The education president at work...

psyche.....

And, in baseball news, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays Have also Solved All of Their Problems....

poof!.... that was easy....

Look for the Devil Rays to win the World Series any year now...

Maybe the Duke Blue Devils should take note...

Finally, everything is OK in the Jets organization

I guess...


Also, what's up with all of the Eastern Illinois University alums that are NFL head coaches? EIU is an OK school... Which is to say that I've run into some pretty smart EIU grads over the years. And, their football program is pretty good (interestingly the football program at Western Illinois University is pretty good as well; does anyone remember Bryan Cox?) but what kind of coincidence is it that this school has produced so many NFL head coaches?

From the strange but, apparently, true files...

or, "I caught the gist of it while I was reading it over the shoulder of someone browsing the internet..."*


The Simpsons are going to Dubai!


* This is an actual quote of a friend of mine...

New Washington Post Front Page

Via Kos, very interesting...

Headline: Jets Front Office a Bunch of Morons

So, let me get this straight... The Jets are going to keep their offensive coordinator even though:

- Their offense stunk

- They interviewed the coordinator for the head coaching job and rejected him

- The coordinator's agent describes him as 'grossly unhappy'

Smooth move...

And, by the way, what kind of lawyerly bastardization of the English language is it to describe someone as 'grossly unhappy?'

Serious as a heart attack?

I get pretty excited watching sports, but this is ridiculous.

It's official... new Jets Coach...

Shouldn't Colin be following this story?

Update: For an update comparing Mangini to Belicheck, click here.

Money Quotes...

I've been personally opposed to Ralph Reed from the moment I first learned of him...

Needless to say, I've enjoyed (without any sense of shame) his recent troubles.

But, what made me laugh, was the following quote:

-----------------------------------------------------------
Reed said he helped close an illegal casino in Texas and prevented casinos from coming to Alabama. "Many marriages and lives were saved" and "many children were spared the consequences of gambling because of the work I did."

But, he added, "if I had known then what I know now, I would not have done that work."

at the end of this story.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Priceless.... So, he did work that saved 'marriages and lives... and many children were spared' but, knowing what he knows now he wouldn't haved done that?

But, But, But... What about the children?

In memory of MLK

I live in Houston. Well, actually, I've spent the last month in Houston and am returning today to DC for a few more months. One characteristic of life in Houston is that people who don't live here love to tell me what a shitty place Houston is to live. And, on many points, I have to agree with them.

However, there are some wonderful things about Houston that help make up for all of the bad ones. The Menil Collection and the associated Rothko Chapel being one of them.

What does this have to do with MLK? Today, to help commemorate the life and work of the good Doctor, the Rothko Chapel will reinstall Broken Obelisk, a sculpture that the de Menils installed as a memorial to MLK. The article is especially interesting to read because it recounts the failed attempts of the de Menils originally to have the sculpture installed at Houston's city hall.

It's too bad I won't be able to see it today, but on the other hand, this does give me another reason to look forward to coming back to Houston.

Because Someone has to post around here...

From Steve Chapman, arguably one of the most insightful columnists in Western journalism, the interesting story of a preacher who protests at the funerals of fallen soldiers, asserting that god uses IED's to kill American soldiers so as to show his displeasure at our permissive culture. The reaction of the government is, of course, to ban these protests. Chapman explains why it is wrong for the government to do so.

More on Mozilla

just in case anyone wanted to know more about it...

More on New Orleans

The Rude Pundit went where I went only he brought along his camera. As you look at the pictures of individual houses, remember that alongside the houses are other houses in similar states of destruction. It just goes on and on.... house after house.

Given that there's that stupid Jets Margarita glass to the right...

and that Colin is to Lazy as shit is to stank... I suppose that there ought to be post about the Jets sending Herm Edwards to KC...

Negotiating tip: Note that the Jets managed to get only a fourth round pick for Edwards... It's kinda hard to exercise any leverage when you've already made it clear that you're going to release the guy that the other team wants...

Oh well. It looks like the Jets are returning to another period of sustained mediocrity...

Here's the story if you're interested...

New Orleans: hope and devastation

As I indicated in my prior post, you can still go to New Orleans and have a good time in the French Quarter.

That's the good news.

On the day of New Year's eve, we took a walk out of the French Quarter and headed out towards the Garden District. As we moved uptown, damage that was obscurred the previous evening became apparent. Refrigerators are still on curbs. Some buildings had completely collapsed. There were generally two types of people that we came across in the neighborhoods around lower Magazine street: Latino day laborers and New Orleans residents who wore understandably exasperated expressions on their faces.

By the time we had passed uptown out of the Garden District, the scene seemed to be lighter. There was a large crowd of people enjoying lunch outside at The Bulldog. We ran into another couple on their way, like us, to Casamento's (which, unfortunately, had closed early).

Heading lakeside towards St. Charles Avenue along Napolean, you could feel hopeful for the city's prospects. As we headed back downtown, it was reassuring to see that the majestic Oak trees lining St. Charles Avenue still stood; battered and certainly worse for the storm but like those parts of the city we had seen so far, still there.

The St. Charles Street car still has not returned to service so, after walking a little further, we were lucky enough to catch a cab back down to the Quarter. Our cabbie told us that what we were seeing was merely the surface of the city; the face of the city that tourists were accustomed to seeing. According to her, apart from Uptown, the Warehouse District and the Quarter, the rest of the city was absolutely devastated and uninhabitable. We would see.

later in the afternoon, while eating oysters at the Red Fish Grill, we had commented upon the massive police presence we had seen in the Quarter to the bartender. He explained that there simply wasn't enough 'business' for the police in the rest of the city because those parts had been deserted. So, the police were concentrated where people still were. He further mentioned that when he had called the police when he saw a stranger attempt to enter the other home in his duplex, nine squad cars showed up.

Later that night, trying to get out of the French Quarter to celebrate New Year's eve and the night we met in New Orleans, we found the police had sealed off the streets leading to the Quarter. One cabbie we stopped demanded a minimum of $25 to take us Uptown to Upperline. We had been told that cabs would be plentiful by a variety of people because this night would be the cabbies best chance to make up some of the money they had lost but we found cabs to be fairly rare as we had originally expected. Returning to the Quarter by midnight, we observed that Bourbon was lively, but not nearly thronging with crowds as on previous New Years' eves.

On Sunday, New Year's Day, we went to brunch with a friend of ours who still lives in New Orleans. He proposed to take us out to Arabi and Chalmette before we left for home so that we could see what 'the rest of the city' looked like. In less than ten minutes we were presented with such a disparate contrast that I simply cannot describe how wrenching the experience was.

From an elegant brunch in a largely intact neighborhood, we went across the Industrial Canal to see block after block and house after house destroyed. Whereas the Oaks of uptown still stood, in The Parish we saw massive Oak tree trunks five feet in diameter lying upon their sides. Each building bore the same markings: several horizontal black-grey lines indicating how high the floodwaters reached and then, slowly receded and spraypainted X's indicating when buildings had been searched and what had been found. To see, DOA spraypainted on some homes was chilling. As we started to return to the City, we drove into a recently built neighborhood to see the home of a friend of our friend's. Each home in the neighborhood was similarly devastated. Windows were all knocked out. The grass everywhere was dead. And, in front of each home, it seeemed that the entire contents of each home's interior, furniture, sheetrock, carpets, were piled high.

We were all subdued on the ride home. I don't know how or even if those areas we saw across the Canal will ever be rebuilt.

Further reading:

The Chicago Tribune's Barbara Brotman writes of her own sojourn through the City.

To get a sense of the depopulation of the city, check out this map.

For more on the cleanup effort, read this story