Because we don’t tax a handful of extremely wealthy people and corporations and offer them all kinds of distasteful deductions, we have a big deficit. Via Daily Kos Labor:

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we’re working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

We middle-class taxpayers bailed out the super wealthy CEOs and mega-corporations when the malfeasance of a few almost cost the rest of us everything. We ponied up hundreds of billions to stablize a global portfolio of toxic assets and provided trillion dollar lines of credit at no interest. Thanks to our colletive credit, our generosity, our future tax receipts that tiny minority got to keep their mansions and investment income, fat exceutive bonuses and sweet government subsidies, and their lavish vacation homes. It’s way, way past time for that goodwill to be recognized and for everyone to pay their fair share.

This idea polls at 70% to 80%, across party lines, it’s as popular as a basketful of bipartisan kittens. Anger over the bailouts is what originally fueled parts of the Teaparty, before they were deftly folded into the religious right’s dreamworld and turned into cheerleaders for the rich by shady operators. It’s what’s behind the growing Wall Street protests today.

Any politician who does not agree with that is a bought and paid for whore.  Any politician who successfully harnesses that resentment will balance the budget, inspire voters, and could well cruise to victory in 2012.

Nothing like a little perspective when discussing space travel with a blog full of skeptics. Granted the distances between planets, moons, and asteroids are huge, the environment is harsh and unforgiving, the challenges and danger are unique, unlike any we have ever faced, and our bodies are frail. Maybe the solar system is too much. But over long periods of time we can and have accomplished feats of exploration no single generation could contemplate. Given more time, better technology, and old fashioned persistence it may be possible to repeat those ancient voyages on a far grander scale.

Our plans for Godless domination of all space and time continue apace.  Exceeeelent! Today I’m happy to announce several new, talented bloggers. Although new here is relative, some of these guys and gals have been writing great stuff and doing important work on behalf of sanity and reality for years.

Dana Hunter at En Tequila Es Verdad is a science blogger, SF writer, complete geology addict, Gnu Atheist, and owner of a – excuse me, owned by a homicidal felid.

Al Stefanelli owns and operates A Voice of Reason, he is a veteran journalist and bravely serves as the Georgia State Director for American Atheists, Inc.

Russel Glasser at The Atheist Experience is a fourth generation atheist and both his parents are physicists, gotta love that!

Ian Cromwell of the Cromunist Manifesto is a polymorph and long-time observer of race and race issues. His interests, at least blog-wise, focus on bringing anti-racism into the fold of skeptic thought.

JT Eberhard blogging at What Would JT Do? is a young rabble-rouser who serves the Secular Student Alliance and contributes to Atheism Resource.

Justin Griffith at Rock Beyond Belief is, praise no one and pass the ammunition, an atheist soldier serving his country and serving as Military Director for American Atheists.

Kylie Sturgess at Token Skeptic is a busy skeptic. She also hosts a podcast, and regularly writes for numerous publications including CSICOP’s Curiouser and Curiouser online column.

Head on over to their website and give them a warm skeptical welcome … which I guess would be something like “OK, I’m listening, what-do-ya got?

Interesting articles about the scope of the challenges involved in interstellar travel:

To send spacecraft to other stars in the space of a human lifetime, new methods of propulsion are going to be needed to provide the necessary ‘oomph’ to break free of our Solar System. Currently the best bet is nuclear fusion power, but there’s a problem – it hasn’t even been shown to be a commercially viable source of energy on Earth yet.

There’s no harm in dreaming, but most people I talk to don’t even appreciate the difference between sending a sizable spacecraft to the moon and a survivable trip to Mars. The distance to Mars is so much greater than I can’t even the trajectories on this page without reducing the earth and moon to little bitty points. The moon is a quarter million miles distant. On average, Mars is roughly 100 million miles away. More over the moon is always the same distance away, we can get there and back with Apollo technology in about a week. Using traditional elliptical orbits it would take about two years to Mars and back.

But there may be another way, and the Apollo trips to the moon are a useful illustration: Cyclers. [Read more…]