Today, the shuttle Endeavor crossed over Southern New Mexico one last time. It flew from Biggs Army Airfield over White Sands Missile Range and west from the NASA facility on WSMR’s western boundary towards its final resting place at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, CA.

I watched the mated behemoths of the Boeing 747 and the obsolete spacecraft fly directly overhead on its path to eternity. I had seen one space shuttle prior to this day. On April 6th, 1982, I watched as a similarly configured tandem pulled in to Barksdale AFB, LA (or was it Eglin AFB, FL?) on its way from White Sands Missile Range. That vehicle had been the space Shuttle Columbia, which would disintegrate over Texas two decades later.

So my contact with the space shuttle program began and ended with White Sands Missile Range, NM.

This, a short time after the deaths of Sally Ride and Neil Armstrong, makes me mourn the U.S. space program.

Republican politicos count on working class and middle class (for that matter, the lower tiers of the upper class) people to vote against their own financial interest. That much is clear. What is not so clear is why the Democrats allow their opponents to play this game (perhaps it is related to the gelatin-based spinal column of the typical Democratic politician). How difficult would it be to point out that, say, regular people like me individually pay exactly the same amount in payroll taxes as billionaires? We all pay exactly the same percentage of purchases in taxes (subject to some caveats that aren’t germane to this discussion). As long as the uninformed can be led to believe that any major issues exist beyond the direction of wealth redistribution, the Right will win.

Overt racism masquerading as simple nativism bothers me a lot. Birthers question Obama’s legitimacy. The movement to make English-only government services, voting, etc. shares its source. Non-whites are foreigners. I have mentioned in the past, that my ancestry to the very state in which I live (though I just moved here not much more than a decade ago) dates back at least as far as 1620. That, of course, would be the European segment. The native American/native Mexican blood predates that by another 300 centuries or so.

Well what about the really swarthy? Surely they just got here, right? That’s true. If, by “just,” you mean only over 200 years ago.

It seems that back in the infancy of this country, President Thomas Jefferson signed a law that would outlaw the trans-Atlantic slave trade beginning January 1st, 1808. While the illegal slave trade continued, the majority of blacks in America are descended from slaves born on American soil during the 18th Century. That is to say that most American blacks have ancestors who were born in what is now the United States of America in the 1700s. Yet those groups most insistent on the sub-citizenship of non-whites have names starting with Mc- or O’- (Irish Potato Famine, 1845-1852), ending with -inni or -ese (great Italian emigration, 1880-1920), or could otherwise be identified with relatively recent mass immigrations to the New World.

That is odd.

Oh. Before I get any hate mail, I know that Obama’s African roots were not of the stock of former American slaves. I’m not talking about him. I am talking about the rest of us in general.

Interestingly, I have encountered Republicans and Republican-leaning people this weekend that dislike Obama, but shudder at the thought of voting for Romney. I wonder to what extent this election hinges on the lack of turnout for one side or the other.

A question that has become a meme this election cycles (much as it first did in 1980):

“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

There are two obvious responses:

“I’m better off than I was three years ago.”

or, more to the point:

“No, I’m not. But Romney and the obscenely wealthy people who caused this mess certainly are.”

It really is too bad that they would rather waste their allotted time giving hand jobs to imaginary gods in deference to their opponents. That is probably why the Republicans will always win.

Immortal words for the ages:

“…evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.”
-Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)