This is what the Louisiana Democratic party as come to: freelance operatives running joke candidates because the party itself can’t come up with a credible opponent. This will get lot of press, and some jokes on Letterman, and everyone will have a good laugh, and the hugely conservative voting base of Louisiana will be turned off by the mockery and the constant exhortations of “hypocrisy” coming from a party that can’t field a candidate or organize a campaign, and the voters will rally around the values flag for a massive FUCK YOU vote and Vitter will crush you in the jungle primary. And there we’ll all be, stuck with that obstructionist, outdated asshole for another six years. But hey, we ran a porn star! SNUK SNERT!
"Probably the biggest hesitation over the years development-wise has been the crime and what takes place in that (the Iberville housing) development with high density," said Brennan. "So to redevelop it, I think is tremendous. It is going to bring a lot of potential, great things for all of us."
"They’ve been flying around,” Payton said of his defense. Brees added that the defense was “building a swagger”.
One of the biggest challenges to our rebuilding together is that there is a whole lot of negative noise in our community. Not everyone, but a segment that is very skilled at getting their opinions and perspectives in the public domain. They dominate the news, the blogs, and talk radio. They are the people on the fringes - the 10% on the far right and 10% on the far left. They most often are heard above the remaining 80%, the rest of us who don't subscribe to their very narrow ways of thinking. But the voices in the middle, the reasonable ones, get drowned out by the extreme distortionists.
Tucker called for a vote on the bill. As members pushed their buttons and the voting board lit up, Tucker turned to one of the House aids and asked, "What does the amendment do?" The aid appeared to shrug her shoulders. Next the Speaker looked down and saw the vote, 99-0 in favor, and announced that the bill had passed.
A few minutes later the House adjourned for the day, with most members oblivious to what had just happened.
LSU's Miles speaks against guns on campus
10:45 AM CDT on Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Associated Press
BATON ROUGE, La. -- LSU football coach Les Miles has taken sides in a political fire fight, speaking against legislation that would overturn the university's ban on guns.
The guns-on-campus bill is now drawing opposition from LSU football coach Les Miles, who understandably doesn't want armed men running around his campus after his team's disappointing 8-5 finish last season.
• Political blogging is the wave of the future, political bloggers say.
While the blogs may differ slightly in the way they frame issues, almost all of the state's prominent blogs lean to the right of the political spectrum.I did not know that.
The next day, three days after landfall, word of disorder in New Orleans had reached a fever pitch. According to sources familiar with the conversation, DHS secretary Michael Chertoff called Rumsfeld that morning and said, “You’re going to need several thousand troops.”I must say I fully endorse this strategy of retelling the story from a new player's perspective each summer. It really keeps the brand out there, so to speak. I'm hoping that when they get around to Nagin, they'll break "the book" up into two volumes for maximum effect. It'll be like turning Harry Potter 7 into two separate movies. Pure marketing gold.
“Well, I disagree,” said the SecDef. “And I’m going to tell the president we don’t need any more than the National Guard.”
The problem was that the Guard deployment (which would eventually reach 15,000 troops) had not arrived—at least not in sufficient numbers, and not where it needed to be. And though much of the chaos was being overstated by the media, the very suggestion of a state of anarchy was enough to dissuade other relief workers from entering the city. Having only recently come to grips with the roiling disaster, Bush convened a meeting in the Situation Room on Friday morning. According to several who were present, the president was agitated. Turning to the man seated at his immediate left, Bush barked, “Rumsfeld, what the hell is going on there? Are you watching what’s on television? Is that the United States of America or some Third World nation I’m watching? What the hell are you doing?”
Rumsfeld replied by trotting out the ongoing National Guard deployments and suggesting that sending active-duty troops would create “unity of command” issues. Visibly impatient, Bush turned away from Rumsfeld and began to direct his inquiries at Lieutenant General Honoré on the video screen. “From then on, it was a Bush-Honoré dialogue,” remembers another participant. “The president cut Rumsfeld to pieces. I just wish it had happened earlier in the week.”
But still the troops hadn’t arrived. And by Saturday morning, says Honoré, “we had dispersed all of these people across Louisiana. So we needed more troops to go to distribution centers, feed people, and maintain traffic.” That morning Bush convened yet another meeting in the Situation Room. Chertoff was emphatic. “Mr. President,” he said, “if we’re not going to begin to get these troops, we’re not going to be able to get the job done.”
Rumsfeld could see the writing on the wall and had come prepared with a deployment plan in hand. Still, he did not volunteer it. Only when Bush ordered, “Don, do it,” did he acquiesce and send in the troops—a full five days after landfall.
What is interesting to observe about Head and Nolting is the way the class conflict element informs their prose. Head, an earnest gentrifier, can't get her mind around why poor people make lousy nutritional choices. Her sarcastic (one assumes) declaration that she will vote for "that freak" John McCain in the upcoming election reveals a liberal sensibility under strain, a mindset even the most empathetic New Orleanians have had to confront within themselves.
As for Nolting, art gallery prole, presumably just getting by on her meager hourly while she dreams of becoming Sarah Vowell once the larger world comes around and appreciates her cutting wit, the resentment comes from below.
Regardless of whether the anger that fueled the writing was righteous or mean-spirited, the fact is that these two locally grown electronic me-centered missives should serve as a warning to all of us.
Summer is approaching, and those of us who stick around will eventually get on one another's nerves. Then, odds are, in a few months we'll all be stuck in traffic together dodging a hurricane.So to sum up, Longo is warning us against the dangers of open discussion about petty things now so that when the time comes to sort out something important like another hurricane snafu, we'll know not to question each other then either. But at least no one will say anything mean.
Then when we come back, we'll have mayoral and City Council elections to contend with, where the candidates will fan the flames of our rage toward whatever "them" we blame the sad state of the city on.
The last thing we need is a digital catalogue of our resentful selves.
Some people object to the perceived motives of attorney Tracie Washington, who sought the council e-mails. New Orleanians may have different reactions to the e-mails' contents and to Ms. Washington. But there should be no debate about whether the records ought to be publicly released. Louisiana law gives anyone the right to see the council's e-mails without giving a reason -- and that makes the motivation for a request irrelevant.
Pisses me off 100 percent of the time. I have been shopping carefully, looking at the per serving cost of all items. This chick in front of me is buying pre made croissant and egg, canned soups, solft driinks, pre made beef pattie (who eats that???), pre made RICE KRISPYs!!! Precut sweet potatos (didn't know those existed) and is payong with a food stamp card. I am voting for the freak mccain and his trash bag vp. I am sick of it.
The role of Tulane in attempting to muddy the waters to it's own benefit has become more publicly understood, but I will be very surprised if before all is settled another "powerful interest" isn't revealed to have a behind the scenes hand in attempts to scuttle the entire project to replace the teaching hospital in New Orleans, and their name turns out to start with "OCHS" and end with "NER". I'll become more suspicious of this if our beloved Sen. Vitter begins to take a more vocal "slow things down" position.
Efforts to gut and restore Charity, rather than build a new facility, also are supported by some historic preservationists and community groups, as well by Sen. David Vitter, R-La.
Vitter, according to spokesman Joel DiGrado, believes that a public hospital should have already been rebuilt downtown, that LSU has delayed that far too long, that its plan is too big and expensive and that "gutting the old Charity shell and rebuilding a state-of-the-art hospital in it could save a lot of money."
METAIRIE, La. -- There's an eye in the sky that you may not know about: Cameras have now been installed on Jefferson Parish School Buses.
But one woman is fighting an expensive traffic ticket she got for allegedly passing a school bus while its stop signs were extended.
Casey Gonzalez received the ticket in the mail on March 31, for "passing a school bus while the stop arm was engaged." The back of the ticket directed her to a Web site called www.alertbus.com.
When she typed in the citation number and driver's license number, she saw footage of the infraction from four different angles, all shot from a Jefferson Parish School Bus.
That's when Gonzalez realized when the video was shot.
"January 22nd, about 3 p.m. I was on my way to an appointment on the east bank," Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez claimed she never saw the bus, but the fine on the ticket sure stood out to her.
"Never did I imagine it was going to be $400. That's like a car note," she said. "There is an early pay discount. I think it's $300 if you pay within 30 days of the citation, but we received it in the mail 60 days after it happened."
WDSU went online and found out the Alert Bus program is run by a locally owned company called OnGo Live. According to its Web site, the company "specializes in the custom installation of portable security technology, providing continuous real-time live audio and video transmission."
The owners wouldn't talk with WDSU, instead referring to the Jefferson Parish School Board, which hired them.
"We've had a couple of close calls where students had been hit -- not severely injured, but we just saw a pattern, that was starting to increase," said school spokesman Jeff Nowakowski. "And we said there's got to be another way to keep the kids safe."
Nowakowski said cameras have been inside school buses for years, but this new system is better because it's wireless and live.
Of the 222 school buses in Jefferson Parish, only 12 percent have these traffic cameras. And since they were originally installed in March 2008, 1,275 tickets have been sent out.
Sixty percent of the revenue goes to OnGo Live, 20 percent goes to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department and 20 percent goes to Jefferson Parish schools.
24. New Orleans
No team with Drew Brees will ever be awful, particularly in a division without an almighty power. The Saints will win two or three 40-31-type of games. But unless Gregg Williams can find a better-than-average pass-rush by maneuvering some average chess pieces -- and unless Jonathan Vilma plays like Superman, and Jabari Greer and Malcolm Jenkins cover like Deion -- this defense is not going to be good enough to win eight games.
BATON ROUGE -- Architects recently unveiled renderings for the teaching hospital that Louisiana State University System executives and state facilities managers have envisioned for lower Mid-City since before Hurricane Katrina.
The three concepts vary, but all depict a massive medical complex -- three wings of in-patient beds, a clinic building, a diagnostic and treatment wing with the emergency department, a parking garage and a central energy plant -- that would reach every block in an area bound by South Claiborne Avenue, Tulane Avenue, Galvez Street and Canal Street. But, in fact, fewer than half the structures in the drawings actually make up the proposed $1.2 billion, 424-bed hospital.
Architects dubbed that "phase one" as they presented the drawings. The rest of the buildings -- duplicates of everything except the energy plant -- are designated as "future" construction in "phase two."
State facilities chief Jerry Jones said he doesn't think the land would be used for construction at all before hospital expansion. He said it likely would be "surface parking" and landscaping.
Sorry, kids.. still don't have internet access at home and I'm far too busy at work to say anything meaningful here. It's a temporary situation. In the meantime, remember three of your libraries are open.. sort of. We're open primarily for internet access and are not able to lend any items yet. On the other hand we are giving away free candy.Which was true! Maybe we should reinstitute the free candy program.
I don't need some judge sitting up there feeling bad for my opponent because of their life circumstances or their condition. And short changing me and my opportunity to get fair treatment under the law. Crazy nonsense empathetic. I'll give you empathy. Empathize right on your behind. Craziness."
First of all, why is that no professor alive can make it ten feet from his front door without sticking an a priori into a sentence? Is there some kind of subterranean lair where academics are beaten with whips and clubs until they learn to write alliterative book titles (”Pus, Primates, and Pessimism: Jane Goodall’s Descent into Septic Shock”) and lard up perfectly good sentences with epistemological catch-phrases? Weird.
We've had clever governors, ruthless governors and treacherous governors. This one is all three.
Newspapers across the U.S. were often begun by pamphleteers, political parties, or businessmen who wanted to get involved in local, state, or even national affairs. The founding editors of The New York Times started that newspaper as supporters of the Whig party and later switched to the Republican party. Adolph Ochs, who bought the Times in 1896, was helped in his negotiations by a letter from President Grover Cleveland, who wrote that Ochs’s management of The Chattanooga Times had “demonstrated such a faithful adherence to Democratic principles that I would be glad to see you in a larger sphere of usefulness.” The Washington Post’s publisher Phil Graham helped put Lyndon Johnson on the ticket with John F. Kennedy.This "balance vs relevance" point has become a common criticism of our modern media. What had happened was that, for about a generation, most consumers of news had lost the assumption that they were required to read their sources critically. One positive influence of the internet age on the news has been the slow but steady whittling away of that mindset.
They used their presses to influence government, but that is what the founding fathers contemplated when they wrote the First Amendment. The idea was that citizens in a democracy were to read more than one paper or pamphlet, weigh all opinions and facts as presented, and make up their own minds.
Today, mainstream print and electronic media want to be neutral, presenting both or all sides as if they were refereeing a game in which only the players—the government and its opponents—can participate. They have increasingly become common carriers, transmitters of other people’s ideas and thoughts, irrespective of import, relevance, and at times even accuracy.
The debate is very inside baseball and may never have any practical effect on patient care. But LSU, Tulane, Dillard, Southern and Xavier all want to protect their turf.This seems like a question that deserves more attention. I was under the impression that, under the previous complicated arrangement by which the teaching hospital operated, LSU absorbed much of the cost of treating uninsured or medicaid patients and provided the bulk... if not all... of the on-call residents in rotation at Charity (and also at Children's). I have a limited understanding of the structure here and so am posting this more as a question than anything else. But if the other schools are looking for a greater share of management authority, will they also be assuming greater responsibility for operation? Is a private institution like Tulane willing or even able to take on more of the public health business?
Apparently it is not enough that the credit card companies have spent $15.5 million on lobbying fees in the first quarter of 2009 alone (this according to CREW, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), while employees of credit card companies spent an additional $14.5 million last year, and credit PACs spent $8.6 million more. It’s not enough that when the President even considered making a change to the credit laws, 14 top-ranking credit card company officials got to meet with Obama to plead their case in person; conveniently, none of the 14 was a registered lobbyist, which made them exempt from laws banning lobbyists from influencing officials with responsibility for distribution of stimulus/recovery funds. Apparently despite all that the credit card companies are voiceless yet, and still need Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times to champion their cause. (link added by me for clarity)One thing I've been trying to figure out is the degree to which persistent public anger at the mismanaged economy will be an aid or a hindrance to Democrats in 2010. I think that Obama's basic continuance of the Bush policy of giving away all of our money to the bankers bodes ill. It muddles the political message in such a way that it makes even the most insane ramblings of his opponents seem at least just as reasonable as he.
Of all the truly revolting political developments of the financial crisis age — and there have been a lot of them — probably nothing is more disgusting than the weirdly intense media backlash against “populist anger,” anger that is inevitably described by media sages like Hiltzik as irrational, unfounded, and pointedly unhelpful. The public is depicted as a great dumb beast lashing out wildly at shadows and hallucinations, with the poor diligent hardworking members of the financial class (slaving away to pump much-needed capital into the bloodstream of international commerce) suffering the collateral damage.
Someone is going to be blamed, and the Republicans have figured out who: Clinton and Obama. But the Democrats are staying above the battle and refuse to “play the blame game”. This responsible, patrician, professional approach hasn’t worked for the Democrats for thirty or forty years, not even during normal times, and it’s certainly not going to work now. But the Democrats don’t realize this, and they’re so committed to their cool, professionalism that are unlikely to be able to deal with the politics of the impending disaster at all.This is precisely why I'm not so keen as the professional political observers are to write off the GOP at this point. It seems to me that while the right is sticking to its ideological guns and doubling down on the crazy, the left (or what passes for the left) is engaging in a hubristic elitist rhetoric of condescension which combines the tone of upper-class intellectual paranoia with a shockingly unempathetic sectional bias. This looks like a long-term losing strategy to me.
Sources: Blakely leaving post in less than a month
09:58 PM CDT on Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Dominic Massa / Eyewitness News
NEW ORLEANS – Eyewitness News has learned of a shakeup in the Nagin administration, and the departure of one of its top officials, Recovery Director Dr. Edward Blakely.
Sources tell Channel 4 that Blakely will leave his post in a little less than a month, by June 1.
There's another angle here too. Labor is really licking its wounds over what appears to be the very steep climb EFCA faces in this Congress. And the Democratic establishment in Washington moved very quickly to crown Specter as the Democratic nominee. It would not surprise me if labor and affiliated organizations might not mind engaging in a amicable Specter-Sestak proxy battle with President Obama and the lords of the senate to make the point that as much as everything's great and everyone's pals, they've got their own independent bases of power and political muscle.
Only in America would the notion of a nearly-naked fundamentalist Christian beauty queen tossing her processed hair and parading brand new pageant-bought plastic breasts across a Las Vegas stage in front of millions of television viewers with all the modesty of a blue ribbon heifer at a county livestock fair (the same fundamentalist Christian beauty queen who would later tell a television reporter that she heard God whispering in her ear as she answered a celebrity-worshipping Internet gossip columnist's question about gay marriage) be treated as anything other than an occasion for high comedy and mirth.
The authors of the Tulane poll, including the political consultant James Carville, said voters believed by two to one that the city was “on the wrong track,” and they compared the city’s mood to that of the nation “in the final year of the Bush administration.”
TICK, TICK, TICK . . .: The moment is likely to pass with little notice, but at the stroke of noon Monday, term-limited Mayor Ray Nagin will begin his final year in office.
The City Charter mandates that every four years, the city's newly elected chief executive and City Council members are sworn in at midday on the first Monday in May.
Former students and colleagues describe Mr. Obama as a minimalist (skeptical of court-led efforts at social change) and a structuralist (interested in how the law metes out power in society). And more than anything else, he is a pragmatist who urged those around him to be more keenly attuned to the real-life impact of decisions. This may be his distinguishing quality as a legal thinker: an unwillingness to deal in abstraction, a constant desire to know how court decisions affect people’s lives.In other words, the law exists within the context of the society it serves for the purpose of establishing real world justice instead of just in the mind of some judge or professor for the purpose of his or her own intellectual masturbation. What a novel idea.
“The University of Chicago was and is full of eminent theorizers who wrap up huge areas of the law by applying some magic key,” said David Franklin, a former student. “He didn’t do any of that; he wasn’t interested in high theory at all.”
Though Mr. Obama rarely spoke of his own views, students say they sensed his disdain for formalism, the idea — often espoused by Justices Scalia and Clarence Thomas, but sometimes by liberals as well — that law can be decided independent of the political and social context in which it is applied. To make his point, Mr. Obama, then a state senator, took students with him to Springfield, Ill., the capital, to watch hearings and see him hash out legislation.
And he asked constant questions about consequences of laws: What would happen if a mother’s welfare grant did not increase with the birth of additional children? As a state legislator, how much could he be influenced by a donor’s contribution?
r: Hoping to acquire liver disease and swine flu simultaneously. Or ummmmm... N191 or whatever the fuck we are supposed to call it so we all keep eating pork.
Me: People are so dumb. Even if we were in any danger, it wouldn't be from eating pork.
r: Well duh. I left work yesterday and ate three pork tacos from a hut in a gas station parking lot served by actual Mexicans as a protest. Fuck everyone.
In covering the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings regarding Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s Supreme Court nomination, CNN anchor Miles O'Brien commented: "And the Senate, of course, is a dignified place, but there's also talk about a filibuster. So how dignified could that be?" Later, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked: "Will the Supreme Court nominee get the fair vote that the president has been asking for?"