OP-ED: Cost-Plus Con: Bureaucratic Fraud Is Sabotaging Space  

May 5, 2025Posted inEditorials and Opinions
artemis i-1
SLS on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. Photo: Charles Boyer / FMN

Imagine a scam where you’re paid more for stalling, overspending, and underdelivering. That’s NASA’s cost-plus contracts, the rotten core of the Space Launch System (SLS), Orion capsule, and Lunar Gateway. These deals, guaranteeing contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin profits no matter how epically they flop, are a taxpayer-funded crime scene. The real enemy? Corporate CEOs and politicians, fattened on this bottomless trough of waste, raking in millions while NASA’s programs are kept on life support, eternally late and eternally over budget. The White House’s fiscal year 2026 budget is hacking these boondoggles to pieces: it’s a Johnny Cash size middle finger to their hustle. This isn’t just about saving cash—it’s about torching a fraudulent system that’s gifting China the Moon while US taxpayers bankroll bureaucratic bloat. 

OP-ED: What Have You Done for Me Lately, China?

April 28, 2025Posted inEditorials and Opinions
President Xi: credit: Wikipedia

Oh, China, you conniving, economic vampire, what have you done for us lately besides leeching our prosperity and cackling from your smog-choked throne? You’re not just flooding our markets with your dirt-cheap junk, fentanyl-laced death traps, and vapes so toxic they could double as chemical weapons—you’re orchestrating a full-scale assault on our economy while we twiddle our thumbs like spineless idiots. Your trade barriers on our goods are so blatant they might as well come with a middle finger emoji, yet here we are, drowning in your plastic garbage at every Walmart, Dollar Tree, and big-box cesspool. When’s the last time you saw our goods clogging up your stores in Shenzhen or Beijing? Oh, right—never. It’s a one-way con, and we’re the morons eating it up.

Book Review: Extraterrestrial and Interstellar – “Have We Been Visited?”

April 25, 2025Posted inBook Review
Grok created image of Oumuamua.

Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist with a storied career as the longest-serving chair of the university’s Astronomy Department (2011–2020), has sparked intense debate with his bold claims about extraterrestrial visitation. Raised on a farm in Beit Hanan, Israel, Loeb’s early curiosity about the cosmos, nurtured by philosophy and science, propelled him to become a leading theorist on black holes and the early universe. Now heading the Galileo Project, which seeks empirical evidence of extraterrestrial technology, Loeb brings his contrarian spirit to Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth (2021) and Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars (2023). These books offer a thought-provoking, scholarly investigation into the question “Have we been visited?”

How to Erase Your Personal Data from the Internet

How to Erase Your Personal Data from the Internet

April 22, 2025Posted inFlorida News
Grok created image.

In today’s hyper-connected world, your personal information—name, address, phone number, even your birthdate—is a valuable commodity. Data brokers and people-search websites, such as Whitepages, Spokeo, and Intelius, collect and sell this data to advertisers, scammers, and cybercriminals, often without your consent. With over 4,000 data brokers amassing profiles on more than 500 million consumers globally, the risk of identity theft, phishing scams, and unwanted spam has never been higher. Fortunately, a growing suite of automated data removal services and proactive strategies can help you reclaim control over your digital footprint.

Rockets

SpaceX Nails Doubleheader with Flawless Falcon 9 Launches

April 22, 2025Posted inFalcon 9, Space News, SpaceX
Left, LC-39A CRS-32. Liftoff at 4:15am. Right, LC-40 Bandwagon-3. Liftoff at 8:43pm. Image by Richard P Gallagher | FMN

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — On April 21, 2025, SpaceX executed a remarkable feat of aerospace engineering, successfully launching two Falcon 9 rockets from separate launch pads in Florida within a span of 16 hours. The early morning mission delivered critical supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), while the evening launch deployed a diverse array of satellites into orbit. Both rockets achieved their objectives with precision, and their reusable first-stage boosters landed safely, underscoring SpaceX’s dominance in reusable rocket technology and its ability to maintain an ambitious launch cadence.

Pope Francis’s Life of Humility has Ended: Enters Eternal Glory.

Pope Francis’s Life of Humility has Ended: Enters Eternal Glory.

April 21, 2025Posted inNational News
Pope Francis. Credit: valahia.news

April 21, 2025

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff and a transformative figure in the Roman Catholic Church, died on April 21, 2025, at the age of 88, just hours after delivering his Easter Sunday address. His passing marks the end of a 12-year papacy defined by humility, advocacy for the poor, and bold reforms that reshaped the Church’s global outreach. Mourners gathered in St. Peter’s Square, some in tears, as world leaders and Catholics worldwide praised his commitment to marginalized communities and his vision for a more inclusive Church.

OP-ED: Sanctimony Spiral—How Dems’ Coin New Term to Cover for Lousy Policies

April 21, 2025Posted inEditorials and Opinions
Grok created image.

Oh, gentle reader, let us pause to mourn the quivering liberal soul, cowering before the ominous specter of the “Manosphere.” This shadowy online realm, where men—those wretched beasts—dare to swap stories, bench-press their feelings, or question the gospel of woke orthodoxy. The manosphere is apparently the apocalypse in flannel. According to the high priests of The New York Times and CNN, this digital den of “toxic masculinity” isn’t just a threat to progress—it’s the sinister force behind the Democratic Party’s slow-motion implosion. And I, old enough to remember when men wore overalls and steel-toed boots, drove pickup trucks with rifles in the back, and grilled “Tarzan” steaks in the heart of the woods, can only shake my head at this pitiful charade.

Close up of booster b 1067

SpaceX Sets Reusability Record with Falcon 9 B1067’s 27th Flight

April 18, 2025Posted inFalcon 9, SpaceX, Starlink
Booster B1067 arriving back at Port Canaveral aboard drone ship JRTI. Image by Richard P Gallagher | FMN

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX has once again pushed the boundaries of rocket reusability with the 27th successful launch and landing of its Falcon 9 first-stage booster B1067. The booster, a veteran of SpaceX’s fleet, lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on April 14, 2025, at 12:00 a.m. EDT, delivering 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites to low Earth orbit. Just over eight minutes later, B1067 touched down flawlessly on the drone ship Just Read the Instructions in the Atlantic Ocean, marking its 27th landing and setting a new record for rocket reusability.

Protests Continue as Florida Teacher Faces Fallout Over Improper Use of Student’s Name

Protests Continue as Florida Teacher Faces Fallout Over Improper Use of Student’s Name

April 14, 2025Posted inFlorida News, Working In Florida
Satellite High School in Satellite Beach, Florida. Image: Facebook

Students, parents and teachers continue to speak out in the case of Brevard County school teacher Melissa Calhoun, a veteran educator at Satellite High School in Brevard County, Florida. Calhoun, as of now, will not have her teaching contract renewed following a February 2025 incident in which she used a student’s preferred name without parental consent, violating a 2023 Florida state law.

OP-ED: From Sleepy Joe to Full-Throttle Trump: The Great American Revival in 85 Days 

OP-ED: From Sleepy Joe to Full-Throttle Trump: The Great American Revival in 85 Days 

April 14, 2025Posted inEditorials and Opinions
Trump’s cabinet meeting at the White House. Source: X.com

Eighty-five days into Donald Trump’s second term, and it’s been like a quad espresso venti to the nation’s veins—no dozing Joe Biden shuffling through the White House here, folks! With a cabinet meeting straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster, Trump’s team reported on the progress to save us from open-border chaos, a drug epidemic fueled by China’s, and a debt crisis that has our nation on the ropes. The last administration was asleep at the wheel, but Trump is here to drive this train now and remind us what “America First” really looks like—and China’s not happy about it.  

Let’s start with the border, where Trump’s turned the tide on a security nightmare. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem reported a second month of record-low border crossings, rolling out a self-deportation program with a legal return path. This comes after Trump shut down Biden’s CBP One app on day one, which had 280,000 migrants logging in daily to waltz across our border. Now they remain in Mexico, and the Pentagon’s building walls, not bridges, to keep it that way.  

ULA Atlas rocket

ULA Prepares for Atlas V Launch as SpaceX Takes Over GPS Satellite Mission

April 8, 2025Posted inAtlas V, Space News, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance
A ULA Atlas rocket with four sold rocket boosters at LC-41 on 8-28-23 carrying NROL-107. Image by Richard P. Gallagher | FMN

Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, United Launch Alliance (ULA) is set to launch an Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying the first batch of production satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet constellation. Another ULA rocket, the Vulcan, will not be launching a previously assigned military GPS satellite. It has been reassigned to SpaceX’s Falcon 9, marking the second such change in recent months. Here’s what you need to know about these developments in the world of spaceflight.

Op-Ed: Fiscal Fiasco–Tariffs Might Save Us from Our Own Stupidity

April 7, 2025Posted inEditorials and Opinions
Grok AI created image.

America—while we’ve been busy playing the world’s economic punching bag, other nations have been laughing all the way to the bank, raking in our dollars and slapping us with trade barriers so lopsided they’d make a funhouse mirror blush. For years, we’ve been in a tariff war—don’t kid yourself—but we’ve been the chumps who brought a butter knife to a gunfight.