Remember.

Nine Years Ago.

*

Possibly Good News

Two nurses from the Cancer Research Department sought me out today.  Their job is to find studies or trials that are suitable for current patients and try to match them up, hopefully getting a spot for a patient, like me, who has few other options.

The good news is that the NIH and Mayo Clinic run studies periodically and I may be eligible for one or more of those - if they begin again in the Fall. From what I gather some are studies, others are clinical trials for specific drugs. 

The NIH study could be based anywhere from Maryland to New York, to Florida. The Mayo studies could take place in Minnesota, Florida, or New York in the US, and France or The Netherlands. No word about whether housing is provided or there is a nominal fee, and/or how long the studies, or trials, run.  Again, it seems a study can last anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks. 

Not sure about how the drug trials work. Of course, if the drug isn’t FDA approved, the trials would take place in another country, but may include Americans willing to travel (read desperate for options) abroad for an extended period of time. Any of you medical professionals out there will know more about this than I.

Of course, I would keep the apartment here, unless otherwise instructed. I have nothing holding me anywhere, so it doesn’t matter. But this news gives me hope where there was little to none beforehand.

Without getting his hopes up, this Cajun is optimistic.

And so it goes.

*

A Fair Weekend and a World’s Fair

Turns out those Friday afternoon storms that caused the blackout/power outage lasted for about 3 hours tying up traffic, causing bad drivers to show their lack of driving abilities (as well as their bad tempers) and shutting down businesses on a 3-mile stretch of busy commercial real estate. 

As mentioned in the earlier post, the city of Rehoboth wasn’t affected, which (thankfully) is usually the case. The rains however, didn’t let up until late evening. Leaving us with a very quiet and peaceful night. 

Yesterday dawned with blue skies and mild winds and I got out to run a few errands.  Even went down to the beach, grabbed an iced coffee and sat on a bench by the ocean for a while before taking a walk on the boardwalk, and heading back home.  The fresh air was good for the soul and body.

The town is packed with people for the weekend and the weather is supposed to be lovely, in the 70s throughout. I want to get the shopping done early this morning before anyone begins to stir or get on the roads.  Also early enough that I can enjoy another iced coffee on the boardwalk before the hordes finish breakfast/brunch. 

Sounds like a good plan to me. The 2 units of blood seem to have boosted my energy level this weekend. Still not sleeping much, (the Benadryl only offers a few hours at best) but I’m not falling all over myself in a stupor, either. 

This is a new book I’m currently reading and since I worked at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair it’s a eye-opening look at the overall picture of what NYC - and the world - was like during the years from 1960 through 1967 and how the events of the time played a big role in the failure of the Fair. Yes, Robert Moses was the biggest problem, but the entire country played a huge part in the changing attitudes of the times, mocking the message and theme of the World’s Fair both years. “Peace Through Understanding” was hardly a realistic outcry of the times. 

I’m little more than 60% through and it’s a good read. Anyway, it brings back memories and forces me to think of where I was while the world changing events were taking place all around me. I remember many of the incidents sited in the book only vaguely since I worked 6 - 7 days a week for the 2 years of the exhibition, spending the other hours either under ground on the subways to and from work, or at home, pretty much sleeping as much as possible. 

The fact that I would become part of the social unrest and the anti-war movement less than 2 years later, the gay rights movement 3 years later, makes me chuckle today.

That said, I made lots of money and had a great time. The Fair was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I will never forget. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.  The book is giving me an overall view of what I was only slightly aware of all those years ago.

And so it goes.

*

First Look: New Tarot Deck

The Visconti - Sforza or The Golden Tarot

A Sample: The Pope = Il Papa  (Hierophant)

The Enclosed Guide Description:
In real life, the Pope possesses the right to crown the Emperor, and his position in the Trump story appropriately places him above the other rulers.
The Pope’s right hand is raised in a sign of benediction, and in his left hand, he holds the papal cross. He wears the three-tiered crown that symbolizes papal authority and represents the unity of mind, body, and spirit. His white beard is an archetype for wisdom, while his white tunic represents purity of the soul.
Together, the robe, crown, and cross stand for ceremony and ritual, imparting historical significance and gravitas dot his bearing. In spite of the Pope’s lofty title, all power is temporal, symbolized by the Pope’s position within the Trumps.

A Sample:  Death = La Morte

Guide Description:
This eerily animated skeleton is the starring figure in an allegorical work of art called the Dance of Death, created in response to a plague that decimated the population in the fourteenth century.
Death holds a bow in its left hand and an arrow in its right. Its piercing eyes stare menacingly out of deep, shadowed eye sockets.
We have seen that Strength, having triumphed over unrestrained ambition, has been trumped by the pain and suffering of the Hanged Man, and now, by Death.
It is no coincidence that Death's rank in the Tarot deck is the unlucky thirteen. But it's obvious from Death's position in this allegory that all is not lost: there are many more trump cards left in the deck.

This deck is a marvelous treasure and worth the wait of so many years. There is much pleasure to be had and much to learn about this new (old) deck. I look forward to spending lots of time in its company.  And, oh my, the cards are very large. Yes, even for my notoriously large hands.

More later.
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Pete Seeger R.I.P

Remembering how The Weavers were vilified, then watched the individual black-balling and smearing of Pete and his message.  Watching him overcome all that to become the great American poet and troubadour in his later years gave me such joy and hope.  Especially during my own anti-war years.

One of a kind. He done good!  He's gone home now. 

And so it goes.

*

A & F Get a Brand Readjustment.

This is priceless.  All the DC queans are clones in their A & F tee-shirts here every summer.  I wonder how this will impact the brand locally.



Discrimination in any form is bad business.

And so it goes.
*

Poor Man's Lasagna - Hamburger Helper

A few years ago I pinched every penny til it screamed, just to get by; the crock pot was my choice for tough, cheap cuts of meat, and extra pocket money was non-existent.

Somewhere during that period I found a product I had never purchased before called, "Hamburger Helper" - it was on sale and there were many varieties to choose from.  I bought one.  Cost was $0.50.  It was the Lasagna Hamburger Helper, to be exact.

In that bleak period I also realized I couldn't afford the ground beef to create the dish and it remained on the cabinet shelf, eventually moving with me to this place. Don't ask.  I have no idea why.

I found it this morning (it expires on September 20, 2012, this stuff could survive the next ice age!) so I thought I ought to prepare it as a reminder of the way things used to be. Knowing that it could be that way again at any time.  Sobering, that.

I have no idea how it will taste, but the fresh garden salad and garlic bread ought to make it edible for one meal.

Ah, memories.

And so it goes.
*

1940 Census Results to be Made Public

This is a BIG deal. It is being called the 'release of confidential data' after 72 years.  More like government 'suppressed information'.  Think connotational indices. Words are wonderful things, aren't they? We won't go there just now. This image alone gives me the creeps.

In any event this new information will likely be a treasure trove for blogger buddy, Ron, and my cousin who do great work investigating their family histories.

NEW YORK (AP) — It was a decade when tens of millions of people in the U.S. experienced mass unemployment and social upheaval as the nation clawed its way out of the Great Depression and rumblings of global war were heard from abroad.

Now, intimate details of 132 million people who lived through the 1930s will be disclosed as the U.S. government releases the 1940 census on April 2 to the public for the first time after 72 years of being kept confidential.

Access to the records will be free and open to anyone on the Internet — but they will not be immediately name searchable.

For genealogists and family historians, the 1940 census release is the most important disclosure of ancestral secrets in a decade and could shake the branches of many family trees. Scholars expect the records to help draw a more pointillistic portrait of a transformative decade in American life.

Researchers might be able to follow the movement of refugees from war-torn Europe in the latter half of the 1930s; sketch out in more detail where 100,000 Japanese Americans interned during World War II were living before they were removed; and more fully trace the decades-long migration of blacks from the rural South to cities.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard University professor and scholar of black history who has promoted the tracing of family ancestry through popular television shows, said the release of the records will be a "great contribution to American society."

Gates, whose new PBS series "Finding Your Roots" begins March 25, said the "goldmine" of 1940 records would add important layers of detail to an existing collection of opened census records dating to 1790.

"It's such a rare gift," he said of the public's access to census records, "especially for people who believe that establishing their family trees is important for understanding their relationship to American democracy, the history of our country, and to a larger sense of themselves."

Margo Anderson, a census historian, said the release of the records could help answer questions about Japanese-Americans interned in camps after the outbreak of WWII.

This census is an important snapshot of what the country looked like near the end of the great depression.  Please read the whole piece HERE.

And so it goes.

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UC Davis Pepper-Spray Incident Reveals Weakness Up Top

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone nails it yet again. Here's a taste:

(W)hen we abandoned our principles in order to use force against terrorists and drug dealers, the answer to the question, What are we defending? started to change.

The original answer, ostensibly, was, "We are defending the peaceful and law-abiding citizens of the United States, their principles, and everything America stands for."

Then after a while it became, "We’re defending the current population of the country, but we can’t defend the principles so much anymore, because they weigh us down in the fight against a ruthless enemy who must be stopped at all costs."

Then finally it became this: “We are defending ourselves, against the citizens who insist on keeping their rights and their principles.”

What happened at UC Davis was the inevitable result of our failure to make sure our government stayed in the business of defending our principles. When we stopped insisting on that relationship with our government, they became something separate from us.

And we are stuck now with this fundamental conflict, whereby most of us are insisting that the law should apply equally to everyone, while the people running this country for years now have been operating according to the completely opposite principle that different people have different rights, and who deserves what protections is a completely subjective matter, determined by those in power, on a case-by-case basis.

Not to belabor the point, but the person who commits fraud to obtain food stamps goes to jail, while the banker who commits fraud for a million-dollar bonus does not. Or if you accept aid in the form of Section-8 housing, the state may insist on its right to conduct warrantless "compliance check" searches of your home at any time – but if you take billions in bailout aid, you do not even have to open your books to the taxpayer who is the de facto owner of your company.

The state wants to retain the power to make these subjective decisions, because being allowed to selectively enforce the law effectively means they have despotic power. And who wants to lose that?
The UC Davis incident crystallized all of this in one horrifying image. Anyone who commits violence against a defenseless person is lost. And the powers that be in this country are lost.

They’ve been going down this road for years now, and they no longer stand for anything.

All that tricked-up military gear, with that corny, faux-menacing, over-the-top Spaceballs stormtrooper look that police everywhere seem to favor more and more – all of this is symbolic of the increasingly total lack of ideas behind all that force.

It's an insightful and frightening read.  It's all HERE.


And so it goes.
*

No Honor in Hurting Unarmed People

This should never happen in America - to anyone.

This entire episode has blown me away.  I knew the threat was still there - since the Viet Nam era - but didn't think it would raise its ugly head in these times.  Boy, was I wrong.

And so it goes.
*

Matt Taibbi: 5 Things OWS Should Demand

 This is an awesome short piece by Matt, but it never misses the mark.

"No matter what, I’ll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement’s basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. There are thousands one could make, but I’d suggest focusing on five:

1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called “Too Big to Fail” financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term “Systemically Dangerous Institutions” – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.

2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it’s supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.

3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer’s own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can’t do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.

4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.

5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company’s long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.

To quote the immortal political philosopher Matt Damon from Rounders, “The key to No Limit poker is to put a man to a decision for all his chips.” The only reason the Lloyd Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons of the world survive is that they’re never forced, by the media or anyone else, to put all their cards on the table. If Occupy Wall Street can do that – if it can speak to the millions of people the banks have driven into foreclosure and joblessness – it has a chance to build a massive grassroots movement. All it has to do is light a match in the right place, and the overwhelming public support for real reform – not later, but right now – will be there in an instant."  — Matt Taibbi: My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters 

Man, the truth hurts even more when reduced to a numerical bullet list. Whew!

And so it goes.
*

OWS: Putting Pundits to Shame

This is the best piece I've read about the Occupy Wall Street movement since it began. Put aside the endless video clips and the sound bites and get to the meat and potatoes of the issues at hand.

From Joshua Holland at AlterNet:

Putting Pundits to Shame: Protesters Know Exactly What They're Fighting for.
Their style may not have been as mainstream as the retirees attending a Glenn Beck rally, but they knew precisely what they were there for. 

It should come as a surprise to nobody that the corporate media's early coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement has featured an abundance of hippie-punching but very little about the substantive issues driving thousands of Americans to take over the streets of cities across the country.

As I approached the 30 or so activists who have been camped out for weeks in front of the Federal Reserve Building as part of OccupySF – a protest smaller than those in New York, Boston or Los Angeles – I'd been primed by news stories heaping scorn on these ostensibly confused, foul-smelling rebels-without-a-cause, but what I encountered was very different.

I discovered that while their style may not have been as mainstream as that of the retirees attending a Glenn Beck rally, they knew precisely what they were there for. They had specific demands and even a simple-to-understand "bumper-sticker" message. “We stand for the 99 percent who don't have much of a voice in this system,” a young woman named Melissa told me. A recent graduate with “not much in the way of job prospects,” she said she'd never been involved in a protest before.

Genuine grassroots movements don't begin with poll-tested messages or slick media operations and aren't fronted by polished spokespeople. In any group of ordinary citizens, be it a Shriner's convention or an uprising against the Wall Street hucksters who took down the global economy, there will be some number who are in fact confused or clueless. A visiting reporter can shape whatever narrative he or she chooses by simply selecting whom to interview and which parts of those interviews make the cut.

At OccupySF on Saturday morning, I too could have crafted a story of hapless, unfocused hipsters had I chosen to focus on the 20-year-old kid serenading confused tourists with a bullhorn rendition of “You Are So Beautiful.” But it wouldn't have been honest. A minute after he began crooning, several other activists told him that he wasn't doing much good for the cause.

Instead, I decided to speak with a man named John, who I found collating and stapling a box of leaflets fresh from the copy store. A 30-something dressed in a tie-dyed shirt who had been “out of work for about two years,” John was noticeably uncomfortable being interviewed. He asked me several times if he could start an answer over. “You'll edit that part out?” he asked me more than once. “I'm really not good at public speaking,” he said, awkwardly.

Then, in stops and starts, John proceeded to lay out a sophisticated and nuanced analysis of our economic straits, and offered a series of very specific prescriptions for making the economy work for everyone, rather than just those at the top. It was a breakdown that made most of the pundits looking down their noses at the Occupy Wall Street movement look like superficial dilettantes obsessed with trivia.

“We know what we're against,” he told me, “but what do we stand for?” John had a 12-point agenda, which he acknowledged would “probably need to be condensed.” “We need to bring back Glass-Steagal,” he said, referring to the Depression-era law that created a firewall between investment- and commercial-banking. “It's really ironic that a law whose purpose was to prevent another Great Depression was repealed and now we have an economy that is worse than at any time since the Depression,” he said. “That's strange.”

“We need a massive investment in infrastructure, in green technology, high-speed rail, things like that,” he said. “We need to abandon or significantly modify these free-trade agreements like NAFTA... these weren't the result of some democratic groundswell. They were written by lobbyists,” he told me. “You know, to oversimplify things, they're intended to maximize corporate profits.”

Read the whole thing HERE.

More later.
*

A Life Update

Did I mention that my apartment sprung a leak?  Discovered last Saturday when it was least expected. Well, the sealant around the pipe that drains from the roof to the ground flows through my walk-in closet gave way (probably from the high winds caused by Irene) and I came home to a bit of a flood.  Ruining 3 pair of work slacks that cannot be salvaged.

Reported the problem to the landlord on Monday.  He promised to address it ASAP. It's been raining (heavily at times) every day since the leak made its appearance.  No one has come to fix the problem. To be fair, it would be impossible to do so in the rain.  So I empty the little bucket twice daily and wait.

Thankfully, the restaurant has been busy even if, as the servers say, tipping is down by half - at least we still have jobs - and diners are going for the off-season daily specials to save their pennies. Hell, we're all doing that.

No reply from Social Security regarding my letter inquiring about tips & ideas for living on $1,180. a month.  It's been 2 weeks, so far.  Could they still be calculating???

The cleaners gave no hope for the slacks, so in a last ditch effort  I tried washing them myself.  No good.  There must be some solvent or bleaching agent in the pipe sealant, so the stains are permanent.  (Sigh!) Toss into the trash time.

It's officially Autumn, and I went to work this morning IN THE DARK!  We hates it, precious, yes we does. Dark, drizzly and depressing.  Though the sun made a valiant attempt to shine, it was out numbered by the black and gray clouds that made this Sunday one designed for staying indoors, under a comforter, with a book and cup of tea. 

Was invited to a fundraising event this evening, but since I was not the recipient - and the donation was $100. - I decided to pass.

More rain is on the way. I am happy to be home sipping a cocktail as I prepare a light supper.


And so it goes.
*

Investment Advice

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you would have $49.00 today!
If you purchased $1,000 of shares in Popeye’s Chicken , you would have $33.00.
If you purchased $1,000 of shares in Lehman Brothers, you would have $0.00 today.

But, if you purchased $1,000 worth of Blue Moon, drank all of it, turned in the aluminum cans for recycling, you would have $214.00.

Therefore the best current investment plan is to drink good beer heavily & recycle.


The best information I've received in a long time.  Sure beats my own sad experiences.


And so it goes.
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Settlement Reached in Suit Over Katrina Grants

Coming up on the 6th Anniversary of the man-made disaster following hurricane Katrina, this is some good news for all NOLA residents, especially those in the 9th Ward.  From today's NYT:

Federal officials announced on Wednesday that they had reached a settlement with a group of homeowners who sued the federal government and the State of Louisiana alleging discrimination in the state’s Road Home program, which distributed grants to those whose houses were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding.
The plaintiffs agreed to drop their suit in response to the establishment of a program, announced by the state in May, that will distribute $62 million among people who were trying to rebuild their homes but had found that their Road Home payments fell significantly short of the cost of rebuilding.

Two fair-housing groups and five New Orleans homeowners filed the suit in 2008 on behalf of a potential class of roughly 20,000 black homeowners, arguing that the Road Home formula was discriminatory.

The program paid out grants to people based on either the pre-hurricane value of their homes or the estimated cost of rebuilding, whichever was less. Under that formula, the plaintiffs argued, a person who lived in a poorer area was likely to receive far less than someone with virtually the same house in a wealthier neighborhood, even though the cost of rebuilding would be the same.

The plaintiffs got a boost in August 2010, when Judge Henry Kennedy of Federal District Court ruled that they would be “likely to succeed” in making the case for discrimination.

Judge Kennedy barred the state from applying the Road Home formula to the small number of homeowners who still had grants pending, but he said he could not legally order retroactive relief for the tens of thousands who had already received their grants.

This could mean more rebuilding in places like Chalmette, which will make many displaced residents, the sister included, very happy indeed.

Read the rest here.

More later.
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Mad Priest: The Good Old Days

Spew Alert...Via Jim:  (click image to embiggen.)

I almost tossed a perfectly good olive on this one.

And so it goes.
*

Flowers, Flirting, and Late Frost

These last two days have been quite a ride. This is an edited version of events.

It's been raining since Wednesday evening.  So rainy and cold in fact, I took the car to work rather than walk, so as to ward off any potential illness lurking about. Of course, due to the high humidity the back and thumbs are giving me fits.  I sometimes wonder if life is worth this level of pain but then, never mind.

Week day lunch visitors are on the upswing and that means people are coming to the beach more often working to open their summer homes a bit early. That's great news.  I'm happy to see their faces again after so  many cold months - they make me think of spring and the summer season ahead.

Unfortunately, thanks to global warming, the forsythia has already bloomed and faded, the hyacinths are on their way to their end, too.  The lilies are almost ready to open and it's only April 1st.! Even though the temperatures hover in the upper 30s to low 40s, nothing seems to stop the green anywhere.

One late frost could destroy everything, but let's not focus on that possibility, OK?

Waiting in the mailbox tonight were (among other trash) 3 more offers from insurance companies trying to sell me on Medicare Part B coverage. I am afraid that I cannot afford ANY of the policies (all around the same rates, BTW) with my present salary and the other monthly expenses that leave me with less than nothing at the end of any given month.

Good news was waiting in my in-box however, the new glasses were shipped today and should be delivered in 2 or 3 days.  I'm guessing Tuesday, which also happens to be my really-and-for-true day off next week. I can't wait.

Then there was an encounter with a very handsome man at work today.  Seemed he was flirting at times, but I wasn't quite sure. Overly friendly and his beautiful deep brown eyes always locked onto mine whenever we talked. (I love when someone talks to me while looking directly into my eyes.) Mostly small talk, but there was an edge to the chatter that made my gaydar go off more than a few times.  Each time I passed his table he would attempt conversation just to get my attention, which I must say, was very easy to do.  Ahem!

After about an hour he left, got into his car (with Ohio tags!) and waved through the glass doors as he drove away.  It was your classic 'close encounter of the third kind' we made contact, of some sort. What?  I dunno. No music of the spheres. Maybe next time...if there is a next time.

Look, I was never good at this sort of cat & mouse activity and at my age after being with one man for 30 years, I am sure I'm even worse. So, there is that reality.

And so it goes.
*

Tirangle Fire 100: Race to the Bottom

Today is the 100th anniversary of that famous fire.  Seems that we're losing ground in every industry.
What could be more appropriate to post above the absurd comments about Sarah Palin than this tribute and eye-opener.

Warning: Graphic images, some difficult to watch.



More later.
*

Narcosub Seized in Colombia

This is amazing.  It's great to see the war on drugs is going so swimmingly, at least for the smugglers.  Who else, aside from governments, could afford a couple of million dollars to build one of these things? And these are more sophisticated, with all the comforts of home, than the previous, dangerous ones.

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombian soldiers have for the first time seized a fully submersible drug-smuggling submarine capable of reaching the coast of Mexico, authorities announced Monday.
Last July, another fully submersible "narcosub" was seized just across the border by authorities in neighboring Ecuador.
Previous drug-carrying vessels found in Colombia were only semi-submersible, meaning part of the structure always remained above the surface.
But the sub discovered Sunday can operate completely underwater, Col. Manuel Hurtado, chief of staff of Colombia's Pacific Command, told The Associated Press. He estimated it could hold eight tons of drugs.
The sub in Colombia was found in a rural area of Cauca province on the Timgiqui River about 275 miles (440 kilometers) southwest of Bogota, the capital.
Hurtado said intelligence reports and tips from informants led troops to the vessel. He said the sub was empty when soldiers found it and no one was arrested.
The 99-foot-long (30-meter) fiberglass boat has room for a crew of six and is powered by two diesel engines and has an air-conditioned interior, Hurtado said. He said it can submerge up to nine feet (three meters) deep and is equipped with a 16 1/2-foot (five meter) periscope.
"The engines were already fully installed and ready to go," Hurtado said.
The sub had "the capacity to sail totally underwater and the ability to travel to the coast of Mexico without surfacing," he added. He said such a trip would take eight to nine days.
Hurtado estimated the vessel had taken six to eight months to build and cost about $2 million.
He said Colombia has seized at least 32 semi-submersible vessels designed to smuggle drugs over the last decade, including a dozen last year.

It's called a "fully submersibl

­e" submarine because previous narco-"sub

­s" were in fact semi-subme

­rsibles. They can't dive and resurface, and are designed to operate just below the water. This one can dive and resurface.

But it's not the first time Colombian authoritie­s have seized one. A half built true submarine was seized in warehouse outside Bogota in 2000. That one would have been able to dive 100 meters and carry 150 tons of cargo. This one is far less ambitious, only able to dive to 3 meters and carry 8 tons.
When the smuggling cartels eventually figure this one out (if they haven't already) the US coast guard is in a lot of trouble, even with ASW help from the Navy. The cartels treat the crews as disposable (their loyalty is secured through a mixture of money and threats against their families), and they can afford substantia­l loss rates and still make a profit.

 H/T: HuffPo

Not much of a war, if you ask me. More like a very expensive distraction and strain on our resources. Clearly, if these smugglers can cough up 65+ million dollars in the past decade for these vessels, we've been out-spent already.

And so it goes.
*

Gloomy Christmas for Gulf Oil Spill Victims

Nothing.  Just nothing.

BP and the US government are strangling the life out of these people, their communities, and a way of life.

PORT SULPHUR, La. — Even before the Gulf oil spill, Jennifer Reddick was just getting by, living paycheck to paycheck as she tried to support six children on the $400 a week she made working part time as a deckhand and shrimp net maker.
Then BP's well blew out off the coast of Louisiana, scaring away tourists and shutting down fishing. Now she has no work and no money to buy her children toys or new clothes this Christmas. Charities are providing what they can, but it's hard for Reddick to take handouts.
"It was never easy before, but we could make it," said Reddick, 30, of Buris, a small fishing town along the Mississippi River. "I couldn't even afford Christmas this year for the kids."
For many people along the Gulf Coast, there won't be much holiday cheer this Christmas.
It's been more than five months since the well was finally capped after spewing millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf. Many shrimpers and oystermen are catching and selling only a fraction of previous hauls. Business owners who saw a summer of lost revenue are still struggling to pay their bills, and many had to lay off workers to make it through the slow winter months.
The Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana has seen requests for help double. Many are coming from people who had never asked for assistance before.
"Even after Katrina, it wasn't like this," said Joannie Hughes, who along with Vickie Perrin has fanned out across the region to deliver Christmas dinners and toys to 112 families.
Perrin said the economic effect is just starting to ripple through communities, from fishermen to grocery stores and restaurants.
"It's like throwing a pebble into a pond. And we're only on the first few ripples," she said.

This makes the holidays and the new year all the more difficult.  What will the new year bring to the lives of these people?

Prayers ascend.

The rest is here.

And so it goes.
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