Alex's Asteroid Astrology |

September 25th, 2019 at 01:24pm by Alex Miller

Pelosi Pulls the Trigger

At 5:04 PM EDT on Tuesday, 24 September 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, fresh from a Democratic Caucus meeting, stood before the nation and announced that the US Congress was beginning formal impeachment investigations against Donald J. Trump. Critical mass had been building for this step in the caucus for a week, since the revelations of Trump’s outrageous breech of ethics, convention and quite possibly laws, in requesting aid from a foreign government in his 2020 US presidential reelection.

Perhaps more surprising, Mitch McConnell supported a unanimous nonbinding resolution in the Senate requiring the White House to release the full report logged by a national security whistleblower concerning Trump’s interactions with the Ukrainian president. Has the worm truly turned?

September 24th, 2019 at 08:58am by Alex Miller

Much Ado about Ukraine

An emerging story casts further light on the Trump administration’s freewheeling, Mafia-style transactional interactions with foreign governments and its rampant stonewalling of congressional oversight. On August 12, 2019 a whistleblower from the U.S. intelligence community filed a complaint with the Inspector General that alleged some kind of wrongdoing at high levels of the U.S. government. The complaint was marked “urgent concern”, an unusual designation requiring immediate action, but the complaint hasn’t been made public, nor has it been shared with Congress, in direct contravention of the law.

September 20th, 2019 at 09:32am by Alex Miller

Ditch Mitch

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is perhaps one of the most disliked, and most effective, politicians in the country. First elected in 1984 in a squeaker election which he won by less than one percent, McConnell has won reelection five times, and faces another race in 2020. He was tapped to replace outgoing Senate Minority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) in 2006, and became Majority Leader when Republicans took over the Senate in 2015.

The self-styled “Grim Reaper” of the Senate, Mitch McConnell is where legislation goes to die. Through a combination of stonewalling, pigheadedness, and obscure parliamentary tactics, McConnell has done his level best to frustrate Democratic administrations and agendas for decades.

September 14th, 2019 at 03:14pm by Alex Miller

Joe Biden’s Family Tragedy

Former Vice President and current Democratic presidential nominee frontrunner Joe Biden is often credited with having an authentic, “folksy” style, especially when interacting with individuals who have suffered great personal tragedy or loss. There’s a reason for this: when it comes to suffering and loss, Biden has a lifetime of experience.

Just after winning his first Senate race in 1972, Biden lost his first wife and their infant daughter in a devastating car crash, which also severely injured their two sons. Biden was in fact sworn in for his Senate seat at his sons’ bedside in the hospital. Forty-three years later, the Grim Reaper picked up where he left off, and claimed one of those boys, Biden’s eldest son Beau, who lost a two-year battle with brain cancer.

September 7th, 2019 at 09:21am by Alex Miller

Asteroid Sleuth: The Case of the Crowing Cockerel

Roosters crow. It’s what they do. But if you’re a wealthy retired French couple with a vacation home on the sleepy isle of Oleron off France’s Atlantic coast, and you have a local neighbor who owns one, you get perturbed at losing your beauty rest. So, what to do? Why, sue, of course!

That was the case with Jean-Louis Birom and Joelle Andrieux, who accused resident cock-of-the-walk Maurice of noise pollution in a suit brought against owner Corinne Fesseau in 2017. The acrimonious two year legal wrangle ended on September 5^th 2019 when a judge in Rochefort ruled in favor of Maurice’s right to sing, awarding 1000 euros in damages against the plaintiffs.

September 5th, 2019 at 08:26am by Alex Miller

The Picture of Dorian Hurricane

Another hurricane season, another record-setting storm. Spawned from a tropical wave in the Central Atlantic in late August, Hurricane Dorian quickly spiked into a strong Category 5, with winds in excess of 185 mph, skirting Puerto Rico and making landfall on Grand Bahama Island. Where it parked; for two days. Dorian now holds the record for the slowest-moving Atlantic storm ever.

The devastation in the Bahamas is apocalyptic, with vast stretches of housing obliterated, infrastructure battered and much of the island inundated with water. As of this writing (Wednesday, 4 September) Dorian continues to make its way north off the east coast of Florida, still threatening Georgia and the Carolinas as a Cat 2 storm.