From AP: "Russian rocket with Simonyi onboard blasts off to space"

To quote the article, “Simonyi, a 58-year-old native of Hungary, paid $25 million for the 13-day trip” into space. Whom and what was served by that $25m? In answer to that question only Simonyi’s tremendous ego and the need of the press for more “celebrity news” to increase circulation, both real and digital.

To be blunt, that $25m could start a new business and create jobs employing people in the US, the nation to which he fled to escape communism. Instead he chose to only build a personal fortune to an obscene level so that he might go into space and then utilize the “news” in the hope of achieving immortality in some documented record that will not only serve no greater good but will be ultimately be erased by some other arrogant, self-centered billionaire and then the next and the next each trying to outdo the other.

Did Mr. Simonyi serve in the military of the country to which he fled for a better life to earn his place? Did he make any sacrifices for the betterment of others less fortunate? Did he do anything that could even be remotely viewed as selfless so that the lot of others in his adopted country, struggling for a better life, might improve? The answer is, “No”.

I’m not a socialist, communist nor am I one of a legion of mindless American consumers of the spoonfed crap doled out by the media; I am a twenty-one year service-disabled veteran from a military family who knows what it is to sacrifice in order to protect and preserve what we enjoy by having earned it. Therefore this “story” has no more value than the the wasted column space and airtime given Britney Spears, Perris Hilton, American Idol or any other mindnumbing “news”.

Mr. Simonyi is but a flash in a news cycle. The members of the armed forces of this country and the indignities they have have suffered in that service and after are, too, and sadly, but a blink in a news cycle. The difference, however, is that Mr. Simonyi will still be wealthy and whole. And while Mr. Simonyi is vacationing on some Greek island those at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military and VA hospitals will be still be struggling to adjust physically and mentaly to survive and adapt to only then struggle further to find gainful employment in civilian life.

This is why I find Mr. Simonyi’s having spent $25m on self-gandulation to go into space for the benefit of his own ego so inexcuseableably obscene when that money could have been utilized for rehabilitation, education and other programs as well as jobs in thanks to those who take the oath and spill their blood so that he and other “celebrities” can live so well.

21-50 - out.