I'm not dead

I've been busy dealing with work and other commitments,

My last choir rehearsal for the season was last night. We will sing this Sunday and next, but not again until September.

I've been following the SpaceX mission to the International Space Station with great interest, and am amazed that they've managed to pull it off perfectly. Their previous Dragon mission was also a perfect success. The Falcon 9 now has a perfect 3-0 record. If this keeps going, I may have to revise my prediction that the next human beings to land on the moon will be Chinese.

Then again, it's still a long way to the moon, and it may be that no one gets there in my lifetime. The money is all in satellite launches, after all, not interplanetary expeditions.

On another subject, what a mess the Europeans have made of their so-called Union. From my perspective it almost looks like it was deliberately designed to empower financial speculators over nations and their elected leaders.

The older I get, the more prescient Marx seems to have been about capitalism.

I wish to God Obama were half the socialist his right-wing detractors claim him to be.

The billion-dollar question: can any Democrat but a Republican-in-all-but-name get elected in a post-Citizens United America?

We will know that the American republic is well and truly dead if these three things come to pass:

1) A Supreme Court decision striking down the Affordable Care Act;

2) The renewal of the Bush tax cuts yet again;

3) President Willard "Mitt" Romney.