Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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Ouch.
Consumers can expect retail gas prices to rise to $4 a gallon soon but whether they stay there depends on the long-term damage to oil facilities from Hurricane Katrina, oil and gas analysts said Wednesday.
"There's no question gas will hit $4 a gallon," Ben Brockwell, director of pricing at the Oil Price Information Service, said. "The question is how high will it go and how long will it last?"
He expects consumers in the Southeast and Northeast to be pinched first, following the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast region. Katrina forced operators to close more than a tenth of the country's refining capacity and a quarter of its oil production, which sent gasoline prices surging.
Just in time for Labor Day. And the airlines are in big trouble.
The USA's already staggering airlines were dealt a crushing double blow by Hurricane Katrina, as jet-fuel prices soared 22% in two days. The killer storm also closed off airlines' avenue to bargain jet fuel. Historically, jet fuel refined in the Gulf Coast region has been cheaper than fuel refined on the West or East coasts. But Katrina has eliminated the gap and diminished the ability of airlines to save money by filling up in the South. Gulf Coast jet fuel soared to $2.30 a gallon at the close Tuesday, up from $1.89 when trading opened on Monday, said tracker Oil Price Information Service. [...]
"All the major airlines, Southwest excepted, will be in Chapter 11 bankruptcy sometime in the next five years," said veteran industry consultant Darryl Jenkins, a visiting professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. "But for those already leaning on the edge, this makes it a very simple decision for them." Delta, American, Northwest and Continental are the big airlines not now under bankruptcy-court protection.
I've been stunned by the news reports coming out of New Orleans and Mississippi. Every time I turn on the news, it's worse. The Times-Picayune is running breaking stories from reporters here. While we're getting lots of reports from New Orleans, Gulfport, and Biloxi, we aren't hearing much of anything from all the little towns in between that are even harder to reach, so God only knows how high the death toll really is. This is a very poor part of the country already and now perhaps as many as a million people just became homeless and had their jobs destroyed. Enormous refugee camps will have to be established and these people will be wards of the state for a long time.
Meanwhile. And then there's this:
When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA. Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars. [...] In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain.
You know what we could really use right about now? That quarter-trillion dollars we already spent on Iraq. And a bunch more National Guardsmen and their equipment. And lots of helicopters. And much less "humor" from Jonah Goldberg. But I'm off on a tangent. All major cities have evacuation plans, but this has pointed up a serious problem: big cities have enormous populations without automobiles. How do you get all those people out in an emergency? In New Orleans, it doesn't even appear that they tried (though, given the normal functioning of the municipal government, that shouldn't be surprising). If you were too poor to drive out and find a hotel, your choices were apparently hope you don't die in your house or tough it out in the Superdome.
"The Iraqi parliament attempted to legislate sanctions against perpetually absent members of parliament on Monday. But they could not legislate on the issue because there were too many absentees."
Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao, on the International Space Station from October 2004 to April 2005, took more than 24,000 pictures out the window. Here are his 10 favorites. I'd have ranked the Himalayas picture higher.
If it seems like hurricanes have been getting more destructive over the past few decades, that's because they have. And as we warm the oceans, they'll keep getting worse.
This might be the dumbest f***ing policy I've ever heard.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster makes the New York Times.
The World Bog Snorkeling Championship was held Monday. [shudder]
Enormous feral pigs are causing trouble Down Under.
And finally, this copied straight from Matt McIrvin:
The MESSENGER Mercury probe swings past Earth, and takes color pictures and a beautiful movie on the outbound leg.MESSENGER will encounter Venus on further gravity-assist flybys in 2006 and 2007, map most of Mercury on three flybys in 2008 and 2009, and finally enter Mercury orbit in 2011. Currently only half of Mercury has been photographed in any detail, by Mariner 10, which flew past the planet in 1974 and 1975. Mercury is not far from Earth as solar-system distances go, but in terms of fuel expenditure it's very hard to get to (being so far down in the Sun's gravity well), and this long series of encounters is designed to help matters.
The voting has finished in China's oddly-titled version of American Idol, and Li Yuchun is the winner of the Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest.
"Special Music by Special People is a Chicago Park District music program for people with developmental disabilities (such as Down syndrome). Here We Are is our third compact disc with 13 fabulously crafted songs created over the past four years. Featuring the Welles Park Special Musicians, Paraplegic MC, and The Sharks performing their hit single 'At the Bottom of the Sea'."
When I first read the words "Special Music by Special People," I immediately thought of the Cramps' "Bad Music for Bad People." It seemed a funny juxtaposition... until I listened to the songs. Their audio page offers three mp3 tracks, one from each compact disc. "This Little Light of Mine" is sung by little kids and is more or less what you'd expect, though the robotic canned drums and sing-songy soprano voices do give it an odd Shonen Knife edge. The hip-hop cut, "At the Bottom of the Sea," is actually pretty catchy, until the middle when the guy starts chanting about Filet-o-Fishes and McDonald's at the bottom of the sea, at which point it briefly becomes as transcendent as Jandek, before settling back into the groove.
However, the Apostrophic Made-My-Morning Seal of Approval goes to "Turkey Time," from the program's first CD, What's For Lunch! The song is a direct descendant of Black Flag's shoutalong anthem "TV Party". No, I'm not kidding. This makes me happy and giddy and foot-stompy. I don't think I've ever heard people having a better time.
On a related note, this is strange.
I've lived through a lot of hurricanes, but obviously not anything like Katrina. In the comments, Mitch linked to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration page of multi-dimensional imagery from polar orbiting and geostationary satellites. The thing stretches from New Orleans to the Yucatan. That's a big damn storm. The National Weather Service warning sounds apocalyptic.
Devastating damage expected
Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks...perhaps longer. At least one half of well constructed homes will have roof and wall failure. All gabled roofs will fail...leaving those homes severely damaged or destroyed.
The majority of industrial buildings will become non functional. Partial to complete wall and roof failure is expected. All wood framed low rising apartment buildings will be destroyed. Concrete block low rise apartments will sustain major damage...including some wall and roof failure.
High rise office and apartment buildings will sway dangerously... A few to the point of total collapse. All windows will blow out.
Airborne debris will be widespread...and may include heavy items such as household appliances and even light vehicles. Sport utility vehicles and light trucks will be moved. The blown debris will create additional destruction. Persons...pets...and livestock exposed to the winds will face certain death if struck.
Power outages will last for weeks...as most power poles will be down and transformers destroyed. Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards.
The vast majority of native trees will be snapped or uprooted. Only the heartiest will remain standing...but be totally defoliated. Few crops will remain. Livestock left exposed to the winds will be killed.
The worst case scenario puts New Orleans under twenty to thirty feet of water for two and a half months. A lot of people remain there, particularly the poor. Don't bother with clothes and canned goods; give cash and give it to the Red Cross.
We redheads have a much higher risk of skin cancer, but the exact reason for that has never been established. Now researchers right here in Durham believe they have found the answer.
[Duke professor John Simon's] team, along with colleagues from at the Funjita Health University in Japan, used a special microscope and an ultraviolet (UV) laser to see what was happening to the pigment-containing structures in hair, called melanosomes, from redheads and black-haired people.
They measured something called the oxidation potential of the red and black melanosomes. This is how likely chemicals are to activate oxygen by taking up electrons. Such changes are known to be linked to cell damage and cancer. They found that the red melanosomes were much more reactive than the black melanosomes. This would suggest that it takes less of a trigger, namely UV rays in sunlight, to make potentially harmful cellular changes in people with red hair.
Professor Simon explained: "Activating oxygen can produce compounds called radicals that put oxidative stress on cells. Such stress could ultimately lead to cancer and other diseases." He said his work "links the red pigments to possible oxidative stress through their electrochemical properties."
Being armed with this knowledge doesn't really lend any additional protection against contracting skin cancer, but at least I know who to blame. Stupid oxygen.
Via my old buddy Erik at Fear of Clowns, I see that the NYT's resident clown, John Tierney (who James Wolcott once referred to as "the latest subtraction by addition to the New York Times op-ed page"), has a piece this morning that doesn't make me bang my head on my desk. Well, it does, but for once he and I are headbanging in unison. He's advocating, if only implicitly, making marijuana a prescription drug for the purposes of research.
Lyle Craker, a professor of plant and soil sciences at the University of Massachusetts, asked an administrative judge to overrule the agency so he could grow marijuana for F.D.A.-approved research projects by other scientists. Dr. Craker is a well-regarded agronomist who's being supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and both of his senators, Edward Kennedy and John Kerry. But for four years he's been stymied by the D.E.A., which first stalled and then finally denied his request for a permit.
There are precedents for his request, because researchers already get supplies of other drugs - like heroin, LSD and Ecstasy - from independent laboratories licensed to make them. But researchers who want marijuana have only one legal source: a crop grown in Mississippi and dispensed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Scientists say they need an alternative partly because the government's marijuana is of such poor quality - too many seeds and stems - and partly because the federal officials are so loath to give it out for research into its medical benefits.
I participated in several federally-funded marijuana studies a few years ago. They were not, of course, funded for the purposes of finding medicinal benefit, but were instead run through the division of Duke Medical Center's Psychiatry Department that deals with alcoholism and drug addiction. I will attest that the marijuana Uncle Sam grows is crap. Foul-tasting, headache-inducing crap. I suspect this story appeals to Tierney because it's one more place he can point his finger and holler, "See? The government can't do anything right." On this one, though, he's absolutely correct. A below-average college student with a closet and a grow lamp could do better than that.
It isn't that they couldn't do better. They have the freaking Department of Agriculture at their disposal, after all, and it isn't like the instructions are difficult to find. No, I think Tierney probably pegs it with this:
People with glaucoma and AIDS have sworn by the efficacy of marijuana, and there have been studies by state health departments showing that smoking marijuana is especially good at controlling nausea. Scientists would like to test these effects, but they can't do good studies until they get good marijuana.
I'm counting catches and, yep, twenty-two. Once again, science loses to politics.
Related: Denver just became the second city, after Oakland, to put a marijuana legalization initiative on the ballot.
Both of my grandfathers were WWII veterans. On my mother's side, my grandfather was a career military man who retired as a lieutenant colonel from the Air Force. He had a sackload of stories about his service both during and after the war. He loved to tell them and I loved to hear them. My paternal grandfather, on the other hand, was an enlistee in the Army who returned to Alabama after the war and worked for the state revenue service until he retired. Growing up, I never once heard him say a single word about his wartime service. Not one, ever. Eight years ago, when he came up to visit after the birth of my first son, I mentioned to him that he'd never spoken about his time in the Army. He replied, "No, I don't like talking about it." He left no doubt that was the end of that line of conversation and it remains the only time I've ever heard him speak of it, however glancingly.
All this is to say that I haven't the faintest idea what he experienced in Europe, but it clearly impacted him profoundly. Similarly, I haven't any way to put myself in the shoes of the men and women stationed in the sweltering chaos of Iraq; only veterans of active shooting wars do. So before anybody else hops on the "they knew what they were signing up for" bandwagon, please go read this by Lex Alexander. Really. Read it. Nothing I could write would add anything to it.
(via The Stinging Nettle)
Does anybody know the syntax to use with MT-Blacklist that will make it allow comments from a specific .info domain, but block all the rest?
The right-wing treatment of Cindy Sheehan.
One is a model of grace, class, and respect for dissenting opinions. The other doesn't even rise to the level of disgusting. Take a guess which is which.
Because I didn't spell it out explicitly, you may or may not have noticed when I linked to the story of the man in Washington state who died after having sex with a horse. The hard way. No charges were pressed, because no laws existed in Washington forbidding bestiality. But all good things come to an end.
But then the story went global last month after E&P Online covered it from the angle of how one reporter managed to get certain unpleasant details into her paper, such as the fact that the farm where this happened had become known on the Internet as a "destination site" for people who want to have sex with critters. The E&P article was widely linked. Next thing we knew, videos of the fatal horse-on-man sex act were circulating on the Web.
Now there's a legislative and journalistic twist. Washington state Senator Pam Roach (R-Auburn) is introducing a bill to outlaw bestiality in the state. And a Seattle columnist has attacked her move, declaring that animals often enjoy the "human touch."
Before you ask, yes of course I have seen the video. No, you don't want to see it and if you do, you'll wish you hadn't. I wasn't right for about a week afterwards and I have a very high tolerance for the strange stuff. Really, you should just take my word on this one. But because I know about 1/3 of my readers are complete deviants, you can find a link to it somewhere on this page. Just don't say you weren't warned. Anyhow:
In her final draft of the bill, finished Aug. 23, Roach included clauses that make knowingly observing an act of bestiality, documenting of acts of bestiality, and trafficking in photos or videos showing such acts, felonies too. However, not everyone has backed Roach. Robert L. Jamieson Jr., a columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, wrote last month that "unless the innocent talks like Mr. Ed or Roach is a horse whisperer, how can she know the animal was harmed?"
He added later, "Moralists will say that since it is impossible for animals to give consent, they should not be taken advantage of sexually. But it's not as if animals consent to being tied to leashes, caged in zoos, pricked by research needles or fattened up before being slaughtered for hamburger, either. People assume animals don't mind being treated in such potentially cruel ways just as some people assume animals don't get any sensual joy from human touch -- a debatable point if one has ever watched a dog hump a human leg with pleasure."
Well, uh, I suppose so. Then again, leg-humping is pretty easy to control. Unless, of course, this legislation passes.
After 582 days, three miles, and over 59,000 photographs, the mars Rover Spirit is still chugging along. It just made up up out of the Gusev Crater, climbed the 90 meters to the top of Husband Hill, and has given us our first glimpse at the terrain beyond. Dig the fantastic panoramic shots. Also here, with dust devils in the background, and an animated gif of an entire flock of dust devils scooting across the crater.
Meanwhile, Opportunity is checking out rocks with rinds.
C'mon now, stop with the PC whining. Everybody knows Jews hate monorails.
((12 + 144 + 20 + (3 * 4^(1/2))) / 7) + (5 * 11) = 9^2 + 0
This has bugged me, too. "As it reads now, it's almost as if the movie is about 40 virgins who are still toddlers (not exactly unusual)."
These look silly. Until you look here.
Report: Penis Issue Harming Thai Cabinet.
Last week, a woman -- being sued for defamation by a clinic after she claimed it gave her a face-disfiguring silicon injection -- said a Cabinet member had received a penis-enlargement injection at the same clinic and urged him to come forward as a witness in her defense. Calling on the official through reporters on the steps of Government House on Tuesday, the woman, Rawiwan Setharat, said, "The problem of my face is bigger than the problem of your penis."
The Library of Congress marks the 85th anniversary of women getting the right to vote with a photo exhibit from the archives of the National Woman's Party.
The American Legion: flipfloppers.
" 'But I wouldn't eat one,' says Jennifer Gillmore."
73 year old Chinese pensioner Wang Ying is so horny, he can use it to lift bricks. (totally work-safe, by the way)
For political reasons, the president has a history of silence on America's war dead. But he finally mentioned them on Monday because it became politically useful to use them as a rationale for war - now that all the other rationales have gone up in smoke.
"We owe them something," he told veterans in Salt Lake City (even though his administration tried to shortchange the veterans agency by $1.5 billion). "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for."
What twisted logic: with no W.M.D., no link to 9/11 and no democracy, now we have to keep killing people and have our kids killed because so many of our kids have been killed already? Talk about a vicious circle: the killing keeps justifying itself.
A vicious circle, indeed. Something changed over the past couple of weeks, though. Lit by the dual sparks of Cindy Sheehan and the enshrinement of Islam as the source of all laws in the new Iraq, even Republicans have begun to sour on Dubya's splendid little war. Bush's approval ratings now rest below Nixon's at the height of Watergate. The usual suspects are still out shrieking that anybody who questions their preciousss is a soldier-hating, subversive, Islamofascist symp, but instead of their usual triumphalist tone, they sound angry, defensive, and desperate. That's not entirely surprising, as anybody with a functioning brainstem (which does perhaps exclude many of said usual suspects) can see that nobody has profited from this colossal disaster more than the rulers of Iran. Oh, the irony.
Now, some of us were saying long ago that we had already lost and that all the "stay the course" talk was just so much hands-over-eyes, fingers-in-ears bullshit. In fact, some of us were saying it from the very beginning. For once, though, being proven right brings no satisfaction whatsoever. I must say, though, thank heavens Kerry lost in November. As much as I was disappointed in my fellow Americans for returning that bumbling Texan halfwit to office, I think we all know what we would be hearing had Kerry taken office in January. "We were making progress in Iraq until that bastard Kerry screwed everything up."
You can't blame anybody but the GOP for this now, America. Bush got to execute this according to his wishes every step of the way and look where we are now: the single biggest foreign policy disaster in living memory and possibly in all of American history. A third of a trillion dollars (and counting) sunk into the enterprise, and let's not forget that we haven't yet paid a dime down on it since it was all done via deficit spending. That's right, even if we brought everybody home tomorrow, we'll still spend decades paying top dollar, plus interest, for the privilege of killing thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians, establishing another Islamic republic, and ruining our reputation around the globe.
So, I offer my hearty congratulations to the war supporters from both parties. You win the prize.
Just so you know where the gaggle that IS the cornerstone of the Republican electoral coalition really stands:
The Rev. Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals said in an interview that he and "most evangelical leaders" would disassociate themselves from such "unfortunate and particularly irresponsible" comments.
"It complicates circumstances for foreign missionaries and Christian aid workers overseas who are already perceived, wrongly, especially by leftists and other leaders, as collaborators with U.S. intelligence agencies," he added.
But other conservative Christian organizations remained silent, with leaders at the Traditional Values Coalition, the Family Research Council and the Christian Coalition saying through spokesmen that they were too busy to comment. (emphasis mine -FG)
A call for the murder of another human being. A thug perhaps; maybe equally as corrupt as many, if not most South American political leaders, but democratically (by Latin American standards) elected nonetheless. Murder. And silence. How Christian.
This might be your last best chance to lick Jerry Garcia's backside. If you're into that sort of thing. Not that there's anything wrong with it.
Well, kinda sorta, if you squint, maybe. Pat Robertson calls for the assassination of the elected president of Venezuela.
"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson told viewers on his "The 700 Club" show Monday. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war." Robertson, a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, called Chavez "a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us badly."
"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said. "We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with." Robertson accused Chavez, a left-wing populist with close ties to Cuban President Fidel Castro, of trying to make Venezuela "a launching pad for Communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent."
Prepare to have your irony meters recalibrated:
In November 2002, Robertson charged that the Muslim holy book, the Quran, incites followers to kill people of other faiths and disputed Bush's characterization of Islam as a religion of peace. "It's clear from the teachings of the Quran and also from the history of Islam that it's anything but peaceful," Robertson said in a subsequent interview with CNN.
Not surprising, really, from the guy who thinks that abortion and divorce are the fault of homosexuals (go ahead, just try to make sense of that one). I'd like to point out, however, that Pat Robertson, batshit crazy fucker that he is, gets granted private audiences with the president of the United States. Well, probably not so much since that incident, but still, plenty of Washington Republicans are more than willing to grease his skids.
And now, Ol' Pat is making the Lord smite Lynyrd Skynyrd. Will nobody stop this man?
Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.
"The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions," said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.
Why, yes it does sound familiar.
The IAEA had put together the group of experts in an effort to foster cooperation but also to eliminate the possibility that its findings would be challenged by the White House, officials said. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion in March 2003, the White House rejected IAEA findings that cast doubt on U.S. assertions about then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's arsenal. The IAEA findings turned out to be correct, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
Interesting article by Stirling Newberry on how the two candidates I liked most during the '04 campaign, Wesley Clark and John Edwards, represent the future of the party by representing its past.
Robust McManlyPants travels to Clarksville, Virginia and discovers where taste goes to die.
Gavin M. notes the aural horror that is Freedom Folks.
And then there's this.
The Cassini probe has detected that Saturn's rings have their own atmosphere separate from the planet, composed mostly of molecular oxygen.
Though Saturn may have had rings since it formed, the ring system is not stable and must be regenerated by ongoing processes, probably the break-up of larger satellites.
Water molecules are first driven off the ring particles by solar ultraviolet light. They are then split into hydrogen, and molecular and atomic oxygen, by photodissocation. The hydrogen gas is lost to space, the atomic oxygen and any remaining water are frozen back into the ring material due to the low temperatures, and this leaves behind a concentration of oxygen molecules. [...]
Dr Coates said the ring atmosphere was probably kept in check by gravitational forces and a balance between loss of material from the ring system and a re-supply of material from the ring particles.
Despite having a diameter of a quarter-million kilometers, the rings are only a few yards thick. If they were compressed into a single icy body, it would only be 100 to 200 kilometers wide.
It seems I've been falling down on my divinely appointed mission to bring you TehWeird©, so let me point you toward The Goddess Bunny (8 MB QT movie). Confused?
(via MeFi)
One partial list and another, both via PZ Myers. In that spirit, I'd like to remind you of this post from last November. The invitation still stands.
Here's a little thought exercise. Try, just try, to imagine the reaction if an anti-war protestor had driven a pick-up truck through a memorial to dead soldiers. Right. The apoplectic denunciations and indignant demands for the same from everybody who ever pulled a Democratic lever would be drowning out air raid sirens. But, hmm, barely a murmur. I don't think it's quite fair to judge entire groups of people by the actions of one lone Texas nutcase (unless, of course, they voted for him), but my criteria don't seem to be the ones that were adopted by our friends across the ideological divide, now are they?
An Iraq veteran wrote a letter to the driver of the truck that's worth the short time it will take you to read it and Elizabeth Edwards, who knows about losing a son, has written a moving open letter about Cindy Sheehan. Sheehan scares the hell out of the Bush administration because it's a battle they can't win. That doesn't mean they won't go their normal route of trying to slime their opponents through proxies. That's all they know how to do and their little obedient orcs are more than happy to play along, but in the end it won't work because this isn't about Cindy Sheehan or the parents of Edward Schroeder or the other grieving parents you'll be hearing about in the coming months. It's about a nation led into an illegal, immoral, dishonest war that offers neither a way to win nor a way to escape, prosecuted with monumental incompetence and corruption. And that has precisely nothing to do with the fact that Michael Moore is fat or that some perennial bête noire of the right supports Sheehan. It does, however, have everything to do with the huge and rapidly growing pile of dead bodies.
The mourning parents and the soldiers who have returned with their lives and bodies shattered, however, are the human face of this war. At least, they are the American face, which is the only kind that seems to matter to much of America, and even that face has been carefully hidden from view. Until now. The brayers on the right would have you believe this is just another political game, but it's no such thing. Oh, it is to them, make no mistake, because everything is to them. Cindy Sheehan, on the other hand, is insisting that the memory of her son not just disappear with bland acceptance into the daily blur of casualties. Insisting that the country — not just Bush, but the country — not change the subject because it's uncomfortable.
Children of the pine forest, we southerners are. I don't live in North Carolina anymore but a part of me will always call it home. That almost universal love of the woods, however, is betrayed by an obscene habit: dumping outrageous amounts of wood material in landfills every day. I devoted the better part of ten years professionally to correcting this problem - building a program from scratch, enhancing it with innovative County public policy, and providing the State of NC with a model for addressing the issue on a much broader scale. A year after leaving - and admittedly neglecting my role as a trade association policy advisor - I still believe that the biggest impediment to wood (and paper as well) resource effficiency and waste reduction is the trouble cutting off big timber from their huge taxpayer giveaways. Good luck, Froz. So, short of that, I'll take success where I can find it.
On Friday, the NC Senate approved a bill that had already passed the House that will, among other things, ban the disposal of wooden pallets in landfills. The dedicated people who advanced this idea and advocated action at the state level over the last several years deserve an enormous amount of credit and a big round of thanks from everyone in NC. And Representative Joe Hackney (D, of course) deserves special kudos because he fought back several powerful interests that tried to shut this bill down. By the final vote, it had changed from banning the disposal of "clean wood waste" to just "wooden pallets." You can read this as caving to the development industry, or you can - FAR more accurately - read it as a good compromise and an effective fracturing of your opposition. Thank you, Representatives Hackney, Verla Insko, and Jennifer Weiss. Conference Committee changes will be inconsequential and Governor Easley's signature is not controversial, largely because of the aforementioned compromise.
After implementing a policy at the County level that did much the same thing as the original H1465 would have - with an even more aggressive definition of recyclable wood, if given the chance I would probably choose the compromised route outright. The regulated business communities can ease into this with less difficulty and thus less expense to them and less difficulty for the agencies charged with implementation and enforcement. It will falter if it can't be enforced fairly and fully. It will also, and most importantly, cultivate private sector collection and processing infrastructure - still immature by northeastern, farwestern, and European standards - without forcing it to handle more than it is ready to, and buckling under the strain. Yo-yoing markets will not solve the long term problems.
I hear the disappointment of those who have pushed the envelope and understand the need to have policy help redirect this plentiful and valuable resource towards an extremely promising industry. I agree that you are the superheroes of recycling. But rather than leap tall buildings in a single bound, I suggest a good ground game, old fashioned, Lombardi-style.
Just make it ten yards. Go one first down at a time. We'll get there.
...that our side doesn't have its own powerfully idiotic powerful idiots. You know, Senator, Washington DC is full of crystal meth and prostitution and until that's cleaned up, I don't think the Senate should be in Washington.
The evolving story of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in the London subway just keeps looking worse day by day.
The questions are mounting. Initial claims that de Menezes was targeted because he was wearing a bulky coat, refused to stop when challenged and then vaulted the ticket barriers have all turned out to be false. He was wearing a denim jacket, used a standard Oyster electronic card to get into the station and simply walked towards the platform unchallenged. It has also been suggested that officers did not identify themselves properly before shooting de Menezes seven times in the head. [...]
For de Menezes life in London was for the most part uneventful. He had been stopped by a police a few times as part of routine stop and search inquiries, once having his bag examined by officers outside Brixton tube station. On each occasion the police had asked him to stop and he did so. However, on each occasion the officers concerned were in full uniform [the officers this time were undercover -'r].
Two weeks before he was killed, de Menezes had been attacked by a gang of white youths, seemingly at random. According to friends this experience left him shaken and nervous.
Well, at least we can turn to the security camera video to get some definitive answers, right?
Cameras at Stockwell tube should have provided footage of the ticket halls, the escalators and the platforms. Most modern tube carriages also have cameras inside. Yet police say none of the cameras at Stockwell was working at the time of the shooting. This is despite London being on high alert and tube bosses being only too well aware of the importance of maintaining CCTV systems.
Well, that's...odd. No cameras working at all either in the station or the cars, following a major terrorist attack on the subway system. About the young electrician emerging from a house that was under surveillance, turns out it was a building of nine apartments that shared a communal entrance. Read the rest of the article for the awful string of mistakes and coincidences that lead up to the shooting.
(via Gary Farber)
Nashville, Tennessee played host today to Justice Sunday II - God Save the United States and this Honorable Court, where thousands of conservative Christian tongue-cluckers and finger-waggers gathered for a star-studded extravaganza to try to put an end to the oppression of conservatives at the hands of Republican-appointed judges. This, of course, is the follow-up to last season's cliffhanger, Justice Sunday - Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith. I'm very much looking forward to next year's wrap-up, Justice Sunday 3D - They're Coming Right at Us! Since the first installment, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist fell out of favor with the Jesus Jamboree after headfaking in the direction of science ever so briefly. Didn't even drive the lane or anything, but then it doesn't take much to run afoul of Puritans. He was replaced in the lineup by Bill Laimbeer Tom DeLay.
Supposedly, they showed this thing on television (but, y'know, not on any station with which I am familiar) and a gaggle of right-wing bloggers were on hand to give you the rah-rah chorus. No snarky goodness to be found there, but apostropher.com had our very own press-credentialed mole in the building. My hungry photographer friend just relocated to Nashville and apparently they'll let any kind of heathen in these things, as long as you deny said heathen tendencies beforehand and cover your "I sodomize fetuses for John Kerry" bumpersticker. Sweet. Photos are below and you should contact Kelly Jo for any questions about use.
One of these things is not like the other ones.
The first W seems to stand for "who".
Not to be confused with the Tony Perkins who only portrayed a psycho.
The rush for the good seats.
'Scuse me while I whip this out.
I have to go potty!
Ex-Con Political Bagmen for Christ, Inc.
Talking morality, awaiting indictment.
Big Brother, Take One.
Big Brother, Take Two.
Big Brother, Take Three.
Big Brother, Take Four.
Freshly thawed from the carbonite.
Happy Zell looks even creepier than Scary Zell.
Event security made our correspondent turn off the camera just before the puppy blood toasts started, but her notes on the entire evening are in the extended entry.
August 14, 2005 - Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee, played host to the
Family Research Council's "Justice Sunday II". The church itself has an estimated
capacity of 2,500 in its sanctuary - cavernous to be certain. One deacon of the church
told me that he thought about 3,000 tickets were given away (only available through
local churches in Nashville) but, of course, "not everybody was going to come".
I, however, could not pass up an opportunity to encounter Zell Miller, Phyllis Schafly,
Tony Perkins and - as a last-minute addition - Tom DeLay. So I was there.
A small but vocal band of counterprotesters was across the street from the church,
holding signs and talking easily with the members of the media who went out to greet
them. "We don't want people to think all of Nashville is like this," one woman said with
a dismissive wave towards the church. Another woman asked me how I got my media
credentials, feeling that the distribution process was "flawed" and said the event
should have been open to everyone regardless of religious affiliation. Perhaps that is
missing the point somewhat, but she still took the bottled water that was proffered by
some teenagers sent from the church. (Others refused the water - "It's probably got
fertility hormones in it or something," smiled one woman.)
Inside the sanctuary, a photo op was taking place of the assembled. On the stage with
ministers were some of the Right's more staunch and steadfast participants.
[notes from here out]
Warm-up act was Two Rivers' house band lead by the "Minister of Music".
(did not catch name) He said "This event is bigger than church, bigger than the
telecast, bigger than you - you have a "kingdom agenda" to spread when you leave
here..."
Video from Dr James Dobson FoF leader
SCOTUS is "ripping the fabric of society" with its "arrogant judiciary" and "judicial
tyranny". But, sorry, the wife and I are in France now on vacation - we couldn't make
it.
SCOTUS influenced by the "leftists" in Western Europe - guided by the opinions in the
most liberal area of the planet. [KJ notes: but at least it's good for a vacation.]
US is now an oligarchy controlled by "minions on the left". Conservatives strive to
bring balance back to the judiciary.
Dobson says "contact your senator - email, fax, call, write a letter - and then pray
God's perfect will be done." [KJ notes: Shouldn't that be done in the reverse order?]
[no notes for DeLay]
Chuck Colson - prison ministries - says about Tom DeLay that he came and helped out in
the prison ministries - Colson looked up and saw DeLay "among the crowd of white-clad
prisoners" - because he is a man of faith and principle and felt a calling to help out
[KJ notes: Or check out the place from the other side first]
Colson says - don't be angry at "the other side" -- conservatives are not "imposing"
their will, just "proposing"
Perkins: In the Justice Sunday "Save our Court" kit, there are 10 Commandment book
covers for kids to cover their textbooks with
Bill Donohue Prez. Catholic League
"My accent is a little different but I stand with the evangelicals"
Go beyond Roberts and have only unanimous SCOTUS ruling overturn an act of Congress -
make all parts of the gov't "co-equal"
Send grief counselors to the Left because they'll be crying
The Left doesn't believe in anything anyway
Zell Miller: Can't believe we are about to discard like an old hula hoop the institution
of marriage. [invokes some Biblical passage] America is asleep - fruit has gone rotten -
weeds are smothering the fruited plains! The secularists are winning - justices are
created to interpret law not make it - COVER this CONFIRMATION process with a BLANKET
of prayer
Phyllis Schafly - for some reason she mentions the Boy Scouts as a need for the SCOTUS
to address. "We don't need to be judged by supremacist judges"
"tell elected reps in Congress to rein in out of control judges"
video address from Jordan Lawrence - Snr Legal Counsel for Alliance DEfence Fund:
Lawrence states some judges treat the Constitution as their "personal Etch A Sketch".
Separate church and state should not exist; right to abortion does not exist
Cathy Cleaver Ruse - Snr Fellow for Legal Studies FRC
we are AWAKENED to the threat of judicial activism. Pornographers are PRAISED as 1st
Amen. heros whilst sodomy and abortion are enshrined as constitutional rights
Assisted suicide is a tragic health problem, deserving a compassionate response -
medicine should be used to heal not to kill
Repealing parental consent laws would make young girls vulnerable to predatory males [KJ
notes: who want to take them across the border to get them a legal and safe abortion?]
The radical abortion lobby looks to the courts to do its work - has never had a
significant legislative vicory
Ted Haggard Prez Natl Assoc of Evangelicals
politics and local churches go together
Church people should influence public policy
Believe in social justice? Influence pub pol
Believe elderly should be honoured and respected? Influence pub pol
Speak out as Christians and present best case for Christian viewpoint in public forums
Must have a "faith debate" in this country
Be the salt and the light God intended you to be
Jerry Sutton Two Rivers Church & 1st VP of the Southern Bap Conv.
- Terri Schiavo was murdered by a combination of an adulterous husband and people without
conscience
5 Things about Christians in Politics:
1. Today is a new day
2. Liberalism is dead
3. Majority of Americans are conservative
4. You can count on us showing up
5. LET THIS CHURCH RISE
Politicians must be vocal about religious belief in public political forums.
Plants distinguish self from non-self.
Your mom was right. It really can make you go blind.
Researchers believe they may have deciphered the Incan khipu, the seven-bit binary code made of knotted strings, which I blogged about a couple years ago.
Global warming skeptics lose another round.
You have to keep stretching test tube meat or it turns to mush.
"A team at the University of North Carolina has shown that valproic acid, which is used to treat bipolar disorder, can also prevent HIV persisting in its latent phase."
Meanwhile, French physicists have determined why dry spaghetti breaks into more than two pieces when bent.
Khosraw Bagheri is the first ever Mr. Afghanistan. You can hit the link for the freakish picture.
At 96 kilograms (212 pounds), Basheri was among the heaviest contenders in the event, which featured nine weight classes and was held at a dilapidated movie theater in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
Hmm, that's only a few pounds more than I weigh. We're built a bit differently, though.
"The most popular sport after football (soccer) in Afghanistan is bodybuilding," said Sayed Mohammed Payanda, secretary general of Afghanistan's National Bodybuilding Federation. "Most people in Afghanistan, especially young people, like bodybuilding very much." It's so popular, in fact, that Arnold Schwarzenegger — the former bodybuilder and movie star turned California governor — is among the most widely recognized Western celebrities here.
So very, very sad.
Modern gyms and athletic clubs have popped up in many provinces in recent years, Payanda said, adding that some Afghan bodybuilders have returned from neighboring Pakistan and Iran since the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime was ousted in 2001 and President Hamid Karzai subsequently took office. But Afghanistan's bodybuilding community is still reeling from the loss of its entire national team — 13 leading competitors — in a 1993 plane crash in the country's north.
In the midst of an interblog slapfight between John Cole and The Editors, I came across this comment and wanted to stick it someplace easily accessible, because somewhere down the line I'm going to be too busy to respond properly to an oft-posed question. This is going to be a great time-saver, I'm sure. It's in the extended entry.
---
I didn’t “hate” Bush when he first took office. I didn’t like him, and what I heard about his character didn’t enchant me, but “hatred”? No.
Watching him let his energy biz cronies run the biggest scam since the South American Railroad grift pissed me off pretty good. But, hey, it’s not like we didn’t know Bush was a corporate tool.
The way he turned his back on the Israel-Palestine issue, stopped the Korean Rapproachment talks dead in their tracks, and pissed on treaties left and right upset me. But it’s not like any of that was a surprise, either. Bush made it clear that he had little knowledge of the world and zero interest in acquiring any; and also that his foreign policy would basically consist of doing the opposite of whatever Clinton had done.
By this point I figured the guy was obviously not up to the job, one of those peculiar sorts who’s not only ignorant but proud of being ignorant. I figured we were in for a few years of Keystone Kops, and then in 2004 we’d get someone in the WH who knew what they were doing.
Then came 9/11. I wanted the US to go after whoever did it. I supported the war in Afghanistan. I thought, hey, maybe Bush has what it takes to rise to the occasion. Maybe he is like Prince Hal, a wastrel good-for-nothing redeemed by one towering event.
Then came Iraq. Iraq made no sense from the start. Why were we going to Iraq when we hadn’t caught OBL yet? Why were we going to Iraq before we were done building a stable democracy in Afghanistan? Why were we going to Iraq when Iraq had had nothing to do with 9/11? Why were we going to Iraq when the weapons inspectors had gone back in, were once again searching for WMDs, and weren’t finding any? Why were we going to Iraq when even our allies weren’t supporting the endeavor? Why were we in such a damn hurry to go to war in Iraq? Why was the WH impugning the patriotism of everyone who asked these questions?
Then came “Bring it on!” and “Mission Accomplished!” and making fun of our soldiers who were dying while looking for WMDs. And that’s when my low opinion of Bush started to harden into something other than bemused contempt.
Because now, it wasn’t just about letting his cronies steal a few hundred million dollars, it wasn’t just about an overgrown frat boy in over his head, it wasn’t just about an ignorant reactionary ruining in one fell swoop what better men had spent decades building.
No: now it was about a man who was sacrificing lives, American lives and Iraqi lives, in a needless, heedless, badly planned war that seemed more about Bush’s personal issues than about the nation’s defense. It was Bush using Iraq as his personal pokey stick, only he was sending our soldiers out there to die. He was sending them without enough equipment, without enough supplies (the first summer in Iraq, soldiers had to buy their own water), and without the foggiest idea of what to do if “Plan A: We Will Be Greeted As Liberators” didn’t pan out. And when it came to “nation building,” Bush sent cronies and ideologues and blue-sky fantasists over there instead of civil engineers and educators and disaster recovery experts.<
