4000 workers and construction projects getting the shaft because of Tea Party attacks on the FAA

As anticipated, the Federal Aviation Administration's operating authority expired at midnight Friday and the agency partially shut down. While air traffic controllers are still on the job and air travel continues more or less normally, nearly 4,000 other FAA employees are currently furloughed without pay. Additionally, nearly 87,000 construction jobs are affected as FAA-funded airport construction projects are forced to shut down. Thisincludes projects from $10,000 to tens of millions of dollars, scattered across the country.
All of which is probably fine with House Republicans, since the whole purpose of this exercise was to make things more difficult for workers, anyway. By trying to make union representation elections operate by undemocratic rules, they put people out of work instead—maybe that's a job well done in their eyes.
The FAA is also unable to collect taxes on airline tickets bought, depriving the government of $200 million a week in revenue. But the great little coda to this story is that consumers aren't seeing savings:

[I]nstead of passing along the savings, the airlines are pocketing the money while customers pay the same amount as before.
American, United, Continental, Delta, US Airways, Southwest, AirTran and JetBlue all raised fares, although details sometimes differed. Most of the increases were around 7.5 percent.

It's like the Republican dream: Not only is the government not collecting revenue, that same revenue is going straight to corporations, for no reason. Why would they ever agree to end this shutdown?

The AFL-CIO sent out an email urging people to take action:

Last weekend, House Republican leaders proved just how far they are willing to go to achieve their ideological goals.
At 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning, they shut down the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As if bringing America to the brink of default hasn’t done enough damage already. Are they out of their minds?
Because of the extreme ideological agenda of House Republicans and their political game-playing, 4,000 workers were furloughed over the weekend and more than 90,000 jobs across the country are on the line—including 1,026 in DC.(1)
Meanwhile, the government is out $200 million a week in airline ticket fees that normally fund our aviation infrastructure. That loss now will be added to the national debt.
Tell your members of Congress the FAA needs to get up and running immediately. Republican House leaders’ hostage-taking needs to stop.

And if you've been following the media, whenever a TV pundit asks a GOP politician about the FAA shutdown, they just lie in their responses. I really don't expect many hosts or anchors to have much of a grasp on the story, but some basic knowledge wouldn't be a bad idea to counter the spin.

The Guilty Life Of an Innocent Casey Anthony By Jamal Allen

As the world watched the second coming of the O.J. Simpson trial, and was left wondering what to make of our justice system. I thought to myself what now? This woman will never be able to walk the streets of any US city without the rants and raves of the people who surround her. After all the lies and blame that she has dished out over the last 3+ years she has surely built up the perception of guilt. The sad part about all of this is that she is now doomed to a life sentence by not the jury of her peers, but a country of them. Over the last few days the Court house in Florida has been entrenched with protesters with duct tape on their face and signs supporting Caylee Anthony. A message to them: Sometimes in this country we must stand up and do whats right. Expressing your anger is something your free to do. But in our society we honor our way of life. And part of that way of life is our justice system which has spoken. At the same time you walk around with all this anger you must also fight against anyone who may harbor ill feelings toward Casey and plan to do something that would hurt or injury her or anyone else for that matter. In the eyes of a lot of people she should be sitting on death row right now guilty as charged. But the reality is she will be a innocent person among us all and must be treated as one. I did not want to spend much time on this subject due to the extreme sides and feelings people have on this case. But we must do the right thing no matter how we feel. Casey will be forever without her little girl and the knowledge of what happen. She will have to live with that. But now she has been acquitted and we all must have to live with that.