Anyone have that chart that shows how the stock market performs with Democratic admins vs Repubs?

TIA

Tom the Dancing Bug: Right Wing Civil Disobedience

Craft launched from Virginia now orbiting moon

By Martin Weil, Washington Post

"NASA has largely been shut down, but not the spacecraft launched last month from Virginia. It is now flying around the moon.

“Yes,” a spokesman for Orbital Sciences said Monday by e-mail. “It is in lunar orbit.”

The spacecraft, known as LADEE, was carried into space from the NASA facility at Wallops Island on Virginia’s Eastern Shore by a launch vehicle designed, built and operated by Orbital for the Air Force.

The Sept. 6 launch was the first to send a spacecraft to the moon from Virginia. The fiery trail of the rocket that propelled LADEE upward was visible for hundreds of miles along the Eastern Seaboard."

Whole article at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/craft-launched-from-virginia-now-orbiting-moon/2013/10/14/20b65c60-3534-11e3-be86-6aeaa439845b_story.html

Last day to register for the election

If you know someone who isn't registered, get them to the registrar today.

Airs tonight: PBS’ ‘Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle’ shows comics as uniquely American stories

By Michael Cavna, Washington Post

"Stan Lee wins plaudits and applause most everywhere he goes as the greatest living ambassador of comics. The spry 90-year-old’s name even gets chanted by convention hordes, as if he were a ballplayer or bullfighter or Robert Downey Jr. In these arenas, the man who co-created Thor lopes among us like a cartooning god.

Now, a new documentary trains its lens not only on superhuman comics characters, but also on the real-life characters like Lee who breathed life into them.

Emmy-winning documentarian Michael Kantor and Emmy-nominated collaborator and theater/film historian Laurence Maslon (“Make ’Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America”) plumb the origins of cape-and-cowl comics — and track a nine-decade dynamic of social prominence and setbacks — in their engaging three-hour PBS documentary “Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle,” which debuts Tuesday night.

“He’s the Homer of the 20th century,” says Kantor, who has spent much of the past several years studying at the creative altar of Marvel Comics, where Lee long reigned as writer and editor."


Whole article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/pbs-superheroes-a-never-ending-battle-shows-comics-as-uniquely-american-stories/2013/10/14/743a9b44-350c-11e3-be86-6aeaa439845b_story.html

The 3 hour program airs tonight.

Akram Raslan reported dead. (Syrian Political Cartoonist)

From Dr. Robert Russell at the Cartoonists Rights Network International

"Here There Be Dragons:in Syria Akram Raslan is slain.
We've learned that on July 26, Akram Raslan and other prisoners of conscience including journalists, artists, singers and other intellectuals were secretly put on trial with no witnesses, no defense attorneys, no appeal, and no hope for justice. From unconfirmed and sketchy reports we learned that they were all condemned to life imprisonment.

Somehow, along the way to prison young 28-year-old Akram Raslan (and possibly others) was peeled off, taken out and executed. He is reported to be in a mass grave somewhere near Damascus. Our reliable but for obvious reasons anonymous sources further allege that the murder of Akram and other condemned prisoners was carried out by Mohammad Nassif Kheir Bek, currently the Deputy Vice President for Security Affairs in Syria. He has already been sanctioned by the European Union for the use of violence against protesters and the Syrian civil war.

Akram Raslan was the winner of the Cartoonists Rights Network International, Award for Courage in Editorial Cartooning for 2013. Past award winners have hailed from Malaysia, South Africa, Turkey, Palestine, Iran, and India, including last year's winner, Ali Ferzat, also from Syria.

Here in the United States we are experts in the knowledge that editorial cartooning is a dying art. In other areas of the world, however, it is an art that people die for."

Entire article at
http://www.cartoonistsrights.org/recent_developments_article.php?id=110

For DU's annual Columbus Day Freak Out: Here's The Oatmeal on Columbus

Well worth the short read:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day

"To know him is to not like him," Maggie Omero on Ted Cruz

An apt statement heard on Hardball.

Will EPA Ever Reopen?

From a Pollution Engineering article:
http://www.pollutionengineering.com/articles/88537-will-epa-ever-reopen

" Sen. Barbara Boxer believes that closure of the EPA permits companies to dump toxic wastes and otherwise treat the environment “like it’s your private ditch.”

“People do it every day of the week, and we stop it because we have cops on the beat,” Boxer said.

The California Democrat and chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee said EPA would remain shuttered indefinitely under the House GOP’s strategy of re-opening parts of the federal government.

“If you look at all their mini-bills, not one of them restored any funding for any agency that comes close to enforcing our environmental protection laws,” Boxer said."

Of course, GOP Reps Marsha Blackburn and Steve Stockman are cheering on the closure because now companies can pollute!

Agency most affected by the Govt shutdown?

The EPA. Now operating with only 7% of its workforce.

From Pollution Engineering Magazine:

"The Environmental Protection Agency will close down almost entirely during a shutdown, save for operations around Superfund sites.

The EPA will furlough over 93 percent of its 16,205 employees, operating with fewer than 7 percent of its employees, according to guidance issued by the agency.

The Agency will almost entirely cease issuing licenses and permits, which may cause delays for companies seeking to build or expand facilities. The agency will stop working on new policies in areas such as air pollution and renewable fuels.

If you were looking for data on the state of the economy, you’ll have to wait until after the “federal funding hiatus.” That could be a good thing, since one estimate in circulation suggests the cost to the U.S. economy of the failure by Congress to approve a funding bill is over $400 million per day."

Whole article here:
http://www.pollutionengineering.com/articles/88533-government-shutdown-crushes-epa