Posts from — March 2010

OK, so tomorrow is really a parade of the mushers from Anchorage to Campbell Airstrip, and the real racing starts on Sunday from Willow.

There has been a noticeable lack of substantial snowfall on the southern half of the course, which will make for some rough riding and problems steering. So far things have gotten a little colder than last week, but heat will still be a concern when the dogs would prefer temperatures below 20°F [-7°C].

Teams leave Willow at two minute intervals, with the time difference adjusted at the 24-hour stop, i.e. the team that left Willow last can leave after 24 hours, but the team that left first will have over 2 hours added to their stop.

In addition to the 24-hour stop, the teams must make an 8-hour stop on the Yukon, and everyone has an 8-hour stop at White Mountain. The stops have to be at checkpoints, and they can’t be combined.

The trail around Rainy Pass through the Alaska Range is probably the hardest on sleds and mushers, as the climb and descent involve a lot of switch-backs and mountain hugging. With a snow deficit, it will be nastier than normal.

If the wind kicks up around the Norton Sound, blizzard conditions and wind chills below -40°[same in F & C] are quite common.

The Mushers in bold are former winners of the Iditarod, the numbers in parentheses are their Bib numbers, and the small “R” indicates a rookie.

The Iditarod posts will be updated during the day, and the map changed on all posts to reflect the current situation.

All posts on the Iditarod can be seen by selecting “Iditarod” from the Category box on the right sidebar.

Below the fold is the starting grid:

[Read more →]

A Tourist

Nom..Nom..Nom.

[Editor: This fluffy orange tabby tom showed up for a nosh. He’s been here a couple of days. The feral females won’t let another female hang around, but the toms don’t care as long as new toms don’t get in a dominance battle.]

Friday Ark

I just noticed that my BBC history widget has this:

1770: British troops kill three members of a mob in the ‘Boston Massacre’ – a propaganda coup for the colonials.

They are still sore about out little disagreement. Come on, you could have had the Shrubbery as your Prime Minister, not that Tony Blair was a major improvement. Hmm, Reagan – Thatcher, then Bush – Blair… pretty scary, actually.

[Note, it is already March 5 in Britain; it changes at 6PM CST]

One of the first things on the Florida legislature’s agenda is to put off the automatic increase in the unemployment insurance premium that kicked in when the unemployment rate went above 10%. Since they don’t ever want to be accused of raising taxes, the Republicans insert “triggers” into bills, automatic increases that don’t require a vote. Being Republicans, they never imagined that the trigger would actually be pulled.

They have the trigger backwards, but they will never understand why. Republicans have never understood the concept of storing up during good times, so you have the resources you need during bad times. If there is extra revenue in a year, they either spend it or cut another tax. They don’t understand that the fiscally conservative thing to do would be to put it in the “rainy day fund”, so that when hard times hit, they don’t have to make drastic cuts or increase “fees”.

Everyone is probably familiar with the fable, attributed to Aesop, of The Ant and the Grasshopper. Republicans claim to be “Ants”, but that’s absurd on its face. Ants are social creatures who work for the good of their community, while Grasshoppers are only concerned with themselves. Ants are concerned with the future, while Grasshoppers can’t see beyond the current quarter. Ants go about the business of life, while Grasshoppers jump around and make a lot noise. Ants build societies, while Grasshoppers build nothing.

Via Corrente I have learned that Al Weisel, the person behind the very funny satirical blog, Jon Swift, died as a result of multiple aortic aneurysms on February 27^th. In a dual tragedy for his family, he died on the way to his father’s funeral in Virginia.

In addition to the web site, he was one of the founders of Blogroll Amnesty Day, designed to promote smaller blogs.

My deepest condolences to his family and friends.

But the US keeps putting on farces.

From the St. Petersburg Times: Suspect in downtown St. Petersburg evacuation is light, flaky and buttery

Dozens of people were evacuated. A street corner was shut down. The bomb squad was called.

More than two hours later, police discovered what the bag contained: a croissant.

The comments were interesting though:

– Dick and Liz Cheney held a new conference to credit the Bush administration policies for keeping us safe from terrorist baked goods. They allege that if we keep following the current administration, we’ll be a nation continually on the defense from attacking bagels and pastries.

– Somewhere Osama Bin Laden is laughing at us all. This dude has us all so scared that we see an abandoned croissant and call the bomb squad. If that doesn’t say the terrorists have won, I don’t know what does.

– Police suspect the French resistance group… Pièce de résistance is responsible.

So far no one has attempted “Hey, it was crescent-shaped, so it was a Muslim plot to test our security.”

CNN reports: Senate passes $10 billion jobless benefits measure

Washington (CNN) — The Senate voted Tuesday to pass a $10 billion measure to extend benefits for unemployed workers and fund road projects after Sen. Jim Bunning agreed to end his filibuster.

The 78-19 vote on the 30-day extension known as H.R. 4691 came minutes after the Kentucky Republican made a final plea on the floor of the Senate for his colleagues not to borrow the money.
…

Bunning blamed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for Bunning’s almost weeklong block of a vote on the 30-day extensions and said his amendment would remove “black liquor” — a byproduct of the pulp and paper process — from eligibility for a bio-fuels producer tax credit, saving $24 billion.

But Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said that very action is already part of a bill that will came up for a vote Wednesday — the long-term extension of those jobless benefits.

“The senator from Kentucky, after one week, has decided to accept exactly what was offered to him last week,” Durbin said. “The senator from Kentucky said ‘No, I may lose. I am not going to offer an amendment, I am just going to object.’ “

[Read more →]

Today is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March. It means that for the next sixty days the residents of the state of Florida have to live in fear of the newest atrocities to be visited on them by the legislature.

This rookie team [term limited, so no one has more than 8 years of experience] of creative writing rejects actually has only one job, the creation of the budget for the next year. Nonetheless, they manage to create havoc in the lives of ordinary people, usually by finding some new location where shooting each other is perfectly legal and reasonable.

As two-thirds of both house are Republicans [they can’t write, but they had some people who were very creative drawing election districts], the minority party in the state, they won’t be raising taxes. No, all of the horrendous increases in costs to the average person will be due to doubling “fees”. Taxes become fees just before the Republicans increase them. For example, the road maintenance tax became a special assessment fee when the county decided to pave the road, instead of just smoothing out the red clay after every rain.

We have major problems in the state and a group of people who are committed to not doing any of the things that might actually fix them, so the result will be a piece of fiction that isn’t just not ready for off-Broadway, it isn’t ready for off the Azores out in the middle of the Atlantic.

Eat your heart out Bulwer-Lytton, the Florida Legislature has been producing the worse fiction in the English language for over a century.

Unemployment insurance is a state system with some federal funding. The amount of money a person receives as unemployment compensation is not fixed and varies a lot from state-to-state, as do the rules for eligibility. It should surprise no one that it is harder to get an unemployment check in red states, than blue states, and the worker doesn’t get as much.

While the national rate is currently around 10%, the unemployment rate in Florida is almost 12%. Florida’s dependence on the construction industry and growth has caused the state to swing from having one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, to having one of the highest.

Everyone is in pain, except the pundits. It is just a sharper pain in some areas.

Playing the role of the March hare, Senator Jim Bunning [R-Fantasyland, KY] is sending a message.

The message is going to about 200K Californian and 100K Floridian, to 90K construction worker on highway projects, to people in rural areas who depend on satellite dishes for television, and to health care providers who accept Medicare and Tricare patients [payments cut by 21%].

Bunning’s personal and heart-felt message: “Tough shit”. [an exact quote]

The United States Senate also has a message for the entire country: “We are too incompetent to get anything done.” [a paraphrase]

The Senate leadership from both sides of the aisle are more concerned with their rules, than the people of the United States. If they can’t get anything done, they all need to be replaced.