Budget Cuts Endanger Agency That Saved Countless Lives in Oklahoma | The Nation


Budget Cuts Endanger Agency That Saved Countless Lives in Oklahoma | The Nation.

This makes for really grim reading…and we know who is at fault.

As a tornado is forming, NWS workers are synthesizing a rapid amount of data from radar, satellites, on-the-ground meteorologists, and citizens calling in what they see. The alerts have to be accurate—and they have to be quick.

“The adrenaline is building up. You’re looking at storms that you know are just really bad,” Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, told The Nation. “It takes a special kind of person because you have to juggle ten or fifteen balls all at the same time, and then make life-and-death decisions based on that.

“It’s an extremely stressful, extremely busy time,” he said. “[It’s like] when an accident is occurring and you have seconds to make a decision as to whether to turn right, or left, or slam on your brakes or whatever—but stretched out over a couple hours. That kind of feeling.”

Five minutes after the tornado touched down on Monday, but twenty minutes before it hit Moore, Oklahoma, the NWS issued a strongly worded “tornado emergency” advisory:

This no doubt saved hundreds of lives in Moore. According to ABC News, the Plaza Towers Elementary School does not have an underground shelter—but the fourth, fifth and sixth grades had enough time to evacuate to a local church, where they remained safe. The entire school building was destroyed.

The NWS deserves enormous credit here. But what if it wasn’t up to the task? That’s an increasingly real possibility. Just this month, Sobien’s group, which represents 4,000 employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (of which NWS is a part), issued a warning that the budget battles are imperiling crucial NWS functions, and creating “[r]educed efficiency and accuracy for tornado events due to reduced alertness of short staffed offices.” Hurricane monitoring and response is also endangered, along with crucial wildfire monitoring efforts and a wide array of other NWS activities.

Since taking control of the House in 2011, Republicans have targeted NOAA for severe cuts—they came out of the gate proposing a massive 28 percent cut in their first budget that year, which was moderated by the end of the process.

 

But the assaults on the NOAA budget continued, and the agency couldn’t escape the sequester, which will lop 8.2 percent from the NOAA budget. This lead the acting administrator to institute an across-the-board hiring freeze in March, and four days of mandatory furloughs are on the horizon. (There is already a 10 percent vacancy rate at the agency.)

This is all occurring at an agency that could badly use more money, not less. The satellite equipment there is badly antiquated, and the Government Accountability Office said the “satellite gap” is one of the thirty biggest threats facing the federal government.

“Remember that bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis? The Weather Service is like that bridge a week before it collapsed,” Sobien said. “The strains are happening. I’m just seeing things just not working the way they should be.”

In fact, amidst all the turmoil yesterday, the NWS suffered some notable problems. In the evening a communications outage affected offices in Chicago; Anchorage; Binghamton, New York; and Kentucky, according to Sobien. The Nation confirmed this outage with an official at the NWS office in Chicago.

In addition, Sobien says the NWS office in Midland, Texas—the next office upstream from Oklahoma City that does upper-air surveillance of storms with weather balloons—declined to do a special weather balloon release after the storm to help monitor conditions because of budget concerns. (An official at that office said he was not aware of that particular situation.)

Those ended up being trivial outages, but next time might be different. If a disaster strikes where a NWS office is under-staffed, it’s easy to see how lives could be lost.

What People From Classic Paintings Would Look Like in Real Life | DeMilked


real life models imitating famous paintings (flora-borsi; courtesy demilked)

real life models imitating famous paintings (image: flora-borsi; courtesy demilked)

What People From Classic Paintings Would Look Like in Real Life | DeMilked.

There’s a strange conceit to this piece as, with the possible exception of the Flora Borsi work, art historians are probably able to vouch for the ‘real life’ nature of the models portrayed.

Strolling in Versailles, France – Thomas Peck – PhotoBotos.com


 

strolling in versailles (image: thomas peck; courtesy photobotos.com)

strolling in versailles (image: thomas peck; courtesy photobotos.com)

Strolling in Versailles, France – Thomas Peck – PhotoBotos.com.

Jewish National Fund UK faces official questions over racial discrimination | The Electronic Intifada


Jewish National Fund UK faces official questions over racial discrimination | The Electronic Intifada.

If it wasn’t so tragic and sad, the irony of this would be hilarious…

In 2005, Israel’s high court found that the JNF, which owns 13 percent of the country’s land and has significant influence over most of the rest, systematically excluded Palestinian citizens of Israel from leasing its property.

In the Naqab, the JNF is involved in projects to “Judaize” the southern desert – known as the Negev in Hebrew. Palestinian Bedouin communities are being compelled to move into American-style reservations dubbed “development towns.”

The “unrecognized” village of al-Araqib, for example, has reportedly been destroyed by Israel and rebuilt around 50 times since 2010.

In October 2012, Budour Hassan reported for The Electronic Intifada that JNF representatives raided the 5,000-strong town of Bir Hadaj (which is ostensibly “recognized”) alongside interior ministry agents, handing out demolition orders. When local youths protested, police invaded, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and some live ammunition.

Secret Sea Otter Site

Reblogged from Everywhere Once:

Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post

True, it’s not a secret. Nothing really is anymore thanks to people like us who blab about everything we find on the internets. But if you’re looking for an up-close encounter with wild and endangered sea otters you may not find a better location than Moss Landing, California.

Read more… 255 more words

Nincompoopery at Work: Cantor’s Con Would Steal Workers’ Overtime Pay by Jim Hightower on Creators.com – A Syndicate Of Talent


Nincompoopery at Work: Cantor’s Con Would Steal Workers’ Overtime Pay by Jim Hightower on Creators.com – A Syndicate Of Talent.

Hey, it’s Tuesday and time for our weekly Jim Hightower fix…  Indeed, another one worth reproducing in full.

My state of Texas seems to have an inordinate share of nincompoops in public office. But it’s only fair that officeholders from other place be considered before deciding which state is the nincompoopiest of all.

Give credit to Pennsylvania, for example, whose GOP governor, Tom Corbett, recently scored big nincompoop points by explaining why his state ranks 49th in job creation.

“Many employers,” the guv grumbled during a radio interview, “say, ‘We’re looking for people, but we can’t find anybody that has passed a drug test.’” Yes, the old my-constituents-are-a-bunch-of-drug-addicts dodge! That’s world-class nincompoopery. Did I mention that Tom’s voter approval rating is down to 38 percent?

But compare Corbett to one of the Lone Star State‘s congress-critters, Steve Stockman. Steve’s re-election campaign has put out a bumper sticker with this uplifting thought: “If babies had guns, they wouldn’t be aborted.” Wow — that’s two nincompoopisms in only eight words!

Still, even Steve can’t hold a candle to Rep. Louie Gohmert, the mouth that never shuts. Vice chair of a House homeland security subcommittee, Gohmert recently revealed an astonishing piece of intelligence on the terrorist threat to the U.S. of A. Al-Qaida, he informed the whole world, has set up radical Islamist camps on the “other side” of the Texas-Mexico border.

Really? No. But the Islamist alarmist proceeded to tell us that Mexican drug gangs are teaching al-Qaida infidels how to cross the border into Texas and to help them fit in. Gohmert says the drug cartels are teaching Islamists how to “act like Hispanics.”

Hmmm, wondered many Latinos on “this side,” how does Louie think one would “act” Hispanic? Sing “La Cucaracha,” drive a low-rider, dress up as landscapers? But “think” is not part of Gohmert’s shtick — his mouth operates on its own without any connection to a brain or reality.

But when it comes to having its share of political nincompoops, few states can keep up with Virginia thanks to the plethora of political stunts by Eric Cantor, the prancing political prissy who serves as the GOP’s House majority leader. He’s presently trying to pull a con on all of us under the guise of helping working families.

Apparently, Cantor thinks he’s too slick to get caught in an outright legislative lie — or maybe he thinks we rubes are too dumb to figure out that he’s trying to slick us.

Either way, a crude deceit is at the very heart of his “Working Families Flexibility Act,” which he recently slid through the House. His bill would eliminate a central piece of America‘s middle-class framework, namely the eight-hour workday and 40-hour week. Under the 1938 Fair Labor Law passed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, bosses can only force hourly employees to work extra by paying an overtime wage for the added hours.

Cantor claims his bill would improve this New Deal protection by letting corporate managers require extra hours on the job without overtime pay by offering “comp time” to the employees. In other words, work more hours now in exchange for taking off those same number of hours later on.

With a wink at corporate lobbyists, Eric slyly refers to this switch as “women-friendly,” allowing working moms the flexibility to decide when to take time off. Therein lies the lie.

It’s not workers who get to decide, but bosses. Note that Cantor’s bill provides no guarantee that employees can actually use the time off they supposedly get by giving up extra pay. In fact, they can use the comp time only if and when the employer says it’s OK — which might be never. Also, even if employees are granted time off, bosses can require them to be on-call during their “free” time.

Cantor’s bill is a flimflam. It hands workplace flexibility to corporations, not to “moms,” while also stealing the hard-won right of workers to be assured of an eight-hour day or extra pay.

For more information, contact the National Partnership for Women and Families at nationalpartnership.org.

Petcube lets you play with your pet, wherever you are


Petcube lets you play with your pet, wherever you are.

Now for something completely different…

It’s good people can connect to their pets at a distance to assist housebound animals to exercise.  What a pity the pet won’t be able to understand it’s their human companion who is intervening in their day.