GOLD!!!

Graceful Gabby Douglas courtesy of Huffington Post

Congratulations to the U.S. Womens Gymnastic Team for winning their first Gold Medal in 16 years!

Another Post-K Milestone

Almost seven years post Katrina, St. Bernard Parish is celebrating a brand new hospital.



The three-story, 40-bed hospital includes an Emergency Department and an Intensive Care Unit, along with a full range of healthcare services: general medicine, general surgery, orthopedics, urology, endoscopy, radiation therapy, physical therapy and skilled nursing. The hospital could be expanded to 60 beds without additional construction because its design calls for private rooms that would be large enough to be converted to semi-private rooms. The overall size of the hospital could be further increased to 100 beds through additional construction in the form of vertical and horizontal expansions.

Chalmette Medical Center, the parish’s lone hospital, flooded in Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and never reopened.



Virtually every structure in Chalmette was damaged/flooded after Katrina. Take a ride through St. Bernard Parish and you can still find empty slabs next to rebuilt homes.



Kudo's to the Parish!

A Tour of New Orleans' Hubig's Pie Factory

A Tour of New Orleans' Hubig's Pie Factory | WWOZ New Orleans 90.7 FM  from WW0Z.

A Sad Day for NOLA

picture courtesty of Will T from Flickr

As I was driving into work this morning I heard about the 5 alarm fire at the Hubig Pie Company in New Orleans.



While walking from my car into work, I could both see and smell the smoke. It's a sad day. Not sure about the outcome of this tragedy. But you can be sure I'm going to the store after work and stock up on some Hubigs.



A Hubig employee on the radio said the building is completely gone. Sigh

But they'll be back. Here's a little history of the other tragedies they have come back from .

Here's an article from the New York Times about the fire.

One of My Favorite Olympic Memories

Windows Wednesday

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Downtown Covington, Louisiana.

Buying the 2012 Election

From politicususa dot com: Senator Bernie Sanders exposes the billionaires buying the 2012 election

According to the report, America for Sale: A Report on Billionaires Buying the 2012 Election, here are the 26 billionaires who are trying to buy your government:



1). Sheldon Adelson,78, owner of the Las Vegas Sands Casino, is worth nearly $25 billion, making him the 14th wealthiest person in the world and the 7th richest person in America. While median family income plummeted by nearly 40% from 2007-2010, Mr. Adelson has experienced a nearly eightfold increase in his wealth over the past three years (from $3.4 billion to $24.9 billion). Forbes recently reported that Adelson is willing to spend a “limitless” amount of money or more than $100 million to help defeat President Obama in November.



2. The Kochs (David, Charles, and William), 72 76 and 72 respectively, are worth a combined $103 billion, according to Forbes. They have pledged to spend about $400 million during the 2012 election season. The Kochs own more wealth than the bottom 41.7 percent of American households or more than 49 million Americans.



3. Jim Walton, 64, is worth $23.7 billion. He has donated $300,000 to super PACs in 2012.



4. Harold Simmons, 81, is worth $9 billion. He has donated $15.2 million to super PACs this year.



5. Peter Thiel, 44, is worth $1.5 billion. He has donated $6.7 million to Super PACs this year.



6. Jerrold Perenchio, 81, is worth $2.3 billion. He has donated $2.6 million to super PACs this year.



7. Kenneth Griffin, 43, is worth $3 billion and he has given $2.08 million to super PACs in 2012.



8. James Simons, 74, is worth $10.7 billion and he has given $1.5 million to super Pacs this year.



9. Julian Robertson, 80, is worth $2.5 billion and he has given $1.25 million to super PACs this year.




10. Robert Rowling, 58, is worth $4.8 billion and he has given $1.1 million to super PACs.



11. John Paulson, 56, the hedge fund manager who made his fortune betting that the sub-prime mortgage market would collapse, is worth $12.5 billion. He has donated $1 million to super PACs.



12. Richard and J.W. Marriott, 73 and 80 respectively, are worth a combined $3.1 billion and they have donated $2 million to super PACs this year.



13.James Davis, 69, is worth $1.9 billion and he has given $1 million to super PACs this year.



14. Harold Hamm, 66, is worth $11 billion and he has given $985,000 to super PACs this year.



15. Kenny Troutt, 59, is worth more than $1.2 billion and he has given $900,000 to super PACs this year.



16. Louis Bacon, 54, is worth $1.4 billion and he has given $500,000 to super PACs this year.



17.Bruce Kovner, 67, is worth $4.5 billion and he has given $500,000 to super PACs this year.



18. Warren Stephens, 55, is worth $2.7 billion and he has given $500,000 to super PACs this year.



19. David Tepper, 54, is worth $5.1 billion and he has given $375,000 to super PACs this year.



20. Samuel Zell, 70, is worth $4.9 billion and he has given $270,000 to super PACs this year.



21. Leslie Wexner is worth $4.3 billion and he has given $250,000 to super PACs this year.



22. Charles Schwab, 74, is worth $3.5 billion and he has given $250,000 to super PACs this year.



23. Kelcy Warren, 56, is worth $2.3 billion and he has given $250,000 to super PACs this year.

The thing that these billionaires love most about Citizens United it is that it allows them to operate in total darkness. The American people couldn’t fight back because the billionaires were giving their money anonymously. This same cloak of invisibility is what made ALEC so effective for years. The conservative billionaire cabal works best in private, behind closed doors, far away from curious eyes.

With his report today, Senator Sanders has made it more difficult for thieves of liberty to keep operating in the night. We now have a list of names and we know what they are trying to do to our government. Sen. Sanders is one of the few federally elected officials who has the courage to talk about these people in public.

Most of the members of the House and Senate are too afraid to speak of, much less take on, the billionaires. Even those decent members of Congress who might speak out against them have been terrified into silence by threats of multimillion dollar negative ad buys that will run against the incumbent back home.

Bernie Sanders is displaying a brand of political courage that is sorely lacking in American politics today, and he needs you to stand with him to protect our liberties, our freedoms, and to battle to return the government back to the American people.

A laugh for a not-so-funny week

Thanks to Charlotte

mpg

Scuzzbucket of the Week

It's been quite a while since I've had a Scuzzbucket of the Week. Not that there's any shortage out there, I've just been lazy.

This is an election year when ALL of the super rich, racists, politicians and others come out of the woodwork with their crazy opinions. So I'm going to take advantage of it and bring back a weekly nominee.

This week's SOTW is Jon Llewellyn Kyl - the junior United States Senator from Arizona.



What got my blood boiling is this quote:(from huffpo)

“We have a president who talks incessantly about class, particularly the middle class,” Kyl said.

"I just think the whole discussion of class is wrong. it's not what we do here in America," said Kyl. He added, "I don't think there's anything called 'middle class values' that are different from the values of other people in this country. Tell me what's different about the values of someone who the president identifies as middle class?"

Kyl said he sees the rich very differently -- more like sports heroes along the line of Chicago Bulls great Michael Jordan.

"When Michael Jordan came, after he established how great he would be, he was given an enormous, almost unheard of salary. Did the other players say, 'That's not fair?' No, actually all the other players got big salary increases, too," Kyl said. "The whole franchise did well, the people selling popcorn, the people parking the cars ... made more money than they ever would have had Michael Jordan never came to the team."




We can see here why Kyl is rich, as he doesn't leave tips in restaurants.


Here's what he thinks of unemployment benefits:


While he's not as rich as most politicians, his net worth is not in the "middle class" category.

An article in the New York Times discusses the "decline of the middle class. Excerpt:

...the relatively meager gains the American economy has produced in recent years have largely flowed to a small segment of the most affluent households, leaving middle-class and poor households with slow-growing living standards.

RIP Sally Ride

Gone too soon, America's first woman in Space, Sally Ride, succumbed to pancreatic cancer today

I have worked in the Space Industry for 30 years now, watched each Space Shuttle Launch with pride and awe. Sort of "knew" the astronauts thanks to NASA's distribution of each crewmember's biography before each launch.

Sally Ride was so BIG in my eyes: such a smart woman, a brave woman. I'm sad to see her pass on - to my surprise - so young. Godspeed, Sally.

From Boston dot com


WASHINGTON—Sally Ride, who blazed trails into orbit as the first American woman in space, died Monday of pancreatic cancer. She was 61.

Ride died at her home in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla, said Terry McEntee, a spokeswoman for her company, Sally Ride Science. She was a private person and the details of her illness were kept to just a few people, she said.

Ride rode into space on the space shuttle Challenger in 1983 when she was 32. After her flight, more than 42 other American women flew in space, NASA said.

"Sally was a national hero and a powerful role model. She inspired generations of young girls to reach for the stars," President Barack Obama said in a statement.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, said Ride "broke barriers with grace and professionalism -- and literally changed the face of America's space program."

"The nation has lost one of its finest leaders, teachers and explorers," he said in a statement.

Ride was a physicist, writer of five science books for children and president of her own company. She had also been a professor of physics at the University of California in San Diego.

She was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1978, the same year she earned her doctorate in physics from Stanford University. She beat out five women to be the first American female in space. Her first flight came two decades after the Soviets sent a woman into space

"On launch day, there was so much excitement and so much happening around us in crew quarters, even on the way to the launch pad," Ride recalled in a NASA interview for the 25th anniversary of her flight in 2008. "I didn't really think about it that much at the time -- but I came to appreciate what an honor it was to be selected to be the first to get a chance to go into space."

Ride flew in space twice, both times on Challenger in 1983 and in 1984, logging 343 hours in space. A third flight was cancelled when Challenger exploded in 1986. She was on the commission investigating that accident and later served on the panel for the 2003 Columbia shuttle accident, the only person on both boards.

She also was on the president's committee of science advisers.

The 20th anniversary of her first flight also coincided with the loss of Columbia, a bittersweet time for Ride, who discussed it in a 2003 interview with The Associated Press. She acknowledged it was depressing to spend the anniversary investigating the accident, which killed seven astronauts.

"But in another sense, it's rewarding because it's an opportunity to be part of the solution and part of the changes that will occur and will make the program better," she said.

Later in the interview, she focused on science education and talked about "being a role model and being very visible."

"She was very smart," said former astronaut Norman Thagard, who was on Ride's first flight. "We did have a good time."

It was all work on that first flight, except for a first-in-space sprint around the inside of the shuttle, Thagard recalled by phone on Monday. He didn't know who won.

One of Ride's last legacies was allowing middle school students to take their own pictures of the moon using cameras aboard NASA's twin Grail spacecraft in a project spearheaded by her company.

"Sally literally could have done anything with her life. She decided to devote her life to education and to inspiring young people. To me, that's such a powerful thing. It's extraordinarily admirable," said Maria Zuber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who heads the Grail mission.

Ride's office said she is survived by Tam O'Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years; her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear, a niece and a nephew.