Posts from — June 2015

Greece missed a payment to the IMF of € 1.5 billion and the IMF refused to grant an extension.

As long as its creditors refuse to restructure the loans without agreements to further destroy the Greek economy, Greece is on its way out of the Euro zone.

This is a rant.

The Supreme Court has said that any two adults who show up for a marriage license have to be given one, but some clowns are trying to avoid doing it by claiming a First Amendment exemption on religious grounds.

Wrong, just totally, absolutely wrong! If you are in public service you take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States – you have to obey the law, it isn’t an option. If you don’t feel you can support the US Constitution, just leave public service. There is no religious exception to doing your job in public service.

It was United States 2-0 Germany at the World Cup in Canada and they will face the winner of the England – Japan game tomorrow in the final.

And Trump continues to take hits for his comments about Mexico. NBC, who not only broadcasts but was a partner in both the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants with Trump, has severed all ties with him. Trump doesn’t understand the problem of bad-mouthing millions of customers.

The world’s stock markets are taking hits over the ‘Greek problem’. It is looking more and more likely that the people of Greece have had it with the Euro and the European Union. The basic problem is that the austerians will never admit that their ‘solutions’ were stupid to begin with and prevented Greece from having any chance of recovery.

If you are obsessive about the time, you should be aware that a ‘leap second’ will be added to June 30th.

While I’ve been out of commission the Women’s World Cup has been taking place in Canada. It is down to the two semi-final games with the US facing Germany on June 30th and England vs Japan on July 1st. It sort of looks like a replay of WWII. Japan is the defending world champion. Both games will be at 6PM CDT.

[Dates corrected after I realized that I had been reading a European site, and it was a day later there and in the late night/early morning.]

David Sweat, the second New York prison escapee was shot and taken into custody by a New York State Trooper. He has been sent to a hospital in Albany, the capital of New York. Sweat was captured in the town of Constable on the New York/Quebec border.

Greece has closed its banks and imposed capital controls in response to the refusal of either the International Monetary Fund [IMF] or European Central Bank [ECB] to negotiate in good faith over the Greek financial crisis.

One down and one to go in the hunt for two escaped murderers in New York. The Border Patrol encountered Richard Matt. He had a shotgun stolen from a cabin in the mountains and apparently pointed it at the Federal officers, so they shot him. This occurred within 10 miles of the New York/Canadian border. Canada is on alert for the escapees.

Law enforcement officials assume that the other escapee, David Sweat, is in the same general area.

Well, Justice Kennedy joined the more left leaning members of SCOTUS and ruled that marriage is a basic right and protected by the 14th Amendment, i.e. any two consenting adults who want to get married, can get married anywhere in the United States.

The same states that got their knickers in a twist over school integration are complaining about this ruling and again using distorted history in their arguments.

Surely You Jest

You want me to move?!

[Editor: CC is annoyed that people keep entering and leaving by the front door.]

Friday Ark

In Repub Presidential hopeful news Bobby Jindal joined the circus the same day that Univision dropped all connection to to Donald Trump, including the Miss USA pageant, because Trump bad-mouthed Mexico and its people.

SCOTUS came down 6-3 that the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act [‘Obamacare’] was bogus, but they are stalling on releasing their decision on marriage equality.

A kind of neat product I stumbled upon is a ‘smart’ smoke alarm battery. YMMV, but smoke detectors are a pet peeve of mine.

I’m feeling a lot better these days, but I have been entertaining out-of-town guests, which has reduced my available ‘Net time. They left this morning, so I hope to return to the regular blogging.

Today at 11:38AM [CDT] is the Summer Solstice, technically considered the “first day of Summer”, but the mid Summer by much of Europe.

Many Wiccans celebrate the day as Litha, while computer programmers honor their predecessors, the druids, who build the first solid-state computing devices, the megaliths, like Stonehenge.

The Slavs celebrate St. John’s Night, Иван Купала [Ivan Kupala], the battle between the White god [Белобог – Belobog] and the Black god [Чёрнобог – Chyornobog] for control of the Sun. The Black god always wins and the night begins to expand.

The sound track to the battle is Иванова Ночь на Лысой Горе [Night on Bald Mountain ] by Модест Петрович Мусоргский [Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky], which everyone should play very loudly.

Archæoastronomy tracks all of the important solar events, another of the many things I learned from Andante.

End Of His Rope

How about some service here…

[Editor: Wonder waiting for his ‘staff’ to untangle the rope.]

Friday Ark

The remnants of Bill are still causing problems, currently in Arkansas on its way to the Ohio Valley.

Another Bush is running for President. The former governor of Florida, John Ellis Bush, is running as a monogram – J.E.B.

Donald Trump rubs salt in the wounds of a lot of investors in his real estate disasters by noting that he is a billionaire while his projects keeping going bankrupt. College students can’t cancel their student loans, but billionaires don’t have to pay for anything.

I see that the usual suspects are trying to spin the attack in Charleston, South Carolina as the act of a ‘lone wolf’ who was a mental defective, rather than another white supremacist terror attack.

Position: 33.7N 97.3W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North [360°] near 10 mph [16 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 30 mph [ 50 kph].
Wind Gusts: 40 mph [ 65 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 999 mb ↓.

Currently about 65 miles [ 105 km] North-Northwest of Dallas, Texas.

The National Hurricane Center issued its last advisory at 4AM CDT and the Weather Prediction Center took responsibility for the storm, which is a wide-spread flood threat.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]