The CBC reports that a Plane fighting wildfire crashes into Okanagan Lake

A waterbomber battling the Terrace Mountain fire north of Kelowna, B.C., has crashed into Okanagan Lake.

In a written release, the Kelowna RCMP said two boats in the area responded right away and rescued the pilot, who was taken to a local hospital with minor injuries.

The cause of the crash hasn’t been determined.

They are making some progress on the fires because of better weather conditions, including some rain, but they won’t be out for a while.

Juan Manuel Garate of Spain took the last stage before the parade into Paris tomorrow, barring some disaster today’s results will be the final ranking.

Tony Martin won the red numbers, and the overall award for combativeness is the one award that is in question, as the jerseys seem to be firmly in place.

The Current Standings:

1. Alberto Contador (E/Astana) 81:46:17 [yellow jersey]
2. Andy Schleck (LUX/Saxo Bank) +04:11 [white jersey]
3. Lance Armstrong (US/Astana) +05:24
4. Bradley Wiggins (GB/Garmin) +06:01
5. Frank Schleck (LUX/Saxo Bank) +06:04
6. Andréas Klöden (D/Astana) +06:42
7. Vincenzo Nibali (I/Liquigas) +07:35
8. Christian Vande Velde (US/Garmin) +12:04
9. Roman Kreuziger (CZ/Liquigas) +14:16
10. Christophe Le Mevel (F/Francaise) +14:25
11. Mikel Astarloza (E/Euskatel) +14:44
12. Sandy Casar (F/Francaise) +17:19
13. Vladimir Karpets (RUS/Катюшa) +18:34
14. Rinaldo Nocentini (I/AG2R) +20:45
17. Carlos Sastre (E/Cervelo) +26:21

Selected others after the fold.

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I keep seeing references to Dr. Regina Benjamin’s weight as being something important to her appointment as Surgeon General. While she isn’t as svelte as Dr. Antonia Novello, the Surgeon General under GHW Bush, Dr. Benjamin also lacks Dr. Novello’s fraud conviction.

Dr. Benjamin reflects the reality of the area she lives in, Bayou la Batre, Alabama, a fishing village on the Gulf Coast. There are a lot of people who are carrying extra weight in the area because they have limited access to good food at a reasonable price. While seafood, in good years, can be great tasting and plentiful, man does not live by protein alone, and that’s where the problems begin.

You can’t grow much in a salt marsh. The fresh fruits and vegetables that the nutritionists talk about are a wonderful concept if they are available. The closest store that would qualify as what people think of when “supermarket” is said is a minimum of 20 miles away by road. The markets around the Bayou are the equivalent of “convenience stores” in the rest of the country. They generally carry products for the Vietnamese or Mexican segments of the local population.

The common menus feature rice, corn meal, and beans, and anything green comes from a can. People eat a lot of fish and some chicken, but beef and pork are special occasion foods. You gain weight on diets like this, and there is no way of avoiding it without a lot of manual labor. It is what poor people eat on the Gulf Coast, and Dr. Benjamin is well acquainted with poor people.

So, I was doing my normal scan of media sites this morning and landed on CBS “News?”. This is an organization that has been honoring one of the great pioneers of television news, Walter Cronkite, for a week. This is an organization essentially created by Edward R. Murrow, who, it could be said, was a founder of the concept of television news. Pretty good credentials, a firm foundation on which to build.

What do I see when I get down to their opinion area? What name appears there, that by all measures of decency and honesty should have been swept into the dustbin of bad media experiences: Ben Domenech!

The piece notes that “Ben Domenech is the editor in chief of the The New Ledger.” Well, he would have to be the editor in chief, because no one who had anything approaching even a facsimile of actual integrity would hire him. In an astounding bit of clueless irony they include at the end of the drivel “Reprinted with permission from The New Ledger”, a concept that never intruded in Ben’s world.

As Joseph Welch famously asked Joe McCarthy, I would ask CBS: “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”