The whole rest of the world is going to have had elections before the US election comes around. The latest is the election for the leader of the Kadima party in Israel. The BBC reports: Livni claims win in Israeli vote

Tzipi Livni has claimed victory in the contest to lead Israel’s ruling Kadima party with exit polls suggesting she had clear margin.

The foreign minister told supporters in a radio broadcast that “the good guys” had won after the ballot by members of the party.

However, BBC correspondents say the margin could be much narrower than earlier predicted.

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Found at MSNBC filed under “grass is green”: FEMA under fire again after Ike snafus

HOUSTON – Hurricane Katrina made them worthless feds in windbreakers, a four-letter agency for which some couldn’t find enough four-letter words. And in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, FEMA is again the easy target for displaced residents and frustrated local authorities.

“Where’s FEMA?” some evacuees have asked. Houston Mayor Bill White complained FEMA wasn’t bringing ice, water and meals fast enough, while the county administrator personally took over the coordination of efforts to hand out relief supplies.

This is just absurd. Houston area is not still under water. There is ready access to the area. There are communication facilities in place. What in hell is the problem? The problem is expecting people without electricity to go to a few centralized distribution points when gas isn’t readily available and they can’t be contacted by the same old media channels.

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You may not recognize the name, Norman Whitfield, but if you ever listened to Motown, you know his music:

Heard It Through The Grapevine
Too Busy Thinking About My Baby
Papa Was a Rolling Stone
War

He wrote the songs and produced the sounds that defined a segment of music that people who heard it will never forget.

Search engines say that people have been dropping by look for the closest point between Alaska and Russia.

Uelen [Уэлен] on the Chukotka Peninsula [Чукотский полуостров] of Russia [Россия] is the nearest inhabited mainland settlement to Wales on the Seward Peninsula at 61 miles [98 kilometers]. The ends of those peninsulas, Cape Dezhnyov [мыс Дежнёва] and Cape Prince of Wales are 51 miles [82 kilometers] apart.

The border in that area is a North-South line that passes midway between the two Diomede Islands. Big Diomede is Russian and Little Diomede is American. They are separated by 2.5 miles [4 kilometers] of water. The International Date Line follows the same line, so they are also separated by the calendar.

The same ethnic groups and animals live on both sides of this artificial Western construct known as a border. The Chukchis in Russia speak the same language, and use the same tools as the Chukchis in Alaska, only their second language is different.

Dr. Masters has another set of before and after pictures, this time of Gilchrist, Texas, which essentially no longer exists.

This time he is using photos from the Hurricane Ike Images of the National Geodetic Survey for the “after” images.

Steve Bates at Yellow Doggerel Democrat got power back after 4 days at 1:30PM CDT and is in recovery from Internet Withdrawal Syndrome.