I grew up around journalists. In the 50s and 60s, Journalism wasn't a profession. It wasn't something you went to college for—it was really more of a trade. You had a lot of guys who came up working in newspapers at the copy desk, or delivery boys, and then they would somehow become reporters afterward and learn on the job. They tended to be working-class guys who had an attitude about power. They saw themselves as being working people, and they had an emotional mandate to stick-it-to-the-man. I remember those people—when I grew up there was this kind of iconoclastic attitude. There are still some people who are from that world—Seymour Hersh is a great example. The guy grew up in newspapers and still just fucking hates people, and works in this dirty little office in Washington—he doesn't do fancy lunches. But somewhere along the line, in the 80s or 90s, after All The Presidents Men came out, journalism became this very fashionable profession, a thing for the Ivy League kids. If you go on the campaign trail, what you find is a lot of people who are really turned on by the experience of being near powerful people. They see themselves as being on the same team as the people that they're covering.
The New Orleans Saints will wear black jerseys for the first time in the Superdome this season - fitting for Halloween night. Some players are expecting the black pants, as well, though Payton didn't confirm the choice of pants, which he said can be changed up until game day. The Saints' choice of uniform is often one of the most discussed topics among fans, who believe some uniform combinations lead to better outcomes on the field. Payton, however, said there isn't much strategy or superstition when it comes to choosing the colors.
Clarkson said the council cuts money, not services, adding that the LA/SPCA needs to determine what services it can offer for 12 months for the money the city is willing to pay.
Zorilla said her agency doesn’t simply offer a menu of services. She warned that decreasing services might result in an increase of strays, more bites and attacks and ultimately more euthanasia.
“When the Super Bowl comes, do we want roaming packs of stray dogs?” she asked rhetorically.
National Oil Spill Commission investigators have found that the Halliburton cement used to seal the bottom of BP's wild Gulf well in April was unstable and was used despite multiple failed tests in the weeks leading up to the massive well blowout.
What's more, the commission investigators found Halliburton knew about the problems and used the cement mixture anyway.
Q Mine is an easy question. Will you rule out raising the retirement age to 70?
THE PRESIDENT: We are awaiting a report from the deficit commission, or deficit reduction commission, so I have been adamant about not prejudging their work until we get it.
But I think you can look at the statements that I’ve made in the past, including when I was campaigning for the presidency, that Social Security is something that can be fixed with some modest modifications that don’t impose hardships on beneficiaries who are counting on it.
And so the example that I used during the campaign was an increase in the payroll tax, not an increase — let me scratch that. Not an increase in the payroll tax but an increase in the income level at which it is excluded.
And so what I’ve been clear about is, is that I’ve got a set of preferences, but I want the commission to go ahead and do its work. When it issues its report, I’m not automatically going to assume that it’s the right way to do things. I’ll study it and examine it and see what makes sense.
But I’ve said in the past, I’ll say here now, it doesn’t strike me that a steep hike in the retirement age is in fact the best way to fix Social Security.
At Historic Second Baptist Church, the pastor, the Rev. Robert Jackson, commended Cao, for whom Jackson's son, Jed, works doing constituent casework.
"I know he has good judgment," Jackson said of Cao. "He hired my son. He's a very intelligent man."
Head said she will be looking for ways to scale back the increase because the property tax burden is borne by only a small percentage of the city's population. Most property tax is paid by business owners and owners of expensive houses.
"We've got to come up with more money," she said, but it would be unfair to put most of the burden on a relatively small number of taxpayers.
Head also suggested raising the city's utility tax, which appears on Entergy customers' bills, because she said that increase would be borne by everyone who uses electricity in the city, even those who live outside New Orleans. She said, however, that she is still researching whether the council can legally do that.
Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell objected to that idea, saying she would oppose adding any charges to utility bills. "There is a portion of this city that is struggling to survive," she said, and the council should keep in mind those who can barely pay their rent and utility bills now.
When Deputy Director Charlotte Parent told the council that the city’s Health Department budget gave $3.2 million to help service clinics, Councilwoman Stacey Head asked why the department couldn’t run and administer clinics with grant money instead.
In response, Clarkson said that Trigs needs help finding outside money: “It may not be able to be more from the city or more from millage, but you do need another source of income.” Clarkson said that the fact that the city’s libraries were so devastated after Katrina should be enough substance to gain considerable grant funding.
This is the second time in a week that teanut goon squads have roughed someone up. This episode was particularly egregious as it involved Ms. Valle being tackled and then stomped on. The teabaggers, of course, are blaming the victim. Rand Paul's statements have been ludicrous in attempting to blame this assault on "political passion." Fuck you, Rand and the horse you rode in on. Someone should send this malaka dead flowers...To which I say, yep, pretty much.
Rand Paul is the scariest of this year's crop of tea party extremists. Why? He's smart and a genuine zealot with an overweening sense of entitlement. Watching him smirk his way through the campaign has sent chills up and down my spine. I've come to realize that he's George W Bush with a brain: a frat boy who reads Ayn Rand is just as dangerous as one who doesn't read at all. The analogy is perfected when I contemplate their fathers: both Poppy Bush and Ron Paul are wrong on many issues but not terrible human beings. Their sons on the other hand...
It's not clear what will happen next. The Supreme Court's ruling puts the kibosh on the cameras from the time being, but officials in Mayor Mitch Landriue's administration have said they believe they will be able to pass ordinances to help the camera system pass legal muster.
METAIRIE, La. ― The Saints put cornerback Randall Gay on injured reserve after the veteran defensive back continued to suffer from symptoms associated with a concussion.
NEW ORLEANS -- Former Saints offensive tackle Kyle Turley knows about concussions all too well, but he doesn't know what exactly the long-term effects of repeated concussions are. So he's lending his mind and his body to the cause, now and later.
Turley is one of 300 current and retired athletes who have volunteered to join a Boston University medical school program to be the subjects of research into the problem.
Along with the others, Turley will undergo a battery of annual tests and has agreed to donate his brain to medical science for further research after his death.
"The same league that's talking about fining players for these hits and talking about maybe now suspending players for these hits who pretends to care so much about our health and safety, let's be honest," Fujita said. "They don't give a crap. Let's be perfectly honest about that.So not only do we not know how badly football players are treating their brains, we're still not even sure the NFL cares about that.
"Eighteen games is asking a lot. And 18 games now without even a discussion about changing the vesting requirements for post-career medical. It's pretty astonishing. Another thing, too. This league is talking so much about these big hits and how they're trying to prevent that and protect the players. Well these are the same big hits they're showing around the clock on every [channel], NFL Network and everything else and trying to get everyone hyped up about the game of football.
"Well why are you advertising all of this stuff if it's against the rules? Same thing with some of these celebration penalties and everything else. They're fining guys like crazy for it and calling penalties, but that's the stuff they use to promote their games. So to me, it's kind of a weird deal. They need to get on the same page and figure out exactly what they need to do."
@Babybrees has just been suspended by Commissioner Goodell for leading with the head.
Les Miles just asked where @Babybreeses come from. Thought they were delivered by magic referees after time has expired.
Still no word on @babybrees @FletcherMackel seen poking around area mangers disguised as a Wise Man #notfoolinganyone
Can we all just agree right now that @Babybrees is NOT being born in Kenya?
Bank of America has hired @Babybrees to sign foreclosure notices. Actually hired 7 months ago.
I'll admit it is more than a little fishy that @babybrees was already admitted to a Gretna magnet school.
46 Year Old John Carney prepares to take all of his balls and go home. Hartley looks like he could just kick something... if only someone would let him"He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They'd been smoking pot." After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. "They told me their god was 'Aqua Buddha' and that I needed to bow down and worship him," the woman recalls. "They blindfolded me and made me bow down to 'Aqua Buddha' in the creek.
The students, led by Susan's sister and Louise, a member of a charismatic church, engaged in loud and desperate prayers while holding Susan with one hand. Kneeling on the ground, my friends were chanting, "Satan, I command you to leave this woman." Others exhorted all "demons to leave in the name of Christ." It is no exaggeration to note the tears and sweat among those assembled. Susan lashed out at the assembled students with verbal assaults.
Over the next few days, the federal Transportation Safety Administration will start using four whole-body imaging machines at security checkpoints at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.
The new scanning equipment, which has already been deployed in 59 airports around the U.S., has created a mild stir because of concerns about invasion of privacy.
While a TSA official informed them about the federal government's plans to roll out the technology in New Orleans, aviation board members were greeted Thursday with a poster board display showing ghost-like, but revealing black-and-white images of a man, his face blurred but his genitals clearly defined.
But TSA regional director Ray White, who oversees airport security in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas, assured the aviation board that several steps are being taken to protect privacy and ensure images of bodies are not retained.One guy alone in a dark room will look at the nekkid pictures, spend a few minutes assessing their level of threat, and then immediately erase them from his hard drive. No American will have any real trouble understanding this procedure. This is how porn works in any number of households across the country. But if that makes anyone uncomfortable they can always opt for the less invasive full body pat-down alternative.
He said only one TSA employee will be able to see the images, in a separate room where they will have no contact with any travelers. He also said the images will be erased immediately after the screener determines that there is no threat, and only written data will be retained.
In addition, all travelers will have the option to decline a full-body image scan. They will be able to opt out and be screened using traditional metal-detectors, White said, but they will be subject to pat-downs and other secondary screenings that they should be able to avoid if they go through the body imaging.
The owners' ongoing talks about competitive balance, profitability and revenue sharing have included the notion of whether teams are operating in "the best available markets," the person said, and whether reducing the number of teams from the current 30 would help improve the product and the bottom line.
"Keep in mind that if we're finding a half a part per billion at the highest, we wouldn't be able to recover in the water column itself at parts per 10," Lehmann said. "It's like trying to get cream out of your coffee, we just don't do it. There's a limitation to what we can do in terms of mitigating the oil in the environment."
New Orleans– As required by the Louisiana Supreme Court, the New Orleans Police Department is issuing a public advisory regarding an “Impaired Motorist Saturation Patrol.” This patrol is a tactic used to significantly impact an area that is known for a high concentration of alcoholic impaired drivers, based on recent fatal crashes and serious injury crashes. The Special Operation Division Traffic Section will conduct all testing from the SOD Traffic Mobile Command Post that will be positioned at a predetermined location on Read Boulevard.
The New Orleans Police Department’s SOD Traffic Section will conduct the Saturation Patrol on Friday October 22, 2010, in the New Orleans East area, beginning at approximately 9:00 P.M., and concluding approximately 5:00 A.M. Motorists will experience minimal delays and should have proper documentation, i.e., proof of insurance, and a valid driver’s license if requested.
“Everyone is always concerned with the concentration of poverty but I’m not sure if we can identify concentrations,” said Keith Pettigrew, deputy general manager for operations at HANO in an interview outside council chambers. “It’s a roundabout way of finding out where people live and people have a right to keep that private.”But reading the quotes from our illustrious Councilpersons in this article, I get the impression that Pettigrew is spot-on.
Head pointed to Central City, where she says Section 8 vouchers may be concentrating to the detriment of residents who complain about properties that landlords don’t maintain, even though they are receiving the government subsidy, and tenants who “do not conform to” the standards of the neighborhoods.Head is clearly implying that her way to deal with negligent landlords involves eliminating affordable housing. I have no idea what she means by "tenants who 'do not conform to' the standards of the neighborhoods" but it sounds like a typically Stepfordish Head statement. Meanwhile Jon Johnson is concerned about the needs of landowners in his district while subtly suggesting that subsidized residents just don't belong in his neighborhood.
“This is not equitable or fair to the people who have returned and rebuilt, or to the low-income people who I believe are in some cases being steered places without being told about opportunities in other parts of the city that may be more advantageous or more central,” Johnson said after the meeting.
“At what point is the administration going to say, ‘We understand there have been hardships we recognize it, but we have to enforce the rule of law?’ ” Head asked. She said that homeowners in her district believe that “their house value is down 25 to 30 percent because a trailer is in the neighborhood.”
“Five and a half years after Katrina, you have to make a value judgment about how you value the people who have come back,” she said, recommending the city set a deadline of the end of the year to have all trailers removed.
For years, fair housing advocates have complained that the Road Home’s use of home values to calculate grants amounts to racial discrimination because it means families in economically depressed neighborhoods, which are typically majority-black, get less money to repair their homes than someone with an identical house in an area where values have appreciated.
The election was called to pick a successor to Mitch Landrieu, who resigned as lieutenant governor in May to become mayor of New Orleans. The winner will hold the office for about 14 months and will have to seek re-election next year, but would be considered the favorite to win the full four-year term starting in January 2012.
If Gov. Bobby Jindal decides to pursue national ambitions and steps down, the lieutenant governor would ascend to the job as governor. Besides being first in line of succession to the governor, the only defined duty of the office is to oversee the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, the state's chief tourism promotion agency.
After Dallas beat a black pants-wearing Saints late in New Orleans’ 2009 Super Bowl run, the drumbeat grew louder and louder from Saints fans who knew one thing – wearing black pants was not the way to win the big game.
After the Saints lost to Atlanta in the third game this year while wearing, you guessed it, black pants, Who Dats were screaming about the uniform faux pas from the highest points they could find in flat southeastern Louisiana.
In depositions released Tuesday, many of those workers testified that they barely knew what a mortgage was. Some couldn't define the word "affidavit." Others didn't know what a complaint was, or even what was meant by personal property. Most troubling, several said they knew they were lying when they signed the foreclosure affidavits and that they agreed with the defense lawyers' accusations about document fraud.
"The mortgage servicers hired people who would never question authority," said Peter Ticktin, a Deerfield Beach, Fla., lawyer who is defending 3,000 homeowners in foreclosure cases. As part of his work, Ticktin gathered 150 depositions from bank employees who say they signed foreclosure affidavits without reviewing the documents or ever laying eyes on them -- earning them the name "robo-signers."
If your home was broken into by a firm to change the locks illegally, that is breaking and entering, and conspiracy. If the wrong bank filed a foreclosure action, if the wrong house was foreclosed upon, its time to go criminal prosecution route.
Go to the local police department, fill out the requisite forms. Then go to your District Attorney’s Office or County Prosecutor’s office, and ask to speak to someone in charge. Tell them you want to prosecute. You can also contact your state Attorney General about the same. Follow up with written letters, that you send you your local newspaper and the NYT, WSJ, USA Today.
If any local DAs balk — some will know bank execs from the political groups and golf courses — let them know you will keeping a written record of all of this, and you plan to make sure that their opponent in the next election knows all about their bank coddling ways. When they stammer, hammer them about their opponent’s interest in who is and isn’t a bank bitch.
QE is difficult to understand and the average person could listen to a Fed official talk about it for two hours right to his face and not understand even the basic gist of his speech. The ostensible justification for QE is to use a kind of financial shock-and-awe approach to jump-starting the economy, but its effects for ordinary people are hard to calculate. Theoretically the entire country has some sort of stake in this program, as (among other things) U the Homeowner may see your home value stay stable or fall less than it would have thanks to this artificial stimulus. You also may be able to buy a house when you wouldn’t before, thanks to declining mortgage rates.
And jobs, I suppose, may theoretically be created by all this dollar meth being injected into the financial bloodstream – although the inflationary effect of printing trillions upon trillions of new dollars would probably wipe out the value of the money you make at that job. When it comes to calculating what QE actually does for you, or how much it harms you, that question is just very hard to answer.
But one thing we know for sure is that big banks and Wall Street speculators are real, immediate beneficiaries of the program, as they suddenly have trillions of printed dollars flowing through the financial system, with endless ways to profit on the new chips entering the casino.
And by an amazing coincidence, many of the biggest players in the financial services industry have a habit of buying up MBS or Treasuries just before these magical money-printing programs of the Fed send their respective values soaring. If you own a big fund, for instance, and you know that the Fed is about to buy a trillion dollars of mortgage-backed-securities through a new Quantitative Easing program, buying a buttload of MBS a few weeks early is a pretty easy way to make a risk-free fortune. One of the worst-kept secrets on Wall Street is that the big bankers and fund managers get signals about the Fed’s intentions about things like QE well before they are announced to the rest of us losers in the public.
As the only citywide African-American politician on the program, Assessor Erroll Williams was expected to make the biggest splash among Democrats who announced Tuesday that they are crossing party lines to endorse Republican U.S. Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao in his campaign for re-election to the U.S. House.
But Williams was a no-show for Cao's news conference on the steps of City Hall. The Cao camp said Williams had a "scheduling conflict" and issued a statement on his behalf.
"Erroll is with us in sprit," Cao spokesman Devin Johnson said.
That left City Councilwoman Stacy Head as the headliner for the "Democrats for Cao" event, which also featured defense attorney and 2008 DA candidate Ralph Capitelli and David Williams, a former appeals court judge
It is a legal impossibility for someone without a mortgage to be foreclosed upon. It is a legal impossibility for the wrong house to be foreclosed upon, It is a legal impossibility for the wrong bank to sue for foreclosure.
And yet, all of those things have occurred. The only way these errors could have occurred is if several people involved in the process committed criminal fraud. This is not a case of “Well, something slipped through the cracks.” In order for the process to fail, many people along the chain must commit fraud.
This off-season, there was way too much chest beating, swaggering and celebrating by both the team and the fans. It's time for everyone to take a deep breath and find a comfortable place between cockiness and despair.
1) Payton on RBs: "These are our guys. There’s no one walking in here to save the day off the street right now.
2) Payton on Brees' many check downs this season: “I don’t see it being a number that’s different than it has been."
Jon Stinchcomb: "We feel like the fixes and solution to the problems are in this locker room."Which sounds an awful lot like this.
BP offshore land negotiator Michael Beirne said that there are e-mails showing that minority well owners Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and MOEX 2007 LLC were provided real-time data from the rig in the days before the explosion.
The disclosure could be a factor down the road in parceling out financial liability for the disaster.
BP has already spent more than $11 billion related to the cleanup and response to the spill. It also has agreed to set aside $20 billion for a victim's compensation fund, and it faces tens of billions of dollars in fines, penalties and other potential liabilities from the disaster.
Anadarko and MOEX would be excused from paying their share of the damages if BP were deemed grossly negligent or shown to have committed willful misconduct, according to an agreement among the three parties. Absent such a finding, the partners would be responsible for a portion of the damages, depending on the amount of their culpability, according to testimony at the hearings Wednesday.
Beirne also testified that the Macondo well project was nearly $60 million over budget days before the explosion.
WHY LSU IS A BETTER NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP CONTENDER THAN ALABAMA: THEY'RE JUST LIKE YOU.
Just watch Alabama and stand in awe of their fearsome symmetries: their pinpoint precision with defensive assignments, their power run game coupled with an efficient and devious passing game, their locked-up special teams coverage. Alabama's pants are pressed to a fine crease, their hair styled to a fine edge, their ties knotted with a precision Germans would find intimidating. They write thank you notes with immaculate penmanship, and never forget their mother's birthdays.
This is not you, most likely. You forget things. You mismanage the clock, and often find yourself scrambling at the end of the day just to get the most basic assigned tasks done. You probably have a stain right now on your pants, and it's probably food, you disgusting pig of a person. You don't drive with your hands at ten and two on the wheel, and most likely sometimes hit the rumble stripes while looking at an interesting bird or shapely lady walking down the street. Honestly, sometimes you do it just because you're thinking about bacon or something. It's amazing you haven't killed anyone yet.
You're a lot closer as a person to being the LSU football team than you are to being the Alabama Crimson Tide, because admit it: sometimes, despite the bad snaps you've made in life, you're ahead of a lot of the plodding dullards who insist on showing up "on time" and "clean shaven" and "totally sober" to their required appointments in life. Sometimes that's been part of the fun, something you can only admit to yourself after you've run around with your hair on fire, broken several major rules of company accounting and best practices, and possibly stabbed a fellow employee in order to get done what you needed to get done to survive.
Miles' uber-stupid is the Tigers' secret weapon. Tennessee had too many people on the field because they were as dumbfounded as everyone else in the building as to what the hell LSU was doing. As an opposing coach, you know Miles is going to do something comically, spectacularly idiotic at some point in the game. How do you prepare your team for that?You know Urban Meyer has been driving himself nuts all week trying to figure a way to get his team ready to handle Miles' unpredictable crazy bomb. Is there a practice drill wherein Meyer suddenly runs onto the field in a gorilla suit and passes out cupcakes with sprinkles to everyone? Has he been sneaking up on players and yelling "boo!" at random all week? Would any of this make any difference? Sooner or later today Miles is going to drop the mighty hammer of crazy stupid at some point and the Gators cannot possibly be ready for it.
In response to three months of requests from The Lens, a surprisingly large number of New Orleans charter school boards failed to comply with even basic requests for information. Many didn’t respond at all. Of the officials who did answer, some provided only partial information – and still others claimed they aren’t public officials or required to do their work in public, even though state law says otherwise.
The way some people talking about schools after Hurricane Katrina use “charter” as an antonym of “public.”
Perhaps you’ve heard people make that distinction and found yourself puzzled by it. After all, there isn’t a single charter school in New Orleans that charges tuition, so how is it that so many people speak about them in a way that suggests they’re in the same class as private and parochial campuses?
There was a fear right after Hurricane Katrina that New Orleans would become increasingly hostile toward the poor. With much higher rents, it has become more difficult for people with low incomes to make it here. But some of the changes in the city, charter schools in particular, don’t require money to navigate as much as they require a certain sophistication.
It takes knowing that the Orleans Parish School Board still exists but that many of the schools under its control are magnets or have selective admissions. There’s also the Recovery School District, which took over the city’s worst schools. And there are charter schools, some of which are overseen by either the OPSB or the RSD. The application required to get into one school might not be the same application used at another.
And that regrettable tradition of waiting till after Labor Day to enroll a child? Parents who tarry are sure to be disappointed.
If you’re accustomed to simplicity, the new system of systems can be dizzying in its complexity.
If you haven’t adjusted to the new complexity, you might decide that public can’t be used to describe a school that won’t enroll your child.
1) My mother was an English teacher. That gave me all sorts of advantages that other kids were without. No, it's not exactly fair.
2) By the time I reached 5th grade I had read almost every book in that school's library. Again, not exactly fair.
The Orleans Parish School Board used to have a budget rivaling that of the city – close to half a billion dollars – but it now shares its state allocation with the Recovery School District and myriad charters. For citizens to follow the money allotted to public schools – $7,995 per child in state money – they need to know when and where the boards meet.
No longer can activists or interested taxpayers plan on attending just regular meetings of the School Board. They also need to travel to Baton Rouge sometimes to hear about Recovery School District schools, and try to track down the meetings of the nearly three dozen charter school boards. (see calendar of charter board meetings here, in Excel)
The Lens attended a handful of charter board meetings recently, and they were lonely affairs. At some, the only other audience members were employed by the school.
As these bozos pretend to proceed, they rarely fail to help us see their own exquisite moral greatness. (Waiting For Superman director Davis) Guggenheim has crafted a destructive, simple-minded thesis—a thesis which advances the teacher-bashing and union-bashing preferred by current elites. But his interviews—and apparently, his film—are built around his own moral greatness. Poor Guggenheim! He feels so bad as he drives his kids to private school in Los Angeles! As these people make jokes of our discourse, could they at least refrain from making us marvel at their personal greatness?