Happy Birthday to Amelia Earhart...

...born on this date in 1897 (disappeared in July 1937).




A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea like me she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia it was just a false alarm
--Joni Mitchell, 1976

"...like Icarus ascending on beautiful foolish arms..." Happy 115th Birthday to Amelia Earhart

I should try to avoid petty political remarks about the fact that we'll probably find Ms Earhart before we're treated to a view of #MittsMissingReturns.
When I saw Amelia Earhart's picture in today's Google Doodle, I immediately got this brilliant Joni Mitchell song stuck in my head. It will be there for days.

"A ghost of aviation    /      

She was swallowed by the sky    /         

Or by the sea, like me she had a dream to fly    /          

Like Icarus ascending     /     

On beautiful foolish arms    /     

Amelia, it was just a false alarm"              

World Trade Center construction update (with bonus MZ-3A airship)

Here's a picture of the new World Trade Center site taken from my phone a little before 1 this afternoon.  The airship above it was -- amazingly -- not covered with advertisements, so I took a closer look.

It seems that there is only one manned US Navy airship, so it was the MZ-3A that flew up over the Hudson River this afternoon.

A Modest Proposal to Prevent Voter Fraud by the 1%

Proposal: 

Ban the use of private jets on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

The Republicans have only one simple and cynical strategy for success in this November's Presidential election. It involves sabotaging the economy by Congressional intransigence, magnifying any slowdown they cause in the economy with their well-financed on-message GOP Pessimism Machine, and denying the voting franchise to as many potential Obama voters as possible.  They want to disenfranchise millions of mostly low-income voters in the name of preventing voter fraud, even though they have trouble citing a single concrete example of fraudulent voting.

Well, I have little concrete evidence that any multi-millionaires have hopped into private jets and voted at all their addresses in California, Utah, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire on the same first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, but that's no reason not to pass a law to keep ultra-rich voters grounded until election day is over.

*    *    *

(Seriously, there is another potential voter fraud scandal involving Mitt Romney not involving private jets, but which can only be resolved if he returns his Massachusetts tax returns.  Click the BradBlog link for more information)