Samedi

Saturday Blogwhoring Thread
~First Draft

Houma performance featured on television tonight

Bostonian tries to attract, keep young people here
~Michael Luke, WWL

Landowners fight corps' plan to take their land for its clay
~Paul Rioux~When the Army Corps of Engineers announced it needed the equivalent of 20 Superdomes filled with clay to raise levees in the New Orleans area, Richard Robichaux had hoped to sell the corps dirt from a former Waggaman sugar plantation his family has owned for more than a century.
But rather than buy the clay, the corps wants to buy the land -- against the family's will, if necessary.
~DISCLAIMER! WARNING! BAT SIGNAL!~
~Below~ Screen shot of today's Expensive Tax-Forked Corps Public Relations Op (E.T-FkdCPRO) placed beside this article about Expensive Tax-Forked Corps Ops (ET-FkdCOs)
~Please click to enlarge.
Blogging 101, Military Style
~SGM Troy Falardeau
~Editilla Gotta Ax~ All youz Military Friends of da'Ladder (M.F.oda'L.) please check these folks out and come on back over here, ya'heah? Or post it onto your own blog and we can hang it here. So'z we can all know Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (WTF).
That is kinda what we are for, right... here.

Defensive blogging
~Soldiers in the Blogosphere
~"A story this morning on milblogging.com caught my eye for a couple of reasons: it involved the Army Corps of Engineers (my branch) and it involved what I'll term "defensive blogging". The story is about allegations by the website Levee.org that Corps of Engineers employees left comments "targeting citizen critic using tax payer money" and were "re-writing history" (the news report by WWL TV can be seen here.) I have no idea if this is an organized effort by the Corps of Engineers, but it certainly highlights one way that the military can (and, I'd argue, should) engage the blogosphere - by leaving comments on blogs to correct or complete a story."~MAJ Jakob Bruhl <-emphasis span="" style="font-size: 180%;">

Farewell FEMA Trailers
~Anita Lee
~Trailer parks dotted the South Mississippi landscape in 2006. All 46 trailer and mobile home parks FEMA built in the three Coast counties have now closed, Photo: James Edward Bates -Sun Herald

True, Home ~YRHT

Oyster Dressing,
Basic New Orleans Style
~Just East of Eden

Vitality returns to homes
in Village de L'est
~Stephanie Bruno
~Village de l'Est, a neighborhood in eastern New Orleans identified strongly with New Orleans' Vietnamese community. One portion is bounded roughly by Dwyer Road on the north, Chef Menteur Highway on the south, Saigon Drive on the east (it runs roughly east-west but makes a turn toward Chef on the east end) and Palace Street on the west. A second portion is across Dwyer Road, where Willowbrook Drive is the main thoroughfare. Commercial activity such as restaurants and other businesses cluster on Alcee Fortier Boulevard in the blocks closest to Chef Menteur. Mary Queen of Vietnam Church on Willowbrook serves as the neighborhood's spiritual core.

Houston’s High Water Problems
~Urban Transport

Rare Books At NOBTS Get Attention~Gary D. Myers

eight feet deep~"Although I believed it would have been a long time before I could bring myself to read any in-depth literary work about Katrina, I have recently found myself intrigued by Douglas Brinkley's "The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast."'

Prospect 1 New Orleans:
Photo Essay Part 2~Art Fag
Sanford Biggers, Blossom, 2007

'Park the Van' Holiday Soiree is tomorrow night!
~Static Television
Hanukkah Day 5: The Leevee's Latke Clan & How Do You Spell Channukkahh~Teruah

Similar in the Opposite Way
~Jeff Albert

Al Hirt Our Man in New Orleans
~all about Jazz

Vendredi~Soirée

Sandy Rosenthal on
The Alex Jones Show
"The Katrina Myth" Revolved Pt-1~Pt-2


The Morning After~Citizen K

US Population Shifts to South, Except LA~Pistolette

BAGnewsNotes
~Sgt. William Olas Bee, a U.S. Marine from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, has a close call after Taliban fighters opened fire near Garmser in Helmand Province of Afghanistan May 18, 2008. The Marine was not injured. Image: Goran Tomasevic.

Vendredi

Terrebonne Parish Storm-recovery spending undecided
~Naomi King

Spirit of giving~Ellyn Couvillion
People may remember hearing or seeing the ads that hit the airways, billboards and newspapers after Hurricane Katrina.
One of the ads, in particular, was bluntly reassuring:
“You’re not crazy,” it said.

Officials call Bayou St. John a flood protection liability, but New Orleanians call it a 'treasure'~Molly Reid

Environmental studies start on projects to rebuild coastal Louisiana~Mark Schleifstein
~DISCLAIMER! WARNING! BAT SIGNAL!~
Screenshot: Today's Tax-funded Corps/TP Flash Ad

Ground laid for more flood trouble?~Hal Bernton

La. financial problems not as bad as rest of America~Mike Hasten

Fourth man charged in theft of alligators

Mulate's reopens: Restaurant renovated after Gustav damage
~Jeff Moore

Songs 4 Foodies #4
~Robert Frost's Banjo

Go for Green Holidays in
New Orleans
~Karen Dalton-Beninato

Hanukkah Day 3:
Battle of Driedel Kitsch
- Gay Cowboys vs Ersatz Hassids
~Teruah~Captain Smartypants "BrokeBack Dreidel"

Jeudi

The 2008 Golden Monkeyfist Awards
The Delta Prime Award
to
New Orleans Ladder
~Editilla Oh'So Humbly Thanks da'Fistas!~

Before the Levees Break:
A Plan to Save the Netherlands
~David Wolman
~"To understand risk, you must consider the value of what would be lost," says coastal engineer Marcel Stive , a pink-faced man of 57 years who heads the coastal engineering and water research centers at Delft University of Technology, just north of Rotterdam. The half of the country that is below sea level—including the area behind these dunes—generates about 65 percent of its GDP. That's nearly $450 billion a year.

"Let's be kinder to the corps, for safety's sake", UNO Engineering Professor's letter just wants us to like them --or fear them?
Editilla has a better idea: why don't we round them up,
and send the entire Corps of Engineers Command to Gitmo --with the other terrorists-- until they tell us who built our Failed Flood Control Structures.
Why don't we Get all Bush/Cheney Doctrine on their asses:
attack the terrorists before they can try to kill us again and torture them until they tell us who attacked us on 8/29/05.
And By The Way...has anyone asked the Times Picayune how complicit were they in the recent Corps violation of the Federal Code governing the Illegal use of government computers? Guess that is not the same thing as these Expensive Tax-Funded Public Relations Ads the Corps runs in the Times Picayune 24 hours/day 7 days/week on nola.com beside favorable coverage, Letters to the Editor and editorials
--like the one below from today's Letter to the Editor.
Are the Times Picayune and the Exquisite Corps working together to Reduce Risk, or Market Risk? Who'ya got in your Wallet?

Revisiting the Future of Ecotopia
~Scott Timberg
~Editilla T'n'T~Planetizen

Clean Water Act ‘decimated’
~Dick Kamp
~House leaders, Waxman and Oberstar, had written letters to EPA and the Corps to address evidence that EPA no longer was enforcing pollution laws in much of the country and that the Army Corps of Engineers was deliberately failing to protect the Los Angeles and Santa Cruz rivers under the Clean Water Act.
The Corps has a backlog of thousands of permits nationwide,
400 in the Los Angeles (Arizona-California region) alone.


Heavy Weather ~by Bruce Sterling
~In the 2020's, America has been through a revolution or two, it's still holding on, but barely functional. Technology continues to improve, promising solutions with the next breakthrough, yet society is failing and vast tracts of land have been become uninhabitable.
The weather systems,
in particular, are out of control. Lots of Big Weather Systems.
~Alejandro Unger, "Alex", is messed-up German-Mexican rich kid. He's always in search of a remedy, legal or not, for his allergies, his dismal health. He's a junkie for medication.
~Rescued, against his will, from the clinic at which he is undergoing a radical medical treatment, he is forced to join his opinionated and impassioned sister and her new-found friends, the Storm Troope. The Storm Troupe are hurricane-hunters.
They're scientists and adrenalin-freaks who live for the data and the excitement of the next storm. Led by brilliant but obsessed Jerry Mulcahey, they believe in, dream about and fear the imminent arrival of the mother of all hurricanes.
~Editilla Acapolkas~Yep, if you could put me in a church, before you nailed the doors shut and burned it down, the altar would hold the tao te ching, inside a building built of dharma surrounded by sprawling grounds of Secular Ecohumanism and ringed by a 4 dimensional, wave-like, seething perimiter of guerrilla cyberpunk rail-tail futurist hyper-level social view.

Harry Shearer Gets It Wrong
~We Could Be Famous

Save Mid-City; Save Charity Hospital; Save New Orleans
~Alobar Greywalker

Pioneer spirit in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward ~Peter H. King
~Robert Green's mother and granddaughter died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He created a memorial on his vacant lot to remember them. Photo: Kirk McKoy ~Los Angeles Times
~In the Katrina-ravaged neighborhood, where many homes were passed along by families across three or four generations, pluck and unity prove to be the cornerstones of rebuilding.

Hispanics changing the face of Nuevo Orleans, Immigrants,
many illegal, rebuild the city
~John Moreno Gonzalez
~"Life is hard here, harder than any place I've been in the U.S.," said Jose Campos, 37, who came here from El Salvador, by way of Florida. "It's a dangerous place, a bad place," he said, "pero cuando usted puede encontrar el trabajo, it' s todo el digno de él."

Contracts Point to Significant U.S. Commitment in Afghanistan
~Walter Pincus ~The indication of additional troop deployments in the works for next winter comes in three solicitations from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for military housing contracts. Each could cost up to $100 million, with two of the three scheduled for completion by late next year.

Md. files claim to recover voting machine expenses
~Laura Smitherman
~"Under basic contract law, this is money that should be paid by Diebold or its successor and not by the taxpayers,"
Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said in an interview.
"This is sort of the final chapter of the touch-screen machines that we've had issues with in Maryland since we've gotten them."

Sports Illustrated on the Vick dogs: Has the tide finally turned for pit bulls?~Christie Keith

Celebrating in the Oaks~Froggy

Kosher in New Orleans
~And, just in time for Chanukah, the rabbi Uri Topolosky accomplished that. Cafe du Monde was recently certified as officially kosher by the Louisiana Kashrut Committee.
Beignets made in all six establishments throughout the city and the make-it-at-home boxed mix sold nationwide are being made in accordance with the ancient dietary laws.


Susan Cowsill Featured on LCN-TV Concert Series

Mercredi

Mustard-Whiskey-Glazed Ham
~Serious Eats

Judge authorizes class action suit for New Orleans school employees fired after Katrina

Terrebonne Parish School Board's plan gathers dust
~Robert Zullo

Edwin Edwards Still Kicking Louisiana In The Butt
~Jeff Crouere

New Orleans Faces "The Nation"
~Harry Shearer
~"It's holiday time and we probably all want to be thinking about something other than bloodshed and disaster. But the editors at The Nation feel otherwise. In the January 5 issue, they've run a long investigative piece on perhaps a dozen unsolved shootings of African-American men in the largely-white New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers Point in the days after the event shorthanded as Katrina. It's a lengthy, painstaking piece of work.
And, just like the work of much of the mainstream media about the disaster in New Orleans three-plus years ago, it lies."

St. Henry’s to hold Christmas Eve service, despite closing
~Michael Luke, WWL

OSHA probes complaint at Exxon Baton Rouge refinery

In just months, Cuba back from storms ~David Adams

Iowa Small Businesses Still Want $200 Million for Flood Recovery

Ike victims caught in a new whirlwind~Purva Patel
~Homeowners struggle to deal with limits on their flood policies and local rules requiring them to pay more to rebuild up to code.

Kansas Levee system under review~Very few engineering firms are willing to do the certification work FEMA requires, which often results in cities paying out sums similar to what Osawatomie paid to have their own levees certified.
“I can’t be for certain, but my suspicion would be that many engineering firms are probably not comfortable putting their insurance and licenses on the line to certify a structure they did not design to begin with,” Osawatomie City Manager Bret Glendening said. Glendening added that many of the levees in the U.S. were built by the Corps of Engineers, then turned over to cities like Osawatomie to maintain.
Please click and enter zip code.

Wash. state finds 30 dangerous illegal dams ~Shannon Dininny

Exquisite Corps awards $900M in energy-saving contracts

Swiss Re Estimates That Over 238,000 People Were Killed by Catastrophes in 2008, Insured Losses Soar to $50 Billion

Update: Pagan ritual celebrates Rudolph's demise~Citizen K

Point and Place:
William Eggleston's Vibrant Spaces~Barry Schwabsky
Untitled, circa 1975, Eggleston Artistic Trust/Cheim & Read, NYC

"Whatever it is about pictures, photographs, it's just about impossible to follow up with words. They don't have anything to do with each other...Art, or what we call that, you can love it and appreciate it, but you can't really talk about it.
Doesn't make any sense."~Bill Eggleston,

Special thanks~Muse-ings

Possibly 4th Street:
Bonerama Christmas Special
~Rob Trucks

Mardi

Cupcakes take New Orleans

Broadmoor Lives!
~Tanya Alexander



Happy 65 Harry Shearer!
~25 @ Le Show!


"A shocking disregard for the facts and for the corps' own mission"~Your Right Hand Thief
~Editilla Krewellas~The pot thickens!
~Composted fo'da lagniappe sharp discourse on da'Oyster's comments section on this OnGoing crisis of the Exquisite Corps of Engineers Rotting the minds of our chir'rens... or failing that, spin'filtraiting the noble commons of Nola Bloggers' Comments Sections! It's like one'a'dem Kafka Wheels or some'ting...
--a Promethean Liver Translpant... vultures rolling stones in up and down mountains in and out of the Red Castle!
Hahahaha... Abbey Hoffman couldn'a writ this stuff! Yikes! He did write this stuff! And We Stole That Book! Hahahahahaha!
You will know them by their sounds of buzzing wings.

And now our Editillero Garland Robinette gives this Story legs like a race horse, with an awsome radio interview yesterday with Sandy Rosenthal, founder of levees.org.
Tune in to find out how she did it and how you can too!
Catch these little fakirs with their hands in their pants! HA!
Finally, somebody who is more pissed off at the Exquisite Corps than yer oh'so humble Editilla! That's right, Robinette lays down such vapid eviseration on da'Co that well, errrah.... Editilla is just caught Speechless! Babe in a sandbox babe in a sandbox me.

If Garland Robinette says something you can take it to the Bank.
I remember him on the air, during the flood. Garland was the ONLY thing on the radio, until you could hardly understand his stripped vocal cords. Really, it was That Heroic, and one of the only things that kept us going through the Dark Nights and Crazy Daze. Really. I'm tollin'ya... alive journalism.
And he lays it out a full half-hour with Ms Rosenthal
--even more details of this preternatural nefarious neotechnical skulduggery: it turns out that the Exquisite Corps is also haunting the ReWrits of Wikipedia? ??? Exuse me? Our Wiki???????
NOoooooooooo --say Mr. Bill!
Suck My Forking Toe --sayz Editilla!
I'll be Damned --said Jesus!
Get Down! Get Back Up Again --Ow James Brown!
And Thank Providence for WWL! Jeez Louie!
Always watching our Backs, Panthère dans le marais!
Or a true pack of Catahoulas no lie.
Always with their Eyes on da'Prize, New Orleans.
Never Forget How Good It Can Get and Watch'em Back!


Personal info that 16,000 Katrina Texas evacuees gave FEMA appears online

Back pay: Miami wants FEMA to cut check for 2005 hurricane damage~Yudislaidy Fernandez

Idyllic existence hangs in the balance~Matt Weiser
~Special thanks~ Aquifornia
~These islands are really bowls. A century of farming and development has depleted their organic peat soils, causing some island interiors to fall more than 20 feet below sea level.
If flooded, these bowls would fill with salty water from San Francisco Bay, contaminating the freshwater supply and requiring painful rationing statewide.
According to researchers, earthquakes and sea level rises anticipated in the next 30 years mean there is a 62 percent chance that a dozen or more islands will flood simultaneously. As these risks grow, such a disaster becomes a virtual certainty by 2075.
"Sooner or later, nature's going to rear up and grab at least part of it back," said Raymond Seed, a UC Berkeley civil engineering professor who diagnosed the '05 levee failures in New Orleans.

The Challenge Clearly Stated
~Searching for Liberty
~Editilla Schem'shillas~Thez Pundits in Canada!
Thez Pundits in Canada! Yaaaasah Ya'Bitcha!

Practical Disaster Recovery For Midsize Companie
~Howard Marks
Editilla T'n'T~Waiting for the Next Disaster


Green Man On A Mission Arrives In Houston For Christmas
~Boswell left Atlanta, GA on December 1st on his two wheels - and so far his fundraising journey has taken him through Mobile, Gulfport, New Orleans and Baton Rouge, among other lesser-known stops.
Boswell's blog can be found here , which has links to his National MS Society site. See the Baton Rouge news clip here.

Hot Shots~Will Coviello







The Katrina Collection
~Art Foundango


Hanukkah Day 2: Yes We Can ~Teruah

New Orleans Producer Darius 'Deezle' Harrison Nominated for Three Grammy Awards

Music star Warren Haynes gives back to community

Lundi~Extra! Extra!

Levees.org, too close for comfort!
~Mon, 22 Dec 2008 WWL Radio's Garland Robinette speaks with Sandy Rosenthal, Founder of Levees.org. Here da'Podcast.
- Attack emails were sent to Levees.org from the Corps of Engineers computers. Did Levees.org get too close for comfort?
Hear shocking new details of the Exquisite Corps' dank nefarious plots to warp the minds of children... or at least ReTell, ReFrame the Lie of their role in the Federal Flood of New Orleans on 8/29!

Algiers Point Anger
~New Orleans Slate

Lundi

Naivety Scene ~Special Thanks~ Karen Apricot

Katrina, the Left,
and New Orleans Today
~We Could Be Famous

MRGO closures on tap
~Amy Wold

Corps-led panel to urge national safety standards for levees
~Peter Eisler

Levees DVD~Modern Marvels

Report sounds alarm on dead zone in the Gulf~Chris Kirkham
~DISCLAIMER! WARNING! BAT SIGNAL!~
Screenshot: Today's Tax-funded Corps/TP Flash Ad

$50 billion Ponzi scheme hits wallets in New Orleans
~Scott Satchfield~WWL

Delegation Urges Hurricane Loan Forgiveness~WDSU

Health panel to visit
~Gerald Shields~Members of a new federal commission are planning to travel to Baton Rouge and meet with state and federal officials over a recent report that some child hurricane victims are not receiving adequate health care.

LaserGrip & LCP--Deadly Duo
~The Shootist

Bonfires of New Orleans,
and Safety~Pistolette

Katrina's American Angels
- KATRINA.COM
~A Christmas Story

Louisiana film industry has record year~Stacey Plaisance

Black and Glitter Christmas Tree ~Nola Nik

Truffle Cups
~Smoky Mountain Café

Stanton Moore’s Signature Snare~bigdrumthump

1941: when whitey's lindy hoppers ruled the earth
~Louis Maistros

The Moldenhauer Archives
~JAZZolilo

Savor the sound of the Crescent City~Wayne Curtis

Dimanche

'Hiccups' mean levees in Iowa won't be fixed by spring
(Click map to enlarge)
~Iowa homes and farm fields in a dozen areas will be protected by damaged levees next spring because U.S. Army Corps of Engineers repairs are running late.
The corps repeatedly predicted that all flood-damaged levees certified by the corps would be fixed by year's end.
Only three of 38 levees and other flood-protection projects requested by local authorities in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri are done, according to corps spokesman Ron Fournier.
A dozen Iowa projects are among those unfinished.
"There have been some hiccups," Fournier said.

Times Picayune brings out the "S" word: SNIPER
Be Afraid...beeee very afraid, especially if you've every been Snipe Hunting. Look out Snipes! Jarvis has got yo'numba and...
the Corps got you in their Sites!

Our View: Regional plan for recovery~The Advocate

Oysters are here to stay Haul expected to be at pre-Katrina levels~J. R. Welsh

Vitter (R-Pamp) to run again
~Gerald Shields