case for guaranteeing preschool access for every 4-year-old in the state deserves scrutiny. The evidence for universal pre-K as an economic development strategy is far weaker than she suggests. Kentucky families deserve honesty about what this expensive and expansive program can – and cannot – deliver. Coleman omits the most rigorous recent research on the subject. Researchers from Vanderbilt University followed nearly 3,000 low-income children through sixth grade with alarming results: Children who attended Tennessee’s Voluntary Pre‑K (TN-VPK) program fared worse on a range of metrics compared with children who didn’t attend.” (11/24/25)

https://www.bluegrassinstitute.org/universal-pre-k-is-an-expensive-experiment/

Thomas L. Knapp

To Be or Not to Be a Think Tank

Source: The Dispatch
by Kim Holmes

“For many years, I found my ideological and professional home at the Heritage Foundation. I first joined the organization in 1986 as a policy analyst and departed it in 2021, ending my 35-year tenure there as executive vice president. My years at Heritage taught me many things about how a think tank should — and perhaps equally importantly, should not — operate.” (11/24/25)

https://thedispatch.com/article/think-tank-research-institute-heritage-liberalism/

Thomas L. Knapp

Japan: Regime Reaffirms Plan to Deploy Missiles to Area Near Taiwan

Source: Bloomberg

Japan’s defense minister, visiting a military base close to Taiwan, said plans to deploy missiles to the post would move forward as tensions smolder between Tokyo and Beijing over the East Asian island. ‘The deployment can help lower the chance of an armed attack on our country,’ Shinjiro Koizumi told reporters on Sunday as he wrapped up his first trip to the base on the southern Japanese island of Yonaguni. ‘The view that it will heighten regional tensions is not accurate.’ … China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a regular briefing on Monday that the deployment of missiles would be ‘extremely dangerous’ and described it as a ‘deliberate move that breeds regional tensions and stokes military rivalry.'” (11/24/25)

https://archive.is/GeCUc

Thomas L. Knapp

Back From the Dead: Resurrecting the Ukraine Peace Plan

Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Snider

“Between the Trump-Putin meeting in Anchorage Alaska and the proposed Trump-Putin meeting in Budapest, the diplomatic track that the U.S. and Russia were on seemed to die. In October, Trump and Putin had a ‘very productive’ two hour phone call that led to a phone call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov that was to lay the groundwork for a meeting between Trump and Putin in Budapest. But, by the time Rubio had hung up the phone, the Budapest meeting was off. … But then hints emerged that restarting talks may not be impossible.” (11/24/25)

https://original.antiwar.com/ted_snider/2025/11/23/back-from-the-dead-resurrecting-the-ukraine-peace-plan

Thomas L. Knapp

The Economy After the September Jobs Report

Source: CounterPunch
by Dean Baker

“The data nerds among us were happy to finally get their September jobs report fix, even though these data are somewhat stale now. However, we still learned a few things about the state of the economy. Before saying what we learned, it’s worth a few words on what we didn’t learn but people are saying anyway. First and foremost, this was not a strong report in any real-world sense of the term. To be clear, the 119,000 jobs reported for the month was stronger than most analysts had expected, including me. But this hardly implies robust job growth. We averaged 170,000 jobs a month in 2024, so now we’re supposed to be celebrating a report showing job growth that is 70 percent of last year’s average?” (11/24/25)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/11/24/the-economy-after-the-september-jobs-report/

Thomas L. Knapp

Thomas rebukes SCOTUS for denying widow’s case, says it lets government dodge blame

Source: Fox News

“Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas voiced disagreement Monday with his colleagues’ decision to reject a widow’s request that the high court consider whether the federal government owes her for her husband’s death. Thomas said that if the justices had taken up the case, it would have been an opportunity to rein in a decades-old precedent that says servicemembers’ families cannot file wrongful death lawsuits against the government if the victim was killed while performing his or her job duties. … The case centered on Air Force Staff Sergeant Cameron Beck, who was killed in 2021. Beck had been leaving a military base in Missouri on his motorcycle to meet his wife and then seven-year-old for lunch when a civilian government employee, distracted by her cell phone, struck Beck. He died on the scene, and the woman later admitted in a plea deal to causing the accident.” (11/24/25)

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/justice-thomas-rebukes-scotus-denying-widows-case-says-lets-government-dodge-blame

Steve Trinward