She's right...and to add to it,
this does not look good either - the NWS used NO in a 'worst case' simulation to show storm surge...it could be bye-bye for Bourbon Street...
[Update Aug 28th] Latest AP report via Yahoo! (written by MATT CRENSON)...some quotes:When Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans on Monday, it could turn one of America's most charming cities into a vast cesspool tainted with toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins released by floodwaters from the city's legendary cemeteries.Experts have warned for years that the levees and pumps that usually keep New Orleans dry have no chance against a direct hit by a Category 5 storm.
That's exactly what Katrina was as it churned toward the city. With top winds of 165 mph and the power to lift sea level by as much as 28 feet above normal, the storm threatened an environmental disaster of biblical proportions, one that could leave more than 1 million people homeless.
"All indications are that this is absolutely worst-case scenario," Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, said Sunday afternoon.
The center's latest computer simulations indicate that by Tuesday, vast swaths of New Orleans could be under water up to 30 feet deep. In the French Quarter, the water could reach 20 feet, easily submerging the district's iconic cast-iron balconies and bars.
Estimates predict that 60 percent to 80 percent of the city's houses will be destroyed by wind. With the flood damage, most of the people who live in and around New Orleans could be homeless.
"We're talking about in essence having — in the continental United States — having a refugee camp of a million people," van Heerden said.
I'll Take Paul Lynde For The Block...
Here's an
answer from Blogger to stop comment spam...I'll now make this post today's actual date and let it 'float'.
Well, it's something. Trying to google my way through finding on-line resources for this city I call home...
Banging through the internets at this late hour looking for local info I cane across this T&G article from 2001 describing how the City of Worcester has rejected - most recently in 2001 - the flouridation of city water. My gosh, this city can be extremely backward. NO FOURIDE??!!!?!??! I'd love to see the relative rates of tooth decay in the
City of Worcester compared to other largish cities that flouridate the water supply.
And yes, I did use an anti-flouride website as my reference.
NH GOP Toadie Gets Prison For Jamming Phones [Repost]
[Update Aug 26, 2005 - this Yahoo story stating that the grand jury would reconvene on this case...others involved? And Ovide Lamontagne is a long-time NH GOP hack, for those that are uninformed...][Update Aug 11, 2005 - link to this Kos diary entry (thank you Wobblie) detailing from an AP article that the national GOP is bankrolling Jim Tobin's defense in this imbroglio. Even tho Ken Mehlman said that people would be fired for this kind of offense. And I found this update myself from the Union Leader after I tried to click my original link below and it took FOREVER to load up their website...but worth it - Links to Tobin's indictment papers and to Mehlman's "zero tolerance" statement earlier this week. And this quote from an RNC spokesperson:
Republican Party officials said they don’t ordinarily discuss specifics of their legal work, but confirmed to The Associated Press they had agreed to underwrite Tobin’s defense because he was a longtime supporter and that he assured them he had committed no crimes. “Jim is a longtime friend who has served as both an employee and an independent contractor for the RNC,” a spokeswoman for the RNC, Tracey Schmitt, said Wednesday. “This support is based on his assurance and our belief that Jim has not engaged in any wrongdoing.”
Heh. "His assurance". His cronies have already turned states' evidence and pointed the finger at him - see the original post below. ] Quoting the Union Leader
article from today
[Feb 9, 2005]:
A former Republican consultant was sentenced yesterday to five months in jail for jamming Democratic Party telephone lines in several New Hampshire cities during the 2002 general election.
Allen Raymond, who was president of the Alexandria, Va.-based GOP Marketplace LLC at the time, did not comment as he left the U.S. District Court sentencing. He had pleaded guilty in June.
This is not Jim Tobin, who was the chair of the W2004 committee in New England is also embroiled in this affair from 2002. Mr. Tobin was indicted in December.
Good riddance to both. NH went for Kerry in 2004 and elected a dem governor (beating out insane skipjack former CEO of Cabletron Craig Benson). Hopefully more people realize up there that modern republicanism does not reflect their inherent small government, reasonable revenue generation, representative government, social libertarian views. More NH GOP heads could roll on this one.
[Click the link above for full article]
The caption:
Bill Moyer, 73, wears a "Bullshit Protector" flap over his ear while President George W. Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)
According to WMAL, Graham said "Islam is a terrorist organization" 23 times on his July 25 program. On the same show, he also said repeatedly that "moderate Muslims are those who only want to kill Jews" and that "the problem is not extremism. The problem is Islam."This, of course, led to this:
The protests led several advertisers to ask WMAL to stop airing their ads during Graham's weekday show, although the station says it didn't lose any advertisers amid the controversy.Uh huh. This is a station in DC that plays the regular rightie silly boys, Rush and Hannity. And it's owned by a certain large mouse:Officials at WMAL, which is owned by the Walt Disney Co., had initially declined to take disciplinary action against Graham, defending his comments as part of the overheated rhetoric of talk radio. But that stance began to change as complaints about Graham's remarks mounted...In 1999, Graham was fired from a Charlotte station for saying that the killing of athletes was a "minor benefit" of the Columbine shootings. He apologized the next day.So, a Disney-owned radio station hires a guy who was fired for rediculous on-air remarks, probably because he was outrageous and would lead to good ratings. Then, when advertisers start to smarten up and realize that they do not want to be associated with rediculous statements, Disney doesn't smell as much money and tells him to shape up. He refuses, so they ship him out.
Much as it sounds like this guy is repugnant, this move was made purely for profit...or the potential for losing profit.
Best quote in the article from Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Powell aide:
"In fact, Secretary Powell was not told that one of the sources he was given as a source of this information had indeed been flagged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar, a fabricator," says David Kay, who served as the CIA's chief weapons inspector in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. That source, an Iraqi defector had never been debriefed by the CIA, was known within the intelligence community as "Curveball."
[click on title for Yahoo! link]
[click on the title for the bat-girl link]I meant to type this myself today, but generating equipment lists, reading SOPs and re-doing p&ids got in the way...so I'll just take from bat-girl here - she links to the good ESPN article as well as a Chicago Tribune article...
He was 6 years old when the Cubs last won the World Series. And he was 15 when the White Sox last captured it all. That should help long-suffering Chicago baseball fans put into perspective the remarkable life span of Theodore Roosevelt "Double Duty" Radcliffe, believed to have been the oldest living former Negro leagues baseball player. He succumbed to cancer at his South Side home Thursday at the age of 103.
He was an all-star catcher and pitcher in the Negro leagues for half a century, including a stint with the Chicago American Giants in 1934, 1941-43 and again in 1949-50. He played in Negro leagues All-Star games in front of 50,000 people at the old Comiskey Park. He also played in an exhibition game at Wrigley Field in 1945, the year the Cubs went on to win the National League pennant.
Do Sniping Somewhere Else
Whatever dink posted that friggin ad in the comments in the last post can go pound sand. Crap like that will be deleted immediately.
Just click on the post title to get to this Kossack diary entry regarding GOoPers eating their own (
thanks AnnArborBlue)...editorializes the three summaries about
Hackett's near-win,
Frist flip-flopping and the
GOP Senate v. White House showcase showdown regarding torture. My point is to collect those three stories here and just let the right stew itself rather than try to rally the lefty troops...
[click the title above for the link]The link above is to an article from the Boston Phoenix, who interviewed Dick Gordon, host of
WBUR's '
The Connection' after his firing and mothballing of the entire show on August 5th. Something sounds a little funny here, but I did tend to agree with the general sentiment that they had too many of the same style of show (
Connection, Here And Now, On Point). My vote, of course, would have been to keep
The Commection. The management of the station has stated that ratings were an issue, but for the numbers that are available:
Because public radio stations are not commercial enterprises, ratings information tends to be held close to the vest. But Gordon says he has seen recent data measuring a so-called loyalty factor, which he says "measures the attraction of a program and the audience desire to return to the program." Gordon reports that among core listeners, The Connection had a high loyalty rating in the area of 70 and 80 percent, "which is extremely good compared to public radio." One other clue to The Connection’s ratings — albeit one that is not up to date — is a "performance snapshot" compiled by the station from the spring of 2001 to the spring of 2003. That chart shows the program’s total audience rising from 520,800 in the spring of 2001 to 666,400 in the fall of 2001 (when 9/11 occurred). It dropped to 527,200 in the spring of 2002, rose to 582,400 in the fall of 2002, and then jumped to 643,500 in the spring of 2003. The number of stations carrying The Connection also rose from 47 in the spring of 2001 to the current number of 66.
Of course, there is possibly one big factor in all this:
One theory is that The Connection was elbowed out of the way by On Point, hosted by Tom Ashbrook, and that the station was eager to move On Point out of its 7 pm slot, perhaps because Chris Lydon has recently returned to the airwaves with a show on rival WGBH-FM in that same time period [ Open Source Radio, 7pm].
And this don't help:
According to BU and WBUR officials, the station had racked up a $13 million operating deficit for fiscal years 2001 through 2004.
Personally, this screws Gordon because he's a Canadian citizen who was looking for permanent resident status:
WBUR may wish to keep its own counsel while negotiating the terms of the break-up. But Gordon’s attorney, Elizabeth Rodgers, suggests that her client may be unhappy with the circumstances of his departure, particularly in light of an April 2004 letter to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services signed by then-WBUR general manager Jane Christo.
"By this letter, I wish to offer Mr. Gordon a permanent position at WBUR, National Public Radio, and to support his application for permanent residence as an alien of extraordinary ability in the field of journalism," Christo wrote.
"Dick Gordon relied on a promise of permanent employment and brought his family to Boston and brought the world to the kitchen table of 640,000 listeners," says Rodgers. "And that promise to be permanent host has been broken."
Wrong decision, man. If they're worried about going head-to-head with Lydon on WGBH radio, they're going about it in the wrong way. And sadly, Gordon was not the only one to get the axe:
(Michael Goldfarb, the station’s London-based correspondent for the Inside Out documentary unit, was also quietly laid off that week.)
[ Click on the post title to get to the link]Readers of this little blog will note under the baseball section on the right-hand corner a link to a blog called "Management By Baseball"...once in a while I actually click it myself to see what's going on it...the top post today is a great post talking about the Yankess and their lack of pro-activity in truly finding weaknesses in their organization and fixing them before they get too bad - case in point Bernie Williams, while contrasting that to the Oakland A's and how they MUST be proactive and stay good in order just to stay competitive, hance the big blowup this past winter (Mulder and Hudson). It's just too bad that they were not able to get anything more than draft picks for Tejada, Damon, Isringhausen and Foulke. Oh, and Jason Giambi. Some good quotes:
And they are being told to hoist all this spending up as a symbol...my have the tables been turned. It really seems that all they do now is borrow and spend, borrow and spend. And cut all sorts of taxes for the sake of cutting them and then go and use their Peoples' Republic of China and Japan credit cards, push up the debt ceiling and charge away:
Having skirted budget restraints and approved nearly $300 billion in new spending and tax breaks before leaving town, Republican lawmakers are now determined to claim full credit for the congressional spending. Far from shying away from their accomplishments, lawmakers are embracing the pork, including graffiti eradication in the Bronx, $277 million in road projects for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and a $200,000 deer-avoidance system in New York.
When the year started, President Bush made spending restraint a mantra, laying out an austere budget that would freeze non-security discretionary spending for five years and setting firm cost limits on transportation and energy bills. But now, as Congress fills in the details of the budget plan, there is little interest in making deep cuts and enormous pressure to spend...
..."If you look at fiscal conservatism these days, it's in a sorry state," said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), one of only eight House members to vote against the $286.5 billion transportation bill that was passed the day before the recess. "Republicans don't even pretend anymore."
Sorry, Mr. Flake - while my fiscal responsibility-side sympathizes with you, your national party decided to forego all restraints on spending to stay in power (sound like a familiar theme from the 80's?) and hitch its wagon to the Neo-Cons and Theo-Cons in order to get elected. Fiscal conservatives have to be beating their heads against a wall - guys like McCain and Dominici in the Senate especially.To fiscal conservatives, it is not just the total cost of the bills but also their content. Covering 1,752 pages, the highway bill is the most expensive public works legislation in U.S. history, complete with 6,376 earmarked projects, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. Kern County, Calif., home of powerful House Ways and Means Chairman Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R), snagged $722 million in projects, or nearly $1,000 per person. Los Angeles County, with clogged highways and 10 million people, will receive barely $60 per resident.
I Miss "The Daily Show"...
Picked this up off of
Daily Kos today...Jon Stewart is rediculously funny, and it's good to see that he's found his niche. He really took The Daily Show from Craig Kilborn and made it his own:
"Oh, Oil!! Giver of power, corrupter of governments, non-sticker of surfaces... Must you taunt us with your slick, non-renewable goodness?
Yes, energy is clearly an important topic with Americans. That's why, before going on recess, Congress broke a 4-year impasse by approving a massive energy bill. And while it did nothing to address our dependence on foreign oil, or fuel efficiency, or in any way simplify the strategic nature of our relationship with the Middle East, it does give oil and gas industries 500 million dollars for research and 2.7 billion dollars in tax breaks, even though a company like Exxon-Mobil made 7.6 billion dollars in pure profit just this last quarter...
Now, you might find the idea of the government using billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize the oil companies as the antithesis of private, free-market capitalism. You are wrong...
[Clip of Republican Representative Joe Barton of Texas: "This bill is based on the premise that we believe in private, free-market capitalism to develop the resources of this land in a cost-efficient manner."]
Oh my God we have a winner! Congratulations, Rep. Joe Barton, you have achieved a lie-to-word ratio of one-to-one!"
Good news is that is appears that almost nobody likes the ruling that came down from the
Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of using eminent domain for commercial development (
Kelo v. New London, in pdf format). From the Yahoo article:
The actions are a swift response to a Supreme Court decision in a Connecticut case. For the first time, it ruled that condemnation of private property solely for economic development was constitutional.
In that case, the justices accepted New London, Conn., officials' plan to raze homes to make way for a hotel, office complexes and a marina.
Rep. Maxine Waters (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., a liberal who rarely supports Republican bills, has signed onto two GOP bills and proposed two of her own. "The people who get hurt are the many poor people and working people who don't think they can fight City Hall," she said.
Paul Farmer, executive director of the American Planning Association, said eminent domain for private projects can revitalize cities. "It should remain a tool that would clearly not be used very often," he said.
Engineering Post: Toyota's Green Philosophy
Building on
my previous post about Honda and their writeup in Newsweek in June, Toyota has made announcement that
they want 25% of their worldwide sales to be hybridized vehicles by 2010 which translates to 1 million hybrid vehicles. They estimate that this will mean 600,000 vehicles per year in the US of A to achieve that goal. While that's a heckuva challenge - they want 10 new hybrid models by 2010 - the more a technology is ubiquitous, the more accepted it is, and the CHEAPER it becomes. I'm glad to see Toyota step up to the plate. And by 2010 the critics can be silenced...and the hesitant - like me - can stop being hesitant. When it comes to technology, I naturally like to stay slightly behind the curve instead of being the first to have something new.
Is Everything All 'White' In Cubbie-land?
Ran across
this on ESPN's Page 2 today and the columnist is feeling that the dust-up (no pun intended) regarding Dusty Baker's wanting to go to LA is really being prodded along by white Chicago columnists (paper and radio) wanting him to be gone, even tho his team is .500 without Sammy, Moises, Nomar, Wood, Prior, Patterson or Hawkins. If Moises was still in Chitown and Nomar, Wood and Prior were all healthy and Corey Patterson, Sammy and LaChoy Hawkins (both since traded) didn't decide to be in the
sucking time all year (deference to
bat-girl), this team would have the wild card lead. I'd tend to agree. We'll see if Matt Lawton helps.
Any Chicagoans out there want to contribute a comment on this one? My only personal link to this issue is that my wife is in loooove with
Nomar. I've never read the Tribune or Sun-Times or been to Chicago.
