July 24, 2012, Dog days of summer
Rest in peace, Dr. Sally Ride, America's first female astronaut, who died at 61 of pancreatic cancer. In 1983, Dr. Ride was aboard the space shuttle Challenger (which would blow up three years later, with two other women aboard), for her debut mission. At the time, Dr. Ride's mission [not to mention her whole career in the hard sciences] was quite groundbreaking (notwithstanding that the Soviets had sent women to space decades earlier...for all its flaws, the USSR had much less of a stick up its ass about things like that than we did... and do... note that there are, despite the vast majority of college graduates being women for some time now, there are only eighteen female CEOs in the Fortune 500... and that's 3.6%... way up from 2.4% in 2011!)
In Fake Election[TM] news, it seems neither of the "two candidates" wants to talk about gun control in the aftermath of the horrific gun-massacre in Columbine Aurora, Colorado. Let me get right to it: unless and until Goldman, Sachs and J.P. Morgan see it to their advantage to cut them off, we will be letting the rubes have guns and ammo and periodically shooting up a school, college, post office, shopping mall, restaurant, ordinary workplace or military base (but not, say, a well-heeled country club or corporate board room, of course, because that sort of thing would endanger people who matter)... "the Second Amendment" as interpreted by no-gun-regulation absolutists will remain "the law". As regular readers of this blog know, the Constitution is simply a construct for the interests of the powerful, which is why things like habeas corpus, or prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure are dispensed with, while guns remain inviolate. "It's the hierarchy, stupid." As Barack and Mitt are simply alternate flavors of the same ice cream, don't look for any difference on this "issue"... or on much else.
In the "oops" department, it seems that eight employees of Rupert Murdoch's media empire are going to be charged with conspiracy to intercept communications (that's a crime when private parties not connected with Goldman Sachs the Government do it... at least in the UK) in the ongoing hacking of communications scandal, including former Murdoch major domo Rebekah Brooks (a close friend of UK PM David "Spanky" Cameron) and Andy "Not Chuck" Coulson, former communications director for UK M David "Spanky" Cameron.
One of our cats is lying between my keyboard and screen and attacking my mouse (he is a cat, after all!), and so, I'll have to just rift on the rest of this post, without links... a huge iceberg has broken off a glacier in Greenland and over 60% of the USA is suffering an unbelievable drought (and before the massacre, Colorado was suffering its worst wildfires ever, including all over the Colorado Springs area, where I ran up and down Pikes Peak back in '07)... and yet, Big Oil and Big Finance still feel the need to fund their global warming denial propaganda... and Americans, being trained to be stupid and compliant by our dis-education system, are still not convinced of reality (though they do believe in UFO's, the rapture, angels, Santa Claus and that tax cuts for the rich will increase government revenue). After successfully replacing the pretty secular Qaddaffi (?) regime in Libya with chaos and Muslim extremists (see "Iraq"), we're trying to do much the same thing in Syria, complete with al Qaeda affiliated mercenaries of our employ... next stop, World War III... it's how we got out of the First Great Depression... don't think that will end well...
Enjoying a brief respite from man-made climate change here in NYC.. hope you'all are enjoying your summers as well. This has been... "Dog days of summer."