“Last night I tried to post an image of Detroit, but it didn’t work too well, and I deleted it. But, go to Google earth or one of those satellite dealos, and put in Detroit. And then scan in close. Those blocks and blocks of empty space used to be neighborhoods filled with houses. A city that used to have over two million citizens now has eight-hundred thousand and change. The city is broke, and mired in scandals. Yet, the city council feels the need to address Jay Leno’s charitable gesture. ”

More – Detroit’s Beautiful, Horrible Decline, a Time photo series.

I thought it was “culture”.

The abused always kick downwards.
You know, it probably doesn’t need to be suggested, but it seems to me that the video linked has the potential to provide raw footage for years’ worth of Youtube creativity…

Tragedy has struck…

… In upstate New York, a street view car hit a baby deer on Five Points Road – and then recorded the whole thing on Google Maps. Nobody noticed until, well, someone noticed, prompting a Daily What blog post, floods of traffic, and then a sequence of five street-level pictures being removed from the site.

h/t RdeB

A gallery.
You know, had government regulators and manufacturers not conspired to drive the price of a new car beyond the average driver’s annual income, they might actually still sell a few.
h/t Tom.

So it’s not just me…

h/t Fuelishness (who also has a reminder on carbon monoxide dangers).

Michael Daly revisits Caroline Kennedy;

A moment came, you know, as Caroline Kennedy was at, you know, the podium, endorsing Barack Obama, when she tipped her head and, you know, smiled just like her father.
At that instant she seemed to, you know, fill with her father’s spirit, the spirit she had seen, you know, in Obama, the spirit propelling her to, you know, step from the, you know, carefully private existence her mother had, you know, worked so hard to make possible.
In that seemingly impossible privacy, you know, she had raised three fine children with, you know, a husband who is as good a guy as ever walked. Their apartment feels, you know, like a home, with warmth and, you know, talk and laughter and, you know, life.
Among the, you know, books on her shelves are those she wrote and, you know, edited; worthy, you know, serious efforts. “Profiles in Courage for Our, You Know ,Time” is a collection she, you know, compiled and edited in 2002. I wrote the one on, you know, the peacemakers in Northern Ireland and can assure you she is hardworking,disciplined and, you know, smart, yet grounded in, you know, common sense.

You know…
More from Ace;

Also note that with Sarah Palin off the stage (for the moment), it’s safe once again for the MSM to begin pedaling the sexism card. Sexism was an important concern when Hillary was running; then not so much when Palin was being attacked; and now that Princess Caroline is running asking her relatives to make phone calls to get her appointed, it’s back.

With a Mastercharge twist.
*

David Freddoso;

The renowned climate-change crusader and professor of marine biology is Obama’s choice for administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
[…] In the e-mail, [her husband] is enthusiastic about the appointment, but he also mentions the “the hardships it will impose on us and our academic family.” Their solution? “The plan is for her to be in WDC and me to remain in Oregon at OSU, with frequent weekend trips back and forth…”

Every time I’m tempted to write the phrase “never ceases to amaze”, I’m forced to stop myself.
The accounts of western governments (from the local to the federal) kneecapping the very infrastructure upon which modern metropolitan life depends – including reliable electricity, food production, and the transport of essential goods – are so routine now, one can hardly keep track;

Friday eight appointed members of the [California] air board voted to adopt the so called ‘Truck Rule’, which mandates that nearly a million diesel trucks and busses be equipped with a smog filtering device or replaced outright.
[…]
State officials say they have loan programs available to help companies replace their trucks, but Mike Kubar says it’s a racket. He says the state program offers about 50 thousand dollars for trucks that cost upwards of 125k.
And that means a trip to the bank for a huge loan.
“Once you’re in debt, once you sign that piece of paper, and if I don’t have business, then we are deep trouble, he said.
The new regulations start going into effect in 2010 and will phase in over a period of 13 years.
The sweeping new law also applies to trucks registered in other states that drive into California

The day may not be long off when interstate truckers just drop their goods at the border
and let Californians pack them in by mule. The one I’d suggest is January 1, 2010.
h/t Shaken

Just kidding.

The roster of potential victims in what prosecutors said was a $50 billion Ponzi scheme has grown exponentially longer in the past few days. [… ]
A charity in Massachusetts that supports Jewish programs, the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, said it had invested its entire $8 million endowment with Madoff. The organization’s executive director said she doesn’t expect it to survive.
Other institutions that believed they had lost millions included The North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System and the Texas-based Julian J. Levitt Foundation.
Hedge funds and other investment groups looked like big losers too. The Fairfield Greenwich Group said it had some $7.5 billion in investments linked to Madoff. A private Swiss bank, Banque Benedict Hentsch Fairfield Partners SA, said it had $47.5 million worth of client assets at risk.

Well, half kidding. Meaning, I figure there’s a 50-50 chance that his clients will.
Related (in French) – Is Desmerais/Power Corp among them? (Via Bourque)
Bablefish translated

Get a load of this;

Olivia Chow’s Website Hacked
[…] The website, which had a poll asking users to vote, was blatantly ’spammed’ with hundreds of votes, shows the website logs.
The poll which asked voters if they rejected Harper’s economic plans had a 60/40-yes/no split between about 170 votes. Around 11:30 pm yesterday it began gaining hundreds of votes in a few hours, all in favour of ‘no’.
Until that time, the poll only attracted an average of about 10 votes a day and had around 60 percent in favour of Olivia’s position. According to website logs, at 11:36 pm on December 10th, the poll began getting 200-300 votes an hour all suspiciously cast contrary to Olivia’s position.
Early on, the website’s administrator tried resetting it to pre-11:30 pm results, but it was obvious the poll was being spammed by a disingenuous voter, or spamming software set in motion.

Except that the “resetting” operation by her website admin (in which 81 “no” votes were deleted) was performed without any public indication that changes had been made – and long before I linked to it here at SDA.
From the comments – “suspiciously cast contrary to Olivia’s position”. That pretty much says it all right there, doesn’t it?”

h/t Rolf P.

UPDATE: Chow admits to internal administration tampering of her own website poll when votes were “cast contrary to Olivia’s position”. Only in the world of the the NDP!
Oh, dear… This is embarrassing.
10:25 pm

View screenshot

10:45 pm

View screenshot

h/t and screenshot credit to “Anna” !
Flashback to Lorne Calvert’s “Raise A Flag” poll-rigging fiasco. What is it about New Democrat politicians that renders them incapable of accepting rejection from the voters?
You’d think they’d be used to it by now.
Morning update –
Yes! (20%, 112 Votes)
No! (80%, 462 Votes)
Total Voters: 574
8:05 EST, December 11, 2008
And then….

Olivia, thy last name is Chavez!
Update – Now the admitted poll “resetter” is claiming her website was hacked.

h/t ron in kelowna

While there is temptation here to indulge in cheap ridicule of what is surely to be one of the final, sad, chapters of a once gifted life, it’s at times like this that I choose instead to reflect upon a genius we all came to know and love – however long ago it now seems.

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” – Barack Obama

Meet Rep.Henry Waxman of Beverly Hills