With the explosion, both of the contractors NASA relies on to get critical food and supplies to the space station have now had explosions within eight months of each other.
With the retirement of the space shuttle, NASA lost its ability to fly astronauts form U.S. soil, and has been paying the Russians more than $70 million a seat to fly American astronauts to the station. But NASA hopes to use contractors to end that dependence, and last year awarded contracts to SpaceX and Boeing to develop a capsules that can carry astronauts to the space station.
Much of Covington’s influence on his followers comes from his novels, which are written in a style that reads like someone spilled a 50-gallon barrel of ethnic slurs all over a stack of early-draft Robert Heinlein novels. His choice of cultural icons dates his books considerably, even the recent ones, which are filled with up-to-the-minute references to Jane Fonda and Gilligan’s Island, but the author probably doesn’t care about these criticisms. The books are not primarily novels, anyway.
The Northwest novels “are not meant to be mere entertainment”, according to Covington’s website Northwest.org. “They are meant to be self-fulfilling prophecies. The author wishes to inspire the creation of a real Northwest American Republic, and his novels are filled with a great deal of sound practical advice about how to do it.”
The online payment company PayPal appeared on Saturday to have disabled the account of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), a rightwing organization that was cited in a manifesto linked to the South Carolina shooting suspect Dylann Roof and has given to prominent Republican politicians.
Side point: political writers wonder when the Republican party will produce its next really shrewd strategist, the one who knows how to pick his battles rather than getting mired in obstructive pandering to the base. Such a figure already exists. His name is John Roberts.
Presidential hopeful Donald Trump has refused to release his long-form birth certificate and passport records, despite demanding the same from Barack Obama during the 2012 election.
The Guardian contacted the Trump campaign to request the birth certificate and passport records of the Apprentice host, but a spokeswoman refused to share the documents.
In October 2012, Trump, a prominent figure in the “birther movement” – a loose affiliation of people who claimed Obama was born outside the US – accused Obama of being “the least transparent president in the history of this country” for refusing to release the very details Trump is now refusing to publish.
In the hours immediately following the decision, it became clear that the network did not yet have its talking points about gay marriage in order. You could watch, in real time, as it tried to land on some. The network kept jumping back to its previously scheduled programming, as if it could convince itself and its audience what had happened was not such a big deal: A little gay marriage, a reminder that some of Hillary Clinton’s emails are still missing, discussion of the terrorist attacks in France, a little gay marriage, and a return to the ongoing Charleston funerals. The host of the talk show Outnumbered began a brief segment on the decision by saying, “Let’s move on so we don’t get mired in social issues. How will GOP candidates react?” as if getting mired in social issues was not Fox’s raison d’être.
Shortly after turning in dissenting opinions in landmark federal rulings today that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and conferred full federal benefits to married same-sex couples, Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John G. Roberts, and Samuel Alito reportedly realized today that they would someday be portrayed as villains in an Oscar-winning film about the fight for marriage equality. “Oh, God, the major social ramifications, the political intrigue, all the important people involved in the case—I’m going to be played by some sinister character actor in a drama with tons of award buzz, aren’t I?” said Scalia, joining his fellow dissenting justices in realizing they would be antagonists in a film potentially titled Defense Of Marriage and probably written by Tony Kushner.
Thanks, Onion.
