Good Morning Conflucians!!! I woke up to a bit of good news: the cracked pipe that caused our water emergency has been repaired and testing of water is underway.
Overnight, crews were able to successfully weld the 10 foot pipe back together with a new metal ring. On Saturday, a seem [sic] in the structure failed, sending 265 million gallons of water into the Charles River.
The water quality tests began after crews made sure the fix to the pipe could withstand the pressure of the water flowing through it and that no other damage was done to the pipe during the break.
According to Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles, the ban could be lifted in the next 24-48 hours, but that’s the best case scenario.
I feel sorry for my students, who are in the midst of studying for final exams with no coffee or tea available on campus. I heard that yesterday there was a massive exodus of students seeking caffeine infusions in Cambridge, which has its own water supply.
This “aquapocalypse,” as the catastrophic water pipe break in Massachusetts is being called on Twitter, has also revived an old ’60s hit, “Dirty Water,” by the Standells.
In other hard-hit parts of the country, the solution to problems will not come as quickly. The disastrous oil spill off the Gulf Coast continues unabated, and in Tennesee and Mississippi, record rain and flooding have killed 15 people so far.
GULF COAST OIL SPILL
CNN has long story on the latest from New Orleans. For some reason, they focus the story around the fact that incoming Mayor Mitch Landrieu [who will be sworn in today] is the first *white* mayor of NO in 30 years. I’m not sure why his race is the salient point for CNN.
His city is still digging itself out from the wrath of Hurricane Katrina five years ago. And his state’s vitally important seafood industry is threatened by the spill.
Landrieu — who lost two previous mayoral bids in 1994 and 2006 — replaces the term-limited Ray Nagin in a city where about two-thirds of the residents are black.
The city’s last white mayor was Landrieu’s father, Maurice “Moon” Landrieu, who left office in 1978. He is remembered fondly for desegregating the city, appointing African-Americans to positions of city leadership, and opening up public facilities to blacks.
Last week, the younger Landrieu took part in a flyover of the spill for a firsthand look.
“As this situation becomes clearer, there are obvious environmental and health concerns, especially as it relates to Lake Pontchartrain, our coast, and our air quality,” he said Thursday. “But there is also an economic component of the utmost importance including the impact on our fisheries and port traffic.”
The fishing and restaurant industries are preparing themselves as best they can for the approaching disaster that will be caused by the oil spill.
“This isn’t just going to be a short-term thing,” said Ben Wicks, owner and chef at Mahony’s PO-Boy Shop, a neighborhood eatery in a converted shotgun house in uptown New Orleans.
Harlon Pearce, chairman of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, said he applauded the federal government’s decision to shut down fishing for at least 10 days to “ensure everyone that all seafood in the Gulf is of the highest quality and is safe to eat.”
Award winning chef Donald Link, whose Herbsaint and Cochon restaurants in New Orleans are popular with tourists and locals alike, said another problem is the publicity surrounding the slick. He didn’t want anyone to think that Louisiana seafood had disappeared or was unsafe, or that New Orleans restaurants were closed.
BP claims they are taking “full responsibility” for the environmental disaster.
“BP is committed to pay legitimate and objectively verifiable claims for other loss and damage caused by the spill,” a fact sheet for claims and procedures read.
A spokeswoman repeated a pledge given by Tony Hayward, BP chief executive, at the end of last week that the company would “honour legitimate claims for damages”.
“This may include claims for assessment, mitigation and clean-up of spilled oil, real and property damage caused by the oil, personal injury caused by the spill, commercial losses including loss of earnings/profit and other losses as contemplated by applicable laws and regulations…”
Hmmm….There is quite a bit of hedging going on in there if you ask me. Even worse, in Alabama, representatives of BP have been trying to get residents to sign agreements not to sue the company, in return for a lump sum payment of $5,000.
Alabama Attorney General Troy King said tonight that he has told representatives of BP Plc. that they should stop circulating settlement agreements among coastal Alabamians….
The attorney general said he is prohibited from giving legal advice to private citizens, but added that “people need to proceed with caution and understand the ramifications before signing something like that.
“They should seek appropriate counsel to make sure their rights are protected,” King said.
In Alaska, survivors of the Exxon Valdez spill are having traumatic flashbacks.
“As far as what’s ahead, we have a feeling that we kind of know what those communities and individuals are going to go through, and it’s absolutely tragic,” said Stan Jones, spokesman for the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council. [....]
About 1,300 miles of Alaska shoreline was affected by the spill, including 200 miles that were heavily contaminated, according to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council. Responders found carcasses of more than 35,000 birds and 1,000 sea otters. That was considered to be a fraction of the bird and animal death toll because carcasses usually sink to the seabed. The council estimated 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 killer whales died along with billions of salmon and herring eggs.
Exxon said it spent $2.1 billion on a cleanup, but in a testament to the persistence of crude, oil a few inches below the surface remains on isolated beaches. Students on field trips to islands in Prince William Sound devastated by the spill often uncover rocks soiled in oil with little effort. An estimated 20,000 gallons of oil remain from the spill.
I like to think our Nobel Peace Prize winning President, who supposedly cares about the environment but still wants to open up our coastlines to more offshore drilling, will read that story. Unfortunately, IMO he is so deficient in empathy that it might not move him much even if he read it.
SOUTHEASTERN FLOODS
CNN: Flooding leaves at least 15 dead in Southeast
“All of our major creeks and the Cumberland River are near flood level, if not at flood level,” Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said at a news conference Sunday, referring to the waterway that bisects Nashville. “The ground is entirely saturated, and the rain continues to fall. There’s nowhere for the water to go.”
Teams of inspectors will be mapping out the damage Monday morning, Nashville officials said.
The western two-thirds of Tennessee has seen between 6 and 20 inches of rain since Saturday, with flooding spreading to Kentucky.
The Nashville Tennessean: Record-breaking flood displaces thousands in middle Tennesee
As darkness set in across the soaked and battered Middle Tennessee region Sunday evening, Nashville began evacuating homes and businesses along the rising Cumberland River.
….Thousands of cars, homes and basements are filled with water. Entire neighborhoods are submerged, and hundreds of people are in shelters.
Authorities were just beginning to comprehend the damage. Late Sunday, Nashville announced that it was shutting down a water treatment plant and that a levee in MetroCenter along the Cumberland River had begun to leak.
After an aerial survey early Sunday evening, Mayor Karl Dean said the damage was worse than he thought.
“This situation is going to require a very large recovery process,” Dean said. “The magnitude of the damage to our community was much more than what I expected. … The safety of some of our infrastructure is questionable.”
We sure could use an FDR type President right now. All those unemployed people could be mobilized to help repair our country’s deteriorating infrastructure. Wouldn’t that be a better long-term goal than saving a bunch of greedy banksters who like make money gambling on whether people will lose their homes or not? Has Goldman Sachs started betting on the fate of the Gulf Coast yet?
TIMES SQUARE FOILED BOMBING
ABC News: Times Square Car Bomb: Police Release Video of Possible Suspect
The New York City Police Department has released video showing a white male in his 40s looking back in the direction of West 45th street. He can also be seen in the video shedding a dark-colored shirt, revealing a red one underneath.
The police are discounting claims of responsibility by a Talaban leader (who BTW, had supposedly been killed by one of Obama’s predator drones).
CNN: Police scour latest evidence in Times Square bombing attempt
Authorities plan to release another video in the case, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told CNN’s “American Morning” on Monday.
Kelly said the person in the video “is seen, we believe, running north on Broadway.” He said the video was obtained from a tourist.
The investigation was focusing on examinations of a Nissan Pathfinder where the attempted homemade bomb was placed. On Sunday, Kelly said the vehicle was being inspected for fingerprints, hair, fibers and other evidence that may help identify who was responsible.
So what are you reading this morning? Post links freely in the comments, and have a marvelous Monday!
Filed under: General Tagged: | aquapocalypse, banksters, Barack Obama, boil water order, Boston water, British Petroleum, Gulf Coast oil spill, Southeast flooding, Times Square bomber
Oh so sad to read this post.
The corporate people who put the man in office
must be laughing at our expense. Obama co-opted
every ideal that we cherished, from First Amendment freedoms, to health care
and now the environment. The horror.
But you and I weren’t fooled.
You and I knew that Hillary wasn’t perfect. We knew that Bill Clinton
was a little too right for us, but preferable to the very destruction of
the Democratic Party.
The memory of all those people screaming: “Obama, Obama, Obama” still
makes me cringe.
I have tears in my eyes because the future is not
pretty. The good thing is that you and I are old, and we won’t have
to experience the results of his election for too long.
But our progeny will suffer the consequences of the election of
2008. There’s nothing to do. It’s to late to change course.
The GOP will takeover Congress, as it should in 2010
and Obama will need just a few Democrats to finish the job.
Must read post by John W. Smart:
Liberal Caverns, where principles go to die.
Read more at link.
Hi rangoon78,
Thanks for the post from John. I’m going to edit your comment and put a link to his blog instead. He deserves to get the hits.
Liberal Caverns, where principles go to die.
We are now in our narcissistic naked emperor phase.
Eloquent rant John. I hear you–and it is infuriating.
Thanks for this! Well written!
Even Jane at FDL has a long post saying progresivism under Obama is dead.
Wow….he really rips Jane a new one in that rant. Loved it!
This is one of the most insightful statements I’ve read regarding what happened to the prog blogs during 2008. And he managed it in 2 succinct sentences:
Exactly. It was all entirely self-referential. Obama capitalized on the Bush-hate, not by decrying Bush’s principles and contrasting ours, but by telling the Left “you are, in your very essence, better than the right”. He stoked a feeling of moral superiority in the Left that was completely disconnected from actual beliefs or actions.
When you have a group of people believing “We are inherently better, just because we are US, not THEM.” then you can use them any way you please, for agendas that they would have rightly abhorred back when the principles were the focus. And it honestly makes me wonder how many of those people truthfully ever had those principles at all. Or were the ideals merely a convenient bludgeon during the Bush years, to beat on the “rednecks and ignoramuses” and secure their elitist advantage?
Because if they ever had Liberal principles, then what is happening makes no sense. But if all they ever had was an elitist sense of moral and intellectual superiority, then what they are doing makes perfect sense.
Well put. Your last paragraph sums up perfectly what I have concluded about many so-called progressives or liberals, and unfortunately about some of my friends and acquaintances as well.
Nice rant.
Ah-my-dinner-jacket is going to get a dose of how intelligent and strong American women can be! I wish they were meeting face-to-face.
Ahmadinejad, Clinton face off at U.N. nuclear meeting
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Iran’s president faces off with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday at the start of a meeting on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a pact Washington and Tehran accuse each other of violating.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100503/pl_nm/us_nuclear_treaty
That should be interesting!
bb: how is the water boiling going? My sister is in Somerville, and she’s dealing with it too.
Expect to see more of this kind f water system failure in the older cities in the North East and Mid-Atlantic states as the cast iron pipes near the end of their life expectancy.
That’s what I had assumed at first. Actually the pipe that failed had only been installed 7 years ago. The pipe itself did not crack, it was whatever stuff they use to connect the pieces of pipe together that failed. This is why they have to run tests on the whole system that was installed. They are now planning to build a redundant piping system should this happen again.
NECN (New England Cable News) has done a great job getting info out to everyone. I have watched our gov. Deval Patrick get involved and I ended up being favorably impressed by his low key leadership style. He and the head of the MWRA both did a great job with the press in terms of simply explaining issues and addresses questions in a straight forward fashion.
I may be stuck boiling water and buying bottled water for a bit, but it is easier to deal with that when one feels their their state and town governments doing a reasonably good job of handling things, and the local media is doing a good job of covering the issues. The MWRA website has PDFs with water, washing and cooking guidelines easily accessible and understandable.
This pipe wasn’t old, and most of the pipes in Mass have been replaced recently because of the harbor cleanup project. Mine were done only about 5 years ago.
I agree with Valissa that our state and local govs are doing a good job. I was able to get the info I needed on line, and there are regular updates on NECN. There were also explanations that made me feel more confidence about dealing with the situation.
I’m doing OK, especially now I know that it will probably just be a couple more days. I’ve been boiling it, pouring it into pitchers to cool in the fridge, and then putting it through my Brita filter pichers. It took awhile to get up to speed, but now I have a lot of water in the fridge. I only use it for coffee, tea, and ice cubes–and cooking, but it’s too hot to cook.
“…a dose of how intelligent and strong American women can be!”
I think he knows how intelligent and strong any woman is – that’s why he fears them.
For a minute, I was wondering what your dinner jacket had to do with it.
Stephanie Miller coined it. Except she calls him “I’m a dinner jacket.” Unfortunately she became an Obot and I can’t listen to her anymore.
She was pretty much an Obama supporter from early in the primaries. She gave herself the nickname “Mama for Obama.” I stopped listening early — I don’t know if she piled on Hillary or just remained an Obama supporter. She also liked Kucinich.
I laughed after I read Ahmadinejad’s name and realized that that was what the “dinner jacket” was all about.
Bringing my tabloids post here -, as I just finished fixing the image display problem
http://edgeoforever.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/tabloids-obama-meet-spill-hunting-car-bomb-terrorist/
Obama activated the guard yesterday, they got called in last night and deployed this morning. I have lots of students missing finals now.
I also drove to work watching boats being hauled in the opposite direction. Lots of activity headed towards St Bernard and Plaquemines.
Clean-up estimated at three months. Aftermath how many years?
They still have crude oil in the water 21 years after Exxon spill, according to the article I posted. You should read the article. The whole area is destroyed, and the smell of oil is always in the air–more than 20 years later.
Thanks, bb. It depresses me so.
Glad you’re getting your water back. I always appreciate running water most, after I’ve had a plumbing problem.
Is Teh One’s luck running out?
He did that house deal then Rezko gets indicted before there is any Pro-quid.
Then the Clintons make a series of gaffes that Team O construes as racist.
What looks like a dead heat going into the November elections is tilted to the Democrats by the financial melt down.
Karma?
Do you think 0 should have activated the guard earlier? There seems to be some debate about how efficiently 0 responded. But I know these things also unfold over time.
Sorrry, that reply was supposed to be under Daki’s statement.
I thought it was the governor that activated the guard?
It is, but the situation is confused now–you did know that Posse Comitatus was eliminated by the Military Commissions Act? I don’t know why Obama would have to be consulted.
The Act also gave the President the power to overrule Govs on the use of National Guard units. We don’t live in a Constitutional republic anymore….
Found this too, too sad post at Susie Madrak’s place last night. Asked myself, WHY, why, why would Army send 7th Cav Black Hawks to Wounded Knee on the anniversary of the massacre??
Still can’t figure it out.
Apparently the head of the tribe invited them for educational purposes.
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2010/05/lakotas-prevent-blackhawk-helicopters.html
Ha, the drummer of the Sandells in the video up top was a mouseketeer. Crazy man.
Wow, you must have been a big Mickey Mouse Club fan. I never knew that.
Looks like they need to shake something shiny at the masses to draw their attention away from the oil spill. Someone named Hitchens wrote a book saying that Clinton ate hash brownies at Oxford. The story is everywhere.
http://www.postchronicle.com/news/original/article_212299365.shtml
{{{yawn}}}
These people are so predictable.
Hitch the Snitch has written a memoir? This outta be good.
A practicing alcoholic says someone else ate pot brownies a long time ago. Shocking.
Allegedly, he’s also claiming he had sex with two future members of Thatcher’s Cabinet. At least he understands that he needs to include this stuff because no one actually cares about him, but he’s basically Perez Hilton at this point.
Funny response from Bill would be (use Bill’s accent): Well, I tell you, if I did eat those things, I probably wouldn’t remember it.
OT… when everything else sucks, try music.
I finally watched Glee for the first time last week and ever since have been having a youtube orgasm marathon. I have listened to their version of the song and that took me to a Gladys Knight version and other Gladys songs until I cried.
Try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzs7rzq9qI4
BTW, the voice you are hearing is that of the gay character who has a gorgeous counter tenor voice and he is singing at least in part to his “crush”.
and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CQ3u0D7_Uw
and then make sure you tune in to Glee.
I was a member of the Glee club in HS of, but we were not so much geeks as young classically trained singers. So It was different, but if you love musical theater as I do, you will love this show.
Music is the language of God and when someone speaks that language as well as Gladys Knight, even a sad song makes you cry with joy.
teresa – I hope you didn’t miss the Barbra Streisand self mashup of “One Less Bell to Answer and A House is not a Home” on youtube. The Kristian Cheoweth duet with Matthew Morrison immediatley reminded me of Barbra’s rendition on a Burt Bacharach special in 1971 and was so pleased to find it.
BTW – I am a Gleek and also love musical theatre ( I have zero talent in the that area however) and last Tuesday night’s show was for me the best to date.
I am a big Cheno fan (since Wicked) and have watched everything of hers on youtube – including her interview with Sean Hannity. She is appearing on Broadway right now in Promises, Promises but the reviews for the show are not to great. Can’t decide if I want to go see it.
I’m sitting here watching the news on how BP is trying to sucker the LA fishermen into signing a settlement paper for $5,000. Pigs.
And guess who was the top recipient of campaign donations from these BP scumsuckers in 2008? Well, if it isn’t our old buddy Barack Obama!
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/01
And BTW, kudos to FOX (is the world upside down?) for breaking this story. They broke it, and have run hard with it, really raking BP over the coals for taking advantage of these fishermen – some of whom are functionally illiterate. Evidently one of them asked a Fox reporter to read the contract for him, and the reporter was appalled.
Whatever else may be said about Fox, during the primary it was the only channel I could watch because they were not rampantly demonizing Hillary. And they do still bother to report, rather than pontificate, on their news shows.
Their straight news is actually fairly decent, and while still biased, it is IMO less biased to the right than NBC and others are to the left.
Their editorial and punditry are a whole ‘nother ball of wax altogether, but their straight news is in truth pretty fair.
US and Iran trade accusations over nuclear weapons