Evening Musings

The shuttle made it back in one piece, although they had to land it at Edwards due to bad Florida weather. Eileen was interested in this trip both because she spent her formative years in metro Houston and she had a namesake, Ms. Collins,  commanding the mission.

Jackson Murphy's take-"NASA, pimp that ride or sell it." The shuttle's supposed to be mothballed at the end of the decade, and I don't know if there'd be a good buyer. It'd be a bit rich even for Richard Branson.
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This isn't a good week for female prison workers. Up in the western UP, a cafeteria worker sprung her boyfriend, only to be caught south of the border in Wisconsin. At least that one was peaceful. Down in Tennessee,  a former prison nurse killed a guard to spring her husband.

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One more 25 BP bump in the Fed Funds rate. Good news for money-market investors, bad news if you have an ARM. However, long term rates refuse to budge, so this might be a good time to swap out an ARM for a fixed-rate mortgage.

The target rates up to 3.5%. That $60/barrel oil price ain't helping matters. I can see Hillary planning a stag(flation) party for 2008, but a rather robust economy keeps spoiling the plan.

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Interesting poll commissioned by the Canadian conservative Western Standard. 42% of Albertans agree with the concept that "Western Canadians should begin to explore the idea of forming their own country." The rest of the west wasn't as disgruntled with the Canadian prospect, with their approval of that statement down around 30%.

Hey, why reinvent the wheel? We can always put a few extra stars on that spangled-banner.

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Here's the new Marc Cohn lyric-

I'm driving in Denver,
Got my head nearly blown off behind the wheel.
I'm driving in Denver,
and the ER folks know how I feel.

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The Wicked Witch of the Southeast is running for the Senate and no one wants a piece of her. That's going to make for one nasty Senate race as the liberals try to give Harris a full Nelson.

Offsetting that news is further deck-clearing in the Michigan GOP, as paleocon Bart Baron pulled out. Keith Butler seems to have a clear shot; I missed the news that Dominos CEO David Brandon opted out as well.

Comments

[Bene Diction]

If you'd like Alberta, help yourself.:^)
Ralph Klein is part of the package though.

Just give the rest of us Canucks a road, so we can get to BC.

I'd expect Western Standard readers to vote this way, no suprise there.

[Mark Byron]

Bene, it looks like a scientific poll, not a reader poll; with the WS crowd, I'd suspect the number'd be over half.

We'll take Klein; he just does those faux pas of telling the truth (or at least the truth as seen through his right-of-center eyes) with little tact. Is he any worse than Ahnold?

We'll make sure to keep a corridor for the Trans-Canadian Highway to go through along Interstate 100. I'm surpised so little of that is expressway.