It’s a shame he’s not really keeping them.

She’s a resident of the Upper Ninth Ward whose home had to be totally gutted after the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina receded. President Bush stood with Williams that day and said she’d get help rebuilding her life.

“We’ve got a strategy to help the good folks down here rebuild,“ the president said that day. “Part of it has to do with funding; part of it has to do with housing; and a lot of it has to do with encouraging volunteers from around the United States to come down and help people like Mrs. Williams. So we’re proud to be here with you, Mrs. Williams, and God bless you.“

That was a big day for Williams. Volunteers from Catholic Charities showed up in the morning and cleared out her house. Everything was taken, even the walls and the flooring. Then, with just a half-hour of warning, the president of the United States arrived.

But since that day, not much has happened. Williams’ house has stood gutted, just as it was when the president left.

Big surprise. It made for a great photo op, though, so Bush got what he wanted out of it.

They can be found on the AM dial at 1310.

Do you smell that?... I think it’s a breath of fresh air…

Anyway, it appears I’m not alone in this regard and it turns out that there may be a bit of a backlash against the current corporate model of running a radio station starting to take root. Listening to All Things Considered on NPR on the way home yesterday I heard a news item titled Neo-Radio Succeeds by Cutting the Noise that offers some hope to those of us who can’t stand commercial radio these days. Wade Goodwyn tells us about a new trend in radio where the play lists are huge, they don’t talk over the start and end of a song, the DJs talk about *GASP!*

the music

instead of Survivor, the amount of commercials aired is less than half of what the big commercial stations air, and the audiences are growing like wildfire. Some stations have seen a 65% increase in audience since they started up, something Clear Channel dreams about seeing, and they appear to share part of their audience with (surprise!) NPR.

I want one of these stations to show up in Detroit. Soon. It would actually get me to listen to commercial radio again. I’d still tune into NPR from time to time, but these days when I want to listen to music I have to pull out my stash of CDs. It’d be nice to actually use the radio in my car for listening to music once again and I’m just not willing to shell out the bucks for XM Radio at this point. Not as long as my CD player is still working at least.

In the meantime, you can check out the two stations NPR profiles in the report at their websites. There’s KQMT 99.5 FM ‘The Mountain’ out of Denver and KBZT 94.9 FM out of San Diego which also streams its programming over the Net. The coolest part about FM949’s audio streaming is that they remove the commercials from their streaming feed:

Music & DJs, YES. Commercials, NO.

When you listen to our stream, you’ll hear our music and you’ll hear our DJs identify the songs you hear - but when we go to our commercials, you’ll hear “replacement” audio. You may hear some of our promotional announcements, other music, wacky foreign language lessons, Halloran’s heavy breathing, or reminders that regular programming will return. Rest assured that when our commercial break is done, you’ll be right back to the next track we play on the air.

How friggin’ cool is that??

Lead in Water - Part I

News of dangerous levels of lead in Washington D.C.‘s drinking water sparks an outcry from the community—especially because city water officials knew about the problem and did little to warn the public. In the first of two reports, NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling explains that weak federal laws regulating drinking water are to blame.

We have Detroit city water here in Canton and we’ve got one of those Brita water filters installed on our tap in the kitchen, but this still leaves me wondering what the water quality here is truly like. Considering how the EPA has allowed this condition to continue for so long I find it somewhat ironic that one of the big news item in Michigan lately is how we may return to emissions testing on our cars because the EPA thinks the air in Michigan is too dirty.

The other news item that was interesting was about how enrollment in Comp Sci classes is diminishing as stories about tech workers losing their jobs and being unable to find new ones continue to spread as jobs are outsourced overseas.

Fewer Students Enroll in Computer Science Programs

A new survey shows a dramatic decline in enrollment in computer science programs at U.S. universities and colleges across the country. Some professors and business leaders worry about America’s ability to remain competitive. NPR’s Laura Sydell reports.

I must confess that I kept thinking “Good” when listening to this story. Seeing as I’m a technical professional who’s been forced into a non-technical position I’ve been looking for a new job that would move me back into my field of competence. On top of that I personally know technical people who have been out of work for awhile now including our own Eric Paulsen so a little tech worker shortage can only be a good thing in my eyes at this point. I can certainly see how in the long-term this might be something to be concerned about, but it’s hard to be too upset about it when you’ve got so many tech workers not working at the moment.

The article contains a small quiz you can take to determine your ‘Scales of Doubt’ to see what kind of atheist, agnostic or believer you are. There are 13 questions which you answer yes, no or not sure to.

Me, I answered ‘no’ to all 13 questions which makes me “a hard-core atheist and of a certain variety: a rational materialist.“ No big surprise there. The book itself looks pretty interesting and I think I’ll add it to my wishlist.

The first article is a report on how the U.S. is shifting it’s focus on the search for WOMD. Included is an admission by Lt. Gen. James Conway about how surprised he is they haven’t found anything yet that is causing some problems for the administration.

The second article related to this has NPR’s Michele Norris talking with former CIA and State Department analyst Larry Johnson about his views that the Department of Defense deliberately skewed the facts to convince the Bush administration to go to war with Iraq. Gee, ya think? Credit to Michele for doing a good job playing the Devil’s advocate in this interview. She asks quite a few questions that mimic many of the arguments Bush’s supporters have tried to use to defend the administration.

While we’re reviewing the claims made by BushCo about WOMD I’d like to point to a a small summary over at the Whiskey Bar that Scott pointed out to me in a comment to a previous rant from me about all of this.

Lastly, kudos to NPR for now offering their stories in Windows Media Player format as well as Real Audio. I hate “Real Network” products and I already have WMP9 installed so this allows me to hear their news story without installing a product I hate.

Sec. RUMSFELD: And of course, the advantage of not acting against the moon would be that no one could say that you acted. They would say, `Isn’t that good? You didn’t do anything against the moon.‘ The other side of the coin of not acting against the moon in the event that the moon posed a serious threat would be that you then suffered a serious loss and you’re sorry after that’s over.

Is anyone else just stunned by the ridiculously simplistic nature of this argument? The above sound-bite was Rumsfeld’s attempt to explain why the U.S. shouldn’t have to provide detailed evidence of Iraq’s intentions. Not that he’s alone in that line of thinking, Vice President Dick Cheney sums up our justification to preemptively strike Iraq as follows: Iraq has chemical weapons. It’s seeking nuclear weapons and its leader is Saddam Hussein.

Well hell, if that’s all the justification that’s needed to launch a war then there are dozens of countries we should be gearing up to wage war on. Personally, all this talk of going to war with Iraq leaves me with the feeling Bush Jr. is trying to prove his worth by finishing what his dad started. Almost as if the administration feels it needs to do something to make up for the fact that they still haven’t captured Bin Laden and his cronies and are worried the public is going to notice that fact soon. Our allies in Europe are all balking at the idea of a preemptive strike on Iraq, with the possible exception of Britain and even they aren’t embracing the idea whole-heartedly. China is against an attack on Iraq and not one of the Arab nations is keen on the idea either. As for Saddam, he’s naturally making claims that the threat of an attack from the U.S. doesn’t just target Iraq, but the whole Arab nation as well. True or not, it plays well in the Arab press. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told students in Alexandria, Egypt. “I said to the U.S. administration, ‘If you harm the Iraqi people while the Palestinians are still suffering, it would only fuel the anger of the Arabs.‘ No leader in the Arab world would be able to stop people expressing anger at such a move.“ I have no reason to doubt him on that point.

I don’t know about anyone else, but all this war mongering makes me long for the days of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal when the only crisis at hand was whether or not the President had gotten oral sex from an intern. Maybe if Bush was busy getting a little extra “bush” on the side he wouldn’t be so frustrated and wouldn’t feel the need to run around starting wars all over the place.