Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Anybody But Obama 2012
Fuck him. Seriously. What a waste. If there is no Democrat in possession of the balls necessary to do the right thing and mount a primary challenge, then there really is no point to having a Democratic party anyway.
Maybe Obama is hoping his new BFFs will give him a job. We know he must not have seen this.
Maybe Obama is hoping his new BFFs will give him a job. We know he must not have seen this.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word - Unrequited Gov | ||||
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Mary Smash Obama!
For the first time in my life I'm proud of my Senator*
*Okay I wanted to make the Michelle reference there but it's actually the second time.
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Mary Landrieu, a conservative Democratic from Louisiana, lashed out Tuesday at President Obama's deal with congressional Republicans that allows tax cuts for the wealthy to be extended for two years.
Extending the tax cuts for those making more than a million dollars a year is borderline immoral, Landrieu charged. "I'm going to argue forcefully for the nonsensicalness and the almost, you know, moral corruptness of that particular policy," said Landrieu, walking into a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats. "This is beyond politics. This is about justice and doing what's right."
*Okay I wanted to make the Michelle reference there but it's actually the second time.
Dangerous People of the Internet
Joe Lieberman: Freedom warrior.
Remember back nearly a year ago now when mayoral candidate John Georges got all upset because some bloggers were writing about some embarrassing things in his past and recording him at speaking engagements where he made an ass of himself? Imagine if Georges had been able to have those bloggers censored by Cox and investigated by NOPD. Because that's pretty much what's going on right now with regard to Wikileaks.
As Digby points out here, it's pretty much why we have a First Amendment in the first place.
A leading US senator suggested tonight that the New York Times and other news organisations publishing the US embassy cables being released by WikiLeaks could be investigated for breaking American espionage laws.
Joe Lieberman, the chair of the Senate homeland security committee, told Fox News: "To me the New York Times has committed at least an act of, at best, bad citizenship, but whether they have committed a crime is a matter of discussion for the justice department."
Remember back nearly a year ago now when mayoral candidate John Georges got all upset because some bloggers were writing about some embarrassing things in his past and recording him at speaking engagements where he made an ass of himself? Imagine if Georges had been able to have those bloggers censored by Cox and investigated by NOPD. Because that's pretty much what's going on right now with regard to Wikileaks.
As Digby points out here, it's pretty much why we have a First Amendment in the first place.
Make up your mind
Not sure what the emergency revision to the emergency property tax hike is all about.
One might get the impression that Council members are eager to squeeze residents for as much as they're worth before even considering going after some of these hoteliers since we wouldn't want to do anything to interfere with their magic "job creating" activities at such a crucial moment.
Update: Turns out they're not protecting hoteliers but are protecting parking lot operators.
One might get the impression that Council members are eager to squeeze residents for as much as they're worth before even considering going after some of these hoteliers since we wouldn't want to do anything to interfere with their magic "job creating" activities at such a crucial moment.
Update: Turns out they're not protecting hoteliers but are protecting parking lot operators.
The extra mill in property tax would replace a planned increase in the city's excise tax on commercial parking lots and garages. The council had intended to raise that tax but now has decided against that idea. The revenue from 1 mill of property tax would be about the same as the parking tax was expected to generate.
Come see the latest last Testaverde show ever
Until the next one, of course, which will probably be in another few weeks or so.
Monday, December 06, 2010
Mental image of the day
From today's T-P front page story about the communications failures that slowed the issuance of the boil order during the water outage.
All and all this policy review is probably a good idea. It's just that the option of sending the cops over to kick down doors in order to confirm the receipt of an email opens up the possibility of all sorts of mischief and also explains why I probably shouldn't work for S&WB.
As for the delay in sending e-mail and text alerts to 13,260 NolaReady.info subscribers on the east bank, records show the S&WB's emergency preparedness director notified his counterpart at City Hall, as well as Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Jerry Sneed, by e-mail about the impending boil-water advisory at 1:30 a.m.
But at a news conference a few days later, Sneed said that message didn't arrive for several hours and that it didn't include an official copy of the advisory, which Sneed insisted was needed in order to issue the alert.
"In the middle of the night, e-mail is good, but it needs to be followed up by phone calls to ensure that we got those messages," he said. "All those problems have been corrected, and we feel confident that the issues won't happen again."
St. Martin and Sneed said on Friday that they have changed their emergency protocols as a result. In the future, they said, they will call senior city officials at their home and cell phones -- or dispatch police to rouse them, if necessary -- when major problems occur at night.
All and all this policy review is probably a good idea. It's just that the option of sending the cops over to kick down doors in order to confirm the receipt of an email opens up the possibility of all sorts of mischief and also explains why I probably shouldn't work for S&WB.
10 out of 44
1987, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2010
Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on locking up their tenth winning season in 44 years. This is not something to take lightly.
Gregg Williams certainly doesn't
Image shamelessly stolen from Larry Holder's Twitter profile. But really, doesn't this image belong to all of us anyway?
Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on locking up their tenth winning season in 44 years. This is not something to take lightly.
Gregg Williams certainly doesn't
Image shamelessly stolen from Larry Holder's Twitter profile. But really, doesn't this image belong to all of us anyway?
Louisiana Voter Cognative Dissonance Challenge
At the end of his Lens column on Friday, Mark Moseley draws the following seemingly logical conclusion about Bobby Jindal's potential reelection paraphernalia.
Wanna bet? If we've learned anything about modern political messaging it's that you can never go wrong when your rhetoric and imagery strongly implies the opposite of the affect of your actual policy. Keep an eye out for more bumper stickers.
One thing’s for sure. We won’t be seeing a preponderance of those purple and gold “Tigers for Jindal” bumper stickers for the re-election campaign, like we did during Jindal’s campaign in 2007. I think the imagery might be decidedly less pleasant this time around.
Wanna bet? If we've learned anything about modern political messaging it's that you can never go wrong when your rhetoric and imagery strongly implies the opposite of the affect of your actual policy. Keep an eye out for more bumper stickers.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Montezuma's Re-Fringe or To Dallas, You Betcha!
Note and apology: Very long very late re-cap of the last two weeks of Saints football with all sorts of extra nonsense thrown in. Feel free to ignore altogether.
I'm almost hesitant to say this at this point since doing so might imply that the audience hasn't been paying very close attention over the years but I feel compelled to note once more for the record that nothing works in this town.
The police don't work. City computers don't work. The schools don't work. The levees don't work. I myself rarely work unless I can help it. Which is fine since neither does the Governor unless he's working on something that doesn't involve Louisiana.
Stranger still is the pause one gives oneself when attempting to name things that do indeed work well in New Orleans and the first two items that pop into one's mind are the red light cameras and, of all things, the football team (more on that in a moment). We live in the oddest of all possible times in the oddest of all possible places.
One thing we are now more certain of than ever after this weekend is that even our most basic elements of our civic infrastructure cannot be relied upon to work properly.
If you look closely, you'll notice the flag flapping lazily about in the wind reads, "Safety Always"
Because I'm sure you've heard enough about the facts of the water outage and because you're probably tired of the unrelenting.. um... stream of jokes about water substitutes like Four Loko or Brawndo! (The Thirst Mutilator) or home purification techniques involving Corexit, and because you're certainly not in the mood for preachy profound editorializing that can reduce easily to, "Things should probably work better", I'll spare you all of that and share a separate, parallel Sewerage and Water Board anecdote from the past week.
I happen to have a semi-formal relationship with a one hundred plus year old library building. During the course of this relationship I've become passingly familiar with the quirky maintenance requirements of buildings in that age group. Last week those requirements necessitated an interface with S & WB after Roto-rooter completed the clearing of a drain line up to the point where, Roto-rooter believed, a municipal infrastructure engineer should get involved. In other words, he could get the crap to drain out of the building but couldn't get it to stop backing up where it met the sidewalk.
The first interesting thing about interfacing with S & WB is that they take great pains to convince you that they are not the people you should be talking to. In our case, this process involved answering the following charges:
1) Can't you call a plumber? We had already done this.
2) You will need to tell us where the drain hooks up to the main sewer line. We have no idea.
3) You need to ask the guy who originally did the work. Possibly 100 years ago.
4) Can you prove to us that the problem is on the city's side and not yours? We..um.. thought we were also the city.
The second interesting thing about interfacing with S & WB is that once they are convinced to go to work on the problem, they really go to work on the problem. Which is to say they call in several different teams of people to puzzle over maps, dig holes, operate hoses, and argue with members of the other teams over what pipes under the ground might be going which way.
The third interesting thing... or at least an interesting aspect of the second interesting thing is that there is far less certainty about just what is underground than one would expect to feel comfortable with. By the end of the week, I am given to understand at least, it was resolved that because of the uncertainty regarding the backed up tie-in, they're just going to go ahead and make a new one. And maybe by now they've finished with that project and life can go on as before.
The important takeaway here, though, is after watching these events unfold, the water outage wasn't such a jarring surprise to some of us. Not that anything like this should be now. Not after everything else we've learned to shrug off as just more of life's little absurdities. Like the first 40 years of Saints football, for example. In fact, one could argue the team's present status as Very Serious Perennial Contender came about only because it was the most absurd of all possible eventualities. And thus the only thing that makes any sense around here.
Saints vs Seahawks and also Saints vs Cowboys: All of these photos are stolen from T-P photographers' work on display in the NOLA.com galleries as usual.
Oh except this one I took of the Dome looking up from Chapion(')s Square.
Whew. Exhausted yet? I know I am. Sometimes crappy football blogging can almost seem like work. And when I put it off for too long before finishing at 4 AM the night before some of it becomes three weeks too late, it feels exactly like work. Luckily I only do a slightly crappier job at actual work so I don't feel too bad about it. But before we wrap it up I'd like to make one more point about absurdity which we can then very likely apply to football tomorrow when the Saints very likely struggle against an underrated Bengals team in the snow.
As was mentioned waay at the top of this post, the final performance of To Moscow, You Betcha! ran just after the Saints and Seahawks wrapped up in the Dome two Sundays ago. I biked over from the Superdome in time to catch that show. I was proud to see Menckles perform and am grateful to our friends who came out as well during the short run.
This was the first time I've had an opportunity to see any of the performances that comprise the rapidly growing New Orleans Fringe Festival and plan to continue to support the festival in the future. After To Moscow's finale, we walked over the Allways Lounge and caught one more Fringe play that night called Mind Control: A Psychotic Self Help Seminar which I thought was extremely clever and creative and very well performed but also nowhere near as profound or insightful as its creators imagined it to be.
There was a lot of horror-inspired acting out of the "dark" parts of the human psyche most of which involved predictable fantasy about sex, violence, incest, and, of course, Hall and Oates. Along with this was the not-so vague hint that we modern folk are particularly vulnerable to these horrors because our modern means of communication isolate us from one another and prevent us from thinking for ourselves and.... are you bored by this too? Right. I certainly am and I was just about to explain why to Menckles as we sat in the bar afterward. I was drunk so this isn't exactly what I was saying to her but it isn't too far off,
"The problem is some people, while very self aware and intelligent folk and all, are too self-important to know how unnecessary this kind of canned angst is. I mean all of this examination of human psyche seems a waste of time to me. There's nothing really all that profound in our nightmares. I mean, we all have them, right?
And then there's also this need to put a finger on what's wrong. Some people believe themselves to be so smart that they must master every detail of the world around them. That it all has to make sense in a very specific context that they've determined is important. And when that doesn't work perfectly, the hip thing to do is blame something like in this case information overload or media culture. When most people really are just to afraid to engage the world while accepting its absurdities.... "
But then we were interrupted by some guy who admitted he was tripping pretty badly but wanted to know how the show went since he had just missed it. So I stopped running my stupid mouth and gave him a far more useful review than that which I was inflicting on Menckles,
"Well it had a really nice elaborate dance number, some shadow puppetry, and a lady in a very funny hat. I loved it. Had a great time."
And that's the truth. I really did. Hoping to have the same sort of great time tomorrow at noon.
I'm almost hesitant to say this at this point since doing so might imply that the audience hasn't been paying very close attention over the years but I feel compelled to note once more for the record that nothing works in this town.
The police don't work. City computers don't work. The schools don't work. The levees don't work. I myself rarely work unless I can help it. Which is fine since neither does the Governor unless he's working on something that doesn't involve Louisiana.
Stranger still is the pause one gives oneself when attempting to name things that do indeed work well in New Orleans and the first two items that pop into one's mind are the red light cameras and, of all things, the football team (more on that in a moment). We live in the oddest of all possible times in the oddest of all possible places.
One thing we are now more certain of than ever after this weekend is that even our most basic elements of our civic infrastructure cannot be relied upon to work properly.
If you look closely, you'll notice the flag flapping lazily about in the wind reads, "Safety Always"
Because I'm sure you've heard enough about the facts of the water outage and because you're probably tired of the unrelenting.. um... stream of jokes about water substitutes like Four Loko or Brawndo! (The Thirst Mutilator) or home purification techniques involving Corexit, and because you're certainly not in the mood for preachy profound editorializing that can reduce easily to, "Things should probably work better", I'll spare you all of that and share a separate, parallel Sewerage and Water Board anecdote from the past week.
I happen to have a semi-formal relationship with a one hundred plus year old library building. During the course of this relationship I've become passingly familiar with the quirky maintenance requirements of buildings in that age group. Last week those requirements necessitated an interface with S & WB after Roto-rooter completed the clearing of a drain line up to the point where, Roto-rooter believed, a municipal infrastructure engineer should get involved. In other words, he could get the crap to drain out of the building but couldn't get it to stop backing up where it met the sidewalk.
The first interesting thing about interfacing with S & WB is that they take great pains to convince you that they are not the people you should be talking to. In our case, this process involved answering the following charges:
1) Can't you call a plumber? We had already done this.
2) You will need to tell us where the drain hooks up to the main sewer line. We have no idea.
3) You need to ask the guy who originally did the work. Possibly 100 years ago.
4) Can you prove to us that the problem is on the city's side and not yours? We..um.. thought we were also the city.
The second interesting thing about interfacing with S & WB is that once they are convinced to go to work on the problem, they really go to work on the problem. Which is to say they call in several different teams of people to puzzle over maps, dig holes, operate hoses, and argue with members of the other teams over what pipes under the ground might be going which way.
The third interesting thing... or at least an interesting aspect of the second interesting thing is that there is far less certainty about just what is underground than one would expect to feel comfortable with. By the end of the week, I am given to understand at least, it was resolved that because of the uncertainty regarding the backed up tie-in, they're just going to go ahead and make a new one. And maybe by now they've finished with that project and life can go on as before.
The important takeaway here, though, is after watching these events unfold, the water outage wasn't such a jarring surprise to some of us. Not that anything like this should be now. Not after everything else we've learned to shrug off as just more of life's little absurdities. Like the first 40 years of Saints football, for example. In fact, one could argue the team's present status as Very Serious Perennial Contender came about only because it was the most absurd of all possible eventualities. And thus the only thing that makes any sense around here.
Saints vs Seahawks and also Saints vs Cowboys: All of these photos are stolen from T-P photographers' work on display in the NOLA.com galleries as usual.
Oh except this one I took of the Dome looking up from Chapion(')s Square.
- Programming Note: We did the Seahawks game without Menckles because she had to make a 5:30 cast call for the final performance of To Moscow, You Betcha! which was every bit as good and then some as this Gambit review of the first performance would indicate. More on this and the New Orleans Fringe Festival later.
We did the Dallas game from Menckles' brother's house in Baltimore because it was Thanksgiving Day and we were accordingly more drunk and out of it than we usually are at the Dome. Thus the vagueness of the Cowboys notes. - Freaking Stud Alert: Don't look now but Chris "#Ironbutt" Ivory is tearing up the NFL. Undrafted Ivory now leads all rookies with 481 rushing yards and his 4.8 per carry average is sixth overall. Ivory was the reason the Saints offense was unstoppable for most of this game, particularly during the first half when he flew over a goal line pile-up for his first career touchdown. When Ivory wasn't leaping over tacklers he was trucking through them. Seattle defenders were frequently seen bouncing off of or being dragged along with Ivory as he moved pile after pile of them for extra yardage. After the game, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll told us, "I thought Chris Ivory was a freakin' stud out there." We thought so too.
At times Saints fans were tempted to yell, "DEUUUCE" just because it felt appropriate. - Congratulations to Drew Brees on being named Sportsman of the Year by SI: Not checking on this but I believe Brees is the first athlete in the history to receive this tangentially sports-related sports award and also be under 5'5" tall. Also not checking on this anywhere but I think I remember three (3) passing attempts tipped at the line of scrimmage vs Seattle. I did just check the stats to learn that he's third in the NFL in total number of interceptions thrown.
But those aren't the only reasons we're suspicious, and frankly kind of tired of Drew Brees lately. To begin with, Brees chose to have his non-sports sports award presented to him by Katie Couric. Couric and Brees have developed a strange rapport of the years which speaks poorly of each's judgment.
But the seriously troublesome bit arises from this NewOrleans.com interview wtih Brees.You won Sportsman of the Year because of what you did off the field as well as on. Do you ever envision having a political career when your playing career is over?
“Maybe. I’m not closing any doors, but I’m hoping I can play football for quite a while longer and then we’ll take a look at potential opportunities.”
It sounds like maybe you’ve crossed that bridge a little bit?
“There are a lot of things I think about. I want to do this or that. I feel I can make a difference doing this or that. That’s one of those things I feel I could make a difference. We’ll see. It’s a long while (away).”
Brees believes he has a future in elective office. As the second Saints quarterback to enter politics, would Brees be more or less of a worthless douche than Heath Shuler? The signs aren't good.
Those of us with memories will recall Brees' disturbing statements last year when he claimed the Guantanamo detainees were treated "10 times better than any prisoner in a U.S. prison" because there are Nintendo Wii's on the premises or something like that anyway.
There's also his pre-game chant which he says is derived from his enjoyment of one of the most disgustingly fascistic movies of the modern age.
And then there's his recently published book which, when one isn't reading it merely to collect episodes of unintentional humor, is notable mostly for its simple-minded tone and its unrelenting application of magical "positive thinking" techniques to every day life. The other day a Twittering friend described it as "a Children's book for Christians" which is kind of true. But I think it's more like The Secret for football fans.
What's wrong with this? Barbarah Ehrenreich explains in this video, which is a short version of her book Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America Which I can't recommend highly enough.
If Drew Brees' ambition is to apply the principles outlined in his children's book to politics and government, we're no better off with him than we are with Sarah Palin.
But on the.. um.. bright side of things, the Saints' passing game looks to be in as good a shape lately as it has been been all year. Plus Drew does still have a mean stiffarm.
- Odd happenings from the Seahawks game: Devery Henderson caught a pass. Junior Galette made a tackle. Chase Daniel did a thing. And Adrian Arrington continued to be a future all-pro.
Relieved at the news of his own resurfacing, Devery immediately led the Superdome crowd in a "Chi-Chi-Chi Le-Le-Le" chant which, BTW, is not from the movie 300. - Pants factor: The Saints have now won three consecutive black-panted football games. Because this trend represents a slight departure from historic patterns, we will humbly offer two working hypotheses. 1) Having been made aware of the fans' concerns over the Pants factor, the players have made it their personal mission to debunk the theory. On the one hand, this is fine with us because it means they're winning games. On the other hand, they still look stupid doing so.
Also the Seattle game was a special situation due to the water outage. Orleans Parish residents were still waiting for the all-clear at kickoff time. If you were going to hanging around in a building where you may come into contact with contaminated water AND "walking tacos", you wanted to be in black pants.
The white-panted Seahawks must have been overly self-conscious considering the circumstances - Uh Oh the kicker sucks: Garrett Hartley missed another 27 yard field goal against Seattle. Garrett Hartley is not good. I don't even know why we're even having this conversation anymore. Meanwhile, Olindo fucking Mare, whose fault all of this might very well be in the first place, went 3-3 against the Saints. If that doesn't exemplify universal absurdity, I don't know what does.
- All that playmaking and shit: After the Seattle game, Reggie Bush was asked about his late scratch from the active roster. He didn't know exactly what the problem was saying, “I don’t know. I think I got to score a couple of touchdowns in pregame." At Dallas, we hope Reggie was the pre-game MVP because the rest of his day was an utter bust which could... really should have cost his team the game. Bush (1 yard on 1 carry rushing plus 12 yards on 1 reception) As the Saints were trying to fend off a furious second half comeback by Dallas, Bush dropped what would have been a sure touchdown pass. The resulting field goal left the Saints with a 10 point lead and somewhat stalled momentum. Five plays later, Bush dropped a punt at his own 15 leading to a Dallas touchdown and the assurance that this game would be a nail-biter the rest of the way. Here Sean Payton says Bush "wasn't supposed to return punts during his first game back" But somehow he did anyway. I don't know what explains that.
After Reggie's last appearance in which he suffered a broken leg while turning the ball over returning a punt we wrote, "You drop a punt, we break a leg" Looks like we owe him another one. Anyone want to do the honors? I know where there's a bat we can use.
- Jeremey Shockey may not be done quite yet:
I know all he does is catch the ball and fall down these days but even that is preferable to Jimmy Graham's turnover late at Dallas which was as bad or worse than Bush's deplorable behavior. Graham is a fine athlete but he's demonstrated more than once that he is far from sure-handed. It isn't a given that he's the future star people are making him out to be. At this point, he's probably got as good a shot of making it big as Adrian Arrington has. - Turning up the Takeaway Machine: Gregg Williams' vaunted turnover-creating defense has, after a slow start, begun to live up to its reputation lately. The Saints' defense created two turnovers on two consecutive series to start the second half against Seattle and very nearly gathered a third when Tracy Porter and his fun haircut almost intercepted Elisabeth Hasselbeck's husband.
Against Dallas, there was another crucial takeaway that... well it's been talked pretty much to death this week.
Yeah that one
While Roy Williams' fumble was a crucial moment against Dallas, I'm not sure it was the biggest play of the game much less one of the Top 10 Plays in Saints' History. Personally I was more impressed with Saints' ability to get the ball back down the field and capitalize on that bit of luck than I was with the luck itself. In my mind the 55 yard pass to Robert Meachem a few plays later was as big or bigger than the turnover itself.
But okay, since everyone is doing it, we'll play the little game too. I don't mean to take anything away from Jeff Duncan's compilation of top 10 plays I linked to in the above paragraph. You should go read that list, especially since Duncan has gone to the trouble of looking up some of the relevant video. It's a fine list but I don't think it's quite right. Here very quickly are ten plays that I would name as the ten most monumental in Saints history.
1) John Gilliam's kickoff return for a touchdown in the opening game: (Duncan lists it as number 4.) Even if the first play in Saints history had been an offsides penalty it would (in addition to being more appropriate in retrospect) would have to be number one. The fact that it was a touchdown does add something, of course but it's beside the point. For Saints fans, how can any event surpass the moment when they first saw their team in action? One might ask, what could be more significant than the fact that we exist? Regardless of the consequences of that fact.
2) Steve Gleason's blocked punt vs Atlanta in 2006: (Duncan has this number 3.) And this is a close competitor for number one because if Gilliam's touchdown confirmed that the Saints existed, Gleason's punt block was (a small but significant) moment in the entire city's struggle to confirm whether or not it still existed after the Federal Flood. This question wasn't exactly answered by a Monday Night touchdown (shit, sometimes I wonder if it still has been) but it was, to put it lightly, a welcome moment of catharsis for those of us trying to answer it.
3) Goal line stand at Pittsburgh 1987: (Not on Duncan's list) After 21 years nobody was sure the Saints would or could ever win more games than they lost in a season. The monkey removed from fans' backs when this game was saved and the ninth win assured brought a far greater sense of relief and exhilaration than seeing the Lombardi Gras parade two decades later. Why? Seeing the trophy may have meant everything was done but seeing the Saints win for the first time meant anything was possible which is a far more exciting thing to contemplate.
4)Hakim drops the ball: (Duncan lists this number 6) Having finally conquered their long heartbreaking quest to even make the playoffs, the Saints immediately embarked on another long heartbreaking quest to win a playoff game. It would take 14 years from the moment the Saints first appeared in a post-season game for their fans to know what it was like to win one. And even the outcome of that was in doubt until the very last moments when the fumble Jim Henderson immortalized with his excited description happened. Note also that the first two items on my list here deal with essential questions of existence for Saints fans. It isn't until here at number four where we learn via Henderson's call that "There is a God after all!"
5) Brett Favre's decision to throw an exceedingly stupid interception rather than run for easy yardage in the 2009 NFC Championship (Duncan lists this as number 2) We know it's fashionable to hate Brett Favre these days but Saints fans should reserve a spot in their hearts for fond memories of the day he made it possible for their team to reach their first Super Bowl.
6) Tracy Porter's pick-6 vs Peyton Manning in Super Bowl 44: (Duncan has this number 1) It was just a great job by Porter. The Colts' two best offensive players were running their bread and butter play. Porter read it perfectly, broke on the ball, and took it back. And that basically won the game. Not much else to say about it.
7) Mike Lansford's game winning kick in 1983: (Not on Duncan's list) None of the great moments would be as thrilling as they were without the kill shots like this one. The 83 Saints were one win away from the franchise's first winning season and a possible playoff berth but were denied at the last second by the bare-footed Lansford. Saints fans carried this sting with them all the way to Miami last year.
8) Tom Dempsey's kick: Right because it was (is) a record. And Dempsey had half a foot. And everybody was there and.. okay we all know this story, right?
9) "Oh My God How Could He Do That?" (Duncan has this number 10) It's how most of us remember the "River City Relay" after Jim Henderson's incredulous exclamation after John Carney blew an extra point which could have... should have sent the Saints into overtime at Jacksonville by virtue of their last second highly improbable touchdown via multiple laterals. The touchdown is fun to watch but it's the kick that makes this a truly great moment. It captures everything we love about football's ability to demand so much emotional investment from us despite its essential absurdity.
10) The "Meacharound" (Duncan's number 9) This is Wang's name for the play against Washington last season where Robert Meachem stole the football back from an intercepting player and ran it in for the craziest touchdown of our lifetimes. Because the play involved giving the ball away and then taking it back, and because the Redskins were involved, I wanted to call this play "The Indian Give" but for some reason that never caught on. It's a great play for the same reason as the one above it on this list. It's nuts. Sometimes nuttiness works against you. Sometimes it works for you... even when it's working against you at the same time.
Whew. Exhausted yet? I know I am. Sometimes crappy football blogging can almost seem like work. And when I put it off for too long before finishing at 4 AM the night before some of it becomes three weeks too late, it feels exactly like work. Luckily I only do a slightly crappier job at actual work so I don't feel too bad about it. But before we wrap it up I'd like to make one more point about absurdity which we can then very likely apply to football tomorrow when the Saints very likely struggle against an underrated Bengals team in the snow.
As was mentioned waay at the top of this post, the final performance of To Moscow, You Betcha! ran just after the Saints and Seahawks wrapped up in the Dome two Sundays ago. I biked over from the Superdome in time to catch that show. I was proud to see Menckles perform and am grateful to our friends who came out as well during the short run.
This was the first time I've had an opportunity to see any of the performances that comprise the rapidly growing New Orleans Fringe Festival and plan to continue to support the festival in the future. After To Moscow's finale, we walked over the Allways Lounge and caught one more Fringe play that night called Mind Control: A Psychotic Self Help Seminar which I thought was extremely clever and creative and very well performed but also nowhere near as profound or insightful as its creators imagined it to be.
There was a lot of horror-inspired acting out of the "dark" parts of the human psyche most of which involved predictable fantasy about sex, violence, incest, and, of course, Hall and Oates. Along with this was the not-so vague hint that we modern folk are particularly vulnerable to these horrors because our modern means of communication isolate us from one another and prevent us from thinking for ourselves and.... are you bored by this too? Right. I certainly am and I was just about to explain why to Menckles as we sat in the bar afterward. I was drunk so this isn't exactly what I was saying to her but it isn't too far off,
"The problem is some people, while very self aware and intelligent folk and all, are too self-important to know how unnecessary this kind of canned angst is. I mean all of this examination of human psyche seems a waste of time to me. There's nothing really all that profound in our nightmares. I mean, we all have them, right?
And then there's also this need to put a finger on what's wrong. Some people believe themselves to be so smart that they must master every detail of the world around them. That it all has to make sense in a very specific context that they've determined is important. And when that doesn't work perfectly, the hip thing to do is blame something like in this case information overload or media culture. When most people really are just to afraid to engage the world while accepting its absurdities.... "
But then we were interrupted by some guy who admitted he was tripping pretty badly but wanted to know how the show went since he had just missed it. So I stopped running my stupid mouth and gave him a far more useful review than that which I was inflicting on Menckles,
"Well it had a really nice elaborate dance number, some shadow puppetry, and a lady in a very funny hat. I loved it. Had a great time."
And that's the truth. I really did. Hoping to have the same sort of great time tomorrow at noon.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Master plan makes it illegal
They seem to have worked this out, but in the future expect to see this argument made about all sorts of things we might like to have in New Orleans but won't get because of scolding over what the master plan allows us to do.
New Orleans is run by a coalition of plutocratic gentry and Yuppie Lefties who like to think of themselves as enlightened intellectuals but are really just conservative elites. The largely irrelevant master plan is going to be a useful rhetorical tool for such people.
New Orleans is run by a coalition of plutocratic gentry and Yuppie Lefties who like to think of themselves as enlightened intellectuals but are really just conservative elites. The largely irrelevant master plan is going to be a useful rhetorical tool for such people.
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Hey shouldn't somebody stop this?
Joe Lieberman doesn't get to tell people what they can or can't publish. Not in this country anyway. Maybe one of these companies should tell him to fuck off.
"Essentially a Blue Dog"
And there you have it
In all fairness, that's about as far left as the Democrats go these days anyway. So within the context of our crazy national politics, Obama really is the far left extremist the Palinites like to call him.
Privately, Mr. Obama has described himself, at times, as essentially a Blue Dog Democrat, referring to the shrinking caucus of fiscally conservative members of the party.
In all fairness, that's about as far left as the Democrats go these days anyway. So within the context of our crazy national politics, Obama really is the far left extremist the Palinites like to call him.
Budget fixed
Cost of sanitation contracts goes down.
Sanitation fees paid by residents go up.
The last Mayor made a big deal out of the fact that he was a CPA but I think this one means more business. And not in a good way.
Sanitation fees paid by residents go up.
The last Mayor made a big deal out of the fact that he was a CPA but I think this one means more business. And not in a good way.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Transparency
From the City Council meeting today:
The New Orleans Coalition on Open Governance, of which The Lens is a member, asked the council to let the public see its proposed changes last week. Council members agreed to try, but in the end, they weren’t able to produce a budget before today. In fact, aides were making photocopies of necessary documents even as the 10 a.m. meeting began.
A last-minute attempt to gather public input before the council’s vote on the tax increase attracted a mere two residents – one of whom is a professional policy adviser who makes a living researching and opining on the city’s use of taxpayer dollars.
But while Bureau of Governmental Research director Janet Howard warned against the council’s decision to freeze the Sewerage & Water Board taxing rate, Gentilly homeowner Steve Donahue challenged the city’s right to take more money from homeowners who chose to return to the city after Hurricane Katrina. Donahue, who is disabled and lives on a fixed income, said that he is making sacrifices to pay his own bills while also “bearing the burden of supporting the city.”
“I’m watching my water, watching my energy consumption. Meanwhile, they’re fishing in a barrel, getting our money,” he said after the meeting.
The state Constitution requires that taxing authorities hold a public hearing before raising taxes to a voter-approved maximum. In this case, the city scheduled its public hearing for the same day that the council was required by the City Charter to pass the budget.
Unlike most public hearings, today’s event happened with none of the formal introductions and presentations that typically open such discussions. Instead, people signed up to speak the same way they do during regular open meetings of the council and were given three minutes.
Howard and Donohue were called up to speak as council members were busy considering a related technical amendment, but no one spoke when the council was considering the ordinance directly addressing the tax increase.
“As far as I’ve seen, there was no public hearing, not the way they usually have a public hearing,” eastern New Orleans homeowner Lorraine Washington said.
Some days I think they do it on purpose
TPM:
In what amounts to an epic constitutionality #fail, Senate Democrats may have blown their chances to see their food safety bill signed into law.Somehow...
The U.S. constitution requires that any revenue-raising bill must originate in the House of Representatives. To honor this provision, the Senate often finds a discarded old House bill, strips it bare, and uses it as a "shell" and passes it back to the House.
They somehow forgot to do that this time.
Definitely the sane call from this far out
Adrastos:
I think, however, that PBJ is aiming at the second slot on the GOP ticket in 2012. Romney-Jindal is a definite possibility. The Mittster would regard PBJ as a fine pander to the teabaggers and wingnuts and we all know how much Mitt loves to pander...I've long thought very little of Jindal's, or Sarah Palin's for that matter, chances of topping the GOP ticket in 2012. But these are batshit insane times and I'm starting to think anything is possible.
Arcane offices delivering deluxe information
Let's see. It's been such a fun news day so far. What else can the Obama administration royally fuck up today?
How about the internet?
How about the internet?
Internet providers will not be subjected to so-called "Net neutrality" rules and may experiment with tiered, usage-based pricing and "network management" practices, according to new rules being considered by the Federal Communications Commission this month.
Advocates of Net neutrality had hoped the regulatory agency would mandate Internet service providers treat all traffic equally: one of the Web's founding principles.
Instead, the FCC's Internet regulations adopts many proposals by search and telecom giants Google and Verizon, with the caveat that wireless telephone providers not block competing voice applications.
Jobs market
Fired!
In other words, the ineffectual Obama administration honestly couldn't give a shit about unemployed people.
In a related story,
Hired!
Eight hundred thousand American families began to lose their unemployment benefits Wednesday morning, after Republican senators blocked an emergency move to continue providing aid to jobless Americans.Column goes on and on about how the Republican congressional agenda is only interested in protecting the wealthy but if you don't understand that by now you aren't paying attention. The key is, what is "our side" doing to counteract this agenda?
As the unemployment benefits were running out, President Obama was meeting with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, and suggesting that it was possible to work with the GOP in a “productive” manner. And Obama was dispatching Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner—“the guy that caused (the problem) among other people on Wall Street,” says McDermott—to cut a deal.
The president is making a mistake, says McDermott.
“He keeps making the same diagnostic error. He thinks that you can shame the Republicans,” the congressman says. “They have no ability to be shamed by children without food, or people being thrown out of their homes or all the problems that come with unemployment. And so it’s wasting your time doing that.”
In other words, the ineffectual Obama administration honestly couldn't give a shit about unemployed people.
In a related story,
Hired!
Citigroup Inc., recovering from its $45 billion bailout in 2008, is in advanced talks to hire former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Orszag, 41, may take a job in the New York-based firm’s investment-banking division, the people said, declining to be identified because the discussions are private. An announcement may come as early as today, one of the people said.
Has Spud McConnell blown his top yet today?
Oil drilling ban to be maintained in key areas, sources say By Juliet EilperinAdding, does anyone else think the decision by the Wa-Po to call its energy-centric blog page, "Post Carbon" is at least as grating as BP's decision to brand itself "Beyond Petroleum"?
Obama administration officials will announce Wednesday afternoon they will not allow offshore oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico or off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as part of the next five-year drilling plan, according to sources briefed on the plan, reversing two key policy changes President Obama announced in late March.
The Rent Is Too Damn High
And will soon go higher:
New Orleans City Council approves 6.74-mill property tax increase; trash-fee hike to $22 considered
Landrieu's upward pressure on rents through these measures coupled with his aggressive plan to demolish potential housing stock will actualize the dream of a smaller whiter city the NOLA gentry has been pining for all these years.
And then in a few years when we have to figure out how to maintain all these flood protection improvements I guess nobody will be able to afford living here.
New Orleans City Council approves 6.74-mill property tax increase; trash-fee hike to $22 considered
Landrieu's upward pressure on rents through these measures coupled with his aggressive plan to demolish potential housing stock will actualize the dream of a smaller whiter city the NOLA gentry has been pining for all these years.
And then in a few years when we have to figure out how to maintain all these flood protection improvements I guess nobody will be able to afford living here.
Who Dat?
No, really. Who?
Payton: Pierre Thomas could return for Saints at Bengals
Also, Sunday, Messy Sunday
Payton: Pierre Thomas could return for Saints at Bengals
Also, Sunday, Messy Sunday
Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco insisted that his team is better than its 2-9 record indicates, and said they plan on putting up a string fight over these next five weeks.
As for Sunday's upcoming game against the New Orleans Saints, he specifically promised a "messy Sunday." Though he wouldn't say exactly what he meant by that, it was likely a reference to recently-murdered New Orleans rapper and comedian Messy Mya, who was known for messing with people in his popular YouTube videos.
Unpleasant commissions, please
Multiple horrors occurring at once
City Council is preparing to pass the budget. T-P's Michelle Krupa appears to be liveblogging the session. She may also be blurting out tweets here.
Simpson-Bowles deficit commission (informally known as the "catfood commission") is also meeting today. Follow along at FDL or on CSPAN3
City Council is preparing to pass the budget. T-P's Michelle Krupa appears to be liveblogging the session. She may also be blurting out tweets here.
Simpson-Bowles deficit commission (informally known as the "catfood commission") is also meeting today. Follow along at FDL or on CSPAN3
Thought for the day
Trollblog:
Update: In a related story, Senate Fails to Pass Unemployment Benefits Extension
Starting around 1968 the majority of Americans, at least, moved from being grudgingly willing to make small sacrifices in order to improve the lives of others, to a more enthusiastic willingness to make small sacrifices in order to make sure that others get hurt.
Update: In a related story, Senate Fails to Pass Unemployment Benefits Extension
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Must read on Wikileaks
If you read one article about the Wikileaks fallout this week, please make it this Greenwald post.
Before setting forth why these WikiLeaks disclosures produce vastly more good than harm, I'll state several caveats as clearly as I can. Unlike the prior leaks of war documents, there are reasonable concerns about this latest leak (most particularly that impeding diplomacy makes war more likely). Like all organizations, WikiLeaks has made mistakes in the past, including its failure to exercise enough care in redacting the names of Afghan informers. Moreover, some documents are legitimately classified, probably including some among the documents that were just disclosed.Much more. Just go read.
Nonetheless, our government and political culture is so far toward the extreme pole of excessive, improper secrecy that that is clearly the far more significant threat. And few organizations besides WikiLeaks are doing anything to subvert that regime of secrecy, and none is close to its efficacy. It's staggering to watch anyone walk around acting as though the real threat is from excessive disclosures when the impenetrable, always-growing Wall of Secrecy is what has enabled virtually every abuse and transgression of the U.S. government over the last two decades at least.
Things everybody saw yesterday that nonetheless must be noted
When we noticed that this year's Gambit "Bar Guide" issue wisely refrained from ranking the bars according to some nebulous arbitrary criteria the way they sometimes do, we were relieved that we were not obligated to produce a handy key to those rankings the way we did last year.
Better still, this year's simplified bar guide comes to us in the form of a mind-blowing flowchart created by Ian Hoch. It is designed to help locals or visitors reach the appropriate watering hole using a decision-based approach. And I gotta say it works pretty darn well. Even if it doesn't get you exactly where you expect (there is no way to get to Igor's or Fahy's) it will get you somewhere similar or perhaps nearby. Would have been a great thing to hand out to Menckles' friends and family when they came in for the wedding.
Better still, this year's simplified bar guide comes to us in the form of a mind-blowing flowchart created by Ian Hoch. It is designed to help locals or visitors reach the appropriate watering hole using a decision-based approach. And I gotta say it works pretty darn well. Even if it doesn't get you exactly where you expect (there is no way to get to Igor's or Fahy's) it will get you somewhere similar or perhaps nearby. Would have been a great thing to hand out to Menckles' friends and family when they came in for the wedding.
Hippies and Teabaggers
Unlike most conventional pundits who rail against the tyranny of polarized extremism, I think the problem with our political system is the overwhelming power of consensus elites to define debate and control outcomes. One way they do this, however, is through the promotion of extremist sounding but essentially just stupid paranoid rhetoric purposed toward elitist policy goals.
For example, ADM and Monsato could just lobby on their own behalf to be left unaccountable for putting poison in your food. But it's a far better strategy to let the argument fall into the hands of stupid crazy people who just make a mess of everything.
And the self-perpetuating cycle of stupid can continue.
For example, ADM and Monsato could just lobby on their own behalf to be left unaccountable for putting poison in your food. But it's a far better strategy to let the argument fall into the hands of stupid crazy people who just make a mess of everything.
Conservative activists have apparently rallied to the call, helping to ensure that passage of a bill that once seemed like a sure thing is far less certain. While the tea party's interests often seem to coincide with corporate America's—as in the health care debate—in this case big agriculture, the grocery store lobby, and the restaurant industry all firmly support the bill. Why? The food industry has found the recent rash of food-poisoning outbreaks to be extremely expensive and generally bad for business.Everybody wins here. Agribusiness gets to take a reasonable public position on food safety while not actually having to be held responsible for it by the law. Increasingly angry and threatened American consumers get to channel their outrage into cathartic but unproductive activities such as buying "survival seeds" and balancing their chakras. Nobody pays a political price for any of this other than these mythical "liberals in Washington" who don't really exist anyway. Meanwhile, our news media doesn't have to get bogged down in discussing the boring ins and outs of food safety regulation but instead has a ball ogling and promoting the spectacle caused by these misguided activists.
But Coburn and the tea partiers have found an unlikely group of allies in their fight against the bill: hippies. Or "granolas," as food safety lawyer Bill Marler calls the organic farmers, locavores, health nuts, and artisanal cheesemakers who oppose the legislation. "The granolas come at it from a standpoint that they want to eat all natural foods, and drink raw milk because they believe it cures everything from autism to erectile dysfunction," says Marler, who's been involved in drafting the food bill for a decade. "Then you have the tea party involved not because they drink raw milk but because they don't want the government involved in any aspect of their lives. It's all about how the government is out to get their seeds."
And the self-perpetuating cycle of stupid can continue.
Monday, November 29, 2010
We broke it, you buy it
When new hurricane protection levees settle, U.S. won't have to help pay repair costs
The other day, while flying back into New Orleans after the holiday, our plane took the somewhat rarer route into town from the east. Out of my window I had a clear view of Mobile Bay, the Mississippi Gulf Coast and its barrier islands, the Chandeleur Islands, and the Louisiana coast, all of which appear much closer together when viewed from the air than one typically thinks of those places being.
As we approached the city, we flew in over the fragile and fragmenting wetland marshes of lower St. Bernard Parish. As we crossed Lake Borgne I craned my neck to get a glimpse of the one-of-a-kind mega surge barrier the Corps is building across the Intracoastal Waterway.
Here's to making it through another storm-free year. Until these inadequate systems are complete, we can't afford to have anything more threatening than that. After they're done, we may not be able to afford many more seasons with or without storms.
Congress will no longer require the federal government to help pay the cost of raising new hurricane levees when they subside, a rule change that flood managers in Louisiana argue could make it impossible to properly maintain the new system now being built.Tomorrow is the last day of the 2010 Hurricane season. We hardly knew it. It seems like so long ago that the future of everything in New Orleans depended on the redesign of the damaged and inadequate flood protection measures the Corps of Engineers once famously admitted comprised a "system in name only" into a modern and sustainable bulwark against the possibility of our world ever being destroyed by water again. Gone were the days when we would aim to meet only the most minimal standard when it came to protecting the lives and livelihoods of our families and neighbors. Well, that's what we said we wanted anyway.
"We're building a system that, at the end of the day, will be certified to give us the 100-year protection that's required" in order to buy federal flood insurance, said Steve Wilson, president of the State Association of Levee Districts. "But if there's no money three or four years from now to raise our levees back up to that level of protection, what have we really accomplished?"As it stands right now, the project authorized by Congress and scheduled for completion next year not only meets a minimal and inadequate standard, there is no provision to ensure the funding levels necessary to maintain even this poor standard.
The other day, while flying back into New Orleans after the holiday, our plane took the somewhat rarer route into town from the east. Out of my window I had a clear view of Mobile Bay, the Mississippi Gulf Coast and its barrier islands, the Chandeleur Islands, and the Louisiana coast, all of which appear much closer together when viewed from the air than one typically thinks of those places being.
As we approached the city, we flew in over the fragile and fragmenting wetland marshes of lower St. Bernard Parish. As we crossed Lake Borgne I craned my neck to get a glimpse of the one-of-a-kind mega surge barrier the Corps is building across the Intracoastal Waterway.
Wilson said another key operations and maintenance issue that will be examined next week is the continuing concern of both east and west authorities that Congress is saddling the districts with operating massive new structures in the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway that should clearly be operated by the corps.
Although all other navigation structures on the Intracoastal Waterway and the Mississippi River are maintained and operated by the corps, Congress once again failed to include that mandate in post-Katrina legislation financing construction of the world's longest surge barrier and multiple navigation gates to stop surges out of lakes Borgne and Pontchartrain from entering the Industrial Canal. Another sector gate across the Intracoastal Waterway is also part of the $1 billion West Closure Complex to block surge from entering the Harvey and Algiers canals.
Gate expectations
"Not only is the corps building a bigger system, it will be more complex," Doody said. "Operation and maintenance costs of the surge barrier and Seabrook gate alone are mind boggling.
Here's to making it through another storm-free year. Until these inadequate systems are complete, we can't afford to have anything more threatening than that. After they're done, we may not be able to afford many more seasons with or without storms.
Dear Mr. President,
Will you kindly go fuck yourself?
Come back when you're done paying for rich people's tax break out of nurses, clerks, and park rangers' paychecks.
Come back when you're done paying for rich people's tax break out of nurses, clerks, and park rangers' paychecks.
The best defense is belligerence
I'm starting to think maybe Sarah Palin really could be President. Because these days leadership is basically defined by making stupendous ignorance a virtue to rally around. And Palin has a special talent for this.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Good Whiskey
Not telling you what to do with your Sunday but reading through the reporting on the Wikileaks revelations might be worth your time.
Update: A good place to keep track of the releases and the reporting on them is at Greg Mitchell's The Nation blog.
Upperdate: See also Simon Jenkins' essay in The Guardian about the documents and the ethics of reporting.
Even when they recount events that are already known, the cables offer remarkable details.
For instance, it has been previously reported that the Yemeni government has sought to cover up the American role in missile strikes against the local branch of Al Qaeda. But a cable’s fly-on-the-wall account of a January meeting between the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, then the American commander in the Middle East, is nonetheless breathtaking.
“We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” Mr. Saleh said, according to the cable sent by the American ambassador, prompting Yemen’s deputy prime minister to “joke that he had just ‘lied’ by telling Parliament” that Yemeni forces had carried out the strikes.
Mr. Saleh, who at other times resisted American counterterrorism requests, was in a lighthearted mood. The authoritarian ruler of a conservative Muslim country, Mr. Saleh complains of smuggling from nearby Djibouti, but tells General Petraeus that his concerns are drugs and weapons, not whiskey, “provided it’s good whiskey.”
Update: A good place to keep track of the releases and the reporting on them is at Greg Mitchell's The Nation blog.
Upperdate: See also Simon Jenkins' essay in The Guardian about the documents and the ethics of reporting.
America's foreign policy is revealed as a slave to rightwing drift, terrified of a bomb exploding abroad or of a pro-Israeli congressman at home. If the cables tell of the progress to war over Iran or Pakistan or Gaza or Yemen, their revelation might help debate the inanity of policies which, as Patterson says, seem to be leading in just that direction. Perhaps we can now see how catastrophe unfolds when there is time to avert it, rather than having to await a Chilcot report after the event. If that is not in the public's interest, I fail to see what is.
Clearly, it is for governments, not journalists, to protect public secrets. Were there some overriding national jeopardy in revealing them, greater restraint might be in order. There is no such overriding jeopardy, except from the policies themselves as revealed. Where it is doing the right thing, a great power should be robust against embarrassment.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Alright alright
Look. I gotta go to the airport and get by balls fondled by TSA. I've been trying to get this Saints post finished all day but have been interrupted by various episodes of packing, building maintenance, janitorial services, and emergency wasp nest removal. (Seriously, yes)
So I'm being pushed out the door now and it's not ready. And that's a shame because it has all sorts of killer movie references, current news, and very serious theater reviews. So dammit.
We'll just have to figure out some kind of way to fold all that stuff into the next opportunity which won't be until after we get back Saturday... and after we catch Testaverde at the Circle Bar on Saturday night.
Anyway meanwhile Wang is waiting for Morten. You should probably just go read that.
So I'm being pushed out the door now and it's not ready. And that's a shame because it has all sorts of killer movie references, current news, and very serious theater reviews. So dammit.
We'll just have to figure out some kind of way to fold all that stuff into the next opportunity which won't be until after we get back Saturday... and after we catch Testaverde at the Circle Bar on Saturday night.
Anyway meanwhile Wang is waiting for Morten. You should probably just go read that.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Uh oh
8 shrimpers fined for trawling in areas closed after Gulf oil spill
Better ask BP for more marketing money.
Better ask BP for more marketing money.
Okay so what happened?
Boil water order lifted across east bank of New Orleans
But officials on Sunday also admitted that they still hadn't figured out what caused the Sewerage & Water Board's in-house power plant, located at the South Claiborne Avenue campus, to shut down for about 10 minutes late Friday. The brief crash caused pressure in the city's water pipes to drop to levels that could allow bacteria to invade the pipes.I hope they tell us when they find out. Or maybe they'll just move on to the all important marketing phase of recovery.
S&WB Executive Director Marcia St. Martin has called Friday night's sudden shutdown of the power plant, which also supports about half of the city's drainage capacity, a "catastrophic failure of all the redundant systems."
"Yes, there are backup systems, and yes, they failed," she said Sunday.
St. Martin has admitted that until officials can figure out what caused the power plant to crash, there's a chance it could happen again.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Crescent City Clear
This weekend's failed infrastructure excitement had me reminiscing about this long-forgotten harebrained scheme of Ray Nagin's
"Clean," "clear" and "refreshing" may not be the first words that leap to mind when you think about New Orleans tap water.
Maybe that's why Mayor Ray Nagin's plan to bottle and sell the treated Mississippi River water that flows into Orleans Parish homes has met with some skepticism.
"Y'all think I'm playing," said Nagin, defending the plan to a chuckling audience as quickly as he announced it during his May 6 inauguration speech.
This month, he made clear he was not. Nagin directed the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans to form a committee to write a business plan for a new water bottling venture. The committee is to report back to the board in about two months.
Meanwhile, a pilot water bottling program will go forward. The board is paying Dixie Brewing Co. about $850 to fill 25,000 plastic, long-neck bottles with fresh tap water under the name "Crescent City Clear" for delegates of the National Water Works Association convention; the 15,000-member organization will hold its annual meeting in New Orleans June 16 to 20.
I remember Nagin joking about the name "Crescent City Clear" sounding a lot better than if they had put "Sewerage and Water Board" on the bottle. Friday night on the Tweeters I inadvertently typed "Sewage and waterboard" which I think may actually violate the Geneva Convention.
Despite the warnings, I'm gonna go ahead and shower before going down to the Dome today. I was tempted to stay good and ripe for my Superdome security pat-down but it's not exactly a TSA style operation over there. At the Dome you can get your flask full of rum by the welcome huggers roughly 10 out of every 10 attempts. At the airport, they have no compunction whatsoever about squeezing your urine. Anyway I'm gonna try and go early. I hear the first 10,000 fans receive a complimentary copy of Jeremey Shockey's new book, Cooking With Four Loko just in case we still don't have water by Thanksgiving.
After the game, do stop by John Paul's (940 Elysian Fields Ave.) for the final performance of To Moscow, You Betcha (see Kevin Allman's review at the Gambit blog) which begins at 7.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Don't worry about it
It's funny, like ha ha funny
Not exactly "I got it" as in #wegotthis but similar.
New Orleans - Lt. Joseph Meisch took the stand saying he recalls Officer Greg McRae laughing as he came down the levee from the scene of a burning car -- a car containing Henry Glover's body. Blank and expressionless is how he described Lt Dwayne Scheuermann, the other defendant accused in the car burning.
Lt Meisch was a 4th District investigator when Katrina struck. He told jurors he was standing outside when he saw two vehicles driving on the levee. He watched the first car drive down the levee out of site, then saw a plume of smoke as two officers walked away from the car and toward him. He recalls "Greg McRae said 'Don't worry about it' and Lt Scheuermann said 'I got it'." Meisch told jurors he was confident Scheuermann would handle whatever it was. He also told jurors that after the Glover investigation became public, Scheuermann encouraged him to tell the truth, adding that McRae 'made a stupid mistake'.
Not exactly "I got it" as in #wegotthis but similar.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
How the news gets made
From Michael Moore's site we find this telling Democracy Now interview with former health insurance industry spokesperson Wendell Potter
AMY GOODMAN: When the film came out and you did the research, did you feel that you actually had contained it at the beginning? I think of a CNN critique that Sanjay Gupta did, Sanjay Gupta did.
WENDELL POTTER: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you have anything to do with that?
WENDELL POTTER: I didn’t. Again, some of the reason you hire these big PR firms is you can do this with a little bit of a hands-off kind of operation. The big PR firms have very good connections with producers of network shows and cable shows and columnists and pundits. And so, you rely on them to be able to get your messaging out. And they’re very, very successful in influencing people about how they write or how they put a show together.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, he was furious. Michael Moore went on CNN, was outraged, and said that everything they said about him wasn’t true. And in the end, CNN had to apologize.
WENDELL POTTER: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: They were not correct, what they said about Michael Moore’s film, that he had gotten his facts wrong.
WENDELL POTTER: I think CNN and Sanjay Gupta undoubtedly were embarrassed that they had been, frankly, duped by the insurance industry, probably not even aware of the role that the insurance industry was playing in that.
AMY GOODMAN: Did the insurance industry put out to all the networks—you had your chosen producers at all the networks—fact sheets on Sicko?
WENDELL POTTER: Not directly. Again, that’s why you hire these third parties, these PR firms, to do it for you, so that your involvement cannot be traced.
Pierre Pressure
Looks like Bush is ready. Where's Frenchy? It's time for the Saints to put together a win streak.
Update: The Tweeter Tubes tell me that Thomas has returned to practice.
Update: The Tweeter Tubes tell me that Thomas has returned to practice.
Serpased
Via the court-mandated press release:
I'm hearing that motorists who do not wish to participate in breath or blood screenings may opt to have TSA called out to feel their intimate parts instead.
The New Orleans Police Department’s Traffic Division will conduct a sobriety checkpoint on Friday, November 19, 2010, in the Uptown Area. The check point will begin at approximately 9:00 P.M. and will conclude at about 5:00 A.M. Motorists will experience minimal delays and should have the proper documentation, i.e., proof of insurance, driver’s license, etc., available if requested.
I'm hearing that motorists who do not wish to participate in breath or blood screenings may opt to have TSA called out to feel their intimate parts instead.
Deep cleaning
BP contractors to collect oil buried beneath sand
BP deep-cleaning Gulf coast beaches amid new worries
Remember, at one time, the idea that BP was burying oil on the beaches was a controversial conspiracy theory. Now that the PR emergency is over with it's okay to do the dirtier work. At least until tourist season starts back up. I hope they don't forget the fancy towels.
PENSACOLA -- BP cleanup contractors say they will step up efforts in coming weeks to collect tons of buried oil and tar beneath the surface of beaches and waterways in Escambia County.
During a boat tour of Pensacola Bay and Perdido Key on Sunday, Joe Waller, BP's Pensacola division supervisor for oil-spill cleanup, said cleanup contractors are facing new challenges while determining how best to collect deposits of oil and tar that were found submerged at Pensacola Pass near Fort McRee last month.
The previously undiscovered deposits are believed to be the source of about 17,000 pounds of oil a month that continues to wash ashore on beaches at Pensacola Naval Air Station, BP officials said.
BP deep-cleaning Gulf coast beaches amid new worries
Workers have dug down about 30 inches so far to find oil, and officials say the dozers can dig as deep as needed to get the worst of the oil deposits. Different, gentler cleaning methods will be used in more delicate areas like Mississippi's coastal islands and the marshlands of Louisiana, the company says.I can't imagine what the "different gentler cleaning methods" planned for Louisiana might entail since we're still pretty sure the magic microbes got all of ours anyway.
BP spokesman Ray Melick says the major work should be done by mid-February, before the weather turns warm and visitors begin heading back. Natural processes should finish cleaning tourist areas once the big machines have dug up all the oil they can.
Remember, at one time, the idea that BP was burying oil on the beaches was a controversial conspiracy theory. Now that the PR emergency is over with it's okay to do the dirtier work. At least until tourist season starts back up. I hope they don't forget the fancy towels.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Tuesday Link Dump
- Audit finds widespread accounting problems at nonprofit linked to Jefferson Parish councilman
Dambala suggests that Lee, a close ally of Congressman-elect Cedric Richmond, was planning to go to Washington with him. - Pat attends and takes detailed notes on James Carville's Bipartisan Policy Center's post-election conference at Tulane.
When I saw this event announced, I'll admit I was less than enthusiastic about being invited to listen to Carville-Matlin along with the likes of Tony Blankley, Paul Begala and "some of America's top political journalists and and analysts" (no relation to the "world's most visionary intellects" but I can see how one might make that mistake) fart out of their mouths about "bipartisanship" all day long. Neither the twittering from attendees nor Pat's note taking has done much to change my mind. If I have to sit within earshot of a plutocratic tool like Dan Glickman lamenting the lack of "civic literacy" among the rabble, or a repulsive toad like Dan Bartlett complaining that Rahm fucking Emmanuel's problem is that he is too liberal, then they damn sure better let me bring my durian catapult in with me. Otherwise I'll wait for the DVD to come out so I can give my cat a new scratching toy for Christmas.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting what these gasbags are blowing at us since it will doubtlessly crystallize into the next broken rhetoric trap impeding progress until the whole thing starts over again with the next election cycle. Please take the time to look at Pat's write-up. As with everything he presents, it is patiently and thoughtfully written. I have a few bones to pick with it but I'm saving those for a much longer post about the re-emergence of the do-nothing mushy pseudo-left which we're going to watch get bulldozed by the incoming Republican congress these next few years.
One observation Pat calls special attention to is the puzzling "deference to the Tea Party" exhibited by the assembled mainstream pundits. Here, Pat describes the Tea Party pretty well.I wish we had an actual movement in this nation expressing libertarian, foundational views of this republic; I’ve long held that I may not agree with Ron Paul or Paul Ryan on the issues, but they are legitimately held positions that represent a legitimate understanding of history and economics, and represent a competing vision for this country’s future. I think there are some individuals who consider themselves “Tea Partiers” who believe that they are doing something similar.
No they aren't new arguments. And more importantly, the "Tea Party" isn't a new "party" or movement or anything new at all really. It is, as Pat also points out, merely the latest marketing strategy for the same right wing agenda that has dominated our politics for most of my increasingly long lifetime. It's a marketing strategy aimed at misdirecting legitimate working class discontent so that it ultimately furthers the plutocratic interests. I know. You're bored with hearing that. I am too. But as long as we've got one party willing to lie and pander to an increasingly impoverished population while the other sneers and condescends at it, this is what we're stuck with; a bi-partisan, cynical hostility of the ruling classes toward the rest of us.
The Tea Party I have seen is not that, however. In their own words, it has morphed into a Christianist, xenophobic and intolerant movement that supports high spending, government violation of civil liberties, religious oppression, endless war (Iran is next!), subsidization of the uberwealthy and unilateral foreign policy. Once they have enunciated those positions, they turn around and posses the historical amnesia to dismiss hard-fought American social advancements, and ascribe tyrant status to President Obama and Democratic members of Congress for “controlling every aspect of our lives” in ways that the government has done for decades, if not centuries. These aren’t new arguments, by the way.
Unsurprisingly, Clancy DuBos attended the same conference where his big takeaway was, "Most important of all, Independents believe both parties should move more to the center." But both parties are already at "the center." They aren't exactly the same party but they do both agree to serve slightly varied schisms of the money power at the expense of the rest of us. As long as mainstream punditry misrepresents the less meaningful distinctions between the parties as "uncivil partisanship" this will remain the case. - Along those same lines regarding tea party phoniness and civil discourse see this Drake Toulouse post.
On the Sunday morning talk shows, Rand Paul, Kentucky’s newest senator criticized Barack Obama for being too harsh with British Petroleum. “I didn’t think the president or his people should say something like putting the boot heel on the throat of a business. I didn’t like that,” Paul said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation. His main point of contention appears to be that Obama set the wrong tone, engaged in creating an atmosphere that is unfriendly to business.
But at least we'll have a more civil tone, which is the important thing.
Ya, I get it, boot heels and throats are a rather unfriendly way of speaking to an oil company, however considering that this oil spill occurred almost seven months ago, and yet no charges have been brought against anyone, I would say that BP, Halliburton and Transocean, yet again, are getting off light for, yet another, accident. - The Lens reminds us that this is "Transit Week"
Our transit advocacy organization, Transport for NOLA, is promoting New Orleans’ first Transit Week, starting today. Try taking transit to work or recreation at least once during this week. Visit our website at www.transportfornola.org/transitweek for schedules, maps, and information on how to take transit. Let us know how it went and how it can be better.
- Arianna Huffington steals rather than creates something. And this is somehow news.
- Hornets lose. Now Monty Williams doesn't have to worry about deciding between resting his starters and preserving a perfect season anymore.
- Sarah Palin is un-refudiated by OED as her coinage is named the word of the year.
- And on that note, To Moscow, You Betcha! runs for two showings tomorrow night (7PM and 9PM) at John Paul's (940 Elysian Fields) and again on Sunday night at 7PM. Good times.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Curbside recycling
According to reports from WWLTV and WVUE, the city just signed a new deal with Metro disposal.
Recycling added, price cut in Metro Disposal deal with city
Metro Disposal and city agree on new garbage contract
Recycling added, price cut in Metro Disposal deal with city
The deal is a one-year contract extension that takes the cost per home down to $1599 from $1815. It also includes recycling.
Metro Disposal and city agree on new garbage contract
"Both Richard's and Metro Wednesday submitted to the city of New Orleans offers which included a 10 percent reduction in the rate charged to the city across the board for the remaining six years of the contract term, with the addition of curbside recycling citywide at no additional cost to the city," said attorney Daniel Davillier, who represents both Richard's Disposal and Metro Disposal.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Weekend digest
- This morning I emptied the bookdrop and found two diet books, one book on how to pray yourself rich, one success-in-life type biography of a well-known business person, and one book about how "effective people" communicate. I should probably start paying attention to the circulation rates of these sorts of items. If there's a reliable method to gauge the general "unhappiness" of the population during a recession, this would be it.
Also, I'm not sure what this means, but this title was stolen almost as soon as it arrived.
- On Wednesday, James Gill's column speculated about Gov. PBJ's next career move.
The secret of Gov. Bobby Jindal's success may be that he can fast-talk his way into a fancy job before he has had quite enough time to be judged a flop in the last one.
Gill goes on to suggest that Jindal may not be quite ready to run for President in 2012, but instead may be interested in replacing Michael Steele as RNC Chairman. This morning, NOLA.com points us to yet another possibility.
He has held so many prestigious posts in a relatively short career that he must get credit for knowing when to get out of Dodge.
Catholic bishops say more exorcists are neededBishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., who organized the conference, said only a tiny number of U.S. priests have enough training and knowledge to perform an exorcism. Dioceses nationwide have been relying solely on these clergy, who have been overwhelmed with requests to evaluate claims. The Rev. James LeBar, who was the official exorcist of the Archdiocese of New York under the late Cardinal John O'Connor, had faced a similar level of demand, traveling the country in response to the many requests for his expertise.
The rite is performed only rarely. Neal Lozano, a Catholic writer and author of the book "Unbound: A Practical Guide to Deliverance" about combatting evil spirits, said he knows an exorcist in the church who receives about 400 inquiries a year, but determines that out of that number, two or three of the cases require an exorcism.
No one knows why more people seem to be seeking the rite. Paprocki said one reason could be the growing interest among Americans in exploring general spirituality, as opposed to participating in organized religion, which has led more people to dabble in the occult.
Talk about your indicators of general unhappiness during a recession, right? More and more Americans are looking to magic for answers. And if that means more and more amateur witches and exorcists seeking office, then that's what it means. Whether or not it means we can still teach science to our children remains to be seen. - Easy reference question of the day: "I can't get the internet on this computer" Answer: "Double click the blue 'E'"
- Oh and speaking of career opportunities, State Rep. Walker Hines has made quite a turnaround in seeking his.
State Rep. Walker Hines of New Orleans announced today that he is switching his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, making the GOP the majority party in a legislative chamber for the first time in modern Louisiana history.
A few years ago, Hines invited several local New Orleans bloggers to meet over coffee where he made some statements about his "principles" that are interesting to reflect upon now. - This one kid came in today chewing on a plastic pen cap. He spent the whole day here and out on the basketball court without discarding it. Just chewed the hell out of it all day long.
- William Jefferson's freezer cash eclipsed by bills in a bra In which T-P reporter Bruce Alpert actually writes, "They didn't explain how she had enough room for so much cash."
- Witness recounts 'pop' that felled Glover In which read the following testimony:
Calloway also testified Friday about his experience at the police compound, where he said officers beat, insulted and threatened him and two other men as Glover lay dying in the backseat of a car.
"They said this is gonna be the judge and jury right here," Calloway, 39, testified. "They were saying stuff like they were going to cut our tendons ... push us in the river ... they kept saying we were looters, pieces of s---."
Glover's brother, Edward King, grew angry with the officers and said he would find and kill the person who killed his brother.
That's when an officer choked and slapped King, said Calloway, who added that he saw the officer's name tag -- at least "all the way to the little 'm.'" He pronounced the name "Schumacher" in early interviews with the FBI, an apparent reference to defendant Scheuermann.
Calloway recalled Friday seeing an officer with roadway flares in his pocket -- identified by another witness as officer Greg McRae -- drive off in the car containing Glover's body. McRae's attorney has admitted his client drove the car to the levee and set it afire.
Sometime later, the officer who hit King gave them an update, telling them Glover had been shot for looting and that they could get the body from the coroner, Calloway testified. The officer then instructed colleagues to give the men a bottle of water and let them go.
Calloway said he and King ran in a criss-cross pattern from the police compound "because we didn't want to get shot in the back ... I never ran that fast in my life." - I'm so old I can remember reading Josh Marshall's TPM when it was one years old. And today it is ten. Ten years seems like a long time, especially in internet years, but sometimes even the old internets still seem sort of newish to me.
- Difficult reference question of the day: "When are they gonna fix that water fountain?" Answer: Who knows? A few days ago, I took this picture of the leaking water fountain on the basketball court at Laurence Square.
About 8 months ago, I took this one.
- Right now Georgia is trying to give Auburn some trouble which could further screw with the BCS picture. More importantly, it can give LSU a real shot at an SEC title should Alabama, you know, find some motivation later in the schedule when they play Auburn. Les Miles will be grazing on ULM later this evening.
- And finally, speaking of grazing, last night we made chicken enchiladas with a salsa verde, which requires many many tomatillos.
And that's all I got. No Saints game tomorrow so I've been scheduled for alternative activities which I sincerely hope are not rained upon.
The textbook committee decided to leave it all out... for now.
No mandatory "alternative theories to evolution" for Louisiana students. Not yet, anyway.
A state advisory panel Friday voted 8-4 to endorse a variety of high school science textbooks that have come under fire for how they describe evolution. The vote was followed more than three hours of discussion.
Two of the “no” votes were cast by Senate Education Committee Chairman Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, and House Education Committee Vice-Chairman Frank Hoffmann, R-West Monroe. The decision likely paves the way for the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to approve the textbooks when it meets Dec. 7-9.
The textbooks that triggered criticism were approved earlier this year by a review committee that spent months studying them. But final action on the biology I and biology II, and environmental science textbooks was delayed by BESE last month amid criticism that they put too much credence in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
End of the day link dump
Must read Matt Taibbi piece on the foreclosure crisis.
The Lens: Even with plenty of subsidized housing, most still clustered in poorest areasdebated rushed through in the wake of the federal flood, "talking to the people that are affected" basically meant gawking at the size of their televisions. Oh and also blowing kisses at them too, which was nice. But those were simple simple times.
CNN: Pilots urged to avoid body scanning
It's good to read about these "health risks" just before the Holiday traveling season. Saints fans who are used to their "welcome hug" each time they enter the Superdome may not be as averse to opting for the pat-down as other passengers.
Obama deficit reduction commission recommendations worse than previously thought.
See also: Many deficit commission staffers paid by outside groups
Finally, on a happier note, New Orleans East doesn't have to say goodbye to its beloved zombie apocalypse hell-scape quite so soon after all.
Six Flags razing rumors denied
For most people, the former bit about homeowners not paying their damn bills is the important part, while the latter, about the sudden and strange inability of the world's biggest and wealthiest banks to keep proper records, is incidental. Just a little office sloppiness, and who cares? Those deadbeat homeowners still owe the money, right? "They had it coming to them," is how a bartender at the Jacksonville airport put it to me.See also: Debtors' prisons!
But in reality, it's the unpaid bills that are incidental and the lost paperwork that matters. It turns out that underneath that little iceberg tip of exposed evidence lies a fraud so gigantic that it literally cannot be contemplated by our leaders, for fear of admitting that our entire financial system is corrupted to its core — with our great banks and even our government coffers backed not by real wealth but by vast landfills of deceptively generated and essentially worthless mortgage-backed assets.
You've heard of Too Big to Fail — the foreclosure crisis is Too Big for Fraud. Think of the Bernie Madoff scam, only replicated tens of thousands of times over, infecting every corner of the financial universe. The underlying crime is so pervasive, we simply can't admit to it — and so we are working feverishly to rubber-stamp the problem away, in sordid little backrooms in cities like Jacksonville, behind doors that shouldn't be, but often are, closed.
The Lens: Even with plenty of subsidized housing, most still clustered in poorest areas
Despite the demolition of the city’s four largest public housing developments, New Orleans has more subsidized housing for its poorest residents now than it had five years ago. But even after spending billions to tear down the old projects and issue vouchers to encourage low-income renters to settle in better neighborhoods, the Housing Authority of New Orleans continues to see these clients concentrated in the city’s poorest areas.I've always been dubious on the very concept of alleviating poverty by scattering people. Some of these "discoveries", for instance, seem like they should have been fairly obvious from the start.
“People who are poor don’t depend on incomes to get by,” she said. “They depend on social networks: the person that is taking them to grocery store, the auntie who is watching their child. If that is how you are surviving, you are going to move to be close to that community.Some of us remember back when these housing policies were being
“When we started this, we expected the choice to be constrained,” Reid added. “But we expected the constraints to be structural. What we’ve found is that the situation is far more nuanced.”
Reid said that the experiences and desires of low-income people must be figured into the policymaking process in a deeper way, if cities want do more than simply relocate poverty.
“We need to be talking to the people that are affected by policy,” she said.
CNN: Pilots urged to avoid body scanning
Pilots' unions for US Airways and American Airlines are urging their members to avoid full-body scanning at airport security checkpoints, citing health risks and concerns about intrusiveness and security officer behavior.
It's good to read about these "health risks" just before the Holiday traveling season. Saints fans who are used to their "welcome hug" each time they enter the Superdome may not be as averse to opting for the pat-down as other passengers.
Obama deficit reduction commission recommendations worse than previously thought.
1. Raises the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare to 69.
2. Cuts Social Security benefits.
3. Ends the mortgage tax deduction.
4. Ends the tax deduction for workers' health benefits.
5. Freezes salaries for federal workers for 3 years.
6. Establishes co-pays for veterans at VA health services.
7. Raises fees to visit the national parks and the Smithsonian.
8. Merges the Small Business Administration into an agency (Commerce) that has always prioritized helping bigger businesses, and cuts their budget.
9. Eliminates the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.
See also: Many deficit commission staffers paid by outside groups
Instead, about one in four commission staffers is paid by outside entities, many of which have strong ideological points of view about how to tackle the deficit.
For example, the salaries of two senior staffers, Marc Goldwein and Ed Lorenzen, are paid by private groups that have previously advocated cuts to entitlement programs. Lorenzen is paid by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, while Goldwein is paid by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is also partly funded by the Peterson group.
Finally, on a happier note, New Orleans East doesn't have to say goodbye to its beloved zombie apocalypse hell-scape quite so soon after all.
Six Flags razing rumors denied
Although a video making the rounds on the Internet says the theme park is scheduled for demolition next year, New Orleans officials say there are no plans to demolish the Six Flags amusement park and that an offer to redevelop the site is still pending.Detritus photographers everywhere rejoice.
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