Reader Lee M. updates: “What to you expect for $165M per mile … four consecutive days of uninterrupted service?“
Previous – Seattle’s brand spanking new parking-lot free light rail system.
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the third (Part I, II) and final special edition of SDA Late Nite Radio pursuant to that singular time in history forty years ago: Apollo 11. Tonight, for your delectation, here is Back to Earth ¤ (6:48), footage of Mission Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin, supported by a cast of 400,000, sailing back from the Sea of Tranquility, Moon, to the Pacific Ocean, Earth, splashdown at 09:50 PDT on July 24, 1969. A Dream; Hard Work; Success. People can, and many do, miss the simple majestic beauty of the Apollo 11 mission, always finding something to complain about, and that’s sad, really, for them. Fortunately, to the benefit of our species, this singular accomplishment now forever stands as a beacon in the navigation charts for the pursuits of the human spirit.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Since Namecalling Is The Order Of The Day
Trumping His Health Care Message With The Race Card
Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?
President Obama may have wanted health care to dominate coverage of his news conference, but at best that topic is sharing space with Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Obama said Cambridge, Mass., police “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates, an African-American scholar who teaches at Harvard; the president also said race “still haunts us,” and that too many blacks and Hispanics are still pulled over without cause.
Was the question a set up?
Obama went out of his way to call on that reporter as the last questioner of the night — even when some confusion about whether he’d called on someone else resulted in his having to go back to her after taking another question.
For a wartime president managing a slew of manufactured “crises” in a reeling economy, he was sure armed with an astonishing level of detail about the arrestee’s side of the story in a local breaking-and-entering case that had resulted in no charges being filed. Obama even had a “spontaneous” joke at the ready about how he himself would probably get “shot” if he ever tried to break into the White House. The joke, of course, fell flat. Trust me on this one (I used to be the guy who decided whether to file federal charges in Westchester County in the first few years after the Clintons moved there): Outside the courtiers of the White House press corps, no one — especially the Secret Service — likes jokes about American presidents getting shot.
And it is just shameful for an American president to describe the police as “stupid” and feed into the racializing of the Gates case. At this early stage, no one has testified, the matter can’t possibly have been thoroughly investigated yet, and the real facts simply aren’t known. Obama, moreover, is not just the president; he’s a lawyer. He’s supposed to know better — though last night he sounded like exactly the sort of lawyer he used to be back in the good ol’ ACORN days.
(Officer’s response and police report.)
Assembly of First Nations: Not Corrupt Enough!
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
FCPP – It is insane to ignore the voices of the people at the bottom who witness a lack of accountability and transparency in Indian Country. One candidate for national chief, on his campaign website, said that, “First Nations leadership has been challenged by unfounded assertions of lack of accountability and integrity.”
CBC – British Columbia businessman Shawn Atleo became the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations on Thursday morning when his sole remaining contender conceded defeat after the eighth ballot.
Related: The AFN Needs Fresh Thinking
“Backstroke”
Just one of the correct answers from the Canadian Citizenship Test (Revised 2009).
SDA Gets Results!
An email from Darcy Moen of Second Time Office Equipment;
Second Time Office Equipment has seen a huge influx of 48 pallets (30 tonne) of ewaste come in during the past few days. The public has turned out in a show of support and dropped off more eWaste at our facility than usual. I suspect it has much to do with the multi-media comments coming from your blog, CTF, and radio.
Our yard is totally full, and we are working a double shift to clear some space.
Reader Tips
Good evening, welcome to the Wednesday (EBD) edition of Late Nite Radio. Tonight we present a song from The Producers, the Mel Brooks musical in which a Broadway producer named Max Bialystock and his accountant Leo Bloom come to the excited, if nervous, realization that they could – theoretically – reap a one-time financial windfall by staging a lavish, guaranteed flop, and then, after the enterprise has collapsed on opening night, pocketing all the money raised for its production.
The two men find what they believe to be the most unimaginably bad play extant — “Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden” — but their carefully chosen worst-ever director, Roger Elizabeth De Bris, considers the play’s ending to be not quite cheerful enough for his tastes, and initially refuses to direct the production even when promised complete artistic freedom to do whatever he wishes with the script and the staging. Eventually his susceptibility to flattery and his desire for a Tony Award gets the better of him and he relents, breaking into song at the very prospect of a Broadway juggernaut in bright lights having his name on the side. When he decides to rewrite the ending so that the Germans win in the end, no moral judgement whatsoever is involved: in De Bris’ happy mind, snappy production values — form, line, and gaiety — will trump the unappetizing facticity of war, destruction and dysentery. And it will work.
In tonight’s selection we see the very moment where the eager yet uncontrollably self-equivocating De Bris is finally convinced to direct the play. Here it is then, without further ado, the cast members of the Broadway production of The Producers — including Gary Beach as Roger De Bris, and Nathan Lane and Mathew Broderick as Bialystock and Bloom respectively — performing the nimble and humorous Keep It Gay.
Your Reader Tips — keep it light, keep it bright — are welcome, as always, in the comments.
SWEEP: Revisiting The Rent Seekers
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation plays “follow the money”;
In 2003, the Electronics Product Stewardship Canada was formed to help influence governments on what environmental legislation was coming. David Betts, formerly of ITAC became its CEO and president. Incredibly, he also became Chair of the Board of SWEEP itself while still holding the EPSC post.
Shortly after the SWEEP program was implemented, David Betts resigned from both SWEEP (see page 3 of the annual report) and the EPSC. On June 1, as soon as his resignations had taken effect, Betts joined the management team at eCycle Solutions where he is currently a vice-president.
Ever since the SWEEP program was first implemented in 2007, Alberta-based eCycle Solutions has been exclusively tasked with recycling the televisions and monitors collected at SARCAN and in B.C.’s similar program. For eCycle Solutions and EPSC companies, industry-led, government-mandated programs have proven lucrative. However, a system that de-emphasizes re-use and restricts private sector participation is second-rate for the environment, consumers slapped with eco-fees, and recyclers shut out of the system.
Lots more at the CTF link, including an eCycle website that’s developed a streak of shyness.
(Click for full size)
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Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Carol Platt Liebau (Harvard Law Review), February 20th – “[Tom Pirelli] did most of the day to day work. Barack Obama was nowhere to be seen. Occasionally he would drop in he would talk to people, and then he’d leave again as though his very arrival had been a benediction in and of itself, but not very much got done.”
CNN Political Ticker, July 21st – One Democratic senator tells CNN congressional Democrats are “baffled,” and another senior Democratic source tells CNN members of the president’s own party are still “frustrated” that they’re not getting more specific direction from him on health care. “We appreciate the rhetoric and his willingness to ratchet up the pressure but what most Democrats on the Hill are looking for is for the president to weigh in and make decisions on outstanding issues…”
Prosperous Times Ahead
This is my brother Mohammed, and this is my other brother Mohammed
It’s as though they all have something in common.
UN report examines Arab world obstacles – A new report by more than 100 independent intellectuals and scholars from Arab countries blames political, economic, social and environmental problems for undermining the lives and freedom of Arabs — coupled with the region’s vulnerability to outside intervention.
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is Mr. Jose Carreras singing Some Enchanted Evening ¤ ¶, from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1949 musical South Pacific, pursuant to the London production in 1986, Jonathan Tunick conducting (3:31).
| Some enchanted evening, Someone may be laughin’. You may hear her laughin’, Across a crowded room. And night after night, |
Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons… Wise men never try. Once you have found her, |
For some value of her.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Y2Kyoto: The Key To Comfort This Summer
Is “layers” (pdf)…
We warned the ladies of Chicago they had three weeks of summer left and that was in late June and we had previously suggested a cooler and wetter bias to summer in our February 2009 outlook for the growing season. Now that the coolness is here we can breathe again. It is not easy living on the edge of a cliff or far out on a limb by oneself in the weather business.
Now that we all know that luck has come our way, let us explain why the cold will not go away for any great length of time in the next few weeks.
Drew Lerner is one of the most respected weather forecasters in agricultural circles;
For a year like this those, frost and freeze events may show themselves earlier than usual. Already in the past ten days there have been bouts of soft frost in Canada’s prairie. No crop damage has come from it, but they occurred in the heart of summer during one of the usually warmest weeks of the year. What will happen later in August when hemispheric cooling begins and the same bias for cooler than usual conditions exists? It just might get cold enough to cause some problems for crops.
This In Vitro Thing Is Spinning Out Of Control
“People over 80 are multiplying faster than any other age group…”
h/t Cal2 and Dutch Canuck, who notes – “Only in a tossed-off aside at the bottom of paragraph 5 do they mention dropping birthrates. Talk about burying the lede!”
Y2Kyoto: The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
Seattle Department of Transport spokesman Rick Sheridan;
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Reader Lee M. writes;
Thus
no parking lots near most of the train terminals. After packing the trains (free fare) over the weekend the new system commenced paid operation this morning and …. around 8 a.m., trains were arriving at Tukwila from downtown Seattle with fewer than 10 passengers aboard.
$165,467,625. That’s the cost of building the system. Per mile.
Mercifully the rail, created to carry passengers from downtown Seattle to the airport, is only 13.9 miles. It’s 15.6 miles from downtown Seattle to the airport. But that’s being fixed.
This boondoggle was created by King County, WA Executive Ron “tax-to-the-max” Sims. Ron is now Obama’s deputy secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
“Livin’ the dream, Sir!”
The latest from Afghanistan, from Michael Yon.
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite
Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is Mr. Roy Clark
performing some version of Malaguena (5:06).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
“I do know for a fact that all jews in the area were notified to stay off of the moon”.
On The View: Barbara Walters comes face to face with her worst recurring nightmare and America comes within a heartbeat of witnessing a television celebrity strangled with her own dreadlocks…
Flashback: Meltdown on the View
They Closed Down All The Freak Shows, Put ‘Em On Discovery Channel
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
NBC, July 19th – “5-Legged Pup Rescued From Coney Island Freak Show”
TLC TV Special , July 15th – “Conjoined Twins: Sister Bond”