By WhskyJack, a Trail Mix Contributor

So if that noise we hear is furniture breaking in the West Wing then it is time to make a deal and end this shutdown. For in the end politics is always the art of the deal and the Speaker was taking master classes in the art back when Donnie was putting on his playboy act and being bailed out by daddy.

First, it is time for Pelosi to ditch Chuck. She is after all the Speaker and he is basically nobody. (She should be nice about it. But still, Steny and Chuck, who are equals, should always be 3 steps behind her) The reason is she has to point out some basic truths that if delivered in front of other males would force Trump to get all macho. So a quiet, private, just the 2 of them meeting.

First, She says, “Donald you are bankrupt, You have been there before so you know what that means. In the interest of the country we will let you have a victory. You will get your 5 billion for barrier upgrade, you get your wall but not this year and it is going to cost you.”

Then tie it into a comprehensive package of border security and immigration reforms. Most details will have to be worked out like any other legislation, but should include adequate judges so any immigrant gets to have their case heard in 6 months, not the current yearslong wait. Port of entry upgrades so entry from Mexico is as painless as entry from Canada. Better worker programs, with ones that address issues in this hemisphere.

And since Trump can’t be trusted to keep his word any current legislation to open up the government needs to contain a poison pill to keep him honest.

Past this on to Nancy, I’m sure she will appreciate the advice.

Jack

By WhskyJack, a Trail Mix Contributor

For some reason I remember this swing around the moon and the reading of Genesis better than I do the moon landing. Probably because we out of school for Christmas.

It was a picture that totally changed artists renditions of the earth and our vision of the earth itself. The earth that looks so big from the ground looks so small in the picture.

To read more about the picture and the moment

By Whskyjack, a Trail Mix Contributor

An interesting picture from 92.

3 will run for president, 2 will win a majority of the popular vote and the other will become president. Is this a screwed up country or what?

Nancy Landon Kassebaum, long time Kansas senator and daughter of Alf Landon.  It doesn’t get more old school Kansas Republican that this. She just endorsed the Democratic candidate for governor.

More Kansas political news: The Republicans are desperate in Kansas 2 district.  Dragging up a decades old sex scandal is desperation and that is what the Republicans have done. Twenty years ago a young lawyer, Paul Davis and his boss were visiting a client strip club when the police raided the place. Old news that comes up for Davis every election. However given that a lot of District 2 is the army base Fort Leavenworth and surrounding area I’m not sure being caught in a strip club is a disadvantage. I’ll leave Flatus to comment on that one.

Finally, For all you die hard Democrats, the Missouri Governor may be the scariest Republican out there. True, he looks like Gomer and once owned a filling station but he is breath of fresh air in Missouri politics as he crosses the state talking with urban, suburban and rural leaders about working on common problems and issues. As he has come out in support of raising the gas tax for roads I’m sure the Club For Growth will run someone against him but IMO he will win reelection in 2020 and take Claire McCaskill’s seat in 2024.

Jack

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David Hogg @davidhogg111
“You know if the government has enough info to send me a draft card on my 18th birthday they should just register me to vote while they’re at it.”

But as we all know it is in the “want to” not in the “can do” that is the problem.

By Whskyjack, a Trail Mix Contributor

Or, how do they do this?

Some days we just need a break from the news about idiots and their mistresses. Thank your favorite deity.  We have science and  the real wonders  in astronomy

I just  read this article and it made my day.  I hope you enjoy it too. Beats the hell out of anything Donald Trump tweeted, just sayin’ …

Red giant brings its companion star back to life

 

There’s some adage out there about helping out your neighbor, right? Well, a red giant star was recently spotted lending more than just a cup of flour to its companion neutron star — it blasted it with winds that nourished the dead star back to life in a burst of X-ray light …

Stars with masses ranging from the size of the Sun to eight times that mass turn into red giants toward the end of their life. As they age, their outer layers are slowly pushed away from the star’s center by solar winds traveling at a few hundred kilometers per second. Over time, the outer layers can expand by millions of kilometers.

Rather than floating off into no-man’s-land like they normally would, the winds from the red giant were captured by its neighboring neutron star, which flared up in X-rays as it began accreting them …

Neutron stars typically develop when stars eight to 30 times more massive than the Sun run out of fuel and detonate in a supernova, leaving a small but incredibly massive spinning core behind. With masses of one and a half times that of the Sun squeezed into a core only about 6 miles (10 kilometers) across, neutron stars are some of the densest objects in the universe.

Neutron stars also exhibit a powerful magnetic field in the object’s early years, which is thought to fade significantly over time. When this particular neutron star’s magnetic field was measured, it was found to be quite strong, hinting that it’s still relatively young. However, its red giant companion is much older, leading researchers to wonder how the system has evolved to this point. One answer could be mass transfer, which can occur in close binary systems when material from one star is pulled in by or expands out past the other.

“These objects are puzzling,” Enrico said. “It might be that either the neutron star magnetic field does not decay substantially with time after all, or the neutron star actually formed later in the history of the binary system. That would mean it collapsed from a white dwarf into a neutron star as a result of feeding off the red giant over a long time, rather than becoming a neutron star as a result of a more traditional supernova explosion of a short-lived massive star.”

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