FEMA: "Ooops I did it again."

As if FEMA does not have enough bad press, it was recently revealed that they gave away $85 million of household supplies intended for Katrina Victims becuase there was no need for them in New Orleans. This is despite the fact that they have regular meetings with a Non-profit, UNITY they refer people to for these supplies, a non-profit that tells FEMA all the time it needs. Apparently, when FEMA offered these supplies to the state, an new agency that UNITY had never heard of, said the state didn't need the supplies.

I am just flaberghasted at this. One of the commentators on this article were correct. If FEMA was a private company, heads would roll. I doubt there will even be an insvestigation of what went wrong. I don't think someone was purposely keeping these supplies from Katrina victims, but someone was grossly negligent. Heads should roll for this and some of the takers of the supplies should step up and offer them to UNITY and other non-profits working in New Orleans.

Thanks John

For the campaign map wiget.

Go visit John at A Lie A Day.

National Popular Vote Update

The National Popular Vote movement is a movement in state legislatures to drop out of the Electoral College. Since states determine how they distribute their Electors to the Electoral College, it is possible, as Maryland and New Jersey have done, to apportion all of their Electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. See my post about Maryland passing this measure last year. In both Maryland and New Jersey, this will not take effect until states representing at least 270 Electoral Votes pass similar measures. It has already been vetoed in Hawaii and California, but is pending in a number of states either in the legislature or on the Governor's desk. It will be interesting to see if this goes anywhere.

I am not a big fan of it, I prefer a proportional electoral college system where if you win 70 of the popular vote in a state, you get 70% (or a rounded percentage) of the Electoral votes in that state. If there are 10 Electors, you get 7 of them. Interestingly enough, Minnesota and Oklahoma have joined the proportional party with Maine and Nebraska. Too bad solid states like New York, California, Georgia and Texas will never pass a proportional rule for the Electors.

Carbon Belch Day

This made me puke a little bit in my mouth.

I "Carbon Belch Day" link is blocked through my job, so please tell me this is actually a really really really bad joke. Please, tell me.

Russian Censorship

This is just a bit scary to read...

The Kremlin is literally erasing opposition from TV. They aren't sending them off to Siberia like the old Communist regime used to do, but they actually took a guest on a talk show who was critical of Putin out of the show when it aired. They didn't cut his scenes, they digitally removed not only his comments but his image. The Kremlin is apparently also keeping basically all opposition off of the television. They even cancelled a rock concert because the band came out in opposition to Putin.

On top of this, Russia has some of the largest oil reserves in the world and are keeping almost as close an eye on it as (if not more than) the Saudi Royal family. Just relish the thought of a world dependent on oil and us muscling for influence with a very large censorship crazy country that controls the taps. Yet another reason why we need to be exporting green technology instead of democracy.