A Tactical Alliance of Convenience: Why Islamists and the Radical Left Align Against the West

AI Generated Cupboard Love

Have you wondered about why Islamists [aka jihadists] and communists/socialists appear to align themselves in the West?

The apparent alignment of Islamists and the radical left in the West is a tactical alliance of convenience, directed against shared enemies, and nothing more. It is not ideological harmony, nor any genuine synthesis of worldviews. 

Islamists, those committed to political Islam, the imposition of sharia, or theocratic rule, are permanently incompatible with communists or socialists. One rests on atheistic materialism and class struggle; the other on divine revelation and the supremacy of the ummah. One sees history as dialectical process; the other as the unfolding of God’s will. Can you guess which is which?

Wherever either has secured power, the other has been purged: Iran after 1979, Soviet Afghanistan, the various Arab socialist experiments. The pattern is consistent and instructive. 

In the West the cooperation is narrower and more limited--campus coalitions, street protests, immigration politics, and anti-Israel activism--yet it's real. Both treat liberal democracy, classical liberalism, free speech on matters of religion and sex, market capitalism, and above all Israel and the United States as the primary obstacles. 

After the 1960s the Western left largely abandoned pure class analysis for an identity-based “oppressor-oppressed” framework. Islamists fit neatly into the “oppressed” category via postcolonial theory, while Zionism or Western policy is cast as the oppressor. The result is joint rallies, BDS campaigns, and campus occupations in which progressive slogans and Islamist symbols appear side by side. 

Hard communists remain fringe; the practical partners are the broader progressive, socialist, and intersectional currents that absorbed Marxist categories and repurposed them. The arrangement is strictly tactical. 

Islamists gain platforms, funding channels, legal cover, and demographic leverage inside open societies.

Western leftist factions gain reliable voting blocs, street muscle, and moral leverage against conservatives. European left parties have courted Muslim organizations for municipal power; American campuses after 7 October 2023 displayed the same selective silence on honor violence, apostasy penalties, and gender segregation that would be intolerable from any other group. 

For the moment both sides regard liberalism itself as the greater threat. Historical precedents confirm the pattern without implying any deeper fusion. Soviet support for certain anti-Western Islamist or nationalist movements during the Cold War was pure realpolitik. 

Anti-colonial rhetoric supplied a shared vocabulary that outlived the USSR. Once power shifted, the alliances dissolved into repression. 

But the sleazy partnership is brittle.

Islamist social conservatism on women, sexuality, blasphemy, and Jews collides with progressive priorities the moment enforcement is attempted. Secular leftists who still notice the data on integration, crime patterns, or polling on sharia, homosexuality, and Israel among many Muslim-majority migrant communities peel away. 

Islamists, for their part, regard communism as kufr and have no long-term interest in proletarian internationalism. Where demographic or institutional power tilts toward one side, the other is discarded. Explanations that reduce the phenomenon solely to “Islamophobia,” “racism,” or pure leftist idealism ignore the repeated, observable pattern of selective solidarity and the explicit statements from both Islamist and radical-left organizers about using each other. 

Equally crude are those that treat every Muslim as an Islamist or every progressive as a communist. It just isn't so.

The alignment exists where interests coincide against the liberal center and the right; it is not a marriage of worldviews. History suggests this alliance will not survive the moment one party no longer needs the other. When demographic change or institutional capture shifts the balance of power, the temporary truce will end as it always has—in mutual repudiation and, where possible, suppression. 

The West will then discover, once again, that the enemies of its enemies were never its friends.

I want to thank you for following Brain Flushings. Please take time to simply check out the sponsors on this page--it's one way to support my work and you don't need to purchase anything to do so. Of course, you can Buy Me A Coffee if you want to support me directly. And finally, don't be afraid to subscribe if you enjoy the blog--it's free, and worth the cost.

Tweet

Trump Takes Aim at Birth Tourism, Moves to Tighten Birthright Citizenship

President Donald Trump is once again reminding everyone that immigration policy is not supposed to be a suggestion box.

On Thursday, Trump signed two executive orders targeting birth tourism and expanding the definition of who does not qualify for birthright citizenship.

The move comes after the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in June in Trump v. Barbara, which ruled that birthright citizenship is a right under the Constitution.

Trump was not exactly thrilled with the ruling.

“We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court concerning birthright. It was close, but a very, very unfortunate decision. So we’re making adjustments because it’s very unfair,” Trump said.

He also argued that the original purpose of birthright citizenship has little to do with the modern cottage industry that has developed around it.

“This was done for a different reason. This was done right after the Civil War. This was for the babies of slaves, and what’s happening now? People are building businesses around it,” he added.

The White House explained that the first executive order identifies, among other categories, certain children of aliens who are not entitled to birthright citizenship, consistent with historical exceptions recognized by the Supreme Court in Barbara.

The second order delegates presidential authority to the secretaries of State and Homeland Security and directs them to shut down the practice of birth tourism.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and a frequent source of nightmares for immigration activists, said the order ending birth tourism falls within the president’s authority under Section 215A of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

“This has been something that people have talked about not only for years but for decades,” Miller said.

Apparently, it was finally time to do something about it.

“The idea that people come here pretending to be a tourist, pretending to be a visitor, saying they want to go to Disneyland, they want to go visit a monument or go to a national park, but the real reason they’re here is to have a child, to make that child an automatic citizen, leave our country, and then have a U.S. citizen child,” he continued.

“It gives them access under this broken system to welfare benefits, ultimately to the voting booth, and all the other rights and privileges that belong solely to Americans. So that practice of birth tourism is, as of the signing of this order, hereby banned,” he added. “And what that means is that no one in the world is any more allowed to obtain a visa for this fraudulent purpose.”

Miller called the action one of Trump’s most important immigration moves.

“I would put this in the top three in terms of importance because it ends what has been one of the gravest and most egregious abuses of the American system, and it keeps American citizenship sacred,” he said.

The other executive order takes aim at broader categories of children of aliens who would not qualify for birthright citizenship.

“That includes, for example, alien enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organizations, and large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments,” Miller said.

“And so, with taking this action, it ensures that large numbers of people who wrongly would be getting birthright citizenship will no longer be eligible for those benefits,” he added.

Trump also signed a proclamation establishing a minimum import price program for polysilicon and polysilicon derivative imports, an effort aimed at protecting American producers. The administration said the move also imposes a 15 percent tariff on derivative products to encourage these industries to move their operations to the United States.

“This is a series of trade and tariff actions under Section 232, intended to ensure that domestic polysilicon manufacturing is properly supported and protected from overseas dumping and offshore threats,” White House staff secretary Will Scharf said.

Polysilicon may not exactly be the stuff of campaign rallies, but it is critical to producing the silicon wafers used in computer chips, including those powering the artificial intelligence boom.

“So the president’s policies have brought 50 percent of production into America, but we need the foundational products made here. Otherwise, you know, we’re making the products here, but we need the supply chain here,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said.

In other words, making the fancy stuff in America while importing the ingredients from overseas is apparently not quite the industrial renaissance anyone had in mind.

Trump’s latest actions put both immigration and domestic manufacturing back where his administration apparently believes they belong: at the center of the America First agenda.

I want to thank you for following Brain Flushings. Please take time to simply check out the sponsors on this page--it's one way to support my work and you don't need to purchase anything to do so. Of course, you can Buy Me A Coffee if you want to support me directly. And finally, don't be afraid to subscribe if you enjoy the blog--it's free, and worth the cost.

Tweet

El-Sayed's deep-down disgust with Michigan's Mackinac Island: asks voters to send him to Washington anyway

In a development that surprised absolutely no one familiar with the modern Democratic Party, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee and jihadi, Abdul El-Sayed, once went full progressive tourist and trashed one of the state’s most beloved vacation spots while complaining about being forced to campaign there.

“I hate Mackinac so much,” he said in a 2020 documentary that followed his failed run for governor. “Every time I’ve ever come here I’ve hated it. Why am I here?” Better question: why is this anti-Semite even running for office?

The clip, resurfaced by The Midwesterner, captured the future Senate hopeful at peak authenticity.  El-Sayed then helpfully clarified that if he somehow won the governorship, Mackinac Island would become his summer home, his way of walking back what he really feels.

The car-free island has hosted the Michigan governor’s official summer residence since 1945, a place where normal people enjoy horse-drawn carriages, bicycles, and walking instead of whatever coastal elite utopia El-Sayed apparently prefers. My guess is that their utopia resembles Egypt, where his parents are from.

His campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on why a man who openly despises one of Michigan’s most historical and wholesome landmarks still expects voters to trust him with their state’s future. Of course, the mainstream media didn't press them for an answer beyond the bs they fed the press.

Last year, Democratic Governor the elite Gretchen Whitmer tried to paper over the progressive distaste for the place by pitching Mackinac Island as the perfect film location for HBO’s “The White Lotus.” 

“If HBO is looking for the perfect location for season 4…Mackinac Island is ready to check you in,” she wrote over footage of the island’s scenery. Whitmer continues to visit regularly for events like the Mackinac Policy Conference, where Michigan’s political and business establishment gathers each year to pretend everything is fine. [She may have even gone there during the COVID-19 lockdowns because, you know, she's elite and doesn't have to answer to anyone in the state.]

This is not the first time a Democratic candidate has publicly loathed the very place they claim to represent. 

During a special election for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, Democratic nominee Aftyn Behn shared her deep affection for Nashville: “I hate the city, I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music, I hate all of the things that make Nashville apparently an ‘it’ city to the rest of the country. But I hate it.”

One can only imagine what she thinks about the rest of the country.

El-Sayed now faces Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers in the general election. After El-Sayed narrowly edged out Rep. Haley Stevens, Rogers released a video aimed at Democratic voters alarmed by the rise of the far-Left in Michigan. “You have a home with us,” he told Democrats of all ages. “Over the next 90 days I am going to work hard to earn your trust, to earn your support, and earn your vote. We have a state to save, Michigan. Let’s get to work.”

At least one party still seems to like the state it wants to represent.

I want to thank you for following Brain Flushings. Please take time to simply check out the sponsors on this page--it's one way to support my work and you don't need to purchase anything to do so. Of course, you can Buy Me A Coffee if you want to support me directly. And finally, don't be afraid to subscribe if you enjoy the blog--it's free, and worth the cost.

Tweet

Covert Bot Army Boosting Mamdani on X May Be Traced Back to City Hall

The allegations coming out of New York City are so bizarre that they make the average political campaign look honest. [H/T The Jerusalem Post.]

According to The Jerusalem Post, dozens of suspected bot accounts flooding X with glowing praise for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his allies may have something rather awkward in common: cyber experts say they appear to trace back to City Hall's own internet infrastructure. Apparently, taxpayer-funded enthusiasm may be the hottest new renewable energy source.

The Post independently consulted the cyber experts involved, who said they are "100% sure" the IP addresses could be traced to City Hall. The report, however, does not establish who controlled the accounts or whether city officials directed their activity. [My money is on Mamdani.]

The findings were compiled by the World Zionist Organization's Department for Combating Antisemitism, which has been monitoring coordinated online campaigns amid rising anti-Semitism. Their cyber specialists examined IP addresses, posting habits, and account behavior that looked less like passionate grassroots activism and more like someone accidentally leaned on the "copy" button for several months.

According to the analysis, dozens, and possibly hundreds, of accounts displayed nearly identical characteristics. Many pumped out hundreds of posts every single day, rarely produced any original content, had virtually empty profiles, and spent their existence doing little more than enthusiastically repeating posts from Mamdani's official account, city accounts, and political allies.

One account reportedly averaged 955 tweets per day with a 100% repost rate. Another managed 864 daily tweets with the same flawless commitment to never having an original thought. Even the most terminally online political activist usually remembers to stop for coffee.

The researchers emphasized that posting at an absurd pace does not automatically prove automation. A determined human equipped with unlimited caffeine, no employment, and an alarming disregard for sunlight could theoretically accomplish similar numbers. Still, when dozens of accounts exhibit virtually identical behavior while reposting the same material around the clock, suspicion naturally grows.

The report found that Mamdani's account frequently served as the launch point for what appeared to be coordinated amplification. A post would appear on the mayor's account before rapidly spreading through networks of accounts displaying the same unusual characteristics. Some reportedly devoted between 98% and 100% of their activity to amplifying the mayor's content, proving once again that loyalty programs have come a long way.

Some accounts were only a few days old yet somehow managed to put out hundreds of daily posts almost immediately. One account, created just three days before researchers examined it, reportedly generated 201 tweets per day despite having virtually no followers or posting history. 

Researchers say this kind of amplification can dramatically increase visibility. The initial wave of coordinated reposts encourages algorithms to promote the content, attracting genuine users whose engagement then pushes the posts even farther. In other words, the internet's recommendation engine may have mistaken an echo chamber for public enthusiasm.

The report cited a July 27 video in which the anti-Semite Mamdani discussed why he could not arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while accusing Israel of killing thousands. The video ultimately received millions of views, with researchers saying the suspected bot network played a major role in expanding its reach.

The analysts stressed that the available evidence does not prove Mamdani, his staff, or his communications team instructed anyone to operate the accounts. Rather, they say the evidence raises questions about whether city officials were aware of the activity, whether it was reported internally, and whether any organizational relationship existed between those operating the accounts and City Hall.

In short, the evidence points to what researchers describe as significant signs of organized amplification, while leaving unanswered who was behind it, who funded it, and whether anyone in government knew what was happening.

The World Zionist Organization says it plans to ask Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the United States' Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, to forward the findings to federal law enforcement for further investigation.

"There is a need for a thorough, professional, and independent investigation into these hate-amplification operations," Yifat Ovadia-Luski, head of the WZO's Department for Combating Antisemitism, told the Post.

"Today's anti-Semitism begins online and then moves into the streets, and the spread of hatred on social media is a central driver of that incitement. This is a well-oiled influence machine designed to shape the international arena, and it is making Jews feel less safe in New York City and across the United States.

"We cannot stand by. We are calling for intervention by the US federal authorities."

Mark Goldfeder, CEO and director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, said his organization is referring the matter to New York City's Department of Investigation and the Conflicts of Interest Board while requesting access to City Hall server logs.

"City employees may not use public resources for political messaging, and public officials may not deceive the public they serve; that has been New York law since long before anyone wrote a bot," Goldfeder told The Jerusalem Post.

If the allegations are substantiated, New Yorkers may discover they weren't witnessing a spontaneous outpouring of public support after all. They may simply have been watching the world's most enthusiastic municipal fan club, one that never sleeps, never complains, and apparently tweets faster than any human who has ever lived.

I want to thank you for following Brain Flushings. Please take time to simply check out the sponsors on this page--it's one way to support my work and you don't need to purchase anything to do so. Of course, you can Buy Me A Coffee if you want to support me directly. And finally, don't be afraid to subscribe if you enjoy the blog--it's free, and worth the cost.

Tweet

Socialist Mayor Mamdani booed off the stage in a New York minute: gets instant karma in Staten Island

New York City’s freshly minted socialist, comrade Mayor Zohran Mamdani showed up to a massive pro-police celebration on Staten Island thinking the working-class crowd would greet him like a conquering hero. 

Fat chance.

Instead, 3,500 residents and families treated him like the defund-the-police enthusiast he has always been and the result was that in under a minute of incoherent taqiyya mumbling, the crowd drowned him out with pure, unfiltered American 'eff off.'

Mamdani, the Democratic Socialists of America, anti-Semite, who spent years treating cops like the enemy, stepped up to the microphone at the NYPD’s 43rd Patrol Borough National Night Out Against Crime. He barely got out a greeting before the boos, jeers, and chants of “get out of here” and “nobody wants you” turned the stage into his personal walk of shame. 

He tried to power through but the crowd refused to let up and bow down to his nonsense.

Eventually the commie mayor clutched his heart in that signature performative Islamic-like gesture, waved like a beauty pageant contestant who just lost, and fled the stage still smiling as if the entire humiliation was some kind of progressive victory lap. This was what can only be described as a major dork performance and embarrassment. 

The audience kept right on booing and shaking fists while organizers desperately tried to restore order. Conservative voices wasted no time celebrating the moment of clarity. Pundit Eric Daugherty summed it up perfectly: the mayor was “VICIOUSLY booed and jeered off stage” and “walked off in SHAME.” 

Commentator Joey Mannarino added the necessary realism: “New York’s communist mayor just got the reception he actually deserves.” 

The same cops and taxpayers this DSA scumcrumpet spent years vilifying and trying to defund finally told him exactly where he could stick his soft-on-crime agenda. 

Staten Island, unofficially known as the last remaining pocket of common sense in the five boroughs, saw right through the act. This was not some random outburst because everyone with eyes and ears knows how Mamdani’s entire political brand has been built on treating law enforcement like the problem. His campaign embraced the defund movement. His first budget sliced police funding and scrapped plans to hire 5,000 new officers. 

New York City Police Department Chief of Department Michael LiPetri attends the
National Night Out Against Crime at Restoration Plaza. (Getty Images)

Then came “Snowballgate,” the February incident where roughly 100 people pelted NYPD officers with ice projectiles, injuring two. Mamdani’s response was to minimize the dickwads behavior by calling them “kids” having a playful snowball fight and carefully avoid any suggestion that assaulting cops might actually be illegal. If you saw the video of the incident, you'd immediately know that this wasn't a freaking snowball fight but an attack on police. 

Crime expert Rafael Mangual noted the obvious: the mayor refused to back the NYPD or call for prosecutions. The message was clear. Officers are the bad guys. Violent mobs are simply energetic youth.

So when the same commie mayor waltzed into a National Night Out Against Crime event expecting applause, Staten Island delivered the only logical response. The people who actually live with the consequences of progressive soft-on-crime policies decided they had heard enough. No amount of hand-over-heart theatrics could paper over years of anti-police rhetoric. The crowd simply exercised their right to free speech and informed the mayor that his particular brand of socialism has no constituency among the people who still believe cops should be allowed to do their jobs.

In the end, Mamdani left the stage to sustained mockery while the rest of the city continues to deal with the real-world results of his bs ideology. High crime, declining quality of life, and a police force under constant political assault do not magically disappear because a socialist mayor smiles through the boos. 

Staten Island just made that point louder and clearer than any policy paper ever could. God bless the people who still refuse to pretend otherwise.

I want to thank you for following Brain Flushings. Please take time to simply check out the sponsors on this page--it's one way to support my work and you don't need to purchase anything to do so. Of course, you can Buy Me A Coffee if you want to support me directly. And finally, don't be afraid to subscribe if you enjoy the blog--it's free, and worth the cost.

Tweet

El-Sayed campaign backed by over $100,000 from dozens of members of group with alleged terror ties

The "Taqiyya Grin"

The political fundraising rule used to be simple. Candidates would promise to keep special interests out of politics, then quietly cash checks from the usual suspects. Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed appears determined to modernize the tradition by proving that "special interests" is apparently just another term that depends on who's writing the check. [H/T Fox News Digital.]

According to a Fox News Digital review, El-Sayed's campaign has collected more than $115,000 from at least 41 individuals who either work for, formerly worked for, or held leadership positions with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, better known as CAIR. That's one way to build a coalition. Another is to skip the middleman and rent a conference room at headquarters.

The irony is particularly rich because El-Sayed has made getting "money out of politics" one of the signature themes of his campaign. Apparently, the money was willing to leave politics, but politics kept inviting it back for coffee and a little bit o' jihad.

Among the contributors were some of CAIR's biggest names, including national Board Chair Manal Fakhoury, national Board Treasurer Eyas Abdeen, national Vice Chair Emad Sabbah, and CAIR-Michigan board member Jukaku Tayeb, who also happens to be El-Sayed's father-in-law. Family gatherings must feature unusually productive finance committee meetings.

Tayeb has reportedly been one of the largest financial backers of the super PAC supporting El-Sayed's campaign. He is also part of the founding committee of the Islamic Society of North America, a group that has been linked to Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood funding, according to previous reporting by the Washington Free Beacon.

Another donor attracting attention is CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, [aka Nihad Adickwad] listed in Federal Election Commission records under the name Nehad Hammad. The dickwad sparked widespread criticism after saying he was "happy" to see Hamas break out of Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, while arguing Israel "does not have the right to self-defense" as an occupying power. In Washington, that apparently qualifies as a controversial statement. On some college campuses, it qualifies as tenure material.

The support for El-Sayed stretched far beyond Michigan. Fox News Digital identified contributions from CAIR officials representing chapters in California, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, and several other states, suggesting that El-Sayed's fundraising operation has become something of a national reunion tour.

Other contributors include CAIR-California Governance Board Treasurer Rubina Alvi, Governance Board Chair Asaad Traina, CAIR-Michigan board member Muzammil Ahmed, who contributed $11,600, Governance Board members Atef Ibrahim and Dina Ezzeddine, along with former National Board Chair Roula Allouch.

"Taqiyya Grin"

El-Sayed's relationship with CAIR extends beyond campaign donations. In 2022, he appeared at a CAIR event and was paid for a speaking engagement, where he criticized Oklahoma's ban on Sharia law and compared it to the Trail of Tears, according to the Washington Free Beacon. Nothing says "local Senate campaign" quite like re-litigating Oklahoma's legal code through historical analogies.

CAIR has faced scrutiny for years over allegations regarding ties to Hamas. In 2007, federal prosecutors identified the organization as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case, the largest terrorism financing prosecution in American history.

CAIR was never charged with a crime and has consistently denied the allegations, challenging its designation in the case. Still, the organization has been formally designated or labeled a terrorist organization by Florida and Texas, while the United Arab Emirates designated CAIR a terrorist organization in 2014, a move widely understood to reflect the UAE's assessment that CAIR has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Responding to Fox News Digital, CAIR rejected allegations that it has ties to terrorism. The organization pointed to its "Dispelling Rumors About CAIR" webpage, memoranda stating it has "repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism throughout our 30 years of existence," and statements saying it has condemned attacks by Hamas and other designated terrorist organizations "for decades."

CAIR also highlighted a 2009 declaration stating, "We unequivocally condemn all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the U.S. Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization."

The organization further cited a National Board statement condemning antisemitism and the Oct. 7 attacks, along with a 2023 editorial in which National Executive Director Nihad Awad said he agreed with CAIR's condemnation of attacks on civilians.

Meanwhile, El-Sayed has continued to draw criticism from Republicans and pro-Israel advocates over various Middle East-related controversies, including campaigning alongside far-left streamer Hasan Piker, his response to an attack targeting a Detroit synagogue, and declining to comment on the death of Iran's supreme leader because, he said, some constituents in Dearborn were mourning. Piker is the nephew of Cenk Uygur, the guy who yells garbage about Israel and founded Young Turks.

Despite the controversy, El-Sayed defeated Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens in Tuesday's Senate primary, surprising many political observers with a much stronger showing than expected. He now heads into a November showdown against Republican Mike Rogers.

Michigan voters will ultimately decide whether this fundraising strategy represents principled coalition building or merely another case of campaign ethics discovering that campaign slogans come with plenty of fine print.

I want to thank you for following Brain Flushings. Please take time to simply check out the sponsors on this page--it's one way to support my work and you don't need to purchase anything to do so. Of course, you can Buy Me A Coffee if you want to support me directly. And finally, don't be afraid to subscribe if you enjoy the blog--it's free, and worth the cost.

Tweet

A Space X Rocket Will Soon Crash Into the Moon with the Power of Millions of Firecrackers

A decommissioned SpaceX rocket that got off course is expected to slam into the moon at 5,400 miles per hour on Wednesday morning.

The impact will generate an explosion equivalent to 15,000 sticks of dynamite, which is 
roughly 140–150 million standard (legal consumer) firecrackers, based on approximate TNT-equivalent energy/blast comparisons—though the two are not directly equivalent because of fundamental differences in how they release energy. Still, that's a lot of boom for the buck.

The upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will probably hit the moon at 2:35 a.m. ET on Wednesday. It has been floating for 19 months in a high orbit around Earth that crosses the moon’s path. Usually, this part of the rocket goes into a long oval orbit around Earth. Then it is brought back down, burns up in the atmosphere, and falls into a far-away part of the ocean. But the pull of gravity from Earth, the moon, and the sun slowly changed the rocket’s path.

This rocket helped launch commercial landers to the moon before it was taken out of service. Julianna Scheiman is the director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX. She said the company did “a different maneuver [than de-orbiting] to ensure that the second stage itself is safe per the appropriate rules and regulations.”

“What has happened is, essentially, a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path towards the moon,” Scheiman added. Astronomer Bill Gray was the first to predict the date and time of the crash. He thinks the impact will release as much energy as 15,000 sticks of dynamite and will create a big cloud of debris.

Even though the crash is powerful, scientists say it will be too faint and too quick to see with the naked eye from Earth.

NASA says the crash is not a danger to Earth. The agency “will continue to track the booster for training purposes, as well as later observe the impact site for scientific purposes.” Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher Benjamin Fernando said that the collision “provides an opportunity to test pipelines for measuring flash properties to locate impact events seismically, and to better understand the multi-modal hazards posed to future lunar infrastructure and astronauts from space debris impacting the moon.”

The crater from the crash should be about 90 feet wide and 16 feet deep. NASA will aim its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the site before and after the hit. This is a robotic spacecraft that maps the moon.This will be only the second time a used rocket has hit the moon by accident.

In 2022, a Chinese rocket booster smashed into the far side of the moon. At first, researchers thought it was a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Later they found out it was China’s Long March 3C rocket. That rocket had launched a mission around the moon in October 2014.

As NASA gets ready to keep people on the moon for a long time, it will be more important to deal with space junk in orbit around the moon. Future crashes could throw debris off the moon’s surface. That could create dangers for astronauts, spacecraft, and equipment operating nearby.


I want to thank you for following Brain Flushings. Please take time to simply check out the sponsors on this page--it's one way to support my work and you don't need to purchase anything to do so. Of course, you can Buy Me A Coffee if you want to support me directly. And finally, don't be afraid to subscribe if you enjoy the blog--it's free, and worth the cost.

Tweet

Fauci Takes Fifth 111 Times Because Answering Questions Would Force Him to Admit He's Not Actually a Deity

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a shocking development that has left half the country clutching their “In Fauci We Trust” prayer cards, Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times during his recent Senate grilling. 

Sources close to the hearing confirm the real reason wasn’t fear of perjury, it was sheer, unadulterated pride. The man simply could not bear watching his own golden statue melt under the harsh light of basic questions. 

Former Rolling Stone editor Matt Taibbi dug through the wreckage of Fauci’s July 29 appearance before the Senate Homeland Security Committee and discovered what many already suspected: America’s most celebrated public health rock star spent the pandemic treating the country like his personal arena tour. 

Diary entries paint a portrait of an egotistical asshat clown who demanded federal employees chase cash prizes for him between Zoom briefings, while casually noting that vaccinated people were still getting infected; details he somehow forgot to share with the flock still waiting for their next booster sacrament.

Taibbi observed that Fauci’s chaotic performance did precisely nothing to dent the religious devotion of the faithful Left. Science, the FBI, the CIA, and the entire intelligence community can whisper “lab leak” until they’re blue in the face; Fauci remains their false prophet, an invidious huckster-narcissist whose reckless experiments may have endangered the world. 

One does not simply question the high priest of “I Am Science.” 

Joe Biden’s blanket pardon, issued with the intellectual clarity of a man who once introduced his own shadow as a Cabinet member, somehow failed to cover this particular hearing. Perjury traps yawned open like the mouths of hungry interns. So Fauci took the Fifth. Legal strategy? Partially, but deeper analysis reveals the true motive: pure ego up his wazoo. 

Three hours of systematically dismantling his own temple was simply too much for a man who once believed the adoring media had permanently canonized him. The heart of the matter, as Taibbi noted, was the exquisite legal loophole left by the outgoing Obama administration in 2017. By redefining “potential pandemic pathogen” with the semantic precision of a leprechaun rewriting the rules of a drinking contest, officials created a glorious gray area. 

Suddenly, taking a bat virus that couldn’t infect bats, inserting twelve nucleotides to give it a furin cleavage site, and watching it become devastatingly transmissible to humans wasn’t “gain of function.” It was just creative virology. 

As former CDC Director Bob Redfield helpfully clarified, if you start with something that doesn’t hurt people and make it hurt people, congratulations, you’ve invented a brand-new category of research that definitely doesn’t count. 

Fauci’s diaries seethe with irritation at the “nonsense” in Congress over gain-of-function questions. In his mind, the funding never “likely” caused widespread human transmission, so everything was fine. Never mind the diary entry fretting that Dr. Zheng-Li Shi had been busily adapting spike proteins to human ACE2 receptors for years. Never mind that the virus that escaped Wuhan just happened to possess the exact engineered feature scientists had been discussing. Details, details. 

The important thing was that the paperwork looked clean. 

Taibbi concluded that half the country is still averting its eyes because one blue-state heartthrob sits at the center of the disaster. Investigating the greatest public health catastrophe in a century might require admitting their idol was fallible clusterfrack of a doctor, and that simply cannot be allowed. God help us when the next novel virus needs a little laboratory TLC. 

In the end, Fauci pleaded the Fifth not merely to avoid legal jeopardy, but to spare himself the humiliation of watching his carefully curated legacy go up in flames while he held the match. Sorry, Doc. The secret is out. The temple has fallen. And no amount of Fifth Amendment invocations can put the furin cleavage site back in the bottle.

I want to thank you for following Brain Flushings. Please take time to simply check out the sponsors on this page--it's one way to support my work and you don't need to purchase anything to do so. Of course, you can Buy Me A Coffee if you want to support me directly. And finally, don't be afraid to subscribe if you enjoy the blog--it's free, and worth the cost.

Tweet