Four birds. In a 100 mile oil slick, stretching from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico,
at this time, four birds were captured for cleaning: a cattle egret, two ducks, a juvenile laughing gull, and one turtle. Oh, a snake was caught covered with oil, but it was tossed out by cleanup workers.

I attended a cleaning of three of the birds in Venice, Louisiana, about two hours outside of New Orleans towards the Gulf of Mexico. They use Dawn detergent, because it cuts grease. The Exxon- Valdez spill taught us that Dawn is effective.

After Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast in August 2005 the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) purchased more than $85M worth of basic supplies for storm victims. For more than two years, until last month FEMA let the supplies sit in warehouses at a cost of $1M/year.

During that two year period local government officials and non-profit relief organizations in Louisiana and Mississippi made repeated public pleas for donations of the exact sort of items FEMA had already purchased and were even stored locally.

That these supplies people have needed for years just sat in warehouses until mid-June of this year is bad enough, but FEMA was able to find a way to make this story even more sad and depressing the way only George Bush's administration can.

There is wonderful news in the paper this morning.  The New Orleans Lakefront Airport, one of the true architectural gems of the 1930s, is going to be restored to its original appearance.  Architect Alton Ochsner Davis will oversee the project.

Completed in 1934 and originally named Shushan Airport Terminal Complex, the airport is one of a very few Art Deco/WPA-era terminals left in existence.  Most of the air terminals of the era were demolished to make larger facilities to accommodate jet traffic.  Shushan was spared this fate when Moisant Field (now Louis Armstrong International) opened in Kenner in 1946.

Back in 1988 when the Exxon Valdez ran aground, I can recall at least a few weeks of steady coverage by both the three major networks and cable news (just CNN at the time) of the disaster, its environmental impact, and efforts to clean it up.

But the fuel oil spill that happened in Louisiana earlier this week proves to be a much larger disaster with farther-reaching consequences--yet for some news briefs I've seen on NBC Nightly News and a couple of cable channels, there hasn't been the major coverage it should be getting. Why aren't the MSM taking it seriously?

And scorpiorising says,

it is somewhat shocking to me, given the size of the spill and its potential impact on fragile wetlands, that there isn't more help coming to help wildlife, and to help with cleanup.

The fuel spill in the Mississippi River now stretches 100 miles, almost to the Gulf of Mexico, and a sickly oil smell hangs over the city. According to a WWL TV news report, an SPCA group from Houston has set up a wildlife recovery effort. I don't want to pass judgement yet, but it is somewhat shocking to me, given the size of the spill and its potential impact on fragile wetlands, that there isn't more help coming to help wildlife, and to help with cleanup.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's Voting Matters Blog

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

In 2000, Florida’s disastrous effort to purge former felons from voter rolls resulted in the disenfranchisement of hundreds if not thousands of legitimate voters and clearly influenced the outcome of the presidential contest in that state. History may repeat itself this November with states taking potentially reckless and unlawful measures to clean voter rolls before Election Day.

With everyone paying due attention to the oil spill (now 80 miles and growing) on the river, a key story from yesterday's Times-Picayune got lost in the noise.

For years, writers, geologists, climate scientists and pols have discussed the value of coastal wetlands in flood protection.  I recently reiterated that a smart presidential candidate could even reverse my state's reddening trend with a commitment to restoring Louisiana's coast.

But, throughout all the discussions, no one has ever specified just how much flood protection bang wetlands offer for the preservation/restoration buck.  Now someone has.

The third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is coming up next month.

Today Dolly has been upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane.  And again there are worries about levees:

Coastal officials worried Tuesday that Tropical Storm Dolly may bring so much rain that flooding could break through the levees holding back the Rio Grande.

Some stories don’t ever seem to change.

Since I've been such a jerk in the last 24 hours, and since there a few hours left in my vacation from civility, I've decided to face head-on the question that's arisen since the close of the wildly successful Netroots Nation-Austin:

Pittsburgh?  WTF???

For anybody who thought Louisiana would get a far better deal from BushCo under GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal than she did under Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, they'd better think again. For Bush's pattern of abuse against Louisiana seems to transcend her politics. According to the Baton Rouge Advocate,

Bobby Jindal,  angered over the increased costs that storm-wounded Louisiana must shoulder for construction of hurricane protection levees, asked Washington for more time — and a little fairness.

Under the latest war spending bill, Louisiana must kick in $1.8 billion by 2011 in order to activate $5.8 billion in federal funding needed to strengthen the New Orleans-area levee system.

Jindal said Louisiana’s share for repairs to the 360-mile, federally maintained levee system, is higher post-Katrina, than before the storm. "It seems ridiculous," Jindal said, tersely.

Unlike Kennedy's mediocre kickoff party, Landrieu has really put the campaign into high gear. She has been through more than one hundred small towns across Louisiana since the year began, and recently began a big campaign swing through Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Monroe, Shreveport, Alexandria, Lake Charles and New Orleans; every major metropolitan area in the state.

She's beating Kennedy to the airwaves, with her first ad about to go up, and available for viewing on her website, http://www.marylandrieu.com . She also pulled out the endorsements of 68 mayors yesterday.

A while back, in a newspaper article detailing the woes of the current Republican House and Senatorial Campaign Committees, one Republican official commented that he and his colleagues could not wait for 2008 to be over so that they could get on to 2010, where, in their hopes, Republican prospects will have improved.

There are a bunch of really good reasons why looking at potential races in the 2010 midterms in 2008 is a waste of time (and I’ll enumerate some of them herein), but, really, "waste of time" describes a great deal of what the average political junkie does on time, and it’s fun.  Speculating is more or less unavoidable, and it’s always fun to look back at old predictions to see how wrong (or, occasionally, right) you (or, better yet, other people) were.  So, without further ado, let’s put some carts before some horses.

brown nosing piece of filth!  Why the frak are you putting a hold on PEPFAR???

Also, the Alabama senator, Jeff Sessions, is moving to keep the legislative provision that uniquely stigmatizes people with HIV in the law as inadmissable to the US. HRC has asked its members to email their senators.

Senator Sessions of Alabama

Vitter - Panderer to all things Southern Baptist

Quinnipiac's latest national poll shows a nine-point edge for Barack Obama over John McCain.

Quinnipiac. 7/8-13. MoE 2.4%.

Rasmussen's tracking poll today shows Obama with a smaller lead:

Rasmussen. 7/14. MoE 4.5%. (3-day average tracking numbers in parentheses)

As for individual states, Obama has a slim lead in Missouri, the quintessential swing state:

Research 2000. MoE 3.5%.

Obama enjoys a four-point lead in Colorado, another swing state lost by Gore and by Kerry:

Public Policy Polling. 7/9-10. MoE 3%.

Good news, certainly. On the other hand, he trails very badly in Louisiana:

Rasmussen. 7/9. MoE 4.5%. (5/28 numbers in parentheses)

Not good numbers in the Bayou State, although the good news for Louisiana Democrats is that Senator Mary Landrieu still leads.

A memorial, that yet isn't - three years later!  It's almost like an IGTNT diary, but isn't.

The first time I ever looked at a blog or got curious about them was the weekend that Katrina hit because I needed a place to scream.  As the same for many, it made me incredulous, angry, confused and sad about all that happened, was happening, what did not happen, be it the effects of the storm and shameful response to all that occurred in its aftermath. Eventually, I found dKos - one good thing that came out of it, for me at least and not a person affected by the storm itself.

More after the jump and a link to the news article...

Democratic State Rep. Michael Jackson, who lost the Democratic special-election primary in Louisiana's 6th District to now-Rep Don Cazayoux, says it's "very likely" that he'll challenge Cazayoux as an independent this year.

He's not planning on challenging in the Democratic primary. He is waging an independent, spoiler campaign against a Democratic incumbent.

This is not insignificant. Cazayoux won election by just three points over Republican Woody Jenkins in April. He did so largely based on heavy black turnout in East Baton Rouge. The district as a whole is 33% African-American, and it's very possible that Jackson, who is African-American himself, will peel off enough votes from Cazayoux to swing the election to Republican Bill Cassidy.

But then, Jackson appears not to be overly concerned about the good of the party:

Jackson, the vice chairman of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, said he’s fully aware that some Republicans want him in the race and that Democratic leaders want him on the sidelines.

"Both sides have shown an interest in whether or not I’m in this race," he said. "Republicans feel it might help their position and Democrats feel like it may hurt their position."

However, Jackson said, "my goal would be to run to win and to maximize the opportunity and to maximize my chances. and it appears that the best way to do that right now is to do it as an Independent."

So, he's running as an independent, then, because it maximizes his chances. It may hand the seat to a Republican, but what the hell...

But he added that although he would be on the ballot as an Independent, he intends to preach a Democratic message during his campaign.

"It’s not that I’m disassociating myself [from] the Democrats ... my banner will be an Independent-Democrat, I’ll stay connected to the philosophy that way."

An "Independent-Democrat", yet. Sounds familiar, for some reason.

Anyway, I should think that a vanity campaign as an independent, against a Democratic incumbent backed by the entire party establishment, with no obvious purpose other than to torpedo the Democrat, does enough on its own to "disassociate oneself from the Democrats".

If Jackson were running in the primary, that would be fine. If the jungle primary still existed, that too would be OK. But an independent run of this nature is truly bad form.

Last month, California gave its stamp of approval to same-sex marriage, becoming only the second state after Massachusetts to do so.  Fear of gay marriage has long been exploited by right-wingers as the ultimate homophobic weapon to scare up bigotry and votes. Predictably, a parade of anti-gay idiots came out of the woodwork, howling in protest.

But they're on the wrong side of history. And to fully understand recent events, it's important to remember a tragedy that happened thirty-five years ago, and how much things have changed for gay Americans since then.

On the last Sunday in June, 1973, a gay bar in New Orleans called the UpStairs Lounge was firebombed. The resulting blaze killed 32 people. The death toll was the worst in New Orleans history up to that time. It was almost assuredly the largest mass murder of gays and lesbians to ever occur in the United States.

More below the fold.

Yeah, I'm always a day late on these things, and god knows I'm no Granny Doc, but here goes.

From the front page to the lowliest diary comments, it is impossible not to encounter somebody's grave, disheartened disappointment at something the Democratic nominee did or didn't do in his quest to gain office.

You're shocked.  You're hurt.  You're going to take your $25 and go home.  You're going to give up on the big ticket and concentrate on state races.

Enjoy.  I don't have the option.  My state sucks.