Like DavidNYC in his last post and like many of you, I'm more than disappointed with media complicity in helping to cover for the gross negligence of Home Land Security, Bush, and FEMA. The MSM started out strong but they're being infected a bit with Rovism. New and damaging information comes out everyday about the WH, DHS, and FEMA. As each new morsel comes to light I see a lot of folks saying 'somebody tell the media!' 'Get this out!'

That's an excellent suggestion and I heartily concur. But we can do more with almost no effort at all and hit the media where it hurts and where they'll notice. Because folks, we ARE the media and more importantly we HAVE the power.

Update: I suggest those of you with juice on other blogs pass this around. And I need e-mail addies for specific programs. When the time is right we'll launch a pilot program and see what happens; a coordinated strike. If it doesn't work, nothing lost. If it does work, it's stuff like this that could end up changing the politicla landscape.

Update 1:35 PM EST: Weather concerns and a faulty fuel sensor have scrubbed the Return to Space Mission. I'll live Blog the next launch window and update schedule shortly.

A routine trip to the grocery store a mile away ... and there are one-hundred thousand people clogging my tiny coastal town.

They line the streets, they stand in the parking lots of every business and shop, vehicles are at a virtual standstill on the highways. For a ten mile stretch on US 1 there are tents, RVs, vans, children playing and frolicking, adults sitting in camp chairs talking and playing cards, sipping lemonade.

These are not the premium seats, but the show from here is spectacular nonetheless. These working families, many who dedicated their paltry two weeks of vacation to witness the crucible of discovery, will soon rise to their feet, put down the cards, sandwiches, and glasses. They will wait quietly, at times nervously, with fingers crossed; many heads will be bowed in prayer. With binoculars in hand the adults motion to the kids, even the smallest children something is going on. From the aged to the toddler, they strain both ears and eyes at the sliver of green painted on the horizon across the tranquil deep-blue bay ... it is time.

Recently an op-ed appeared in the New York Times by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna. This piece has been picked up by segments of the extremist fundamentalist right both here in America and abroad to intimidate and castigate Catholics into rejecting common descent, evolutionary biology, and in some cases all of modern science. But is that what the author is really proposing?

Note from NYT-Christoph Schönborn, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of Vienna, was the lead editor of the official 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Whether it's a hundred deaths or one, it's too many. But reports indicate that the casualty count could have been far, far, worse beneath the streets of Old London. The death toll could have been in the hundreds or even the thousands.

It wasn't miracles, it wasn't luck, it wasn't poor planning on the part of the criminals. Indeed; every sign is they sought to kill as many innocent men, women, and children as they could. What saved Londoners ... was Londoners.

Written by DarkSyde, inspired by contributions from Jon Springer, and edited by the sweet Lady Rhian

Some nights when cold wind whistles through dead thistles on its frigid lonely quest, warmed in deep December's darkness in the belly of my nest, I awaken, startled stifled, heaving silent screams, wrested from the clutches of dissolving winter dreams, Unreturning despite my yearning for the sweet embrace of sleep, down my hallway quietly creeping I read of something deep; but all too often, surf'n and blog'n, only despair invades my keep ... The vision that m'live'n is not the mare I'd choose to face; the more I see, the more I crave the bed'n grave of sleep'n's sweet embrace...- A Peak Oil Night's Mare

OK I've simply had it with these War Hawk idiots. The following is me throwing in the towel on several wingnuts who still support this shit after that miserable performance last night. I really don't care anymore about alienating them. We're the majority now and we have the mojo, so let's just stop dicking around and start calling these assholes out. Anyone still left supporting this shit deserves nothing less.

Some vulgarity below

The 31st Tangled bank is up at Science and Sensibility. And may I say that the layout the blogger used is about as slick and professional as it gets!

What is the Tangled Bank and how can you be linked? You can find the details here ... when PZ gets his server back up. It's the best science blogging on planet earth and the longest running, most successful Carnival I know of. You don't have to be a scientist to submit an entry, but you do have to be able to play one on the Internet.

OH! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter's silvered wings

Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds

And done a hundred things you have not dreamed of- wheeled and soared and swung high on the sunset silence ...

Who among us has not dreamt of flight? To coast effortlessly along on lazy thermals on a sunny day, the distant tapestry far below painted in pastel blues, browns, and greens? To dive at the ground at over 150 MPH and then pull out and blaze over a blurred landscape at breathtaking speed? From Daedalus to Da Vinci to Apollo and beyond, it is a vision that has driven mankind. The idea of flying informs our dreams, infiltrates our legends, and invades our nightmares. And now that we can fly by way of machines, it turns out to be every bit exciting as we imagined. But why are the birds heir to this ability? Why and how were they chosen to be among the lucky few who would take to the air and go on to dominate the land, sea, and sky?

Huge Grahics Below!

Here in the US the Fourth-O-July means hot dogs and firecrackers for the kids and the 'older' kids among us. On July Fourth, for a few short hours we will mostly put away our differences, pull out the lawn chairs, and gaze upward as the evening skies are painted in incandescent red, white, and blue, with our families and friends, to celebrate our Independence as a nation. It's a glorious and loud tradition.

But the best show this time around will take place almost three-hundred million miles away, in the deep reaches of interplanetary space. Deep Impact is on collision course with both Comet Tempel 1 and history. And in less than two weeks she will deploy a missile that will track and then strike the giant snowball, gorging out a crater the size of a football stadium in a flash that will be visible even to backyard observers equipped with a pair of binoculars.