Touring Mississippi

By David Sterrett

"The Deep South might be wretched, but it can howl." - Barry Hannah

You'll be hard pressed to find a guidebook for Mississippi. It's devoid of "tourist" attractions that the tour bus or cruise boat crowd wants to see. It also has an ugly, messy history of racial discrimination and segregation.

But if your knowledge of the state consists of what you saw on the Eyes on the Prize series in high school you may want to take a closer look.

Part of its charm is that it remains very authentic and for such a small, poor state it has contributed greatly to American culture. Mississippi gave us Pulitzer prize winning authors William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, blues musicians John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and B.B. King.

The food will charm you as much as the people do. Mississippi produces half of the U.S. catfish harvest every year or 350 million pounds. That goes to supply the delicious Mississippi catfish chain Penn's ( http://www.pennsrestaurant.com/ordereze/default.aspx). Other delightful treats you will find include tomato gravy to go with your morning biscuits and hush puppies.

So put Mississippi on your bucket list. Drive the blues highway (U.S. 61) ( http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/road-trips/blues-highway-road-trip/ ) and sample some Tupelo honey. Go hear some great blues at Underground 119 in Jackson (http://www.underground119.com/) or Morgan Freeman's blues club ( http://www.groundzerobluesclub.com/) in Clarksdale. Then go soak up the literary culture at Square Books in Oxford and walk in Faulkner's footsteps. You won't regret visiting the Magnolia State.

The Scottish Invasion

By David Sterrett

Without warning, the United States is being infiltrated. At rock clubs throughout the country a brand new sound is making its mark. The trademarks of this musical wave are a hint of melancholy, swirling melodies, and a scots brogue. The Glaswegians have arrived!  

Something about the thick mist, haunting moors, and tortured history makes for a national psyche ripe for creating some moving ballads.  Frightened Rabbit personifies these qualities.  With a passion that never seems forced they deliver thoughtful songs that also make you want to dance.  Case in point their hit the Twist:  http://youtu.be/KOh6kKrQioE

They recently played two sold out shows in the same night at the 9:30 Club and they did not disappoint! 

If electronica is more your thing.  Check out Chvrches.  Lauren Mayberry's pixie voice pairs perfectly with some excellent synth.  Here's their hit We Sink: http://youtu.be/sN0BnpI4mdQ

Lastly Biffy Clyro masters the art of the crescendo in Many of Horror:  http://youtu.be/mAh--lH0H3U

Oh, Ah. Leggo Model Rollercoaster

Only thing better would have been if it ran on solar energy.

F$@K, We Missed Him

Our guy was in DC today at the National Press Club to announce that he was suing the U.S. government over its practice of awarding no-bid contracts for rocket transport to national security satellites. We could have seen him. In person.

No, a person who is changing the world, er universe, does not need to feel bad about suing the very U.S. government that kept him from going bankrupt at least twice in the past five years. The show must go on.

The folks over at Universe Today (appropriately) have the story.

The Unheralded Economic Miracle

By Taylor Lincoln

You wouldn't know it from the press clippings, but we may have been witness to the miraculous economic performance ever over the last five years. Yes, the last five years, the ones everyone has been griping about that have left the president's approval numbers on life support.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the economy added 192,000 jobs in March while the number of people entering the workforce surged by a half million people. These numbers bring the total number of jobs back to pre-2008 meltdown levels.

If you are keeping score at home, that's 49 straight months of job gains, not that such an accomplishment is worth noting ... unless the former administration's incessant bragging is a guide. "America has added jobs for a record 52 straight months, but jobs are now growing at a slower pace," President George W. Bush claimed in the early stanzas of his January 2008 State of the Union address. (In reality, BLS figures show W's actual streak was just 46 consecutive months and jobs were rapidly plummeting by the time he made his SOTU boast.)

But, while Bush's purported DiMaggio-esque streak was fueled by a housing bubble that kicked construction employment into overdrive and left Americans intoxicated with soaring home values, Obama's nothing-to-write-home-about 49-month expansion has occurred during the hangover from the Bush housing binge.

Consider that obstacles.

Manufacturing lost 2.3 million jobs during the recession. This sector has done surprisingly well since then, but only 500,000 manufacturing jobs have returned.

Residential construction's historical share of the U.S. economy is about 3.5 percent, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. By 2006, it was about 6 percent. During President Obama's first term, it hovered 2 percent.

Infrastructure: This chart shows that public infrastructure spending had fallen to a lower level than it had been any time in the past 20 years March 2013.

Public sector: When Obama was elected in November 2008, there were 23.1 million public sector employees in the United States, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That number sunk to 20.5 million by July 2013. That's a loss of 2.6 million jobs. (The number has since rebounded to about 22.2 million, accorining to preliminary data through March 2014.)

Finally, there's the sluggish European economy, which has acted as a drag on the U.S. economy for years.

So, our economy might be a disaster. But it's the sort of disaster we can live with.