Science Education in Lousiana

Doonesbury nails it.

Unemployment Is Up Some More, Does Anyone In the Village Give a Shit?

The official unemployment rate climbed to 9.2% for June. The U-6 rate jumped 0.4%, to 16.2%, or 24,830,000 people who are out of work or stringing together part-time jobs.

Republicans are still peddling their fairy tale that more tax cuts for the rich will help. Democrats probably would like to engage in some economic pump-priming, but that is not going to happen, not with the House of Representatives firmly in the hands of the fiscal arsonists who are eager to score political points by trashing the economy, with the connivance of enough like-minded Senators.

Fact of the matter is, nobody gives a shit about the unemployed any more. The Republicans never have, of course. They didn't give a shit when a third of the country was out of work in the Great Depression. To them, it was a time to try and seize control of the government. Corporations are sitting on large piles of cash, the CEOs are raking in ginormous pay increases, but they are not hiring.

The wealthy and the corporations apparently have concluded that they don't need us. Any unrest would be met with by waves of paramilitary goons*, eager to please their masters by spilling blood. But why people in this country aren't getting royally hacked off that the wealthy and the CEOs have been making out like the thieves they are is beyond my understanding.

The system is wholly unfair. Executives and banksters chain-saw the shit out of businesses to make a short-term buck and nobody cares. One of those corporate butchers, Mitt Romney, had the gall to proclaim that his vast experience with trashing and looting companies makes him fit to be President, which would be like hiring Ted Bundy to run a girls' school.

Republicans hate unions to the point that they would have shuttered a goodly potion of the American manufacturing base in order to stab the United Auto Workers. They would have thrown a million or more people out of decent jobs in order to score some cheap political points How anyone can regard the Republican party as being composed of patriots is not comprehensible. But don't kid yourself, most of the Democrats are no better.

If you're looking for optimism, go elsewhere. In the words of River Tam: "Things are going to get much worse."
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* The police.

Even Arrogant Clowns Can Do Some Good, Even If By Accident

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) has proposed legislation designed to ensure pilots fairer treatment and more access to information in FAA enforcement actions, reform the appellate process, and create advisory boards to help improve the notices to airmen and medical certification processes.

Why is Inhofe so concerned about pilot's rights? It's because that boob landed on a closed runway, scattering the men working on the runway.

O course, nothing much happened to Inhofe, because he is a sitting U.S. Senator, and, because as he put it: "I was supposed to have unlimited airspace." He had to take some "remedial training."

Boo-fucking-hoo. If any non-politician had landed an airplane on a runway that was closed by a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM), marked with large "X"s and had construction equipment on the runway, the FAA likely would have gone for an emergency suspension, followed by maybe a long-term sit-down, ending with a repeat of the last flight test, otherwise known as a "709 ride". And that's if the FAA didn't go for a full revocation. of the pilot's certificate.

As this article noted, 709 rides are given for "minor violations" of Federal Air Regulations. Other than maybe inside of Inhoe's mind, there probably isn't anyone in the aviation world who would regard landing on a closed runway that was obstructed by construction equipment as "minor." Even if there was no NOTAM, landing on a runway that is obstructed is a violation of both the Federal Aviation Regulations and common sense. But no. Inhofe was required to get four hours of ground school and three hours of flight instruction. And he is obviously outraged that he even has to do that.

Still, it is a common complaint in the aviation community that when it comes to acting against pilots, the FAA acts as judge, jury and executioner. Some reform there is necessary. Too bad, though, that it comes because an arrogant and unrepentant douchebag like Inhofe came close to killing some people.

Step Right This Way For Your Full-Body X-Ray

Step right this way for your free TSA X-ray:

Airlines are being warned by the government that terrorists are considering surgically hiding bombs inside humans to evade airport security. As a result, travelers may find themselves subjected to more scrutiny when flying in the heart of summer vacation season, especially to the U.S. from abroad.

I suspect that the real risk will be from ass-carried explosives, not surgically-implanted ones. The kind of surgery necessary to plant a bomb is probably not a walk in the park, but they probably can do the surgery in a Pakistani hospital.

The Doorman

Jake is lying in that doorway and bapping at any cat who wants to get past him.

None have succeeded.

Fat-assed, lying down on the job and getting in everyone's way-- I may have to rename him John Boehner.

Our Greedy CEOs Are Acting Like Chimpanzees

Sharing and fairness seem to be hard-wired into humans.

But the greedheads who run major companies, banks and hedge funds, with their attitudes of "hooray for me and fuck you" are acting more like baboons. When people call CEOs and the rest "greedy monkeys", they are being more accurate than they know.

Which is probably defaming baboons. Good thing for me that they can't sue.

Uh-Oh, I Think Nancy Grace's Head Just Exploded

ORLANDO, Fla. — Casey Anthony, the young mother whose seeming heartlessness at the disappearance of her daughter transfixed America for three years, was found not guilty on Tuesday of killing the girl, Caylee Marie.

I stopped watching Good Morning America because every show had a segment with Nancy Grace shrieking about this trial and how Casey Anthony was going to go to the chair* for whacking her daughter.

Apparently, it is a good thing that I never tune into the 24 Hour Lynch Casey Anthony Channel, also known as HLN. You have to love how one of the bloviators on that channel blasted the defense for a pathetic closing argument. I'd say that those words have to leave a mark on HLN now, but I doubt if there is a person there who has any qualms, let alone shame.

It's not just HLN or GMA. The Today Show had Star Jones telling millions of viewers what a terrific job the prosecution did with its closing argument. Well, not so much.

So, you might ask if I think that Casey Anthony killed her daughter. Possibly. But "possibly" isn't proof.
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* I know they execute people by lethal injection now. But "going to the gurney" isn't quite the same.

Our Best Frenemy

Pakistan. Their intelligence service whacked one reporter, beat the stuffing out of another (both for writing stories that made the Paki spooks uncomfortable) and supplies guns, money and training to our enemies.

Pakistan is playing a dual game and everybody who has been paying any attention knows it. It is somewhat understandable; Bush was ready to bomb the shit out of Pakistan in 2001, but the Pakistanis also know that the war in Afghanistan will end some day. The Great Game of Central Asia still goes on, the contested turf is the same, but this time the players are India and Pakistan, not the British and Russian Empires.

This is why of all of the military aid we give them to "fight terror", the vast majority goes to preparing to lose another war against India-- Pakistan arguably has initiated at least four wars with India, both large and small, and lost every one. With a record such as that, it is kind of hard to understand the esteem that the Pakistanis supposedly have for their army.

We're kind of stuck with them, as long as we need to get supplies and troops in and out of Afghanistan. Which is a strong argument for ending the conflict.

The Next Generation

The relative of a friend. He's going off to college in the fall. Range time last month (along with cartridges and targets) was my graduation gift to him. He's shooting my Mosin-Nagant PU sniper rifle, which was his favorite of the day. On the bench are a M1903A1 Springfield and a Savage Mk II. Not pictured is a Krag carbine.

It was raining off and on that day, sometimes rather hard. One of his classmates is a serious gun enthusiast who was very impressed by his getting to shoot a Krag (I only gave him five rounds (they go for $38 a box).

A good day.

"The Recession Is Over," So Says the New York Times

In an article about the effect on retail shopping of high gasoline prices, the Times had this jaw-dropper:

...now, with consumers feeling short on cash after the recession, high gas prices are keeping some of them from shopping as frequently.

Really? "After the recession?" Is that because the CEOs are, once again. making out like the bandits that they are, with a 23% rise in pay from `09 to `10?

The current seasonally-adjusted U-3 unemployment rate is 9.1%. A year ago it was 9.6% The U-6 unemployment rate, which is closer to a real statement of things, is 15.8%, down from 16.5% last year.

So where are we now? This is a graph from Calculated Risk that shows loss of jobs versus time for every recession since the Second World War:

Note that the slope of the job losses and jobs recovery are very similar to the 2001 recession. The difference is that in the 2001 recession, the percentage of jobs lost was 2%; in this current recession, the percentage was over 6%. If the recovery rate persists at the same slope as the `01 recession, the unemployment rate would be back to normal roughly 72 months after the recession began, which is over two years from now.

Two things to keep in mind. First, a six year timeline from the start of massive job losses to the end of the job losses is right in line for the start of the next downturn. If economists believe that this recession is so over, then it is possible that jobs will start disappearing in the next recession before a full recovery from this one.

Second, the Republicans are actively working to sabotage what little recovery there has been. The whole point of the current debt ceiling brouhaha, from their perspective, is to make a debt ceiling deal so toxic that the Democrats cannot accept it, crashing the recovery (such as it is) and throwing millions more people out of work. Then the GOP goes into the next election, claiming to be the party of reason and compromise and blaming the Democrats-- a view that will be parroted by the Right Wing Noise Machine and the useful idiots in the Tea Party.

Meanwhile, President Cool as Ice has largely, until very recently, been unwilling to call the Republicans out on their economic sabotage. The Republicans see no reason not to continue on, because nobody is countering their propaganda.

If you think that is far-fetched, keep in mind that the Republicans were successful at neutering the stimulus and they've been able to cripple any further attempts to prime the economy and they have been somewhat successful in blaming the Democrats for that.