Monday: Magic

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You want some magic this Monday to start your week? Check this short film Vorticity by Mike Olbinski. If you can launch it in full screen or cast it to a television, even better, and I hope you have decent speakers for the sound. Mike’s wife is a saint, a wholly different kind of magic off screen to support a guy who does this stuff.

Under the gun here today, too much real world stuff to check off my To Do List. Only a quick list of stuff worth looking at.

Kudos
Bravo to Michigan’s Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Flint Township) who filed the Families of Flint Act last week to provide $1.5 billion in relief funding for water system repairs, additional health care, monitoring and education, as well as economic development to support the struggling city. Co-sponsors include U.S. Reps. Sander Levin (D-Royal Oak), Debbie Dingell (D-Dearborn MI), Brenda Lawrence (D-Southfield MI), and John Conyers (D-Detroit), along with 167 other House Dems.

Lean on House GOP members to do the right thing and support this bill when they are next in session in August.

Leftovers
Couple of things screwed up or left unfulfilled before Congress left town:

Quick List

Catch you tomorrow, gotta’ dash!

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30 replies
  1. P J Evans says:

    There are really only two freeways that serve Terminal Island: the Harbor Freeway and the Long Beach Freeway – and both of them are high-traffic. (The Terminal Island Freeway is a dead end freeway – it goes up to Sepulveda/Willow and ends.)
    IF Foxx doesn’t think we don’t need funding, he’s never been around there.

    • jo6pac says:

      PJ I have question. I thought they were going to build a railroad out of the area then put containers on trucks. That never happened?

      Thanks in advance.

    • rugger9 says:

      One wonders if there is some other triangulation calculation going on, in that CA is safely D but perhaps some of the other locations can be tilted at the last minute by throwing money into the state. I’d agree about the LA importance, however, since the next closest port capable of handling that level would be Oakland. San Diego is not set up as a container ship facility to the level needed, it’s mostly USN / USMC bases. Port Hueneme in Ventura is too small (another USN base).

      *
      On Turkey, the thing that helps Kerry here is that the Turks hate the Russians more than just about anyone else (other than the Greeks and Kurds) and a jingoistic Erdogan really could not move easily from NATO to the new model of the Warsaw Pact and expect to survive politically or otherwise. What isn’t known is whether Erdogan would go the “nonaligned” route with the Gulf Cooperation Council. Erdogan already (allegedly) provides tacit support for the ISILgroup. One of the key things going on there (see Juan Cole’s blog) is that Aleppo’s fall cuts the easiest supply line from Turkey to the rebels. Sunni Turkey would not likely cut a deal with Shia Iran. Bottom line, while Erdogan for now has fended off the coup, there are many who prefer secular Turkey as opposed to a religious Caliphate. Until Tayyip stops pushing the religious advantage he will be resisted and we’ll see more of these.
      *
      Kerry does need to ensure that the Putin’s Russians do not exploit this opportunity to create access to a warm-water port large enough to hold a fleet and not choked off at the Bosporus. I don’t think Putin’s boys necessarily initiated the coup like the CIA would, since Turks and Russians have been fighting for centuries (the charge of the Light Brigade is from the Crimean War which was one of the rounds) and anyone making a deal with Putin on the Turkish side is committing political suicide if the deal is discovered.

  2. Alan says:

    Interesting that you don’t mention UK debate on the renewal of the Trident missile system. But maybe that’s because, while many in the Labour and Tory parties think having nuclear missiles gives them big dicks and allows them to sit at the big boys table, no one else cares.

  3. omphaloscepsis says:

    @jo6pac:

    You may be thinking of the Alameda Corridor.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_Corridor

    http://www.acta.org/projects/projects_completed_alameda_factsheet.asp

    “The Alameda Corridor is a 20-mile-long rail cargo expressway linking the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles to the transcontinental rail network near downtown Los Angeles. It is a series of bridges, underpasses, overpasses and street improvements that separate freight trains from street traffic and passenger trains, facilitating a more efficient transportation network. The project’s centerpiece is the Mid-Corridor Trench, which carries freight trains in an open trench that is 10 miles long, 33 feet deep and 50 feet wide between State Route 91 in Carson and 25th Street in Los Angeles. Construction began in April 1997. Operations began in April 2002.”

    A bit outdated, but more readable than most:

    http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/alameda

    “During its first six years, the corridor carried more than 12 million containers or 21 million TEUs [20 foot equivalent unit]. It is estimated that each day more than 7,200 containers (13,000 TEUs) are transported via the Alameda Corridor, which constitutes almost one third of the port’s average daily volume.”

    http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/project_delivery/lessons_learned/success_stories_alameda.aspx

    • rugger9 says:

      Containers are typically designed for intermodal transport either by rail or by truck to fit onto a tray setup. All you need is a big enough crane to pick and place and some way to manage the tracking of what goes where.

  4. Rayne says:

    Alan (1:13) — Hey. Check the second graf of this post. Did you miss the part of this post where I said I AM BUSY TODAY? Look, the rules here are simple: don’t be a dick. And you are being a dick when you insist I must cover any topic in a roundup I post here Mon-Fri out of the goodness of my heart (and certainly not for any personal financial gain).

    That said, since you’ve got the time to bitch about the topic and these roundups are open threads, why don’t you share a bloody link about the Trident nuke base and its relationship to the UK-Scots negotiations?

    P J Evans (12:39) — Thanks for that qualification, I wish I had time to screencap a pic from Google Maps satellite view to expand your comment.

    omphaloscepsis (2:05) — Appreciate the enhancement info. That is one mothertrucking massive amount of freight. Stupefies me that Foxx bypassed the whole area with grant money.

  5. blueba says:

    I really don’t know anything abut Ryan who is posting here. However I am unhappy with the tone and content of recent posts which appear to be from a Neoliberal viewpoint.

    Recently we were treated with the same swill of the Neoliberal corporate press about stock prices effected by events – something dear to the hearts of Neoliberals but almost meaningless for hoi polloi.

    Today we get a stealth advertisement for a “space” company, cheering its for profit accomplishments and commentary on a corporate merger. Space-X is in the business of selling stuff or trips into space to the people with the money to pay for them, they are not some cool organization which will help anyone except themselves. In fairness perhaps Ryan is trying to get to something else behind the merger/purchase or the transnational corporate activity of Space-X but that is left to the imagination.

    The ever present fawning over corporations and their profit making activities apparently permeates even emptywheel (the blog not the person)

    • bmaz says:

      That is Rayne, not Ryan, you stupid twit. And none of the hosts of this blog give a tinker’s damn about your personal concerns over our subject matter or tone.
      .
      If this whiny tripe is all you have on the offer, don’t bother to come back or comment again. Should you persist with similar whiny tripe, consider this a personal guarantee the door will hit you in the ass on the way permanently out.

    • John Casper says:

      1. Who is Ryan?

      You wrote, “However I am unhappy with the tone and content of recent posts which appear to be from a Neoliberal viewpoint.”

      2. Please link to specific posts and the sentences that you consider, “neoliberal.”

  6. bloopie2 says:

    News report: Roger Ailes will be dismissed from Fox News in the wake of multiple reports that he sexually harassed his female subordinates over a period of decades and a high-profile lawsuit from former top anchor Gretchen Carlson. Well, how about that? Gretchen is clearly a winner, and we all (men included) are better off for this, in so many ways.

    • rugger9 says:

      TPM has a copy of GC’s latest filing and it would be interesting to get bmaz’s erudite dissection of the case. However, just as a layman I would think that Fox would have been more interested in maintaining the architect of their highly successful business model instead of the “just because we have to” filings to change venue. What TPM noted correctly is that GC filed against Ailes personally and not Fox News and so even though Fox is an interested party, their standing and ability to push the case in the direction they want would be limited. Ailes is apparently “on his own” as a result. I’m not an attorney, but if GC had been in NJ when any of the alleged propositions from Ailes occurred, that’s probably enough to file there.
      *
      Now, if you’re Rupert… (pause to cleanse the mental barf resulting from that thought, sorry….) who would you replace Ailes with that would be just as mercenary and devious? I nominate old Turdblossom himself.
      *
      It will be interesting to see how the RN decides to handle the Faslane issue. It is not really too dissimilar to what the USN had to do regarding Subic Bay when the Philippines went their own way (until the PRC started their South Sea campaign, but the current USN facility is much smaller). This is really a NATO issue, and while I do not think the Scots would pull out of NATO, but I’m sure (as Igor said in Young Frankenstein): “the rates have gone up”. How much will be the subject of the negotiations to come. This I think is actually something that would not be subject to the Holyrood parliament under the Act of Scotland since it pertains to national defense and international relations. The RN has other bases to relocate into as needed.

      • John Casper says:

        Thanks for the link.

        Hope this animates worker rights with Republicans. Despite what he did to Air Traffic controllers, Reagan believed in collective bargaining. Eisenhower, even more so.

  7. Rayne says:

    blueba (2:45) — Hey. The name is RAYNE, not Ryan. If your intent is to annoy with myriad tiny paper cuts, you’re doing a fabulous job.

    Give how little daylight there is between your favorite country and its corporations, I suppose you really can’t cheer for an individual corporation or appreciate the individual drive to achieve that isn’t completely pwned by the government. It must be difficult to understand why I might be disgusted by Halliburton and Koch Industries but enthused about SpaceX since they may do business with/for the government but aren’t actually tightly entwined with the government.

    What a pity.

  8. bloopie2 says:

    “Enthusiasm at ‘Women for Trump’ event palpable.” That’s what the doctor does when checking you out–palpate, or press with the fingers. So then, the women are here ‘for Trump’, and they are palpable? Oy vay. I wonder if Fox News is covering the event. (Sorry, it’s hot in my office today and the mind is wandering of an afternoon.)

  9. P J Evans says:

    Port Hueneme in Ventura is too small (another USN base)
    It gets a lot of car carriers, actually. There’s a port in addition to the USN base (which is Seabees).

    • rugger9 says:

      That’s a relatively new development. It is not far from the main N-S rail line which is why it would make sense.

      Did they tweak Seal Beach as well?

        • rugger9 says:

          Hard to keep up with BRAC shifts sometimes, and yes I am well aware it was a NWS since I’ve reloaded there in the past. The point I would make is it has rail and heavy lift capabilities to transfer to civilian use. We had a NWS here at Concord / Port Chicago, made famous by a blast during WW2 and by Brian Willson losing his legs when a weapons train rolled over him while he was protesting. When the military mostly pulled out of the Bay Area I’m pretty sure it was BRAC’d as well.

          Those weapons trains stop for no one outside the perimeter for some very good reasons, but Willson made the martyr gig pay for a while after that.

  12. Rayne says:

    Alan (1:13) — This

    Interesting that you don’t mention UK debate on the renewal of the Trident missile system. But maybe that’s because, while many in the Labour and Tory parties think having nuclear missiles gives them big dicks and allows them to sit at the big boys table, no one else cares.

    Right. I didn’t cover Taylor Swift versus Kanye and Kim Kardashian, either, and you didn’t say it was *interesting that I didn’t mention them* or insist *no one else cares.*

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