Often referred to as commercial spaceflight for humans, flying to space is a dream that almost every super wealthy individual will be able to realize in the next few years. Till now, it was only RSA (Russian Space Agency) that used to offer such space tourism services in the early 2000’s at a cost of around $ 200 million per trip. However, they stopped such commercial space tourism back in 2010.
In recent years, there are some space tourism companies which are going all out to make it the new travel frontier for the wealthy of the world, once again. NASA made an announcement last year that starting 2020 there will open up International Space Station for space tourism. Piloted by Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, civilians will be able to get the space experience at a reasonable cost. Five companies which are leading in this space are detailed below: Continue reading
Andrew Yang, former candidate for president, has joined the chorus of voices pointing out how the Democrats have abandoned and driven away the working class and the poor of all colors. 
Balladeer’s Blog’s coverage of corporate fascism continues with this look at Michael Lind’s brilliant book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite. Lind often writes for Salon and Politico and in this book deals with the way in which the global trend toward populism started in response to oppression from what he calls “The New Class.” 
Lind’s work criticizes the new corporate fascist elite, like last year’s Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas (previously reviewed here at Balladeer’s Blog). Lind, a professor at the University of Texas, argues that the plutocrats of today don’t just guard their money and privilege, they disguise their self-interested pursuits under the pretense of “social activism” and other deceptive buzzwords while lecturing the working class and the poor.
Lind writes, “The new class war is very real—and the managerial class is winning.” Lind’s “managerial class” quite rightly includes not just the wealthy elite themselves but also the facilitators of these privileged fascists – the bought and paid-for politicians, the unelected bureaucrats, biased journalists, media propagandists and the politically prejudiced lawyers and “educators” who promote the interests of the wealthy while pretending to be championing the underclasses. 
Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog are familiar with the way I refer to “the Chicago cesspool” of political corruption. Well, in the recent study by UIC the Windy Cesspool remains the most corrupt city in America! From 1976 to 2018 there were 1,750 political corruption CONVICTIONS in Chicago. So that’s not even counting the many times the city’s corrupt machine thwarted justice.
I emphasize this for overseas readers who seem to think that only America’s Republicans are criminals, when in fact BOTH Democrat AND Republican career politicians are white-collar criminals. 
AARON BURR
CASABLANCA (1942) – Happy Valentine’s Day! A few readers of Balladeer’s Blog have asked me for my opinion on this classic movie so I figured Valentine’s Day was the perfect opportunity. 
Getting back to Casablanca, it’s possibly the greatest “bittersweet ending” romantic flick ever made. I find that it appeals to almost everyone. If you’re young and naïve it can make you ache at the thought of persevering despite your broken heart. If you’re older and cynical it makes you nostalgic for a time when you actually thought a broken heart was the worst thing that could happen to you. 
Even Democrats like CNN’s Van Jones and Jamal Simmons have begun facing the fact that President Trump’s policies have helped the working class and the poor of all colors. Trump has broken many of the old political paradigms in America, partly by being a de facto Third Party President. 
“What he (Trump) was saying to African-Americans can be effective. You may not like it, but he mentioned HBCUs [historically black colleges and universities] — our black colleges have been struggling for a long time, a bunch of them have gone under — he threw a lifeline to them, in real life, in his budget. He talked about that. He talked about the criminal justice reform. He talked about opportunity zones. He talked about school choice.” 
Independent voter site Balladeer’s Blog often points out the need for Third Parties. So many of us decided to #WALKAWAY from the increasingly deranged Democrats to become Independent voters. Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi expressed similar disgust with Democrat corruption and dishonesty after last week’s Iowa Caucus debacle. 
Balladeer’s Blog remains the only site on the web that equally criticizes both Democrats and Republicans, and I want to remind the uninitiated that SIXTY-SEVEN votes out of the one hundred in the Senate are needed to unseat a president. The Democrats could only conjure up 48 and 47 votes respectively on their two weak and fraudulent articles of impeachment. (Nancy Pelosi should have torn up THOSE when the House passed them!) 
In reality the entire impeachment process has been degraded to the point where it is now meaningless. It’s been reduced to just another tactic in the usual partisan warfare of the Washington DC cesspool. And even worse, in this case it was used to try to undo presidential election results that America’s notoriously corrupt political establishment did not like. 
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