US senator warns 'China is cheering' for proposed NASA budget cuts The proposed cuts to NASA's budget are drawing sharp criticism from US lawmakers, with one saying: "If you cut this budget, you cut into the heart of America's leadership when it comes to space exploration." The comments were made by Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) outside the gates of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, which …
If Americans want to cut the budget then all they need to do is not vote for a Republican government. See nice chart near the end.
Read the first chapter of 'How to talk to a science denier' by Lee McIntyre*. He attended a 'Flat Earther' conference and spoke with the attendees. According to him, many of them were pretty damaged people who wanted somewhere to belong.
* ISBN 978-0-262-04610-7, pub the MIT Press
Because a prerequisite for being a real Trump supporter (i.e. attending rallies, wearing the clothing, etc. not just voting for him) is that you must lack even the most basic critical thinking skills and be gullible to the extreme to conspiracy theories. Not a one has an IQ higher than room temperature.
Ah yes. People who disagree with me are stupid. An excellent argument to present, the “other side” absolutely won’t use it to immediately dismiss any argument they don’t agree with, or understand.
Don’t you want people to change their minds? How can we move forward if we just dig deeper ruts for people to get cosy in.
Come on, be smart, they are not stupid - there is more nuance to this phenomenon
"Come on, be smart, they are not stupid - there is more nuance to this phenomenon"
Research seems to suggest that they are afraid and try to protect either themselves or their "community" (ie, life style).
What is it MAGA followers are afraid of? Look at them, it is mainly Men, mainly White, mainly Uneducated, mainly homo/transphobic.
So, I suspect it is:
- Men being afraid to be irrelevant to women who get better educations and jobs.
- White voters afraid of becoming a racial minority (and being treated like they treated other minorities)
- High school/college dropouts afraid of not getting decent jobs anymore
- Men/women afraid of having their cozy marital arrangement upset because there is more than Me Tarzan battling monsters, You Jane vacuuming the home (and every weekend a missionary)
Why the conspiracy theories?
That is a strategy, I suspect. If you cannot win with rational arguments and actual facts, you can always win with made-up irrational arguments and alternative facts. And if there is one thing MAGA does not have, it is rational arguments and actual facts. The less arguments they have, the more outrageous their irrational arguments and alternative facts must become.
"White voters afraid of becoming a racial minority"
Which is what certain 'conservative' elements in American are telling them is happening. As well as telling them it's already happening in Europe. Which makes them cleave closer and shut out progressive influences from their lives.
Why would I want to change the minds of morons, implicit in the framing is that the world should mourn your passing or even notice.
Being a moron is a personal tragedy, it's only relevant since health and safety spoilsports have reduced the number of avoidable workspace deaths available for plausible deniability.
There are many fine decent people on the planet, It's your responsibility to become a reasonable approximation of one, with sufficient fidelity that entire minutes in your company are allowed to pass without observers discovering you've not got a soul worth saving.
People are allowed to be wrong. That's not the same as weaponised ignorance. People are allowed to be ignorant. That's not the same as studied indifference. You are entitled to just barely be surviving and unable to cope with the concepts.
There is a frame where humans are deserving, and subhumans must constantly supplicate for their partial humanity. That's something that is radicalised into some at such a social level that it's barely recognised. The insistence on being the dispenser of credibility, even as your underpants adorn your head, and your hat does duty as cricket's first and last codpiece/box combo.
"Why would I want to change the minds of morons,"
Mostly, because there's enough of them to vote in a moron as President.
You either have to change their minds, or convince enough non-voters to get out and vote for "not a moron", assuming either party can find candidates like that.
It made no difference to the People of Occupied Palestine, but it did prevent the likes of you from presuming their consent or support of Genocide.
Trump getting in is good for Palestine - it's the same Zionist Policy because that's driven by the 80 Million odd Evangelical block vote, and the Arms and Energy lobby - both of whom prefer to murder people and steal their resources, rather than trade. https://thecradle.co/articles/why-does-the-us-still-control-every-penny-of-iraqi-oil-revenues
Trump is just brash enough to do it publicly, He's not in charge, any more than Biden was, It's not a democracy - it's an empire with administrators and a figurehead, and millions of Human Shields.
"People are allowed to be wrong. That's not the same as weaponised ignorance. People are allowed to be ignorant. That's not the same as studied indifference. You are entitled to just barely be surviving and unable to cope with the concepts."
All true, but stupidity is an environmental hazard.
Stupid people bring disaster upon those near (and far) them. Anti-vaxxers maim and kill their children those around them who are not responding to vaccinations. Stupid petty criminals torch down apartment blocks. And conspiracy theories incite mass murder (eg, racial wars).
People are indeed allowed to be ignorant and foolish. But it is our duty as good citizens to help them survive their foolishness and protect them and those around them as much as possible from the consequences of their choices.
There are many, many ways of doing this without taking their freedom to be ignorant fools.
There are a lot of reasons other than being a weak minded fool who fell for a criminal grifter that people voted for Trump. If they are militantly anti abortion, for instance, they will only vote republican no matter who is running. I don't agree with that view, but I respect it as a difference of opinion that makes it impossible to vote for a democrat. Being a red hat wearer who shows up at his rallies and believes he's the second coming or something, those people are just plain stupid.
Genocide Joe alienated every decent voter who refused to vote for Genocide, leaving only BlueMaga the steadfastly indoctrinated.
Nobody extra voted for Trump - People didn't vote for Genocide Joe or the cackling Drunk. Genocide Joe blew up the US rather than miss out on Genocide in Palestine, the mass slaughter was enough to make him feel young enough to stage Weekend at Bernie's for an electoral campaign.
I’m sorry but I simply could not bring myself to cast a vote for a man who doesn’t seem to believe that people like me are fully human. I cannot support a man who seems to think that it’s OK that babies in Gaza are needlessly starving to death. A vote for Biden is not just a vote against Trump, it is a vote endorsing his clear disdain for Palestinians, his dehumanization of Arabs, and his complicity in what many experts have termed a plausible genocide.
But, Arwa, Trump would have been even worse on Gaza! I know that. But, let me tell you something, that argument loses a lot of its potency when Gaza looks like hell on earth as its. There is not a single university left. The health system has basically collapsed. 1.9 million people have been forcibly displaced. The UN has said 100,000 people in Gaza have been killed, injured, or are missing. And Biden seems to think so little of the devastation that he seems to think it is appropriate to weigh in on a ceasefire while eating an ice-cream cone. It’s honestly very difficult to think about how things could possibly be worse.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/28/if-biden-loses-in-november-dont-blame-voters-who-are-angry-over-gaza
.
"“that Dems cared more about immigrants, trans people, and waging war in Ukraine and Gaza than domestic priorities or their daily economic realities.” (Young voters, on the other hand, took issue with Harris’ perceived silence on Gaza, with a majority of voters in that focus group saying her unwillingness to take a stand affected their decision not to vote.) "
Across the four Sunbelt battleground states — Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina — there were at least 937,200 Democratic voters who turned out in 2020, but didn’t show up for Vice President Kamala Harris four years later. That’s a meaningful drop, and one that was large enough on its own to swing the election: Trump only won those states by a combined 531,539 votes.
Analysis of Catalist data showed that Democrats (both registered and modeled) sat out of the 2024 election at a higher rate than their Republican counterparts. Across every state and almost every demographic group analyzed, Democrats’ vote share declined compared to 2020 — and left-leaning voters removing themselves from the voting pool meant that the electorate was redder than it would have been had they participated.
Some pundits and Democratic operatives have interpreted the election results as an emphatic endorsement for Trump’s message. But in focus groups, these voters paint a very different picture.
“If you listen to them you really understand that, on the whole, these voters didn’t skip voting because they viewed Kamala as too liberal or too woke, and the vast majority of them, if they had shown up, would not have voted for Trump. They are not swinging to the right, it’s more that the Democrats lost them,”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/why-2020-biden-voters-sat-out-2024-1235318121/
"Nobody extra voted for Trump"
Not voting is a choice too. You then are complicit to whomever wins. Because, in a democracy you are part of the ruling "demos", whether you like it or not.
If you look away from a crime, you are an accomplice of the crime.
He who is silent agrees
The proposed budget cuts to NASA are as much politically motivated as financial. NASA's scientists, satellites, observations and experiments have been at the forefront of climate science and showing the fact of Global Warming caused by human created emissions of CO2 and others 'greenhouse gasses'.
The Trump MAGA playbook is that Global Warming is a Chinese hoax intended to damage the USA's manufacturing base. They cannot accept that it may be real and requires serious action to mitigate, so their policy is to 'shoot the messenger'. Remember that in Trump's first term (so, so, long ago, long ago) US Government climate scientists were banned from describing global warming as real.
East observation satellites and science are not just pretty pictures or a 'nice to have' they are essential to mitigating humanity's adverse effects on the environment.
More 'shoot the messenger': Harvard is under attack from Trump:
"Trump threatens Harvard's tax-exempt status after university refuses to cave to administration's demands
Donald Trump has said Harvard “should lose its tax exempt status” and be taxed as a political entity after the Ivy League school rejected what it said was an attempt at “government regulation” of the university.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote:
Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!
Most universities, including Harvard, are exempt from federal income taxes because they are classified as providing a public good.
The latest escalation comes after the Trump administration elected to cut $2bn of Harvard’s federal grants after the university refused to cave in to what the president has called an effort to curb antisemitism on campus. Many educators, however, see the administration’s list of demands as a thinly veiled effort to more broadly curb academic freedoms.
Former president Barack Obama praised Harvard for setting an example for other higher education institutions to reject federal overreach into its governance practices."
from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/apr/15/donald-trump-harvard-funding-tariffs-immigration-dei-us-politics-live-updates
Now, Harvard is the Alma Mater of a large fraction of the leading people in the USA (eg, 3 of the current SCotUS judges).
They have the best legal and financial minds in the country.
I have a feeling the people of Harvard know what they are up to and what they want to do to defend themselves.
Columbia also delivered a SCotUS judge.
The trouble is that Trump is not playing by the 'gentlemen's understanding' rules of previous presidents, and has, in effect, 'weaponised' the Presidency. His authority to declare a national emergency without much, if any, justification, thereby avoiding having to persuade Congress to do things mean that he is basically doing WTF he likes. The Harvard Lawyers may be 'the best in the USA', but Trump has shown disregard for the rule of law, and continues to do so. His refusal to request the return of someone wrongly sent to the 'mega prison' in El Salvador despite being told to by SCOTUS indicates that he really has no respect for the law.
OK so the man, incarcerated with some pretty violent criminals is quite possibly already dead, but Trump should at least try.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kilmar-abrego-garcia-not-leaving-161615606.html
Trump's reason for systematically demolishing higher education is simple. This data from the US Dept of Education says it all:
Using publically available data, states coded as “blue” based upon results from the 2004 presidential election were significantly higher in education funding than were states coded as “red.”
While the above is from 2004, the concern that a higher education makes people vote blue rather than red still exists. And, if various statistics are to be believed, not entirely without reason. Think of it what you like.
>Now, Harvard is the Alma Mater of a large fraction of the leading people in the USA (eg, 3 of the current SCotUS judges).
But since Harvard is not really a university but a branch of Hamas, those legal degrees are obviously invalid.
Harvard should immediately rescind all the legal, medical and engineering degrees it has granted to these people for the good of the nation
The letter sent to Harvard is here:
https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Letter-Sent-to-Harvard-2025-04-11.pdf
From the Guardian article here:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/apr/16/trump-harvard-funding-threat-latest
I do wonder what exactly is meant by some of the terms and requirements. Although I note that Harvard is not required to ensure its policy on admissions prevents people getting in because Daddy gave them a lot of money.
The requirements to inform the federal government of legal action committed by Harvard Students is nonsense, that is a job for the courts (OK, so it appears that Harvard has its own Police force so maybe they could do it) but whatever happened to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty?
What is "Viewpoint Diversity"? (Section titled "Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring").They have to audit 'Viewpoint Diversity". How on earth do they do that? Particularly as they are supposed to be clamping down on anyone who promotes the idea that Palestinians should have rights. (Henry Fords maxim that you can have any colour you like as long as it is black springs to mind, but that is hardly 'diversity') and in any case doesn't that conflict with the directive to stop "diversity hires"? (Bullet marked "Discontinuation of DEI".)
This poor little bear of very little brain is confused .
Every US adversary is cheering Putin for pulling a heist of century.
The US were looking everywhere but place where they were most vulnerable - democracy and free speech.
Russia got their plant in, without firing a single shot.
Whole US intelligence community got caught with pants down and now are a laughing stock of the whole world.
Russia and China know that- as things stood- a country like the US, in a position of both geographic and political strength, was never likely be brought down externally. At least, not without anything less than a global-scale war they'd almost certainly lose if they weren't "lucky" enough to get a pyrrhic victory.
No, as with many once-dominant powers in history, a country like that is far more likely to be brought down from within. And Russia in particular has been expert in leveraging and exploiting those forces of internal conflict.
"Or has racism, isolationism, religious-fuckery and a general disregard for their fellows been a recent development in the USA ?"
No, this a revisionist re-enactment of the American Civil War: This time we will win!
And we restore all these monuments commemorating those who fought for slavery and serfdom!
I don't think the Chinese care one way or another. Individually they probably welcome contact and collaboration but institutionally since they've been banned by law from any cooperation with NASA for many years now so they've learned to do their own thing.
This obsession with wondering what the Chinese are up to and how we can somehow do something to stop them has ceased to be interesting or even a joke. Its starting to sound like a mental illness. We need to focus on the things we do well (Webb, for example) and just carry on doing those things.
> Its starting to sound like a mental illness.
Starting to? The US has long run on the basis of "they are out to get us, we have to do something". China is simply the flavour of the month, Bad Guy-wise. Of course, only after the town in the next county along, the stranger they saw on the street today or that couple down the road who don't live their lives exactly the same way we do.
Fear Creates Obedience: Fearful citizens are less likely to question authority. And that includes FOMO.
Live a life in that state and you'll not be a model of mental stability and rationality.
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