Posts from — February 2011

From CNN: Wal-Mart lost shoppers during the holidays

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Despite aggressive price-slashing, free shipping and other gimmicks, Wal-Mart lost shoppers during the critical Christmas shopping period, resulting in a same-store sales decline in its fourth quarter.

Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), the world’s largest retailer, reported an overall 1.1% decline in its same-store sales — it’s seventh straight decline in the quarterly measure, this time in the period that includes the key November-December gift-buying months.

Nothing is going to improve until there is an increase in demand, and that can’t happen without jobs. The pathetic “stimulus” bill was too small to provide a real boost to the economy, and the austerity that everyone is championing will drive the US back to recession and deeper into deflation.

The BBC is now reporting that 65 dead in Christchurch

The tremor caused widespread damage as it occurred at a shallow depth of 5km (3.1 miles) during lunchtime when Christchurch was at its busiest.

The mayor of New Zealand’s second-biggest city says 120 people have been rescued from the ruins.

The country’s deadliest natural disaster in 80 years struck at 1251 (2351 GMT on Monday), 10km (6.2 miles) south-east of the city.

Most of the people died in vehicles when buildings collapsed on them.

Update from TV New Zealand: Live updates: day two

2.50pm: Reporter Ruth Wynn Williams says a cordon spanning two blocks has been put around the 26 storey Hotel Grand Chancellor building for fear it will collapse. No one is allowed in. It is understood the building, which is Christchurch’s tallest building, is sinking in its foundations.

To recap 2:32pm
– death toll stands at 75, with 300 missing
– there are fears the 26 storey Hotel Grand Chancellor building could collapse
– temporary morgue facilities set up
– major damage to power infrastructure
– water and sewerage services disrupted
– phone networks under pressure
– hospitals damaged, patients being transferred
– PM vows Christchurch will be rebuilt

If you look at the USGS Australia Region map, the red lines are the faults, you can see that this is an intense period of activity. New Zealand is in the southeast corner of the map.

Also from the USGS site the details of the 6.3 quake and the aftershocks.

McClatchy reports on the infant deaths caused by BP’s greed: Infant dolphin deaths spiking in Gulf after oil spill

GULFPORT — Baby dolphins, some barely three feet in length, are washing up along the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines at 10 times the normal rate of stillborn and infant deaths, researchers are finding.

The Sun Herald has learned that 17 young dolphins, either aborted before they reached maturity or dead soon after birth, have been collected along the shorelines.

The Institute of Marine Mammal Studies is doing necropsies, animal autopsies, on two of the babies now.

Dolphins were my childhood playmates in the bayou. They are mammals and have to breathe at the surface. When the surface is covered in oil they can’t breathe because their blowholes become clogged. The poisonous dispersants were sprayed on the surface oil, further affecting the dolphins. The fish the dolphins eat are also poisoned.

The dolphins are on the top of the food chain, just like humans, and the oil has poisoned the food chain.

TV New Zealand is posting Live updates: Christchurch quake.

The ABC report: Multiple deaths as quake strikes Christchurch

Multiple fatalities have been confirmed after a powerful 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck the New Zealand city of Christchurch, bringing down buildings and buckling roads.

The US Geological Survey said the quake struck near the city at a shallow depth of just four kilometres shortly before 12:50pm (local time) with the city at its busiest.

Police said Central City was being evacuated, with multiple deaths reported at several locations, including two buses crushed by falling buildings.

• Quake has caused multiple deaths
• Second major quake to hit city in six months
• Extensive damage in city, power cuts
• City has run out of ambulances
• 5.6-magnitude aftershocks recorded
• A level 3 emergency has been declared

…
Christchurch was struck by a major 7.1-magnitude earthquake in September last year. That quake was felt through much of the South Island and caused widespread damage.

The region has been struck by thousands of aftershocks since the original quake.

New Zealand, which sits between the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates, records on average more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which about 20 would normally top magnitude 5.0.

This was a shallow earthquake that struck a city where the structures were already weakened by the previous quake, so some, like the Cathedral, just collapsed. It occurred during the middle of the day so there were more people concentrated near the epicenter, and in multi-story buildings.

… you have probably never heard of, although you have seen his influence in the former Eastern Bloc countries, Burma, and are now watching it in North Africa and the Middle East. The BBC has a short piece on Gene Sharp: Author of the nonviolent revolution rulebook.

If you want a copy of the rulebook to play along at home, Mr. Sharp’s organization, The Albert Einstein Institution, has From Dictatorship to Democracy available for free download in 24 languages.

The BBC reports on the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon blowout: Gulf spill’s effects ‘may not be seen for a decade’

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill “devastated” life on and near the seafloor, a marine scientist has said.

Studies using a submersible found a layer, as much as 10cm thick in places, of dead animals and oil, said Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia.

Knocking these animals out of the food chain will, in time, affect species relevant to fisheries.

She disputed an assessment by BP’s compensation fund that the Gulf of Mexico will recover by the end of 2012.

Millions of barrels of oil spewed into the sea after a BP deepwater well ruptured in April 2010. Oil slick Assessments of the clean-up effort have focused on the surface oil, but much oil remains at depth

Professor Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington that it may be a decade before the full effects on the Gulf are apparent.

The oil is sitting on the bottom of the Gulf turning it into a lifeless oil bog. The organisms that should be there to provide food for the upper forms of sea life are dead. The effects of this will ripple upwards and kill off the tuna, shrimp, red snapper, etc. We still get tar balls on the beaches, and there is oil residue in our seafood. There has been widespread illness that doctors suspect is related to the use of dispersants.

Those of us on the Gulf Coast know that we are being lied to by BP and the US government. All of the other studies of the health of the Gulf were made without any inspections of the floor of Gulf, something that Dr. Joye actually did for her work.

Gin and Tacos reads long and boring budget bills, so you don’t have to.

The fact that buried in that bill is a provision that allows the Koch Industries vice president for Wisconsin, Scott Walker, to sell the publicly owned energy facilities on a no-bid basis to private industry pretty much shows the real purpose of this whole problem. Koch Industries, an energy company, wants to steal from the people of the state of Wisconsin, and the Republicans are rushing to help them.

The union busting was ancillary, but designed to cover the real purpose of the bill. Walker wants everyone focused on the attempt to screw over the workers, so they don’t notice that he intends to give away the assets of the state.

Here’s the official marked-up bill in PDF format. The relevant text is on page 24 identified as “16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant.” It is included as Section 44 of the bill, and is created, not an amendment of existing law. This is the real purpose of this mess, corporate theft of public property, there is no other reason for hiding this in the bill, and demanding quick passage without any debate over the bill. They wanted to rush it through before people found out.

The Guardian is live-blogging the Arab and Middle East protests – as they happened, and they have set up a separate blog for Libya after protests flared in Tripoli.

Iran and China are also getting nervous about protests.

The crowd at First Draft are covering their home turf in Madison, Wisconsin, with Scout coming back to fill in.

As a public service here is the enemies of people list:

Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali – former first thief President of Tunisia

Hosni Mubarak – former first thief President of Egypt

Ali Abdullah Salen – current first thief President of Yemen

Muammar al-Gaddafi – current first thief Leader of Libya

Mohammed VI – current first thief King of Morocco

Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa – current first thief King of Bahrain

Scott Walker – current Koch Industries vice president for Governor of Wisconsin

This is all about the rich getting richer and everyone else starving. This is about stealing from the poor to give to the wealthy.

Ellroon notes that the Chinese dairies are apparently running low on countertops [melamine] and are now adding old shoes to increase the protein level in their watered down milk.

Maru notes that the House Republicans have some strange priorities, passing an unconstitutional bill of attainder to defund Planned Parenthood, and then demanding continuing Federal funding for teams in NASCAR.

The Miami Herald notes that States ignored warnings on unemployment insurance

WASHINGTON — State officials had plenty of warning. Over the past three decades, two national commissions and a series of government audits sounded alarms about the dwindling amount of money states were setting aside to pay unemployment insurance to laid-off workers.

“Trust Fund Reserves Inadequate,” federal auditors said in a 1988 report.

The Republicans have absolutely no ability to plan beyond the end of the current day. It is simple reality that you build up reserves when times are good, to cover the hard times. Does “saving for a rainy day” ring a bell. In the state of Florida the stupid unemployment insurance law raises premiums when the unemployment rate goes above 10%, rather than starting with a high rate to build up the fund, and then decreasing the rate if the problem escalates to provide some stimulus to businesses. They don’t want to save money, they want to waste it.

I would note that when I read about Larry being brought in to deal with a rat infestation at 10 Downing Street, I didn’t ask: “Wouldn’t an election be more effective?”

See, I’m not always sarcastic.

The race ended last night at 10:06PM AKST when Hank DeBruin and his Siberian Huskies of Ontario, Canada crossed the finish line in Fairbanks with an official time of 13 days 10 hours 54 minutes on the trail. Here’s a nice grouping of pictures of Hank and the puppies. Lily is the leader.

Only 13 of 25 teams finished the race. More than ten times as many people have climbed Mount Everest than have finished the Yukon Quest. Of the 349 dogs that started at Whitehorse, only 125 crossed the finish line. Two of the dogs, Taco of Brent Sass’s team, and Geronimo on Hugh Neff’s, died on the trail. That is rare on the Quest. Geronimo died of Aspiration Asphyxia, eating too fast and having food block the airway, but they still don’t know why Taco died, possibly a heart condition that has been missed in dozens of vet checks.

Now to the Awards–

Dallas Seavey won the Championship and the Rookie of the Year Awards. He also got to select the Golden Harness award for two dogs and picked Diesel and Chung, who got steaks in addition to the bling.

Ken Anderson received the Dawson City Award and 4 ounces of placer gold for being the first team into Dawson that went on to finish the race.

Kelley Griffin won the Challenge of the North Award for exemplifying the “Yukon Spirit”.

The Veterinarian’s Choice Award for outstanding dog care went to Mike & Sue Ellis. Sue is Mike’s wife and handler for their Team Tsuga Siberian Huskies.

The mushers vote for the Sportsmanship Award and this year it was a tie, so it was awarded to Mike Ellis, Allen Moore and Brent Sass. As the winners noted the entire field deserved it, given the conditions on the trail.

A new award was handed out this year – the Silver Legacy Award was presented to its namesake, Brent Sass’s veteran lead dog, Silver. The 7-year-old was not only instrumental in helping Hans Gatt’s team on Eagle Summit, he helped in his rookie year in 2006 when faced with similar conditions during the Yukon Quest 300 race. He is a trail breaker and weather leader, and while he is a little slower, when the going gets tough, he is the go-to lead dog on Brent’s team. He is a dominant enough lead dog that other teams are willing to follow him.

The non-sled dog people will be pleased to know that there is a two-week break before the Iditarod.

CNN is reporting on the protests in Wisconsin, but you have to get to the bottom of the article to find the truth:

…

But the state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau — similar to the federal government’s Congressional Budget Office — reported last month that tax cuts passed late last year by Wisconsin’s newly elected, Republican-led legislature had helped add more than $200 million to the state’s budget shortfall.

Walker’s proposed legislation requires workers to cover more of their health care premiums and pension contributions, although supporters say local governments will decide on health care contributions for their employees.

The legislation also requires collective bargaining units to conduct annual votes to maintain certification, a costly procedure, and eliminates the right of unions to have dues deducted from worker paychecks.

Wisconsin has been in good fiscal shape and should be running a small surplus, but then the Republicans took over and plunged the government into a deficit. The Republicans created the crisis and now they want the workers to pay for it, rather than repealing their ill-advised “initiatives”. They created the situation so they could impose their “solution”.

None of this was necessary. This is like the defendant who murdered his parents and asked for leniency because he’s an orphan.

The Miami Herald reports that the Republican Florida Senate is not happy: Scott rebuked by 26 senators over high-speed rail funding

From Washington to Tallahassee, Florida lawmakers scrambled Thursday to save $2.4 billion in federal money for high-speed rail that Gov. Rick Scott rejected.
…

“The cart’s in a ditch right now and we’ve got to figure out a way if we can all pull it out together,” said U.S. Rep. John Mica, an Orlando area Republican who is chairman of the powerful House transportation committee.

In Tallahassee, a veto-proof majority of the Florida Senate rebuked Scott in a letter that urged the federal government to give the state the money Scott has refused.

[Read more →]

It is very possible that everyone will be in Fairbanks for the final banquet, as Hank DeBruin and the Siberians can leave Chena Hot Springs in about 2½ hours. It is snowing, but it will be daylight.

Jodi Bailey was the first of the true rookies to finish, this is her first long distance race, while those who arrived before her classified as rookies have been in the Iditarod.

If anyone out there is considering running in the Quest, do it in an even year the first time. It is much easier to face Rosebud and Eagle Summit with a full fresh team than after a week of running on the trail.

Update at 12:10PM CST: Hank has left Chena Hot Springs, everyone is headed into Fairbanks.

Update at 5:36PM CST: Hank is alone on the trail with about 40 miles to go.

Update at 8PM CST: About 25 miles left.

Update at 10:15PM CST: About 15 miles and Festival Fairbanks has set up a web cam on the finish line. [Oops – standard Fairbanks problem, the resources are too limited]

Update at 1:08AM CST: The Red Lantern is out.

At Fairbanks

7 Jodi Bailey (17)^R
8 Mike Ellis (5)
9 David Dalton (23)
10 Tamara Rose (12)^I
11 Kyla Durham (14)^R
12 Jerry Joinson (21)^R
13 Hank DeBruin (19)^IΦ

The Mushers in bold are former winners of the Yukon Quest, the numbers in parentheses are their Bib numbers, the small “I” indicates a Quest rookie who has competed in the Iditarod, and the small “R” indicates a total rookie.

Note: This post will be updated during the day, and the map changed on all posts to reflect the current situation.

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