We Are Not Alone

On the last day of every year, I resolve to make no New Year's resolutions.

It's the only one that's ever worked.

First Night Worcester 2009

First, a warning: before you click on the First Night 2009 link, be prepared for the automatic playing of a piece of music that you may be tempted to immediately stop (player controls at top right on the page)... it does conclude after less than a minute however. I only mention it because I can't quite place where the musical piece comes from, and there's no clear indication on the site as to where that info might be found. No attribution for music always bothers me. (They did it through all six seasons of the Sopranos on HBO, and that always bothered me, too.)

The trouble with this piece is that it just doesn't quite fit. Although it's probably the kind of thing that most might simply ignore as background music, the relegation of any music to "background" status also bothers me.

After re-playing the music several times to hear this apparent "webpage overture" I ended up believing that whoever designed this particular feature might actually have a sense of deep, dark humor. The piece is something I'd expect to overlay a scene in a Stanley Kubrick film. Deeper and darker still, it could even be something I wouldn't be surprised to find enhancing a scene in a David Lynch film.

But, no matter whether it could've been played behind Jack Nicholson driving his family up that lonely road to the ill-fated hotel, or if it could've been used to counterplay the murder of Laura Palmer, it surely bears no slightest connection to the festivities scheduled to take place tomorrow, here in Worcester... unless, of course, it's the undisclosed title for the piece that makes the First Night connection.

What's the title of the piece? Who knows? I sure don't, and they're apparently not interested in linking to any info on the website about it, either.

The First Night Worcester 2009 website does, however, have a second tier menu link to a list of all the performers and a venue map to help you plan your First Night activities from 3 pm through midnight tomorrow.

Worcester Bug Hunt - another pest

Just when you thought it was safe to assume we know what's going on, a whole new infestation comes out from under the radar.

Money Quote: In five years, winter moth caterpillars have defoliated tens of thousands of acres of hardwood and fruit trees as they slowly expand as far west as Worcester and now into Rhode Island.

At least with the winter moth, though, they won't be cutting down all the host trees. Instead, the moth can be fought by releasing a parasitic fly known as cyzenis albicans. The flies lay eggs on the leaves that the female moth caterpillars eat, hatch inside the caterpillars, and consume them from the inside out...

Who said entymology wasn't more fun than a horror movie?

December 30th

Today is a birthday for Bo Diddley, Skeeter Davis, Del Shannon, John Hartford, Paul Stookey, Felix Pappalardi, Michael Nesmith, Davy Jones, Patti Smith, and Jeff Lynne.

Worcester - Another 2008 Online Wrapup

Sharilee has posted a 2008 retrospective in Part 1 on 12/23, and in Part 2 today.

Worcester Magazine Fires Another One

Doug Chapel, author of Action Geek, has been dumped by Worcester Magazine.

It looks like WoMag is in such dire financial straits that they can't even afford to carry a home town artist, a longtime fixture at WoMag, for that measly hundred bucks each month....

A lousy hundred bucks a month! Can you believe this?

Gatehouse v Boston.com, cont'd

Heh. While Gatehouse is busy suing Boston.com for aggregating and doing deep links to their content, the Mass Roots GOP website is lifting entire articles verbatim.

Caroline "Y'know" Kennedy

In this clip, on average, Caroline utters the useless interjection "y'know" once every five seconds. Actually, it's not bad when you compare it to her Uncle Ted's ubiquitous "uh's" and "ah's" that have made any Senate floor speech he's ever given to be twice as long...



YouTube link

Snowpile Patrol

This snowpile on the corner of Gates and Illinois was still high enough today to make anyone huff and puff in any attempt to clear a path for the sidewalk underneath.

But just imagine how high it had to have been piled up by the snowplows before all the rain and warm weather got rid of all the rest of the snow in the neighborhood.

This is the kind of problem that property owners face in complying with the city's sidewalk snow removal ordinance. One could probably clear the sidewalk, but then get fined anyway... after the plows come along for their twelfth run along the street, piling up even more compacted snow onto the corner.

If the ordinance was "fair" it would provide for any and all property owners in the city whose property does NOT abut a public sidewalk to "pitch and help" and be "civic minded" in this endeavor... every time it snows.

There are plenty of these kinds of situations to be found across the city. I certainly didn't go out of my way to find them this morning.

This snowpile at the corner of May and Woodbine is no less of a glacier. It's the kind of thing that even a consumer snowblower will have trouble biting into.

The whole spirit of this ordinance is pretty lopsided, to say the least. The majority of the City Councilors who voted for it don't even HAVE sidewalks abutting the property where they live. The idea that there would be any slightest semblance of a city-wide equal distribution of labor amongst taxpayers to provide this service to the city is completely false.

Where the city collects taxes to provide services for the good of all, they fall down flat on their faces with this ordinance to compel involuntary servitude only from those who own property abutting a city sidewalk. The same irrationality behind this ordinance would be just as ridiculous an argument to compel property owners to clean snow off the streets abutting their property, as well.

Jumble

The Jumble puzzle in today's T&G is somewhat screwed up. But it involves numbers again, something they have trouble with over at 20 Franklin. Besides, they just buy that stuff, they don't create it or (apparently) even check it.

Caroline Kennedy: Trial By Ink

Daddy? Can I have a Senate Seat when I grow up?

With pundits like Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News writing columns like this, you'd think that the left wing's most famous daughter of the 1960's has pretty much blown her shot at the US Senate appointment to fill Hillary Clinton's seat.

It's certainly beginning to look like she's blown it, so far.

There may well, indeed, be no more wiggle room for Caroline to reverse the PR disaster that her bid has become. To all who might be watching, all it looks like so far is a member of the ruling elite who's completely out of touch with the rest of us great unwashed out here in the real world. The way everyone's spinning it, it appears that Caroline had no idea that the rest of us mattered, or that the press needs to have its collective asses kissed, in order to get good press.

At this stage, she'd have to give an open ended press conference on a par with her Daddy's expertise. And there is nobody, including me, who will believe that she's up to that level of savvy with the press at this point... or probably at any point in the near future. Personally, I would very much like to see Caroline surprise the hell out of everyone and do a big press conference that deftly turns the whole media parade into a band of gushing sycophants... but it's beginning to look like she doesn't even have the chops for a decent sound bite.

2008: Worcester Online

Worcester's Online Echo Chamber has had some notable moments and touched upon some interesting topics over the past year.

For two whole days in August, City Councilor Rick Rushton was a blogger.

The Worcester Regional Research Chest of Drawers dove into the blogosphere and (heh) made a big splash.

InCity Times, after years of being a print only bi-weekly, began to go online, ...but ran into a great big pile of trouble. After that, another aborted attempt was made to go online again. But then, finally, InCity Times successfully went online in a third incarnation and quickly posted all sorts of interesting articles.

Back in September of 2007, Mike Benedetti began a podcast about Worcester called "508", and it ran weekly through December 19th of this year. One of the more entertaining and informative pieces of the puzzle that is the Worcester Blogosphere, 508 will, hopefully, return in May 2009. Here is the complete archive.

LB Worm began the Wormtown Punk Punk Blog on January 14th.

Worcester lost the toilet museum.

The prospect of women dancing naked on Main Street inspired lots of noise. And it lasted a while, too.

The VegWorcester blog was born on March 18th.

A derelict tennis court gained much more attention than anyone in that neighborhood could have ever wanted, even in their wildest nightmares.

Worcester's new place in the heirarchy of major motion picture locations may have gotten taken down a notch, but the city got yet another moniker: HollyWoo. And HollyWoo got plenty of additional movie-making exercise this year. The year had barely gotten past Spring when another casting call went out.

But the HollyWoo branding didn't really take. In fact, the re-naming of Worcester and the sloganizing had gotten so bad that, at one point, No Slogan Day was born.

The city's census went online.

After getting massive amounts of traffic on a post she made with pictures of Worcester's famous Turtle Boy, Claudia launched the Turtle Boy Website.

Tracy started up the Whos of Who-cester blog on March 1st, about three months after having also launched the Cascading Waters blog.

I posted about the city's first major wind power project from April through September.

Charter Cable tried to introduce an unwanted practice under the guise of a new service, but then changed their mind after the meme went national.

Mid-year gave us the beginning of a memorable meme: The Stupidest Person in Worcester. And Brendan wasn't the only writer in town who decided to deride that same person.

Another oft-resurrected meme around these parts was the disappearing journalist cum shrinking noose-paper budget. But this last article by Scott McLennan was truly one of the lowest points... it was the end of an era.

Then another low point seemed to have arrived when WoMag got sold. Subsequently, there was the launch of two new newsy aggregatorish sites, RealWorcester and Worcester Wired. Later on, Charlene started her own blog.

WB Journal editor, Christina Davis started a blog in July. In September, they moved the blog over to the main site.

The Randell v Nemeth meme spanned the whole year.

Paulie went online in March.

Can we ever forget the hot dog ordinance?

And what would 2008 have been in Worcester without RojasGate?

The election campaigns sliced into everyone's attention during September and October, and when the election was over, Worcester's Online Echo chamber still had a few things to say.

There was predictability... There was decimation... And there was a preponderance of those who asked, "...knife ordinance?"

All things considered, and aside from the ice storm, the biggest and longest running story in Worcester this year has probably been the Asian Longhorned Beetle infestation. The video clip embedded in this post, however, gets my vote as the absolute best online coverage of the year.

Republican Offenders

Ever since the Republican Offenders website came online, the question has been put forth as to when a Democrat Offenders site would surface. The person who created the Republican Offenders site had originally implied that they would be the ones to do it, but then reneged.

Over the past several months, I've occasionally done a search for a Democrat Offenders site, but no-one has apparently created one yet. I'd have to say that if anyone's looking for a website to create, but hasn't come up with any fruitful ideas yet, this topic would certainly end up drawing an ever-growing crowd over the next four years.

1.74 Cubic Miles

After they burn coal in an electrical generating plant, they have to get rid of the ash. At the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee, they pile it into a holding area. When it rains, the ash gets wet and turns into sludge, so they built a dam to prevent this sludge from going anywhere.

Unfortunately, the dam broke and 1.74 cubic miles of this sludge just went wherever the local terrain would take it.

Is this what they mean when they say "clean coal"?

No Prescription Needed

Heh.

Bloody Christmas

Mike Benedetti posted this picture and an explanation for what appears to be a serious injury he sustained while traveling south on a bus Christmas Eve.

Good Grief!... it's almost all I could say when I saw it.

It could've been worse... but I suppose you could say that about nearly anything.

Statistically, though, this means Mike will never sustain another injury while riding a bus.

I'm glad you are okay, Mike. Best to you in your DC endeavors!

BioHackers

The scenario that was a backdrop for the movie Bladerunner may be getting closer to reality, lately. In the film, rows of storefronts along a dimly lit city street contain various Mom and Pop enterprises specializing in all sorts of bio-engineered consumer products, the example in the film being a snake used by an exotic dancer.

Current rule sets, however, are nowhere near the kind of regulations apparently in place in the movie's backdrop, such as microscopic (and easy to find) producers' serial numbers. Yet, the garage level operations currently on the rise are way ahead of the regulatory curve in today's real life scenario... it's not a backdrop for a movie anymore.

Gatehouse v Boston.com

At the least the request for an immediate injunction was denied. That still doesn't reduce the possibility of Gatehouse, essentially, destroying themselves and every other online news organization in the process, should they win this case. The "deep link" networking of news and commentary on the web is what drives the bulk of the traffic. (Methinks this particular litigation is merely an attempt to derive an award, rather than settle a valid beef!)

AP tried this tack a while ago, but backed off after just about everybody boo'd and hissed... The angle that Gatehouse is trying, though, stands a somewhat better chance of winning in court, and for that they probably deserve much louder booing and hissing, in my opinion.

Side Effectitis

A drug used to treat glaucoma, Lumigan, has a (second most frequent) side effect of causing longer eyelashes.

Well, there's a bonanza!

The FDA has now approved the drug to be used to grow longer eyelashes!

Heh. When used specifically for the side effect of growing longer eyelashes, one has to wonder what the side effects of THAT will be.

Merry Xmas to Mass Taxpayers

The burgeoning losses to pension funds will turn Massachusetts into an even bigger river of red ink over the next year, at the very least, ...and probably for much longer.

Funniest Christmas Video

It may take a warped mind to appreciate, but this surely is one of the funniest Christmas videos I've seen this year.

A Bad Year for Legal Problems

From the looks of it, 2009 will not be a year to expect any semblance of getting a court date in a timely manner.

Flogged

During my morning surf today, I clicked on an obscure link that, unfortunately, went into one of those "your computer is infected" pages that goes haywire with all sorts of pop-ups that look like real scanning software... So I just slammed the whole computer off (my usual response to this sort of stuff).

Now I'm going through a full scan... one hour of scanning for viruses on a "full scan" at this point... with the computer disconnected from the net. Meanwhile, it's nice to have Kathy's computer five feet away to make a post this morning.

I didn't blog all day yesterday... with this little glitch this morning, though, I'm going into withdrawal...

Update: The scan produced no viruses found... which is typical for the kind of thing I encountered. A never-ending propagation of pop-ups that look like scanning software that you don't have installed on your computer is a dead giveaway. If closing the first pop-up produces two more, it's time to hit the "off" switch. What's really nice about this, however, is that if you do a hard switchoff with Vista, it doesn't cause a problem when you turn it back on again. I've been thoroughly impressed with the efficacy of Vista's "self-healing" properties.

Merry Christmas

ShovelGate

Not that you could tell from this picture, but there's a sidewalk under all that snow on the right hand side of lower Grafton Street, ...but I suppose the city just didn't remember it was there, as of ten this morning.

But, to be fair, City Councilor Clancy mentioned that the sidewalks alongside the park at Massassoit and Blithewood weren't cleared when he came in for the Council meeting earlier yesterday. Today, those sidewalks are all cleared, including Rice Square School, which he also mentioned. We have to remember that the whole city is "complaint driven" (except when it comes to FOIA requests, of course).

This brings me to suggest that the City Council might want to consider modfying the Sidewalk Snow Removal edict somewhat. The "10 hour rule" is pretty stiff, to say the least. I mean, if the DPW can't even comply with it, why should anyone else have to?

Unless the Councilors are merely looking for another source of revenue by upping the fines, changing the tight 10 hour requirement to something a bit more realistic would be more appropriate. I'm sure Gary Rosen and Phil Palmieri would both agree that if you haven't cleared the sidewalk in front of your property within 24 hours after a storm, then maybe a warning to get it cleared over the subsequent 24 hours would be more appropriate. Then, if the snow's still there after a total of 48 hours, you start gettting fined. Under those parameters, at least you would be able to say that the city wasn't just looking for revenue in all of this hot air about safety, and so forth.

And then there are all those empty commercial properties with sidewalks next to them. This whole block on the corner of Beacon and Hermon has been unshoveled since time immemorial, year after year.

Some person, or some organization somewhere, actually owns properties like this, and the snow removal edict certainly isn't making any distinctions between residential and commercial properties. So, we have to assume that the city should be just as diligent in ramming it up their asses, too.

Frankly, it's absolutely pointless having sidewalks on Beacon Street in the winter... which, as it turns out, is pretty much the way it ends up being after every snowstorm: no sidewalks anywhere in sight.

The point of the edict, of course, is to make the sidewalks safe, navigable in winter, and kinda like sidewalks in Palm Springs all year 'round...

Here's a shot of an empty commercial building on Hammond Street, with an abutting sidewalk that never gets cleared of snow.

This used to be Thom McAn, later Chess King, then "poof!" ...they packed up and moved to Rhode Island and became CVS.

All things considered, and judging by the hypocrisy I heard last night in the Council chamber, the only real drive behind this sidewalk snow removal edict is their undying revenue hunger. If any of them really gave a shit about safety, the current version of the edict would've sufficed to get these sidewalks cleared of snow already.

Wal-mart Pays a Bonus, cont'd

A couple weeks ago, Wal-mart agreed to pay their Minnesota employees a bonus. Of course, they've been doing various things like this to "save money" for a long time. On Tuesday, Wal-mart agreed to pay an even bigger bonus to their employees in a whole bunch of other states besides Minnesota.

And they only have another dozen lawsuits to settle before they try to make their case for some bailout money...

If ever there was an argument for an employee union in this day and age, Wal-mart certainly stands out.

Quote of the Week

At last night's City Council meeting, discussion regarding the ongoing RojasGate situation between the city and the T&G elicited this report in the paper today: "Mrs. Lukes said the T&G has the financial resources to hire Bowditch & Dewey LLP, considered to be one of the region’s top law firms, to fight for the Rojas records. But she said she was concerned about ordinary citizens who don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to follow up on their informational requests."

A little while later, the Mayor, along with the rest of the council, made a 180 degree shift from that position and voted "yes" on the amendment to the Sidewalk Snow Removal Ordinance (previous post).

There is probably no-one in this city who can afford to fight the city over this ordinance, and yet the ordinance drops an unfair burden upon city property owners whose property just happens to abut a public sidewalk. The whole concept of collecting taxes and providing services is that it is an equal burden. But this sidewalk ordinance shifts that burden and requires involuntary servitude from only those whose property has an abutting sidewalk.

Mayor Lukes' concern about ordinary citizens who don't have the money to hire a lawyer to fight the city obviously doesn't interfere with her notions concerning this unconstitutional solution to the problem of snow on the city sidewalks.

Worcester City Council: Blowhard Central

Item 23a on this evening's City Council agenda brought out a lot of hot air. Enough hot air, in fact, to probably melt all the snow off of all city sidewalks, even with today's low temperatures.

Item 23a is the final vote on the Sidewalk Snow Removal Ordinance amendment, which raises the fine for not shoveling the sidewalk abutting one's property to $75 a day, plus the cost of any snow removal that may subsequently be done. Everyone but the Mayor spouted large and pompous rhetoric about civic responsibility and all that sort of thing, seasoning it all with ideas about making the city safe for the children, and all sorts of other baloney to justify ramming it up the asses of the property owners in this city... just because the city can no longer afford to provide this service. And why can't the city clean snow off the sidewalks in Worcester? Because they have to pay for pensions and perks and vehicles and other bennies for all those city employees... none of whom can apparently be handed a shovel after a snowstorm.

The Mayor was the only one who didn't speak on this particular item. Interestingly enough, it was only her home that actually had the sidewalk abutting her property cleared of snow when I went around and checked last Thursday. She is one of only three City Councilors who even have any sidewalks abutting their property. The other two didn't bother to comply with the ordinance as it already exists.

Phil Palmieri's house had a little path shoveled from his front door to the driveway, but left the other 90% of the walkway in front of his house untouched. And Gary Rosen didn't bother to shovel anything from the sidewalk in front of his house. I guess they just didn't feel like being "civic minded" that day, eh?

Councilors Germaine and Haller don't own any property in the city, and the rest of the hypocrites on the City Council own homes with no sidewalks abutting their property at all. Consequently, none of them will ever have to be bothered, either with the "civic responsibility" of shoveling snow for the City of Worcester, or being punished for not doing it every time it snows!

The ordinance passed unanimously, and will go into effect on January 1st.

Update: I see that 4rilla's biting into the jugular with this, too. And he's even got video!
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Swimming Against the Tide

Here's the story of a weekly noose-paper that shuns the internet, set their ad rates low ten years ago and has never raised them, and has steadily grown in profits since it was founded in 1999.

Caroline Kennedy Chutzpah

"Good times never seem so good... I've been inclined to believe it never would"

Those words are part of a song by Neil Diamond, about which he revealed last year, he was inspired to write when he saw a picture of a very young Caroline Kennedy riding her pony, Marconi, all those years ago.

Yesterday, the NY Times published an article about Caroline, and how she isn't going to be making any financial disclosures unless she's actually appointed Senator from New York. Caroline's expressed desire to leap into national politics by sudden appointment is certainly one of the more buzz-worthy subjects of the season, and even the NYT seems unwilling to just give her a pass...

It's been rumored that Caroline got herself onto Obama's VP search committee to "pull a Cheney" and nominate herself for the spot. Do you believe that? I do. My impression of Caroline Kennedy is that she has the kind of chutzpah that you would have to admire.

Obviously, though, rumor or no rumor, she didn't get the nomination for VP...

I certainly don't agree with all of Caroline's political views, such as her dogmatic insistence that the Supreme Court was wrong in DC v Heller. And I don't agree that "just because she's a Kennedy" that she should get the Senatorial appointment.

But Caroline Kennedy is certainly qualified to be a US Senator. She graduated from Radcliffe College, got a JD from Columbia, and an AB from Harvard. So, right off the bat, we can tell that she's pretty much the opposite of the brainless fluff that McCain chose for his running mate.

And she's spent the entirety of her life working low profile in local New York political circles, doing good work, writing books, and doing what anyone would like to see a rich person do for the good (as opposed to being a dilettante fop, living off the trust fund).

Like Barack Obama, though, Caroline Kennedy is a Dem about which we have no clear perspective on how she'd govern. But if she ends up as centrist as Barry's turning out to be, I'll be very surprised.

Worcester Winter Wonderland

I didn't do much picture taking this morning when I went out to retrieve Kathy from work. But I like the way this shot of Union Station came out, since I only pointed the camera vaguely in that direction when I was coming into Washington Square.

I especially like it because it shows how the crosswalk in the middle of the traffic island at the very beginning of Grafton Street hasn't been cleared of snow.

I mean, really... of all the public walkways that the city is responsible for clearing off snow from within 10 hours of a snowstorm's end, I should think they'd be on top of THIS ONE.

And this is just a random shot, too. I mean, I wasn't out there this morning looking for anything to piss and moan about. When I took the shot, I didn't even notice this. Only after I got home and looked at it did I find that, contrary to any notions about needles in haystacks, all ya really gotta do to spot the "do as I say, not as I do" baloney in this city is just take random photos without even bothering to look into the viewfinder!

Sheesh!

Moses is Coming!

The statue of Moses that had been a fixture at the old courthouse will be making a big comeback at the new courthouse in a few months. Today's story about it in the T&G includes some interesting comments, not the least of which is one commenter's claim that Moses is a "Christian religious symbol"... but then after another commenter questioned that, posted again to call the statue "biblical or religious".

That the story of Moses is equally prominent in Islam and Judaism still doesn't negate the secular recognition of Moses as the earliest figure in the lore underlying all of western civilization as regards the establishment of laws. The idea, stated by another commenter, that a statue of Moses in a public building is verboten, a la the "separation of church and state" is, without a doubt, a hot topic.

But in the milieu of lawyers who spend their entire careers citing precedents in law, you just can't get any earlier precedents that have survived through history in what all of them would most likely agree is an unbroken line, handed down generation to generation over thousands of years. I mean, that trail of legal precedent just doesn't go any further back than Moses in this particular civilization. And it is equally valid in the Judaic, the Christian and the Islamic traditions, as well as the secular halls of justice in modern society.

If anyone has a serious problem with a replica of Michelangelo's statue of Moses (carrying tabula rasa) in an American courthouse, I would tend to think they're stretching it. I'm about as unreligious as a person can get, but I still know what planet I'm on and what the roots of the civilization I live in are based on. Besides, if anyone really should have a problem with that particular statue, it should be those who are devoutly religious and would object to Michelangelo's insistence upon characterizing Moses with those devilish horns sticking out of the top of his head... wouldn't you think?

Earthquake News

Yesterday afternoon, a 1.8 magnitude earthquake was reported in Newburyport.

I never heard of the "Clinton - Newbury Fault Line" until I chanced upon this article. It's 97 miles long and extends from Newbury, through Clinton, and south through Worcester into Connecticut.

Through Worcester?...

Gee... I wonder if my house is on the fault line?

Red Ink Everywhere

It isn't just the Big 3 automakers bleeding red ink this year...

RojasGate - opacity vs transparency

In today's T&G, the anonymous pontificator(s) opine upon the case of retired firefighter Lt. David P. McGrath. The sharp contrast between the noose-paper's ongoing story on this retired firefighter's case and the ongoing story regarding police officer Mark Rojas is something you have to wonder at.

On December 10th, the T&G reported on detailed personnel information they had magically acquired about firefighter McGrath, even to point of getting a frame grab picture from a DVD produced by a private investigation firm hired by the city to follow Lt. McGrath around and shoot video of him taking his trash to the dump, moving furniture, etc. Based upon the utterly unqualified medical opinions of the investigators, Lt. McGrath was persuaded to retract his application for a disability retirement claim. Friday, they decided to make an even bigger deal out of it.

What's absolutely mind-boggling to me is how the city administration has provided information on this case via the Freedom of Information Act, not to mention the volume of additional information that was somehow acquired by the paper, in contrast to the stonewalling taking place regarding the case of police officer Mark Rojas' internal affairs file. Not only the details of a closed session meeting, but even the DVD produced by the private investigators, appears to be 100% accessible in the firefighter's case!

If there is a "policy" regarding how the personnel information of city employees is treated, then the difference between these two cases fully belies either that policy's existence, or its application by the City Dictator. For one thing, the Rojas files contain completed investigations, while the McGrath story involves an ongoing investigation. How the hell can the latter be fully transparent for public smearing in the paper while the former has more than half the record blacked out???

For another thing, how can the noose-paper not notice or call any slightest attention to this glaring inconsistency?

Enlightened Self-Interest

Credit Suisse leads the way...

Heh

This speaks for itself.

Kitty TV

I built a makeshift hanger for a bird feeder, using a copper pipe banged into the ground and some pvc tubing slipped over the top to get the kitty's TV set up and running before all this weather hit.

It's one of the simpler pleasures of home life to watch the kitty scramble from window to window, tail switching and muttering the kitty equivalent of a low growl, as he "chases" the wildlife outside. The bird feeder, though, is truly the best kitty TV...

I had started out looking for a picture to show the snow outside, and post about the weather, but this was just too funny to pass up.

Just for the record, though, it started snowing (yet again!) a little while ago.

RojasGate - episode 6

Today's installment of the T&G's ongoing smear campaign against Officer Mark Rojas includes some information about Ron Madnick's efforts to get the city to establish an independent civilian review board for allegations of misconduct against Worcester police officers, which I think is a great idea. It's also a much more informative article, in that it spends a lot of ink on Kevin Ksen's experience with Officer Rojas, and how that internal affairs complaint proceeded from the complainant's viewpoint.

But the most important issue regarding Officer Rojas, in my opinion, is WHY the city is willing to be so reticent in providing all the negative details about him, while letting a 33 year veteran firefighter's vastly less important personnel details flow so freely into the T&G's hands. Today's article quickly dismisses this issue, right at the outset, by saying, "While some observers question why Officer Mark A. Rojas was allowed to continue policing city streets as he accumulated an internal affairs file spanning more than a thousand pages, Chief Gary J. Gemme characterized the bulging file as a testament to the diligence with which his department investigates its own."

That's as "fair and balanced" as the reporting on this story will probably ever get. So far, it just looks to me like it's merely a series of flames...

The rest of the article seems mostly to be focused on the impression that we shouldn't trust the police department to investigate their own. Why shouldn't we? After all, the department has tossed two veteran officers under the bus for cheating on their time cards... compared to "assault and battery" I'd say that due diligence has apparently been done in investigating Officer Rojas, in view of how quickly the other two lost their jobs for such a vastly lesser offense.

The most basic issue here seems to me to be that the public impression of "assault and battery" is being confused with the police power to arrest. Police officers have extraordinary powers. These are long standing and legally conferred powers, and I have a realistic respect for that. There's a big difference between being assaulted by a civilian and being arrested by a police officer. I mean, if you're getting arrested and you merely utter, "I object to this..." then you can plan on the rest of your arrest being somewhat rougher than it would have been otherwise. If you are being arrested for shouting out the car window, "Get the fuck out of the way!" to a carful of plainclothes cops in an unmarked car, and you don't immediately change your attitude when you realize they're cops, and you continue to "object to" the rough treatment, then maybe you simply don't understand this extraordinary power that the society has authorized police officers to use in arresting people.

Claiming "assault and battery" by a police officer who's arresting you in a situation where you've been told by them to do something, or to stop doing something, but you continued to disobey and offered any slightest resistance to their order, no matter how petty or ridiculous, or even "unlawful" it may have seemed to you at the time, is simply an invitation for a quickly escalating problem of being arrested more and more roughly.

I'll be the last person to condone the abuse of police powers, but I'm not naive enough to believe that those legally sanctioned powers to arrest me are on an equal footing with any "right" I might want to have in resisting, objecting, or otherwise challenging a police officer's extraordinary powers... especially if their blood is already up.

The expectation of a "comfortable" arrest is pretty absurd, don't you think?

The T&G, on the other hand, appears to simply want to get the entire community inflamed against the whole police department, based on what I've seen of their 100% negative, highly slanted, and curiously selective reportage in this whole matter. Why are they giving the City Dictator a pass regarding the inconsistent release of city employees' personnel cases? What is officer Rojas' 12 year record on arrests followed by convictions in getting dangerous criminals off our streets? And why did it take them a whole week to figure out how many pages they bought for their fifteen hundred bucks???

Despite the T&G's clear efforts to get me to hate the Worcester Police Department, to not trust the Worcester Police Department, and to believe that Officer Rojas' is the worst "bad cop" in the history of the department... I still don't trust that the T&G will EVER tell me the whole story.

Opposite of a Blizzard

This picture of Kathy's car, and the mailbox, shows today's snow accumulation.

Between sunrise and sunset, we've gotten a little over an inch of snow. And yet, it hasn't really stopped snowing all day long. It's really strange.

This weak system has been stalled in the same spot all day long, and it's produced a never ending flurry, here in Worcester. So, maybe we could say that this is the opposite of a blizzard, where a constant snowfall accumulates a whole inch in one day, rather than an inch or more per hour.

Taking a Spin

It wasn't half bad, ...considering that the forecast called for a foot of snow and we only got six inches.

Billings Square, like every other intersection I went through this morning, was in good shape.

From what I could see while driving back and forth across the city this morning, the DPW and the contractors who clear our roads did a nice job.

Kathy didn't get out of work for an additional hour this morning, but when I did pick her up, she took these pictures on the way back home.

I saw a lot of places where we still have branches piled up, though, ready to be removed. This has all got to be logistics hell for the City Dictator and the DPW Commissar to have to deal with, especially since there's another storm forecast to hit here tomorrow.

On Bowker Street, where the parking can only be on one side of the street in a snowstorm, the branches are also neatly parked on the correct side.

Somehow, though, I doubt that the branch cleanup efforts will be focused over on the east side of the city anytime soon. If you've driven anywhere on side streets around Burncoat, and many neighborhoods on the west side, then you've seen that the pure magnitude of the cleanup is truly beyond imagining.

We can hope that tomorrow's storm will be another fizzle, but they're still forecasting 6 to 10 inches at NWS.

Amateur Radio Operators in the Storm

The American Radio Relay League offers this article to report on what amateur radio operators across New England have been doing to assist emergency operations over the past week.

Fourth Estate Boulevard

Like the crumbling estate of Norma Desmond in the film "Sunset Boulevard", the Fourth Estate in America houses cloistered and aging actors dreaming of a comeback...

That yearning desire for a comeback, unfortunately, is still overly tainted with the expression of ego and the power of uttering their opinions to a captive audience. It's still a far cry from the public service they so often claim they provide. The proof of the pudding? It's here in the curiously anachronistic (a decade late, and millions of dollars short) idea that a fading Gray Lady should still try to mold public thought by opining to a democratized audience on the internet, out here in the milieu of the 21st century's "great equalizer".

As if the immediacy of their pompous pontifications is their problem...

They still don't get it. Maybe the noosepaper industry had a captive audience for their efforts to shape opinion in the America of the 1930's, but that function has been successively and ever more democratized over the past eight decades. They simply haven't figured it out yet: that the greater public service of the Fourth Estate would be to inform the public.

Opining is what everybody else does, now...

Even Faster Snow

It looks like the storm pretty much blew itself out last night, after I got home from bringing Kathy to work. The Jeep, which was all brushed off and driven across town and back around 7 pm, now only has a dusting of snow on it. When I got up this morning, I expected there would be a foot on the ground, but it's just barely up to the bottom of the storm door... the ruler says 6 inches.

I'll take some pictures when I go pick up Kathy from work after seven...

Fast Snow, cont'd

Here's a shot of City Hall at 7 pm this evening.

I drove Kathy to work in the Jeep, rather than have her wrestling with the Subaru through this weather.

The crews are all out, keeping up pretty well with this storm.

...Really have to shower kudos where kudos is due tonight, as the DPW guys have been straight out since last Thursday night, ...and now this storm hits. Even this past Tuesday evening, watching Mike O'Brien at the City Council meeting, it was apparent that the guy was operating on a sleep deprived schedule. That was three nights ago...

And not only this storm, but then another on Sunday...

And THEN, ...it's back to the Ice Storm cleanup and power restoration... and THEN maybe start cutting down the bug infested trees that are still standing.

Whew!

Blago Busts Out

And why is anybody surprised?

Maybe it's because the media is the real criminal in this story, and the media is not going to smear itself.

When the Tribune blew the wiretap, tipping off Blagojevich in the process, they effectively crippled any case that the US Attorney might have had in all of this.

Blagojevich was tipped off to the fact that he was being wiretapped by the Tribune BEFORE anybody might have had a chance to pay him off.

The Tribune has rendered to the American people one of the most serious abuses of the freedom of speech that I've ever seen. Who benefits? Only Rod Blagojevich, and his closest conspirators. Now, they will all escape justice unscathed, thanks to the Tribune's so-called "citizenship" in blowing the US Attorney's investigation.

Fast Snow

The street went from bare to covered in 20 minutes.

Someone's already gone up the hill with their tires losing traction.

For those who haven't gotten to where they want to be for the night, it's already too late.

Mo Betta Wedda

The weather guys are predicting this is going to produce about a foot of snow around here, starting any minute now...

The radar shot is as of noon, from the National Weather Service site.

Snow, we can deal with. Much better than ice.

Update: It started snowing here just after 1:30 pm.

The Last 508 Podcast

Mike Benedetti will be leaving for Washington DC in a couple of weeks, so he won't be podcasting until this coming May when he returns to Worcester. This is the last 508 Podcast until then.

Mike will be working on the project to close Guantanamo, which is a very worthy activity in my view. Mike's ongoing activism is something I greatly admire him for.

Where's the Dr's Exam?

So far, I've read two articles about this video surveillance story. The first article last week, and now this one today, both bring up more questions than they answer. When a city employee applies for a disability pension, is there any medical examination done to verify the condition that the employee is claiming as the basis for their applying for the disability payments? The way these stories read, you'd be hard pressed not to believe that the whole process is done without any medical opinions being produced, no diagnosis by a qualified medical professional, and it's all just a matter of who you know...

Since when is the medical opinion of a videographer enough to instigate a probe by the state's Attorney General? Where's the doctor's exam?

Charlene Launches!

I've been waiting for Charlene Arsenault, erstwhile WoMag reporter, to spring onto the blogosphere ...but I have to wait no longer!

Worcester Sidewalk Snow Ordinance

Now I know why the City Council can so easily pass a sidewalk snow removal ordinance to ram it up the asses of city property owners... Only three of them have sidewalks to clear snow off of in front of the homes they own! But it gets even worse...

The only counselor with a clean sidewalk this morning also happens to be the Mayor. Konnie Lukes' house has a sidewalk that had been completely shoveled this morning, by 9 am.

Yes, boys and girls, I actually went out this morning, 21 hours after yesterday's storm had ended, and shot video in front of all the City Counselors' listed places of residence. From the video, I took these frame grabs.

The sidewalk in front of the Lukes residence on Hadwen Road was truly an example of how a sidewalk should be cleared off. According to the city ordinance that, if amended, will fine property owners $75 a day if they don't do it (plus snow removal costs), I'd say that the Lukes family saved themselves a few bucks.

Around the corner, however, we found that Gary Rosen's house had a completely untouched sidewalk in front of it...

Gary, you are SO BUSTED!

That's a nice solid sheet of ice, since nobody at the Rosen residence saw fit to obey the city ordinance to clear the snow within 10 hours of yesterday's storm ending.

Really, he's never going to hear the end of this!

The "do as I say, not as I do" principle is in full force here!

And this guy's a teacher, the kind of person who's very profession demands that they lead by example!

And, for anyone who might not know it, this year's action on the snow removal ordinance is to raise the amount of the fine. The ordinance is currently in force.

And then there's Phil Palmieri's sidewalk...

I hate to be the one to break the news to my own district Counselor, but the City has clearly instructed residents to place branches downed by the ice storm between the curb and the sidewalk, or else on your property inside the sidewalk... not on the sidewalk. So this is a double infraction. Not only is the majority of the sidewalk abutting Phil's property not shoveled, but there are also all those branches on top of it.

I can just hear Phil's plea bargain to pro-rate the fine because SOME of the public sidewalk DID get cleared.

Nah-uh. Nope. No dice. I've already gotten a comment from a reader who claimed that Phil "...NEVER, EVER shovels his sidewalk EVER!"

Well, at least this time Phil apparently did see fit to shovel from his front door to his driveway...

Amazing, isn't it?

Perhaps Phil doesn't understand the City Council's intent behind the ordinance to get the entire length of the sidewalk abutting his property cleared of snow, not just the section he has to walk to his car.

So, of the three City Counselors who actually have sidewalks in front of the homes they own, two of them are scofflaws.

Then there's the rest of the pompous asses who would stick it to the property owners in the city by forcing them into involuntary servitude under penalty of daily fines plus costs, but who, themselves, don't even have a sidewalk abutting their property, or else aren't the owners of the property they list as their residence!

How convenient is that?
.

RojasGate - episode 5

It's taken a week for the T&G to discover that the 1508 page internal affairs file turned over to them by the Worcester Police Department contains only 1112 pages.

Well, at least they're consistent over there at 20 Franklin Street... they've been arithmetically challenged for as long as I can remember.

Nonetheless, the missing 396 pages of Officer Rojas' internal affairs dossier is yet another bizarre twist in the ongoing story. The Worcester City Dictator and the Police Department sure don't get any high marks from me in this continued stonewalling.

But the T&G isn't impressing me in the least with their ongoing smear campaign against Officer Rojas, either. It's just too glaringly one-sided and negative for me to jump on the bandwagon and fall prey to their inflammatory spin.

A search of the T&G website only turns up one positive mention of Officer Rojas back in July. It says, "Officers Mark Rojas, Elias Baez, Ryan Stone and Steven Pignataro all received certificates of commendation for disarming a woman on Pleasant Street Feb. 12. The woman allegedly threatened to stab people who were in her way and the officers as well. At one point, she held the knife to her throat, but Officer Rojas was able to take the knife away."

Gee. Five armed Worcester Police Officers, threatened by one person with a knife, and the only one who has the cajones to disarm her is Officer Mark A. Rojas. If someone threatens me with a knife, guess which one of those five officers I'd like to have nearby...

And I don't see Mark A. Rojas on the list of the top 125 wage earners in the City of Worcester for 2007, either. So, I have to assume that he's been too busy doing his job to wangle a fat paycheck. But you wouldn't know that from anything the T&G has bothered to report about him. It's all completely one-sided and 100% negative.

I call that a smear campaign of the first water.

I'll be the last to assert anything about Officer Rojas' character, though. I never met him. I know nothing about him except what I've read in the paper. But what I've read so far has been so one-sided and blatantly inflammatory that I still can't blindly accept that the T&G has been doing anything "civic-minded" yet. After all, they were just as merciless with retired firefighter, Lt. David P. McGrath, when they smeared that 33 year veteran last week.

No, the real problem here is the City Dictator's inconsistent application of so-called "policy" in the release of city employees' personnel information. On the one hand, he's apparently assenting to the stonewalling of Officer Rojas' internal affairs records, but on the other hand he's allowed the free flow of all that personnel info, so the paper can smear Firefighter McGrath. These two stories admit of no real "policy" application at all, but rather the whim of those in charge to choose who gets thrown under the bus and who doesn't.

Obviously, the folks in charge don't want Officer Rojas thrown under the bus. But until the T&G starts digging up some facts that clearly explain why, the "who, what, when, where, and why" basis for solid journalism will continue to be absent from their reportage of this story.

Da Wistah Weddah!

The piddly bit of snow that we got this morning partially melted, but is now frozen as of 1:30 this afternoon.

The temperature here on the southwest side of Crow Hill in Worcester is now down to 28 F and still falling.

The National Weather Service is predicting that tomorrow's high temperature will be 37 F. After that, they're predicting that it won't get above freezing in the foreseeable future. There's a snowstorm predicted for Friday into Saturday, and then a larger snowstorm for Sunday night into Monday. This does not bode well for ongoing cleanup and power restoration work being done in the wake of last Thursday night's ice storm.

Bill Gagen told me via two way radio a few minutes ago that the Home Depot on route 9 in Shrewsbury has a big handmade sign saying "We Have Generators!" I wonder how long those will remain available?

Who Runs the Government, cont'd

We think that the people we elect to office are the ones who make the biggest difference in the long run, but it really is much more complicated than that.

Blagojevich and the Chicago Tribune

I've gotten the distinct impression that the Blagojevich scandal is somewhat like a little pimple, underneath which there would be a huge tumor. It's the timeline that appears to me to be the most underplayed angle of this story.

The Chicago Tribune, in effect, tipped the whole world off regarding the fact of Blagojevich being under a wiretap as early as Sunday, December 7th in an editorial entitled Governor, Let's Talk.

However, it wasn't until two days later that Blagojevich was arrested.

What bothers me the most about this timeline is that, apparently, the Tribune had been witholding publication of that important fact, that Blagojevich was being wiretapped, upon the apparent request of the US Attorney's office. But the noosepaper blew the lid off that investigation before the US Attorney could get a preponderance of evidence against him, such as an actual bribe being paid. And there is even a pseudo-apology of sorts that showed up in the Tribune on the same day that Blagojevich was arrested.

That same day, the NY Times reported on the Tribune Angle, but this more pertinent and "follow the money" angle, along with the outrageous timeline, just hasn't seemed to interest the M$M too much on this story, ever since.

Basically, I find it a serious dereliction of the noosepaper's mission to have revealed the presence of a wiretap in an ongoing investigation by the US Attorney.

Bullshit Quote: "The Chicago Tribune's interest in reporting the news flows from its larger obligation of citizenship in a democracy."

If "citizenship" has been so perverted to the point where they tip off the criminals like this, then it's definitely time for the Tribune's creditors to simply shut that place down for good.

Who Runs The Government

We think that the people we elect to office are the ones who make the biggest difference in the long run, but it's much more complicated than that.

WTAG Emergency Service to Worcester County

Brendan mentioned it when his power came back on and he could post something about it on Monday, and I re-discovered it yesterday when our power went out... WTAG (580 AM) has been pre-empting their regular programming since the ice storm began, and providing the kind of public information service to the region that no other media outlet has apparently been willing to do.

Last night at the City Council meeting, one of the councilors called attention to this ongoing effort at WTAG, and suggested that the council make some motion to recognize what a valuable service and contribution to the problem solving they have been making, and are continuing to make even now, six days into this natural disaster.

There's really no comparison... when the lights are out, there's no TV, there's no internet, and you don't know what's going to happen next, having a cheezy little battery operated AM radio that spits out a running live broadcast about where to go for shelter, what the electric crews are doing, what the city officials are announcing, and everything else you might want to know... Well, all I can say is THAT is what makes the difference.

Wormtown Ice

LB Worm's post about his experiences in the ice storm include a video, the only video I've seen so far, that has the sound of the trees as they snap and break. It is truly the spookiest and most closely representative of what people have been saying to describe what this was like. You could hear the death and destruction all around you, but you didn't necessarily get to see it until it was over... that has to be way beyond creepy!

Off the Grid, cont'd

Power went out here just after 2pm today, the first outage of more than a few minutes for us in at least a couple of years. I was on the phone talking to a friend in Tatnuck when the power went off, then went back on again a minute later... then off again for a minute, then back on for a few seconds, then finally off. It stayed off for about two hours.

I spent most of that time, however, visiting with my friend in Tatnuck.

On the way over to Tatnuck, I snapped this update shot of the "coming soon" Constant Velocity Shopping store that, apparently, won't be open in time to lure any holiday shoppers.

I got home around 4:30, got online and typed up a post and poof! The power went off again...

By 6:30, I decided to go out. The electric company had been working a block away all afternoon and they were still there, so I figured power would be back on sooner or later...

I wandered off in the jeep, trying to decide whether to go get a pizza to eat by candlelight, or maybe go up to Showcase North and see "The Day The Earth Stood Still". I still hadn't decided by the time I hit Salem Square and it occured to me that it was almost 7 pm on a Tuesday evening... Why not go to the City Council meeting? After all, it costs nothing (unlike the other two alternatives I had been considering).

Well, that's what I ended up doing. I've been to City Council meetings before, but this time was different. There was nothing on the agenda that I had any slightest interest in. Consequently, I noticed new things.

I noticed that the sound on channel 12 (where I've been watching the Council a lot) really sucks. In the chamber, you can hear everything.

I noticed that Phil Palmieri is the only Councilor whose microphone is mounted on a flexible gooseneck that, when he bends it up or down to speak, makes a sort of groaning/farting sound that, if I chuckle loud enough, gets a smirk from one or two other people in the room.

I noticed that Konnie always looks cuter in person than she does on TV.

I noticed that Councilor Germaine always looks shorter in person than he does on TV.

And I noticed that the TV makes the Council Chamber look a lot bigger than it actually is. All things considered, though, I still think sitting in the peanut gallery on those uncomfortable seats gets much too easily beaten by laying on my couch at home and watching a Council meeting on TV. I mean, when various councilors start yawning toward the end of the meeting, it's nice to just doze off right then and there... instead of having to drive home first.

Off the Grid

I took a ride out to Bill Latimer's house in Holden this morning, and he's still without power.

This shot of his front yard, according to Bill, shows the aftermath of cleaning out all the big stuff...

I've spent the last couple of hours trying to upload some video of Brattle Street, but YouTube isn't cooperating today. Most of that street is piled high on both sides with tree branches downed by the storm.

I tried to run down Birchwood Road on my way into Holden this morning, but it was impassable with downed power lines and crews working. I saw a lot of out of state plates on trucks, and quite a few US Army license plates, as well.

Bill says the power to his section of Boyden Road might not be restored until next week, according to the work crews he's talked to. But he's running an 8500 watt portable generator, so it's not like he and Brenda will have to go anywhere to stay warm.

Neither of us have heard from another friend out in Oakham yet. And Bill says that he heard that much of Princeton may be without power through the holidays.

It's clear that the damage done from this one ice storm is far worse than anything either of us have seen around here... ever.

Fiends On The Loose!

When disaster strikes, opportunity knocks. Certain personality types will seize any opportunity to run a scam, apparently. Reports of enterprising scam artists, running around offering to turn power back on for a fee, have been popping up in the news since Sunday. This report from the Herald, however, is just too funny not to point to.

National Grid yesterday warned homeowners in the Worcester area to be on the lookout for fiends posing as utility workers who have hit up customers for as much $2,500 to restore their electricity.

No, it's not a typo.

Opportunity Squandered

Glenn Greenwald is interviewed by Bill Moyers on the legacy of the Bush Presidency.

Universal Healthcare vs the PCP

This article in last Thursday's NYT details something my doctor told me about that very same day. I had asked him if there would be anyone replacing his recently deceased associate. He said that he can't find anyone, and that there is a serious shortage of medical students choosing primary care.

We're seeing it here in Massachusetts because of the healthcare law that has thrust close to a half a million new patients into a system that demands they select a Primary Care Physician in order to begin using their new, mandatory healthcare benefits. If you need to see a specialist, you have to get an official referral from your Primary Care Physician... but what happens when there just aren't any more Primary Care Physicians that can accept new patients?

That eventuality is probably already here in Massachusetts. It will come just as quickly everywhere else with any national healthcare system, too.

Bernie Madoff

Here's a client list of Bernie Madoff's victims.

A classic Ponzi Scheme that runs up into the $50 billion range is the best case I've yet seen to increase regulation. I'm a true believer in capitalism, but somewhere along the line this society is going to have to come up with an answer to the question, "How much is enough?"

Explainer-In-Chief, cont'd

Juan Cole fills us in on the journalist who threw his shoes at Dubya, and what he was saying when he threw them.

Electrification

I was talking on the two-way radio this morning to various ham radio operators, some of whom have worked the storm related emergency communications networks over the weekend. According to one of them, Massachusetts had over 300,000 electric customers without power on Friday, but as of yesterday that number had been effectively reduced to around 13,000. I asked him if maybe he had dropped a zero and that maybe number was still up around 130,000 but he was pretty sure he had it right.

Update: It looks like the zero was dropped, after all.

The Day AssCo Stood Still

An Assumption College student whose handle on YouTube is ryanlaabs9 has posted several Ice Storm videos over the last couple of days. He descrbes himself as "funny smart goodlooking perfect and modest"...

Here's the first of six in a series called "The Day AssCo Stood Still":

Devastation Row

It looks like everything west and north of I-290 got crushed. Some more personal running commentaries since the beginning can be found here. And there are those who went out and shot videos, too.

This situation in Worcester County has been national news since Friday morning.

Explainer-In-Chief

I'm so glad that we won't have the Explainer-In-Chief explaining things to us after 1-20-09... with his uniquely sickening brand of denial:



NECN link

Coal Mine Canaries are Chirping

Yes, boys and girls, the coal mine canaries have been chirping. Although none have keeled over yet, their little red flag chirps are getting louder.

The Blagojevich scandal reports from Britain are much more revealing than the smarmy garbage reported by our bankrupted fourth estate, here in America.

Money quote: “If Obama wants to be squeaky clean, he is going to have to cut all his Chicago friends loose. His chief of staff has fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

The mere idea of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff turned my stomach last month. I made it clear that I felt we'd be looking back at this dubious appointment by Obama with remorse before too much time had passed... what's it been? A whole month?

RojasGate Continues

Kevin posted a very informative article at IndyMedia yesterday, detailing the various lines of political interest that have formed over the semi-release of Worcester Police Officer Rojas' disciplinary files to the T&G.

I would, nonetheless, continue to pursue the notion that there's a lot more to Officer Rojas than the information contained in those files. Some will believe that the files describe a constantly volatile and abrasive cop, and this notion appears to be the one that drives the T&G's single-minded pursuit in this whole thing. But to assume anything about Officer Rojas, one way or the other, is to not recognize that a vast amount of information about him is not being reported.

That anyone would defend a cop who really is constantly volatile and abrasive would not make any slightest sense to me at all. It would also be inconsistent with Chief Gemme's having already tossed two veteran officers to the wolves for merely cheating on their timecards.

There's a big difference between chronically beating the shit out of innocent city residents and cheating on your timecard. That the Chief of Police would defend the former while condemning the latter is simply not believable. There has to be a larger balance of positive information about Officer Rojas' performance as a police officer over the years that's simply not even being hinted at in the press. Either that, or Officer Rojas has a gun to the Chief's head... Nothing less would explain the Chief's decisions in these matters of who gets thrown under the bus and who doesn't.

The problem here not only involves the city administration's apparent lack of transparency, but it also involves the hugely slanted, entirely one-sided smearing of Officer Rojas in the T&G. The latter, in my view, would most likely be a believable cause of the former. And the sentiments evoked in the public with this hugely slanted presentation of Officer Rojas certainly plays only to the emotions, rather than to an informed public discourse based on a more complete picture of who this guy really is.

But we already know that the T&G never does any hard news anymore. Any expectation of reports printed under a by-line to be "fair and balanced" is simply ignorance of what noosepapers are all about...

...And as far as transparency is concerned, who can expect anything but the governance of whim in a dictatorship? I've already pointed out the glaring inconsistency of the city administration's release of public records concerning city employees, as I think that's a much more important issue here.

A Smoker in the House

It looks like there's a smoker over there at 20 Franklin... Today, the anonymous pontificator(s) are railing against the unreasonable prohibition of tobacco in Boston.

My favorite line is how they close their appeal, "The time has come to draw a bright line between government’s role in protecting citizens from health risks to which they are unwittingly subjected and from risks citizens willingly accept in the pursuit of happiness."

You could say the same thing about marijuana. In fact, you could say the same thing about any substance that people employ for recreational use.

Wal-Mart Pays a Bonus

A court settlement in Minnesota on a class action suit of current and former Wal-Mart employees was settled for $54 million on Tuesday. Heh. And that's just one state...

Layers of the Onion

Here's a brief history of CIA involvement with drug trafficking.

Job Losses

From one business owner's point of view, big job losses in November are no big surprise.

Ice Storm Videos

Here's what I shot around noon today, going across the top of Burncoat Street:



Here's somebody's first clip (of five) from this morning in Holden. This is another person's first clip (of four) from early this morning, before the sun came up. And this is a clip of the damage from later on this afternoon, taken by someone starting around O'Connors restaurant and then going down I-190.

More Ice

Burncoat hill was pretty messy this morning at 11:30.

There's an undertaste of guilt that I feel whenever I take a ride only to take pictures of some event like this. I mean, I'm not a reporter...

My son, Sean, called this morning to say that his neighborhood (Burncoat) looked like a disaster area. So, I thought I'd take a spin around to see what it looked like for myself.

Yup. It's a complete mess!

The WBZ van was up there around Brighton Road, taking care of the actual reportage...

The severely broken tree on the left hid the worse damage that those folks up on the right were looking at when I went by.

But like I said before, I'm not a reporter, so I didn't stop to get a more interesting "newsy" picture or interview the people who were there. Basically, all I did was drive through with the camcorder running, and these pictures are just frame grabs.

From what I saw, though, there's some serious property damage on Burncoat hill this morning. Every side street I looked down appeared to be nearly, or completely impassable.

The difference between this area, and the slightly more southern and easterly part of the city that I live in, is like night and day! It's always been amazing to me that the weather conditions can be so different from one side of Worcester to the other.

When I got to the summit, I looped back onto West Boylston Street. I was sorry I did, though, because traffic was apparently backed up all the way into West Boylston.

This was the problem at Brooks Street.

Just having that right hand lane blocked at the traffic light made it a field day for Left Turn Monkeys who, in their complete ignorance, only perpetuated the traffic jam they had just spent their last quarter hour stuck in... All any of these idiots had to do was go one more block for their left turn, where two wide lanes were perfectly clear, and then double back to wherever they wanted to go on one of the back streets (so incredibly easy to do in that neighborhood).

I had considered going over to shoot more video on Salisbury and then over to Tatnuck, but after this mess I decided it really wouldn't be worth it. Besides, I had already unnecessarily contributed to the mess out there just by leaving the house and adding one more vehicle to that traffice jam...