There were about 500 people demonstrating in Pensacola, which seemed to come as a surprise to local people.

You let Lowes and Wal-Mart build their big-box stores, and you are going to have people who are less than fluent in English and who run like they grew up wearing sandals – a crouch and a scuffing as they run – familiar to residents of South San Diego County.

After the hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 the area’s Hispanic population jumped, and I have it on good authority [my next door neighbor] that Wal-Mart has expanded its grocery section to include “all kinds of Mexican food with foreign language labels” and Saturday night is “Mexican night, most of the cashiers don’t speak good American.”

If this continues she might have to go back to her hometown: Andalusia…Alabama.

The life guards at the beginning of the season have for some time come from Poland, and the last time I was getting my driver’s license renewed there were a number of people in the waiting room speaking Russian.

Until the government gets serious about the borders, and stops giving businesses the incentives to import labor when they are unable to export the jobs, people had better understand that we are going to have immigrants, just like their ancestors.

The first woman to command the Space Shuttle, Eileen Collins [Colonel, USAF retired], is leaving the agency to spend some time with her children. In her case, she has a son and daughter who will be in elementary school, so this isn’t a political excuse.

The birth of her son caused NASA to require female astronauts to now undergo a pregnancy examination before flight, as she also proved to be the first pregnant woman in space.

This is just another sign of the eclipse of the space program under the Shrubbery. There was a time when astronauts had to be kicked out, because no one wanted to leave the excitement.

The May Day association with labor is all American, and just as controversial as everything of any consequence in history. The day is tied to a strike for the eight-hour day and the so-called “Haymarket Riot” of 1886. When it comes to “riots” and the Chicago police are involved, you are not going to find a single truth.

As May 1^st falls at the mid point between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice it marks the beginning of summer for many people and is celebrated by Teutonic cultures [on the eve] as Walpurgisnacht [in German], and among the Gaelic peoples as Beltane.

The real significance was that it is unlikely there was going to be another freeze and it is probably safe to start planting crops, so a fertility festival is in order. This is to ensure a good crop, not to get together and have a good time before getting to the backbreaking work of farming, really.

This is the third anniversary of Mission Accomplished, the Shrubbery’s prance across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, one of the most expensive photo ops in American political history, and 1687 days since he said that Osama was “Wanted, Dead or Alive”.

This year there is the added feature in the US of the boycott and demonstrations of Hispanic Americans and other immigrants. Unfortunately these people have absorbed enough American culture to understand that nothing is going to be done because it’s the right thing to do. You have to hit people in their wallet, or you’ll be ignored. Reality makes that Koolaid bitter.

Update: It’s also the 75^th birthday of the Empire State Building and, via Auntie Roo at Blonde Sense, Loyalty Day.

Update 2: and Law Day? Come on, people, this is piling on. There are 364 other days available.