Where's the Outrage?

Times-Picayune

I would like to say that I will come up with something brilliant never before said about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. I wish that were true. There have been endless books investigating the Hurricane Katrina tragedy from multiple angles. David Brinkley’s book, the Great Deluge, maybe the most complete. New Orleans’s own daily newspaper, the Times Picayune, has done a magnificent job at relentlessly chasing down details. Finally, Spike Lee’s documentary, When the Levees Broke, personalizes some of the pain and suffering.

Before Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Georges hit the Gulf Coast in 1998 and narrowly missed New Orleans. This hurricane revealed several problems. City, state and federal officials met in 1999 in order to plan an adequate response. The state of Louisiana formally wrote FEMA and requested a planning exercise in August of 2000. It took four years before the exercise actually happened. In July 2004, Hurricane Pam began. There were over 300 participants in this five-day exercise. Hurricane Pam, by all accounts, was a realistic category three hurricane with sustained winds up to 120 mph. Using simulations from the National Weather Service and the US Army Corps of Engineers, the participants simulated over 20 inches of rain falling in parts of southern Louisiana. The storm surge topped the levees. The simulation assumed that over 300,000 people could not get out of the city in spite of mandatory evacuations. They also assumed that over half million buildings would’ve been destroyed. Over 100,000 people were injured and 60,000 killed. This was serious.

After the simulation, an after action report was filed. The most remarkable thing about this after action report is the number of areas where the letters TBA (to be announced) up here in the report. The report is incomplete. Large responsibilities have not been decided. In football, there is a saying, “You play like you practice.” In this case, the simulation showed huge gaps in our response. In reality, there is huge gaps in our response. In my opinion, any serious look at Katrina must start with a look at Hurricane Pam and the inter-agency problems that Pam revealed.

Tags: Bush Administration, Katrina by ecthompson
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We are all focusing on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast as we remember Hurricane Katrina. Let me start by saying I love NOLA. I love the people and the culture. I started blogging just a couple months before Katrina. I knew that the levees had broken hours before MSN reported it because of discussion boards on the Internet.

I took this picture in 9th ward 3 years ago.

9th ward

So what are the lessons?

• there should be no political considerations when doling out aid
• experts are experts for a reason. They should be in charge of planning and resource management.
• we as Americans do a bad job of planning for future problems. Money was consistently diverted from the levees into projects that would give politicians “more to run on.”
• there is no excuse … We must get help to everyone within 48 hrs. There is no excuse.
• this could happen again.

What are your thoughts? What lessons have you learned?

From HuffPo (written by Janet Napolitano):

We’ve also made tremendous progress since Katrina and Rita in improving our country’s ability to prepare for, respond to and recover from major disasters of all kinds.

An example of this progress is the recovery efforts this summer following the worst flooding in more than a century in Nashville, Tenn. These floods took the lives of more than 30 individuals, devastated communities, and threatened the safety and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of residents. Despite this historic damage, our swift and effective response demonstrated what a difference preparation, coordination between federal, state, and local governments, and the quick deployment of resources to local communities can make.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, played a key role in the government’s response. But as our FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate would be the first to say, preparing for — and responding to — disasters truly is a shared responsibility. While we continue to strengthen and streamline efforts to prepare for disasters at the federal level, citizens, families, communities, faith organizations, and businesses all have an important role to play in our collective response to emergencies.

Tags: Domestic Issues, Katrina by ecthompson
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If you haven’t seen Spike Lee’s new documentary on New Orleans, you haven’t seen a Spike Lee documentary on New Orleans. Yes, I know that his first documentary was great, powerful, in-your-face, raw, truthful, emotional and more. This is all that and more. The HBO special, If God is will and da creek don’t raise, is Lee’s latest look at New Orleans and the Gulf five years after Katrina. This is must-see TV.

So, we placed the blame for the slow government response on Michael Brown, the hapless head of FEMA at the time. New documents appear to show that Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, may have been the man with the deer in the headlights look in his eyes.

The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the “principal federal official” in charge of the storm.

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina’s early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff — not Brown — was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government’s blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn’t shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department. (more…)

Tags: Katrina by ecthompson
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I don’t talk about climate change enough on this blog. I just don’t have the time to read everything. At least that’s my excuse. Here’s a great post from DK:

It was the scandal that never was, which was the true scandal. It was one of the most shameful episodes in the annals of climate change denialism, and given the desperate efforts of the corporate interests that profit so mightily off such staggering irresponsibility, that’s no mean feat. But so many traditional media outlets have become little more than propaganda arms of their corporate owners that their obscuring, obfuscating and sometimes just plain lying about the scientific facts is just more of the same. It’s only the most dangerous crisis humanity has ever faced, but to them that’s less important than their rapacious greed. It’s time for a bloggers’ ethics conference.

The real story was that thieves hacked the private emails of respected climate scientists. That’s a crime. That should have been at least part of the focus of the reporting: a false scandal was being concocted by people who were, at face value, criminals. But the larger part of the story was that it was a deliberate effort to distort and distract from the scientific facts. That, too, should have been at least part of the reporting. Instead, so many major media outlets played along, ignoring the criminality, and propagating the distortions and lies exactly as the criminals wanted. Even though the distortions and lies were easily debunked. All it took was intelligence and integrity, rarely found in the major media, although they could be found, elsewhere.

One of the best concise refutations of the false scandal came from our ownDarkSyde, one of those lowly blogger types. Brian Angliss of Scholars & Rogues provided one of the best comprehensive refutations, in a series of posts: here, here, here, and here. Another of those bloggers. And a couple weeks back, Salon’s Alex Pareene had what should be, but certainly won’t be, the false scandal’s death knell:

It was obvious to anyone who actually bothered to read the stolen “climategate” emails that they didn’t actually contain anything particularly scandalous, and they certainly didn’t contain anything at all that remotely called into the question the legitimacy of years of science demonstrating the effect of human activity on climate change.

But once the name “climategate” was affixed to the trumped-up non-scandal and printed in large type in a major newspaper, it didn’t matter what the emails said. Not a whit. Emails, scandal, “-gate” — there must be something to this!

There wasn’t.

More here…

Tags: Environment by ecthompson
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From time to time, my conservative friends and followers have accused me of being blind. They have asserted that my admiration for Barack Obama has no bounds; therefore, I have completely lost my objectivity. No, I don’t think I’m blind, but I have cut this president a significant amount of slack. I am hoping that the president begins to craft policies on civil liberties that parallel progressive ideals and his rhetoric. For the last couple of months, I feel as though I’ve been watching an episode of The West Wing, an episode where President Bartlet is not really making decisions but is instead just sticking his toe in the water to see how it will play politically.

I watched the President’s speech last night with great anticipation. I was almost salivating. I was hoping the president would boldly do something, anything. Now, I’m not one of those who has been criticizing the president for not fixing the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. I know that he is not an engineer and does not have a degree in oceanography or hydrodynamics. He is the president of the United States, however, and he should have and could have introduced some programs, to be reimbursed by BP, for the Gulf Coast residents. He could have and should have asked Congress to introduce legislation to restore the Superfund. This fund would be used to clean up toxic spills like this. The fund would be paid for by taxes and fines on industry. He did none of this. Basically he said nothing new. I found it extremely disappointing.

Let me get back to civil liberties — out of all the issues I had with the Bush administration, this was the worst. The Bush administration claimed that the president had the power to detain somebody indefinitely, without trial. The Bush administration claimed that to protect the United States they should be able to snatch somebody and take them somewhere without any judicial oversight — renditions. All of this has been endorsed by the Obama administration. As a matter fact, in court, the Obama administration has been arguing to keep all of the Bush administration’s transgressions in place. I was hoping that Barack Obama would slowly and steadily phase out these transgressions. Not only has he not phased them out, he has aggressively embrace them. Mister President, as one of your biggest supporters, I ask you to stop this.

Glenn Greenwald has a lot more:

When ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero last week addressed the progressive conference America’s Future Now,he began by saying:  ”I’m going to start provocatively . . . I’m disgusted with this president.”  Last night, after Obama’s Oval Office speech, Jon Stewart began his show with an 8-minute monologue on Obama’s executive power and civil liberties record which, in essence, provided just some of the reasons why Romero’s strong condemnation is so justified.  None of this will be remotely new to any readers here, but it’s still nice to see its being distilled so clearly by a voice which even the most hardened Obama loyalists have decided is a credible and trustworthy one (at least when he’s mocking Sarah Palin and exposing Fox News; we’ll see what reaction this provokes from them, if any).  One point:  contrary to the blatant strawman incessantly raised by those loyalists, note that the criticisms here are not grounded in complaints that Obama has failed to act quickly enough to usher in progressive policies — let’s repeat that:  the vast bulk of criticisms of Obama are not grounded in complaints that he has failed to act quickly enough to usher in progressive policies — but are insteadbased on horrendous policies which Obama himself has affirmatively and explicitly adopted as his own, many of which directly contradict what he vowed to do as President (speaking of which:  see this NYT Editorial today lambasting what it describes as the Obama administration’s disgraceful and inexcusable conduct in the Maher Arar case):

Tags: Civil Liberty, Environment, Legal, Obama administration, Supreme court by ecthompson
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It is sad when you are so old that it takes you several days to recover from a very busy day in the hospital. Anyway, I would like to throw a couple things to you on a Wednesday evening.

Microsoft vs Apple

• The US government has ordered British Petroleum to use a less toxic disbursement. I was just wondering, when they use the disbursement where does the oil go? If we’re just spreading it around, how is that helpful?
• Is Apple King of the hill? Is Microsoft yesterday’s news?
• BP may be intentionally underestimating the amount of oil that’s being released into the Gulf in order to save the company millions of dollars.
• Former Detroit mayor gets 18 months in jail for being a moron. I’m not sure how he figured he would be able to lie in court and get away with it.
• James O’Keefe pleaded guilty to tampering with Senator Mary Landrieu’s phone. I’m not sure how he only got a $1500 fine and 100 hours of community service. That seems a little light to me. If I tried to tap a senator’s phone, I wonder how much I would be looking at. Just a fine for me. It would never happen.
• As the president works to end the stupid policy of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, conservatives are pulling out all the stops. Conservative talker Bryan Fischer has stated that Hitler used gay soldiers. (Notice that anything that conservatives don’t like must be associated with Hitler.) The Family Research Council has stated that ending the discriminatory policy will mean more gay rape in the military. Their logic is crazy and convoluted.
• New study suggests the best time to act on climate change and the energy bill is right now.
• Glenn Beck is crazy.
• The only reason that Texas was able to balance their budget was the stimulus package. Serendipity?
• A black bear was spotted roaming in downtown Asheville earlier today. You don’t see this kind of excitement in Atlanta!

Tags: Big Oil, Business, Domestic Issues, Environment, Media, Military by ecthompson
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Oil reaches Louisiana

I have never been a Dick Cheney fan. So, with that as the backdrop, I must say that an article in the Wall Street Journal (of all places) seems to point the finger at the former vice president. When he was having his secret meetings with Big Oil companies, these companies asked for and got a pass on buying expensive devices that help prevent blows like the one off the coast of Louisiana.

Now, I don’t know if this is true or not. Over the next several days, newspapers and TV reporters will start doing their jobs and investigate the situation. TPM has a nice timeline of this disaster. What is clear is that we were told a story, a fairy tale. For the first two days, we were focused on the lost workers. Where were they? There was nothing about this being one of the largest spills in US history. There was nothing about a spill at all. Then, on day three or four, we heard there might be some leaking oil. Is this all one big cluster?

From WSJ:

The oil well spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico didn’t have a remote-control shut-off switch used in two other major oil-producing nations as last-resort protection against underwater spills.

The lack of the device, called an acoustic switch, could amplify concerns over the environmental impact of offshore drilling after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig last week.

The accident has led to one of the largest ever oil spills in U.S. water and the loss of 11 lives. On Wednesday federal investigators said the disaster is now releasing 5,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf, up from original estimates of 1,000 barrels a day.

U.S. regulators don’t mandate use of the remote-control device on offshore rigs, and the Deepwater Horizon, hired by oil giant BP PLC, didn’t have one. With the remote control, a crew can attempt to trigger an underwater valve that shuts down the well even if the oil rig itself is damaged or evacuated. (more…)

Watch this video:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tags: Big Oil, Environment by ecthompson
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A couple of days ago, I was going to post something on a mining disaster in China. Over 100 miners were trapped for more than a week. Somehow, 115 miners were rescued. They were alive. Before I had a chance to really investigate what happened and how they were saved, we had our own mining disaster. I hate these things. I really do. I believe we should be able to work and have a reasonable expectation of coming home — alive. There are some jobs that carry the risk of death — police officer, firefighter — to name a few. You should be able to work and in a safe environment. That should be our right here in the United States. It may turn out that there was no culpability and that this disaster, this horrible explosion, was a freak accident. Maybe, but I doubt it. Mining is dangerous. This is a fact. Whether you are in Russia, China or here in the United States, digging long tunnels underground and extracting a particular rock does carry an inherent risk. I know that some progressives are calling for tighter regulations and that may be needed. Right now, I just want our government to enforce the regulations that we have. I know that if I’m driving my car and I collect over 1000 violations, I won’t be driving my car anymore. (BTW, where is Obama? I’m just asking.)

My heart goes out to those who have lost their lives and their families who have to live on without them.

Update: I got an e-mail from Newsy.com. Check this out. I think that it is very well done.

From Political Animal:

Ten years ago, the Big Branch Refuse Impoundment, a giant coal-waste reservoir owned by Massey in Inez, Kentucky, sprung a leak that flooded nearby waterways with so much sludge that it was declared the largest environmental catastrophe in the history of the Southeastern United States — bigger, in fact, than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The Monthly published a piece from Clara Bingham several years ago on the disaster.

On Oct. 11, 2000, in Inez, Ky., a town of 500 in the heart of the state’s coal fields, a coal-waste reservoir the size of 306 Olympic-size swimming pools sprang a leak. Within six hours, 300 million gallons of thick sludge had flooded out of the Big Branch Refuse Impoundment, a hilltop facility owned by Martin County Coal, and into two tributaries of the Big Sandy River, which courses along the Kentucky-West Virginia border before emptying into the Ohio River.

The gooey mixture of black water and coal tailings traveled downstream through Coldwater and Wolf creeks, and later through the river’s main stem, Tug Fork. Ten days later, an inky plume appeared in the Ohio River. On its 75-mile path of destruction, the sludge obliterated wildlife, killed 1.6 million fish, ransacked property, washed away roads and bridges, and contaminated the water systems of 27,623 people. Incredibly, no lives were lost. Even so, the EPA declared the spill the largest environmental catastrophe in the history of the southeastern United States. In fact, the Inez disaster was almost 30 times larger than the infamous Exxon Valdez tanker spill, which dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

The company that owned the waste impoundment, a subsidiary of Massey Energy, the fourth largest coal producer in America, claimed that the flood was caused by an “act of God.” Jack Spadaro, superintendent of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy, a training facility for the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) based in Beckley, W. Va., was part of the team assembled by MSHA to investigate. Working with eight colleagues from MSHA, an arm of the Department of Labor that regulates the coal industry, Spadaro began interviewing engineers, miners, and mine company officials to determine what had caused the impoundment to break. The investigation, which began on the eve of the 2000 presidential election, had within a month begun to collect evidence that Spadaro’s team believed could prove negligence on the part of Martin County Coal.

The evidence was never published — the Bush administration, the beneficiary of generous support from Massey CEO Don Blankenship, intervened to quash the investigation. (Indeed, the Bush administration’s record on mining oversight was itself scandalous.)

Brad Johnson also has a good piece on this today, including details surrounding a deadly fire which broke out in the Massey-owned Aracoma Alma mine in 2006, burning two men alive.

Coal River Valley activist Lorelei Scarbro, meanwhile, told CNN, “Massey Energy’s record speaks for itself. With an enormous amount of violations and previous deaths at this mine, I will leave it to you to decide if this company puts profits before the safety of its workers or views its employees as a disposable commodity.”

Tags: Environment by ecthompson
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The rope-a-dope was made famous by Mohammad Ali, used most famously against George Foreman. Ali would make an opponent think that he was helpless and the opponent would punch himself out. Once the opponent has punched himself out, Ali begins a thunderous attack. Is this what we’re going to see from President Obama?

Yesterday President Obama announced that he was going to open new areas to offshore drilling. Offshore drilling? Is this progressive president we voted for? Offshore drilling is not a progressive position. This is something that Republicans have been asking for for years. More domestic drilling… is this part of an overall strategy for climate change because, if so, we’re heading in the wrong direction, unless Barack Obama has an ace up his sleeve.

Is it possible, from a political standpoint, that Barack Obama is giving away something in order to pressure the Republicans into giving up something on climate change? This is the only reason I can think of for offshore drilling.

As if to balance out the awful news of more drilling, the White House announced several new initiatives today. The EPA is going to put new restrictions on mountaintop mining. Think of mountaintop mining as stripmining on steroids. Mountaintop mining is extremely destructive to the environment. This restriction is something that progressives have wanted for a long time.

The White House also announced new fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks. Average fuel efficiency should be 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. This is intended to save oil and push more car manufacturers to hybrids.

So, what do you think? Is Obama trying to outsmart the Republicans or did he just cave in?

Tags: Big Oil, Economy, Environment, Obama administration by ecthompson
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I think it is kind of amusing that there is a large group of people who question the science of global warming (climate change secondary to man’s burning hydrocarbons). So I thought the best way to illustrate the craziness of the deniers would be to ask, how do you know oxygen exists? Almost all of us had some sort of biology and chemistry in high school. We did some sort of experiment and hopefully did not blow up the lab. I think that most of us remember the experiment that we did using a technique called electrolysis. We took water and passed an electric current through. Hydrogen went into one tube and oxygen into the other. But, how do we know that was oxygen? We’ve been told, over and over, that oxygen makes up 21% of our atmosphere. But you can’t see oxygen. You cannot taste it. (More about oxygen here.) How we know? Well, it is based on the molecular theory. Molecular theory? It’s a theory, not a proven fact.

This is the same line of questioning that the deniers are using. Yet, the same scientific methods that convinced us that oxygen exists have been used to prove climate change secondary to man’s burning of fossil fuels.

Climate change. Conservatives have taken this term and run with it. They played on the fact that most Americans know a little bit of science, but not much. Most of us remember that there were many ice ages. The earth warmed iand the ice receded. The earth cooled down and the ice proceeded over the large continents. So, every time a scientist mentions climate change, conservatives point to this natural cycle. They then ask, “how do we know that the warming trend that we’re seeing now is not part of this natural cycle?” Before I get to this answer, let me add one other thing. One of the final arguments that deniers use is that the world is so big and you and I are pretty small compared to the size of the world. How can we, as God-fearing little human beings, have an impact on this great big world of ours? This is probably the deniers’ weakest and simplest arguments. There are multiple ways to refute this argument. Let me just say that currently scientists have tested the air in California and have detected pollutants that were generated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, in China. Therefore, what happens in one part of the world can have an impact on people thousands of miles away.

How can climatologists point to some of the events that are happening now as evidence of climate change secondary to man’s burning fossil fuels? Well, thankfully, I don’t have to come up with an experiment off the top of my head. Smart people, scientists, have done this for us. There are a few places in the world that don’t change all that much. As a matter fact, they haven’t changed for thousands of years. One place would be Antarctica the other would be Greenland. In these two places, it gets extremely cold. The ice in some places is several miles thick. NASA explains it like this:

Throughout each year, layers of snow fall over the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Each layer of snow is different in chemistry and texture, summer snow differing from winter snow. Summer brings 24 hours of sunlight to the polar regions, and the top layer of the snow changes in texture—not melting exactly, but changing enough to be different from the snow it covers. The season turns cold and dark again, and more snow falls, forming the next layers of snow. Each layer gives scientists a treasure trove of information about the climate each year. Like marine sediment cores, an ice core provides a vertical timeline of past climates stored in ice sheets and mountain glaciers.

Tags: Big Oil, Environment by ecthompson
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The Obama administration is making a new effort to protect barrier islands and other coastal areas in the Gulf of Mexico area. Mississippi and Louisiana seem to be a specific focus of this program.

(Above–A picture of Ship Island off the Mississippi coast. In the background you see Fort Massachusetts. The federal government controlled the island in the Civil war and used the island as a prison for Confederate soldiers. Black combat units were also trained on Ship Island. Here are facts about Ship Island.)

From the Associated Press article on the Obama Gulf Coast effort—

“Since the 1930s, the Mississippi River delta has been slowly falling apart and eroding due to levee construction, oil drilling hurricane damage and other factors. Louisiana has lost about 2,100 square miles of coast and loses about 25 square miles a year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey…With sea levels on the rise due to global warming, experts warn that much of south Louisiana and Mississippi are at risk of being lost for good.”

Here is the full story.

This sure is interesting. You’d think that the good folks down in Mississippi  and Louisiana might oppose federal dollars to help remedy the effects of the great scam of global warming.

Here is a recent New York Times story about how people who think evolution is not real, are now adding global warming to their list of hoaxes.

I’m out of patience with this stuff. People are free to believe what they wish. Freedom of religion is a principle our nation is founded upon. But schools and public debates are places for facts. They are not places for ideologically-driven lies.

Maybe a referendum should be held in Mississippi and Louisiana to be sure that folks in these places believe in global warming. We don’t want to be wasting taxpayer dollars.

Here is a Times of London story about the possible impact of global warming on people and animal life across the globe.

Here is more from the Associated Press story—

“Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said the report “clearly demonstrates a positive shift in direction, but must be coupled with aggressive action on the ground — turning dirt. There is no time for delay.”

You are reading this correctly—Republican Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana wants some swift federal action to help address a problem in his state.

Here is how Governor Jindal felt about federal money last year–

“Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced Friday that he will decline stimulus money specifically targeted at expanding state unemployment insurance coverage, becoming the first state executive to officially refuse any part of the federal government’s payout to states.”

I see.

Here is the White House press release about this federal help that the people of Mississippi and Louisiana will no doubt be glad to take.

From the release–

“Ultimately, successful implementation of the shared vision depends on access to the best available science in a form that is useful for management decisions.  The Working Group will assess current capacities and identify gaps in science so the Federal-State vision will be implemented based on the best information.”

I put the term “best available science” in bold so that nobody would miss what is being said. The Feds are coming down South to cram global warming down the throats of the people. Time for a tea party!

Is Republican Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi going to tolerate this federal intrusion?

From Think Progress, here is a portion of Mr. Barbour’s record on the environment from when he was a corporate lobbyist–

“Back at his lobbying firm in early 2001, Barbour was hired “to help apply pressure in all the right places.” He convinced President Bush to break his campaign promise to reduce global warming pollution from power plants. Barbour’s memo “Bush-Cheney Energy Policy & CO2” belittled global warming as a “radical fringe issue,” and called the regulation of carbon dioxide pollution “eco-extremism.” He urged the President Bush to avoid making decisions informed by science, which would “trump good energy policy, which the country has lacked for eight years.”

Here is the full report on Mr. Barbour’s record on the environment.

The federal government has dominion over the states. In this case, the federal government is going to provide help for Mississippi and Louisiana no matter if they like it or not.

(Below–Fort Livingston on Grand Terre Island off the coast of Louisiana. This fort, named after a political figure from New York, was built by the federal government and fell back into federal hands after the fall of New Orleans in the Civil war. Here are some facts about Grand Terre Island.)

Tags: Domestic Issues, Environment by Texas Liberal
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I’m getting pretty tired of snow. Asheville is getting a good dose right now. Going to shovel the front drive right now.

Tags: Environment by ecthompson
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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From CNN.com:

A massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck Chile early Saturday, producing powerful aftershocks and triggering a tsunami.

The epicenter of the earthquake was located off the coast in Maule, near the city of Concepcion, 212 miles (341 kilometers) from the capital of Santiago. The quake struck at 3:34 a.m. (1:34 a.m. ET).

At least 47 people have been confirmed dead, according to government officials, with the death toll expected to rise.

Concepcion is Chile’s second largest city with a population of 200,000. There are reports of collapsed buildings in Santiago. The quake was felt in several Chilean towns and in parts of Argentina as well. Some buildings in Buenos Aires were evacuated.

“This is a major event. This happened near some very populated areas,” said Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist with USGS. “With an 8.8, you expect damage to the population in the area.” (more…)

Tags: Environment, Foreign Affairs by ecthompson
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It is sad to say that I recognized almost everyone in this video. There are only one or two people about whom I don’t have a clue. Man, I’m old, but this is a great song and a great effort. Please don’t forget to give to Haiti.

Artists: Lionel Ritchie, Michael Jackson, Kim Carnes, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Kenny Rogers, Paul Simon, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Willie Nelson, Al Jarreau, Kenny Loggins, Steve Perry, Hall and Oates, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, James Ingram, Ray Charles and a few others
Tune: We are the World

Tags: Environment, Music by ecthompson
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I’m glad that they remade this great tune. I’m old, so I could only recognize about 20 artists. How many can you recognize?

Download this video off iTunes and a portion of the moolah will go to Haiti. I have a donate button so that you can donate through the Red Cross.

Tags: Environment by ecthompson
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I have been travelling and my blog has been giving me the finger over the last couple of days. I think that we have the issues solved.

• Gave a talk at DRI yesterday. I think it was well received. I didn’t hear any snoring.
• Luger dies in Vancouver. Very sad. You shouldn’t die playing a sport.
• Huge offensive has been launched in Afghanistan. I think that the media has done a very poor job informing us about what’s at stake in Afghanistan and why Obama has decided to stay in Afghanistan. This is just the opposite of what happened in the run up to the war in Iraq.
• It appears that a school secretary was fired for speaking Spanish to some parents. I sure hope that this story is wrong.
• So is the Healthcare Summit on or off? The White House has sent invitations to key Congressional leaders for this summit. It still isn’t clear that the Republicans will participate. At least it isn’t clear to me.
• Polar ice cap is getting worse.
• American seems to be souring on Palin and the Tea Baggers.
• There was a university school shooting. This time no students were injured. The shooting occurred at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Three people are dead.
• Washington Post chief political guru David Broder wrote one of the worst columns that I have read in the last four or five years. The whole column is one big delusion about how politically great Sarah Palin is. C&L and Glenn have a few words to say about Broder and Sarah the Great. I can only add Jon Stewart’s thoughts below:

Tags: Afghanistan, Education, Environment, General, Healthcare, The Daily Show, Virginia Tech Shooting by ecthompson
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I knew this was coming. Who’s surprised?

From TP;

Last night on his Fox News show, Sean Hannity claimed that the recent spate of winter snow storms in the Washington, D.C. region clearly means that the planet isn’t warming. He then attacked Vice President Gore, calling his anti-global warming advocacy “hysterical”:

HANNITY: And tonight’s “Meltdown” is brought to you by the D.C. snow storm, you know, the storm that dumped about two feet of snow on the Washington area over the weekend causing thousands of power outages and keeping many people home from work today. And it’s the most severe winter storm in years, which would seem to contradict Al Gore’s hysterical global warming theories. [...]

Pretty unbelievable. I bet the snow even kept Al Gore’s jet from taking off.

Because of the recent snow storms in the Northeast, many conservatives like Hannity have taken the opportunity to take cheap shots at Gore. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and his family mocked the former Vice President by building an igloo on the National Mall and calling it “Al Gore’s new home.” And Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) joined in as well,tweeting today that, “It’s going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries ‘uncle.’”

As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has explained, “winter snows do not invalidate the reality that the planet just experienced the hottest decade on record. Scientists have been warning for decades that global warming would increase the severity of winter storms.” And a recent National Wildlife Federation report has found that winter storms are getting fiercer even as the season gets warmer.

Climate expert Dr. Jeff Masters notes, “It’s not hard at all to get temperatures cold enough for snow in a world experiencing global warming. … Global warming theorypredicts that global precipitation will increase, and that heavy precipitation events…will also increase,” he said, adding that this “occurs because as the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air.” Indeed, the IPCC has said that atmospheric moisture has increased 5 percentover the last century.

Tags: Environment, Party Politics by ecthompson
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I can’t think of anything that would be worse… feeling so helpless that you give your own children away.

From CNN.com:

In the devastating January 12 earthquake, he lost the meager home he had sitting on a hillside in Calebasse.

“I can’t stand that they were suffering here,” Laurentus said. “I had confidence in the Americans. I trusted them.”

So Thursday night, when Silsby came with a bus, he placed his girls, Soraya, 4, and Leila, 5, on two seats towards the front. He didn’t pack any of their things, he said. Not even their teddy bear. The American woman had bags filled with clothes, toys and snacks. (more…)

Tags: Environment, Foreign Affairs by ecthompson
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I just thought that this was remarkable.

From BBC:

A man has been pulled alive from the rubble in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, two weeks after the earthquake which destroyed the city.
He was rescued from the ruins of a building in the centre of the city, and taken to hospital by US troops.

Officials said it seemed he had become trapped by an aftershock two days after the quake and was severely dehydrated.

The rescue comes 14 days after the 7.0-magnitude quake, which killed as many as 200,000 people. (more…)

Tags: Environment, Foreign Affairs by ecthompson
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* The Errington Thompson Show will be streaming live at 9 AM. My special guests are Linda Monk, constitutional scholar and author of the fabulous book, The Words We Live By. We’ll talk about the new Supreme Court ruling and what this means to campaign finance and free speech. I will also talk with Patrick Fitzsimmons, the executive director of Western North Carolina’s Red Cross. We will talk about the relief efforts in Haiti.

* Speaking of Haiti, did you see that fabulous benefit concert last night? That was amazing. Have you given?

* Britain has raised its terrorist threat alert to its second-highest level — severe. In their scale, severe means that an attack is highly likely. This can’t be good.

* A huge storm, which battered California for several days and cause mudslides and flooding, is now over Arizona. Northern Arizona has received record snowfall and southern Arizona is seeing massive flooding.

* Looks like somebody is planning on running against John McCain.

* Air America Radio is out of business, again. I’m not sure why anybody over there can’t get progressive radio right. Is it really that hard?

* Democrats are doing their best to screw up health-care reform. It now appears that the House is going to reject the Senate’s version. The Senate, of course, are ready scratched the House version. I was just wondering if any Democrat will show leadership on this issue?

* A school bag containing Kermit the frog caused a Colorado charter school to close for several hours.

Tags: Environment, Healthcare, Legal, Party Politics, Terrorism by ecthompson
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