Contractors are attempting to recover as much as 15 barrels of crude oil released from an Extex Operating platform near Turtle Bay, about 9 1/2 miles south of the Jean Lafitte Harbor, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard received a report of the release at about 4:30 p.m. Saturday. A team of LSU researchers in Turtle Bay also videoed the release on Saturday, showing crude oil spewing from a pipe atop the platform into the open water of Barataria Bay.
There are so many little oil spills happening all the time along our coast from both active and "orphaned" or abandoned wells that it's really a mundane sort of thing to report.
Area residents should expect repeated bouts of “superfog” through at least mid-week, thanks to a stubborn dome of high pressure sitting over southern Louisiana, National Weather Service meteorologists said Monday.
The dense fog resulting from the combination of clear skies, light winds and overnight temperatures dropping to levels where dew forms are pretty normal for this time of year, said Ben Schott, director of the weather service's Slidell office.
What became more problematical was that the fog combined with smoke, creating superfog conditions, he said. "Smoke naturally diminishes visibility, and in combination with particles from the fires it can enhance the already foggy conditions by creating even more droplets of water in the air to make visibility worse, dropping visibility on roadways to zero visibility in some cases this morning across the region," Schott said.
They say the smoke is mostly coming from marsh fires in the Bayou Sauvage area. All weekend it smelled like burning plastic. Today, the superfog is causing even worse problems.
Parts of interstates 10, 55 and 310 are closed after dense fog and smoke led to a massive pileup and other isolated accidents Monday morning.
Authorities are asking drivers to avoid a roughly 20-mile stretch of I-55 running alongside Lake Maurepas and the entirety of the Bonnet Carré Spillway.
So avoid that area. Also, maybe just avoid all the areas today.
A popular chef reported missing in New Orleans
over the weekend has been found alive after his family told local media
he was dead, according to multiple reports.
Family
of Demietriek Scott, who goes by "Chef Scott," reported the cook
missing on Saturday, New Orleans Police Department confirmed to USA
TODAY.
His family later told multiple outlets including WWL his body had been found on the side of a bridge in the city's Ninth Ward on Monday morning.
But on Monday night, New Orleans media reported Scott, 47, had been found alive and well.
“I’ve been around,” Scott told WVUE after he showed up at his family’s home late Monday afternoon. “I essentially just needed some time for myself.”
I don't know if this is a function of the diminished capacity of local news reporting (support your localindieoutlets while you still have them!) But it does seem kind of amazing that the state and city can hold months of negotiations over critical parcels of land downtown and the public doesn't hear about it until the day before the legislature takes up a bill to move it forward.
Under the mayor’s plan, the state would give the city its share of
Duncan Plaza and the Heal parking garage at the back end of the plaza.
In exchange, the state would receive the land under the courthouse at
the corner of Poydras Street and Loyola Avenue, as well as two city
streets that run alongside the Caesars Superdome and the green space
along West Stadium Drive.
There are a ton of tricky points of contention between the city and state that threatened to (and still could) undermine the deal. But they did manage to get by the first legislative hurdle (mostly by just removing the points of disagreement from the law they had to pass.) So there's still a long way to go and we'll see what happens.
Hundreds of homeless people took up residence in Duncan Plaza for a couple of years after Hurricane Katrina. Since then, given its proximity to City Hall, it has been a popular site for protests and rallies. That’s been particularly true in recent months, and the park has become a popular starting or end point for marches protesting various policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Weigle said the DDD will not try to curtail that part of the park’s use.
“It’s fair to say that this agreement would not be in place if we had not made a commitment to continue to support that kind of activity in the park,” Weigle said.
“Being someone who loves that part of what it means to be an American, I’d never look to curtail that in any way,” he added. “It’s something we’re looking to celebrate along with all the other uses in the park.”
It's anybody's guess at how sincere Weigle was about any of that. It's a moot question since he's long gone now. Also city officials have been especially hostile toward the homeless as of late which could inform the park design as well.
One of the first buyouts of a home in Gordon Plaza, a largely Black
neighborhood built four decades ago atop a toxic dump, netted a $250,000
profit for the owner, who purchased it in late 2021 as a mass buyout and relocation of the subdivision’s residents was being discussed at City Hall.
The Dorsey family had lived at the ranch house on Gordon Plaza Drive
since it was built in 1982. They’ve lost multiple family members to
cancers they believe can be linked to living on what is now a Superfund
site.
But the Dorseys sold the property 18 months ago for $55,000 to Treme
daycare operator Lizzell Brooks-Williams, who owns several other New
Orleans properties.
It really seems like this is something that could have been avoided in the process of designing the eligibility requirements of the buyout program. Unless, of course, they didn't want to avoid this scenario. Because it just really really seems like they didn't.
A New Orleans truck driver who wanted to get into the real-estate business by starting with something cheap.
An air conditioning and heating company owner who lives in Atlanta.
A
retired police officer who paid fire-sale prices for three
deteriorating homes, which remain blighted but are now valued at
$475,000.
All are among those now benefiting from the city of New Orleans’ $35 million plan to buy out owners of Gordon Plaza, the largely Black neighborhood built four decades ago atop a toxic dump.
One SWB scandal just flows right into the next
A 2021 WWLTV investigation exposed a wide range of irregularities and self dealing at the Sewerage and Water Board. The facet of that story that drew the most attention from law enforcement turned out to be permits officers with side gigs as contractors. The facet that most interested us was that the records of all of this were kept by, well, not the most modern of systems.
A lot of this has been kept under wraps by the Sewerage and Water
Board’s antiquated plumbing permitting system. The board told WWL-TV
that no computerized database of plumbing permits and inspections
exists, not even an index. The station has fought for over a year just
to be able to see the room where permits are kept and maintained by
Arnold and his staff during work hours.
The Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors sent a scathing
letter to the Sewerage and Water Board in January, blasting it for being
“obstructionist” to the licensing board’s efforts to root out
contractor and permitting fraud.
Arnold’s permitting office “operates on what can only be described as
index cards, file cabinets and such, (and) it makes it almost
impossible to for state investigators, or the public, to find
information on projects,” the letter said.
The agency had expected to complete the job this week but said Friday
that workers found an additional leak at the bottom of the force main,
at the pumping station at 2800 Florida Ave. They'll keep digging to
repair it.
In a tweet last week (that I cannot embed because of stupid Elon) McBride noted that the amount of raw sewage being dumped into the river is "basically all of the sewage from north of I-610," or 97 million gallons per day.
Sewerage & Water Board employees have complained to management
about a host of other issues in the division in recent years, including
allegations of favoritism, retaliation, unsafe working conditions and
unchecked harassment.
In 2022, a filter gallery employee filed a public whistleblower complaint
that accused managers of using taxpayer dollars to build a “secret
room” inside the Carrollton plant where a select number of employees
would bring people to sleep with both on and off their shift.
Verite interviewed two current employees and one former worker from
the Carrollton Plant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear
of retaliation. In their interviews with Verite, they confirmed the
existence of what one employee described as a “secret sex room.” One
employee provided a video of it, showing couches, a refrigerator, a
microwave, a TV and a shelf full of framed photos of nude women.
Naturally, the "secret sex room" got everyone's imaginations going. We'll likely see the unfortunate results of that next Carnival season. It may not be as salacious as what "one employee" implies, though. I mean it's not too hard to believe that a critical piece of infrastructure requiring a 24 hour labor force and which may also require workers to make themselves available during emergencies, might induce those workers to improvise a makeshift sleeping quarters on site. Now, such a space *might* be used inappropriately. But outside of one person's vague statements, we don't actually know that it was. In any case, it shouldn't surprise anyone that such a room exists.. or did anyway until this story (which is actually about many more credible allegations of payroll fraud) showed up. Besides, from the looks of the video shared on TwiXter, the now shuttered "sex room" has nothing on the $60,000 office Cedric Grant installed when he was there.
Anyway congratulations to SWB are in order on one point. It's been a mostly street flooding free summer thus far. Who would have guessed that the one trick to getting that to happen would be record drought conditions.
Various other things are broken
In addition to the big leaky sewer pipe this summer, residents should also be wary of malfunctioning air conditioners threatening to shut down various city offices at random times, including NOPD headquarters.
The city's deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure, Joe
Threat, said Tuesday that the Department of Property Management has
struggled to develop new contracts after an Inspector General report
in 2021 found that the Department of Property Management had improperly
utilized an expedited contractor approval process for non-emergency
situations.
Mohan said that attempts at emergency measures were also hamstrung by
city payment issues. He had deployed 45 temporary AC units within the
last month, he said.
When he tried to order another 45, he said
that the supplier put a credit hold on the city because of outstanding
invoices from other city departments.
Councilmembers expressed dismay, but not surprise.
"Dismay, but not surprise," is, by all rights, the city motto at this point.
Cantrell's revelation that a tree inspection was conducted shortly
before the accident came a day after attorney Morris Bart, who is
representing the injured teen and his family, said the city was "grossly
negligent" for not roping off the area after the limb fell in June.
In
a text message Wednesday, Bart, who is preparing a lawsuit against the
city, said that photos of the tree after the first limb failure showed
obvious warning signs.
“The hole left after the limb fell clearly shows rot and damage to the
tree,” said Bart, who noted Tuesday that he had hired a forensic
arborist for the case.
Who knew you could even hire a "forensic arborist"? I guess that's why Morris Bart gets the big bucks.
Oh and speaking of District Attorneys.. or DAs that could have been
Keva Landrum, who lost to Jason Williams in 2020, has been in sitting in limbo awaiting an appointment to the post of US Attorney for the Eastern District in Louisiana. But that expected call hadn't yet come as of this July. So she's removed herself from consideration.
“I just made the decision on my own, based on the length of time it
has taken, and no real timeframe,” she said. “I decided that for me it’s
best to pursue other opportunities.”
Landrum, 50, declined to say
what those opportunities might be. She has been out of public office
since 2020, when she left the bench after a dozen years to run for
district attorney, a race she lost to then-City Councilman Jason
Williams.
She said she was unaware of who might replace her as the nominee in waiting.
U.S.
Rep. Troy Carter, the lone Democrat in Louisiana’s congressional
delegation, said Friday that he understood Landrum “has withdrawn from
consideration because of the inordinate time that the process has
taken.”
It’s unclear what sank her chances, but the sources familiar with the
process said that Landrum had drawn fierce opposition from some
progressive groups.
Wait a minute. Look "progressive groups" could certainly find numerous reasons to rightfully oppose this nomination. And maybe they did that. But I thought it was pretty clear the matter holding things up was Landrum's ties to a political corruption scandal that would fall under the office's jurisdiction.
Peterson was an early endorser of Landrum during her 2020 run for Orleans Parish district attorney.
Landrum, in turn, hired Peterson’s husband, Dana, to help run her
campaign. She paid the Petersons’ consultancy, College Hill Strategy
Group LLC, $130,590 over three months. It is not clear how much of that
was profit: Landrum's campaign expense reports say that much of the
money went to cover the cost of mailers, postage and other items. Karen
Carter Peterson reported income of $513,772 for 2020 on a federal disclosure form when she ran for Congress last year.
Landrum lost the district attorney race to Jason Williams.
See? It was in the paper. Sometimes I wonder if the paper reads the stuff in the paper. Which, again, is why I need to get back to keeping notes.
There are other potential ethical
concerns behind Kaplan’s appointment as well. In October 2021, Kaplan
formed a political action committee (PAC) called the “New Orleans Cultural Economy & Nightlife PAC,” which donated $5,000—the
maximum allowable amount under campaign finance laws—to Cantrell’s
reelection campaign. After Cantrell won, she created the Office of
Nighttime Economy and appointed Kaplan as its director.
Irvin Mayfield was convicted for a fraud in which he diverted non-profit funds intended to support the library toward his own recording studio project. He is making restitution for that now by... overseeing the use of public and non-profit funds intended to support NORD toward his own recording studio project.
Ron Forman is about to get (maybe? The mayor won't say for sure) $15 million in (additional.. he already has about $11 million) public funds to build yet more limited-access tourist forward privatized public space on the riverfront. The plan also involves a scheme to build a big parking garage that Ron can split the revenue from with the other thieves at the French Market Corp.
Other stuff upcoming
Like I said, this is all just backlog. I felt like I needed to get all this down somewhere before the interesting part of the year got rolling in earnest. We're right on the cusp. Soon we'll know if the mayor can pick a police chief. Soon it will be Prime Hurricane Season. Soon it will be Municipal Budget Season. Soon it will be football season.
Oh and the statewide elections are about to get rolling. Qualifying is next week!
And this is why I would like to remind everyone to be on the lookout for suspicious car fires. They tend to happen around this time. I have been trying to keep track over the course of many years. I think this is the most recent post to look back at it.
And now we have another to throw on the pile.
That's one week ago in our neighborhood.We actually heard it go off at about 3am. I don't know the whole story. As far a I can tell, it never made the news, which is weird because often these things do. But maybe in the context of so many things falling down or breaking apart this summer, it's just not surprising anymore. Dismaying, perhaps. But not surprising.
Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser's Plaquemines Parish home was burglarized
Thursday, according to the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office.
The criminals took sports memorabilia and rare coins, WDSU reported. Nungesser said he was in the process of moving during the break-in
The
Highway 23 home, located in Point Celeste, was also damaged by a small
kitchen fire that occurred during the burglary, according to the
Sheriff's Office.
"We're still investigating, but at this time,
it's believed that the fire was unintentional," said Lt. Chaun Domingue,
spokesman for the Sheriff's Office.
That sounds bad. I feel bad for Billy. I hope they didn't get his socks. But because of certain circumstances and Billy's status as a person of some prominence, we do have to ask if there's something beyond just simple burglary going on here. We do know, for example, that this wouldn't be the first time something strange happened to collectibles under Billy's supervision. In 2017, he was involved in "some pretty strange crap" along those lines.
Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser has been using a Lower Pontalba Building
apartment and space in other state museum buildings in the French
Quarter for his personal benefit and has engaged in a pattern of
political interference with the agency's operations, the Louisiana State
Museum's interim director said Monday while resigning in protest.
Nungesser’s
interference includes attempting to override museum officials and board
members who objected to plans to loan U.S. Sen. John Kennedy artworks
for his office in Washington, D.C., and threatening to sell museum works
of art on eBay to raise funds, said Tim Chester, a museum consultant
who took the interim position in October.
“I have never encountered anything like this in the 40 years I’ve worked
in the field, ever,” Chester said. “I’ve seen some pretty strange crap
come down in museums, but this one takes the cake.”
We also know that, intentional or otherwise, this would not be the first time a Louisiana politician or political operative suddenly found their home and/or car to have been set on fire. Let's look at a few relatively recent examples.
In 2009, a political gadfly/consultant type named Brian Welsh was involved in a stunt of a campaign promoting Stormy Daniels as a challenger to then Republican Senator David Vitter. Then his car burned up. Welsh went on the news to air his suspicions that Vitter's henchmen had it out for him. A lot of people were skeptical of this. (I was skeptical.) The fire department was also skeptical.
“It was a fire. The car didn’t explode,” said Public Information Officer Jonathan Pajeaud. An arson investigation is underway and foul play hasn’t been ruled out. But, Pajeaud said, Welsh told firefighters he’d recently gotten electrical work done on his 1996 Audi, and investigators are also looking into that as a possible cause.
Welsh told a local TV news station that police told him they’d never seen anything like it.
But, Pajeaud said, “Car fires here are very common.”
He added that investigators, on average, have a preliminary report in about two weeks. Pajeaud said that, for now, the investigation is being handled solely by the fire department and not by police. The police department has not responded to our questions.
Welsh persisted, however, posting surveillance videos that appear to show someone tampering with his car just before the fire happened. Still, nothing ever came of the investigation. "Car fires here are very common," after all.
In 2014, Mario Zervignon was consulting for a Public Service Commission campaign challenging Eric Skrmetta when this happened.
An apparent firebombing ignited a pair of early morning blazes
Thursday in Uptown New Orleans, incinerating three vehicles and
scorching a house in a startling scene that resembled a war zone.
Federal law enforcement officials said they were investigating whether
Mario Zervigon, a well-known political fundraiser, had been specifically
targeted in the attack.
Flames engulfed Zervigon’s vehicles and
quickly spread to his home at the corner of Prytania and Constantinople
streets. Eight people escaped the home’s three apartments uninjured, but
three cats were believed to have perished in the fire, said Katy
Patterson, Zervigon’s wife, who made it out safely with Zervigon and the
couple’s two young children.
If the Zervignon case was ever solved, I don't remember seeing it. Maybe someone can clear that up. Casual googling doesn't get me very far today. The usual pattern with these things is they happen, they look suspicious, we talk about them in the news, and then everyone forgets about them until the next one happens. Every now and then they solve one, though. In fact, that 2014 story also references a prior incident from 1997 that resulted in a guilty plea.
Firebombings, while exceedingly rare, are not unprecedented in New
Orleans. Thursday’s incident recalled a series of intentional fires
beginning in 1997 that targeted Stuart Smith, a vocal opponent of loud
music in the French Quarter. Bar owner George Mellen Jr. pleaded guilty
in 1999 to hiring an arsonist to toss Molotov cocktails at Smith’s home
and vehicle on several occasions.
Here is more detail on that one in case anyone is interested. There are a lot of old favs in this story. None of them (including
Stuart Smith, even though he was the victim of the attack) comes off
looking particularly good.
Smith, a lifelong New Orleans resident who moved to the French Quarter
in 1997, blamed the decline on the city's refusal to enforce noise and
zoning ordinances.
But city officials said their hands are tied.
"Every time we come up with a resolution, we're sued by one side or another," said Councilman Troy Carter.
Mayor Marc Morial, who had all performers cleared out of Jackson Square
when he was married there, has been otherwise reluctant to get involved.
"A lot of what the complaining is about really has to do with the
comeback of the entire city," Morial said. "The Quarter is not a
suburban neighborhood."
The stance by Smith and his allies has at times drawn an aggressive response.
When Smith tried to stop the city from issuing a music license to an
outdoor bar around the corner from his 5,000-square-foot home, Molotov
cocktails scorched his Mercedes-Benz and rained down on his roof and
into his courtyard. His home was not badly damaged.
The bar's owner, George Mellen Jr., and an associate, Richard Jones, pleaded guilty to conspiring to plant firebombs.
A Lamborghini found burned to the ground Tuesday belonged to the
owner of a Baton Rouge company that last week pulled out of a New
Orleans contract to remove Confederate monuments after he had received
death threats.
David Mahler’s Lamborghini, worth in excess of
$200,000, was parked in the H&O Investments parking lot at 17425
Opportunity Ave., in Baton Rouge when flames were spotted from the air,
said Roy Maughan Jr., Mahler’s attorney.
Immediately, we were told, we'd never really know what happened.
It’s likely investigators will never know how the fire started,
though, as the evidence was destroyed in the fire, Tarleton said. He
said the department has not ruled anything out.
All that was left of the car was the seat frames, the tires and a heap of melted debris.
Accidental car fires are not unusual, often caused by mechanical issues, he said.
These things just happen all the time. It's pretty amazing when you think about it. At least we won't go bored puzzling over the stream of unsolvable enigmas we're presented.
NEW ORLEANS — Someone set two vehicles on fire in a Lakeview neighborhood last week in an explosive moment caught on camera.
The man fires what appears to be a flare at one of the cars, soaked in gasoline, blowing it and another nearby vehicle up.
According to neighbors, it happened around 2:15 a.m. on July 29.
That's a strange story, right? Because of the long history of these, I thought it worth noting at the time that it was really close to qualifying week for the 2019 state legislative and executive elections. But nothing else surfaced in the news to connect back to it. It did have me looking sideways at some of the fishy goings on in the state house races. But there's no evidence any of it is related. Anyway, it's likely we'll never know.
A vehicle fire in the eastbound high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes of
the Crescent City Connection is snarling traffic on the West Bank,
Monday morning.
The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development reported the fire just after 8 a.m.
Oh also, was there an election over the weekend or something? I found all this trash laying around.
We'll definitely have to talk about this one later. There are so many bad takes flying around today it's hard to pick out the absolute worst. But this is a contender.
James Carville, the New Orleans-based political strategist, believes
the outcome has national implications, noting that Peterson had the
advantage of her side spending more money and a low turnout special
election (16.6%) that typically favors candidates who seek to excite
their party’s most fervent supporters.
“Voters voted against wokeness,” said Carville. “They just did. Woke did very, very poorly.”
I mean, it isn't very surprising that Carville has adopted the pejorative form of "wokeness" to mean any political platform to the left of, say, Ronald Reagan. But he's also wrong (or lying, if you prefer to call it what it is) to claim this result is a rejection of such a platform instead of a candidate. But, more on that later.
In the meantime try to avoid getting exploded by anything.
Similarly this morning's flaming vehicles that caused a French Quarter block to be evacuated are not the first cars on fire to appear in 2019. Today's event is unlike the one over the summer, though, in that because it is not suspiciously coincident to any ongoing political campaigns, there is a much better chance we will actually be told how and why it happened.
Actually, we are being told that this afternoon as I am typing this. According to WWL:
What caused a loud boom and flames to erupt from the street in the French Quarter around 5:00am?
"This
morning we had a challenge in the French Quarter with the explosion and
the fire," said Col. Terry Ebbert, New Orleans Director of Public
Safety and Security.
He explained that officials are blaming human waste.
"It appears that we had... methane gas underground."
Where did it come from?
"That is probably is due to (the) sewage system."
One thing we have learned this year is that, whether they blast it with flames from below, disable it in a flash flood, or just suck it straight on down into the culvert, Sewerage and Water Board is coming after your vehicle one way or another.
Anyway, another day, another (literal) shitstorm. I wonder what will explode tomorrow.
Any follow-up on this yet? Seems a little weird that we don't have any names of the affected property owners in this story.
NEW ORLEANS — Someone set two vehicles on fire in a Lakeview neighborhood last week in an explosive moment caught on camera. The man fires what appears to be a flare at one of the cars, soaked in gasoline, blowing it and another nearby vehicle up. According to neighbors, it happened around 2:15 a.m. on July 29.
Home security video shows a pair of SUVs suddenly burst into flames, followed by a series of small explosions. Neighbor Quinn Eagan heard a loud boom, ran out of his house and found the vehicles on fire. "I
grabbed the neighbors garden hose over here and just started trying to
put it out and then when the thing started exploding, I hid behind the
tree over here and kept spraying and just realized it’s futile," Eagan
said.
That's "neighbor, Quinn Eagan" so we have to assume it wasn't actually his cars on fire. Whose cars are these? The reason we ask is because when this, or an incident like it, has happened in the past (and it has happened, repeatedly) the target's name has been of some note.
An apparent firebombing ignited a pair of early morning blazes Thursday
in Uptown New Orleans, incinerating three vehicles and scorching a house
in a startling scene that resembled a war zone. Federal law enforcement
officials said they were investigating whether Mario Zervigon, a
well-known political fundraiser, had been specifically targeted in the
attack.
Talking Points Memo tonight reports that the car belonging to Brian Welsh, aide to putative/possible Senate candidate Stormy Daniels, did not "explode," as had been reported earlier, but was simply a car fire:Brian
Welsh's story isn't quite adding up. He keeps describing the incident
as an "explosion" that lifted the car's roof five stories in the air --
which differs from what the New Orleans Fire Department has told us.
"It was a fire. The car didn't explode," said Public Information Officer Jonathan Pajeaud.
An arson investigation is underway and foul play hasn't been ruled out.
But, Pajeaud said, Welsh told firefighters he'd recently gotten
electrical work done on his 1996 Audi, and investigators are also
looking into that as a possible cause.
When (Attorney Stuart) Smith tried to stop the city from issuing a music license to an
outdoor bar around the corner from his 5,000-square-foot home, Molotov
cocktails scorched his Mercedes-Benz and rained down on his roof and
into his courtyard. His home was not badly damaged.
The bar's owner, George Mellen Jr., and an associate, Richard Jones, pleaded guilty to conspiring to plant firebombs.
Now, a lot of people don't care for Stuart Smith, or for the continuing cause of shutting down live music venues in New Orleans. But most of us tend to frown on fire bombing as a go-to political tactic... despite its apparently frequent use.
Which brings us back to this Lakeview incident which we can't help but notice happened really close to qualifying week for the October statewide elections. Whose cars were those, again?
Brian Welsh’s story isn’t quite adding up. He keeps describing the incident as an “explosion” that lifted the car’s roof five stories in the air — which differs from what the New Orleans Fire Department has told us.
Nobody could have predicted... okay well somebody kind of did. Greg's initial reaction was "$20 says he did it himself" At this point I'm kind of hoping this is true only so that we can award Welsh the Douche-of-the-year trophy for 2009.
