Month: August 2010

Was ‘Restoring Honor’ rally about America, or Glenn Beck?

Posted by dcrim – August 31, 2010

Writing for The New Republic, freelance journalist Alexander Zaitchik —  author of “Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance” — says the decline of the talk show host apparently has been greatly exaggerated. Once again, Zaitchik contends, Beck has been successful in promoting himself and furthering his career.

Writes Zaitchik:

Almost no one who attended Saturday’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the National Mall seems able to cogently explain what, exactly, took place. Was it a thinly disguised political rally? A triumph of Made in America inspirational treacle? A modern-day religious revival? When probed by reporters, happy participants and skeptical observers alike struggled to make sense of the prayerful parade that saw Tony LaRussa, Sarah Palin, and Eveda King take turns at a podium between prerecorded voiceovers about crossroads, awakenings, and miracles. Yet there was one message that the afternoon’s emotional emcee managed to get across with unmistakable clarity: Glenn Beck is still a major force to be reckoned with, and has every intention of staying one.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan has an interesting take on Saturday’s festivities in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Nobel Prize-winning columnist Paul Krugman predicts a repeat of the 1990s if the current trend continues.

The worst high school football play of all time? You decide

Posted by dcrim – August 30, 2010

I suspect this is not how this play was drawn up. I also suspect it would leave even Bill Connell speechless.

Obstacles remain for hydropower to generate energy, profits

Posted by dcrim – August 29, 2010

Jeffrey Tomich of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch exams efforts by developers to use the Mississippi River as a power source at a dozen locations between southeast Iowa and the Missouri Bootheel, including the city of Quincy at Lock and Dam 21.

The city of Quincy last month applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a license to build a 15-megawatt hydroelectric project at Lock and Dam 21. The problem is, that process could take up to a year, and none of the potential equity partners that have expressed an interest in the $100 million project appear to want to commit money until the license is in hand. That means the city can’t tap into $30 million in federal stimulus money unless it spends $5 million of its own money by Dec. 31, or unless that deadline is extended by Congress.

Despite the possibilities hydropower development presents — and experts point out several in the article — trying to raise capital for the expensive projects in this economy, dealing with a “long and arduous” licensing process, the scrutiny facing new technologies and the inevitable environmental concerns are considered the major stumbling blocks.

Writes Tomich:

… They all share a common goal: to harness the river’s flow to cash in on the booming interest in renewable power. But each group likewise faces an undercurrent of financial and regulatory challenges that have dashed developers’ hopes in the past.

Can those hurdles be cleared? That question remains to be answered.

Blagojevich jury holdout explains her reasoning

Posted by dcrim – August 27, 2010

JoAnn Chiakulas, a 67-year-old grandmother, explains why she was the lone holdout in convicting former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich of trying to sell Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat in this Chicago Tribune story.

Not the kind of news you want to hear eight days before opener

Posted by dcrim – August 27, 2010

The Cardinals are stumbling, having lost three straight to the lowly Pirates and Nationals after losing four straight last week to the lowly Cubs and Brewers, so it seemed time to turn our attention to college football. Missouri opens its season Sept. 4 against Illinois in St. Louis. A fourth straight win over the Fighting Illini would be the perfect tonic to get September started on the right foot.

Then this. MU has suspended tailback Derrick Washington, the teams’ best running back, indefinitely. And judging from the story in the Columbia Missourian, “indefinitely” could be a long time.

The stimulus program is about more than creating jobs

Posted by dcrim – August 26, 2010

Writing for Time magazine, Michael Grunwald explores how the stimulus is changing America.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus — has been marketed as a jobs bill, and that’s how it’s been judged. The White House says it has saved or created about 3 million jobs, helping avoid a depression and end a recession. Republicans mock it as a Big Government boondoggle that has failed to prevent rampant unemployment despite a massive expansion of the deficit. Liberals complain that it wasn’t massive enough.

It’s an interesting debate. Politically, it’s awkward to argue that things would have been even worse without the stimulus, even though that’s what most nonpartisan economists believe. But the battle over the Recovery Act’s short-term rescue has obscured its more enduring mission: a long-term push to change the country. It was about jobs, sure, but also about fighting oil addiction and global warming, transforming health care and education, and building a competitive 21st century economy. Some Republicans have called it an under-the-radar scramble to advance Obama’s agenda — and they’ve got a point.

Yes, the stimulus has cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, bailed out every state, hustled record amounts of unemployment benefits and other aid to struggling families and funded more than 100,000 projects to upgrade roads, subways, schools, airports, military bases and much more. But in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, Obama’s effusive Recovery Act point man, “Now the fun stuff starts!” The “fun stuff,” about one-sixth of the total cost, is an all-out effort to exploit the crisis to make green energy, green building and green transportation real; launch green manufacturing industries; computerize a pen-and-paper health system; promote data-driven school reforms; and ramp up the research of the future. “This is a chance to do something big, man!” Biden said during a 90-minute interview with TIME. …

Critics have complained that while the New Deal left behind iconic monuments — courthouses, parks, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Grand Coulee Dam — this New New Deal will leave a mundane legacy of sewage plants, repaved roads, bus repairs and caulked windows. In fact, it will create new icons too: solar arrays, zero-energy border stations, an eco-friendly Coast Guard headquarters, an “advanced synchrotron light source” in a New York lab. But its main legacy will be change. The stimulus passed just a month after Obama’s inauguration, but it may be his signature effort to reshape America — as well as its government.

If you haven’t gotten your fill of the Tiger Woods story …

Posted by dcrim – August 25, 2010

Some excerpts from Elin Nordegren’s interview with People magazine, courtesy of the Associated Press. Nordegren’s divorce from Tiger Woods was finalized Monday. Just a hunch, but People will probably sell a few extra copies of this edition.

On Woods’ infidelities:
“I’m so embarrassed that I never suspected — not a one. For the past 3 1/2 years, when all this was going on, I was home a lot more with pregnancies, then the children and my school.”

On her feelings when she first learned Woods was unfaithful:
“Absolute shock and disbelief. I felt stupid as more things were revealed — how could I not have known anything? The word betrayal isn’t strong enough.”

On the last nine months, since Woods’ infidelities were revealed:
“I’ve been through hell. It’s hard to think you have this life, and then all of a sudden — was it a lie? You’re struggling because it wasn’t real. But I survived. It was hard, but it didn’t kill me.”

On speculation she hit Woods the night of his accident that triggered the revelations about his behavior:
“There was never any violence inside or outside our home. The speculation that I would have used a golf club to hit him is just truly ridiculous. Tiger left the house that night, and after a while when he didn’t return, I got worried and decided to go look for him. That’s when I found him in the car. I did everything I could to get him out of the locked car.”

On why she is speaking out now:
“Before today I haven’t felt ready, but now I see it as a step toward putting it behind me. … I have no intention of addressing these matters again after this interview.”

On whether she’ll be able to forgive Woods:
“Forgiveness takes time. It is the last step of the grieving process. I am going to be completely honest and tell you that I am working on it. I know I will have to come to forgiveness and acceptance of what has happened for me to go on and be happy in the future. And I know I will get there eventually.”

Aldermanic courtesy apparently a thing of the past in Quincy

Posted by dcrim – August 24, 2010

Tony Sassen

It used to be that if both aldermen from a ward either supported or opposed a proposal involving their constituency, the rest of the Quincy City Council went along. It was an unwritten acknowledgment that those aldermen knew what was best for their ward, and other aldermen wanted the same courtesy extended if a thorny issue came up in their ward.

Mike Farha

That went out the window Monday night when all seven Democrats and one Republican voted against the wishes of 4th Ward aldermen Mike Farha and Tony Sassen, both Republicans, on the zoning controversy involving the bungalow at 2002 Maine. Farha and Sassen spent considerable time in recent months talking with Dr. Louis Quintero, who wants to demolish the house and put up a professional building to house his dental practice, and preservationists and nearby residents who opposed losing another century-old structure in the historic district.

Farha and Sassen have mirrored the wishes of most 4th Ward residents by consistently opposing the expansion of commercial zoning in residential areas, perhaps the touchiest issue in the central part of the city. They stayed true to that philosophy after receiving considerable input from both sides, but were undercut by eight aldermen who apparently thought they knew better. Or who maybe voted the way they were told to vote.

We don’t know for sure because six of the eight didn’t utter a word during a debate that lasted nearly an hour.

Blagojevich is back to being Blagojevich

Posted by dcrim – August 23, 2010

Rod Blagojevich just won’t go away. Days after being convicted of one felony and having a judge declare a mistrial on 23 other counts, the impeached Illinois governor was found hawking photos and autographs to raise money at an event in Chicago, and proclaiming that there may be a political comeback in his future.

What if Lou Gehrig didn’t suffer from disease that bears his name?

Posted by dcrim – August 20, 2010

From the New York Times:

The disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease after the baseball player who famously suffered from it. Or so we thought.

The New York Times reports on a study in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology which has found that brain injuries can cause symptoms similar to those of A.L.S. Though the study doesn’t directly dispute that Gehrig suffered from the disease, the Times reports that the authors of the study mentioned the possibility in interviews.

The study does specifically refer to other athletes who had been diagnosed with A.L.S. and who were later found to be suffering from a “different fatal disease, doctors said, caused by concussionlike trauma, that erodes the central nervous system.” Although the truth was discovered after those particular athletes had already passed away, this discovery could effect the future treatment of athletes suffering from A.L.S.-like symptoms.