YatPundit's blog

IANAL, so I don't know how far Mad Aaron can go with this:

Former Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard has filed a lawsuit against the person or people behind a series of online posts that he claims defamed him.

The suit names "John Doe" as a defendant, and refers to the party as a "person presently unknown to plaintiff."

The lawsuit, filed in Civil District Court, claims that Broussard was targeted with disparaging remarks by someone posting under the alias "campstblue" on the Nola.com website.

WDSU thinks Mad Aaron wants to smoke out an adversary:

Earlier this year, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sal Perricone resigned his position after admitting that he had posted about Broussard and other individuals using the screen name "Henry L. Mencken1951." He has not commented on suggestions that he posted comments under other names, including "campstblue."

What I'm wondering, though, is if this rises to the level of defamation, given that Mad Aaron held public office and was a candidate for office during the timeframe of the posts. I'm more uncomfortable with a politician being able to force exposure of an anonymous commenter than I am of the comments made.

The comments don't appear to be anything worse than anybody who got "Broussard Water" in their house in 2005 made about him.

puh-leez:

Really, Travers? Did you forget that Walter Willard, brother of Cynthia Willard-Lewis, was also a Purple Knight?

Let's not forget that Judge Reese went to Loyola Law School, which gives him school ties to a large percentage of practicing attorneys in Orleans Parish.

New Orleans is, in many ways, a very small town.

I'd love to get answers to these and other questions about why the response to Hurricane Isaac's damage from Entergy New Orleans and Entergy Louisiana was so disappointing. Given that my LPSC member is a Republican and that Entergy has no vested interest in positive community relations, I'm not hopeful. Still, I'll ask my questions:

1. Where is your published Disaster Recovery Plan?

All those bucket trucks from other parts of the country don't pop up magically. There must be agreements with other companies to get the trucks and the men working them to a disaster site. When I teach Business Continuity in my computer-geekery world, we always tell storage administrators to develop a plan they can pass on to management. The bosses don't need to know the minutae of failing a data center over to a site 20km away, but they want to know you've got this. Same thing for Entergy: Publish a high level disaster plan. We don't need to know how you get charged back for the labor, and we don't need to know anything you consider a trade secret or security issue. Just tell us your basic methodology.

2. What are Entergy's priorities when restoring power after a hurricane or tropical storm?
Three things I'd like to ask @Entergy

1. Where is your published Disaster Recovery Plan?

All those bucket trucks from other parts of the country don't pop up magically. There must be agreements with other companies to get the trucks and the men working them to a disaster site. When I teach Business Continuity in my computer-geekery world, we always tell storage administrators to develop a plan they can pass on to management. The bosses don't need to know the minutae of failing a data center over to a site 20km away, but they want to know you've got this. Same thing for Entergy: Publish a high level disaster plan. We don't need to know how you get charged back for the labor, and we don't need to know anything you consider a trade secret or security issue. Just tell us your basic methodology.

2. What are Entergy's priorities when restoring power after a hurricane or tropical storm?

This is another no-brainer. People are hot and sweaty. They're cooking up all the food in the fridge/freezer, if not throwing it all out. They're angry, and, most likely, under-informed about the situation, since access to information usually requires electricity. Still, these folks aren't unreasonable. Tell them about how first-response services need power. Remind them that paw-paw three blocks over needs power for the oxygen concentrator he needs to breathe. Most people see the logic of powering up businesses first, so people can get back to work.

3. Why does finding out when we'll get power back require electricity?

This isn't just counter-intuitive, it's bloody stupid. Entergy claims they post updates to their website. Last I checked, you need electricity to get on the Internet. You also need Internet service. While that's not Entergy's problem, the need to have both power and cable (or cellular phone service) compounds the probability of not knowing what's going on. In the event of a disaster, how about some old-school communication? Send around flyers explaining the situation. Give realistic estimates of when an area will get power back. Send out some community-relations/PR types into affected areas to answer questions face-to-face. Yes, people will be unhappy/upset/angry, but roll with it.
This is another no-brainer. People are hot and sweaty. They're cooking up all the food in the fridge/freezer, if not throwing it all out. They're angry, and, most likely, under-informed about the situation, since access to information usually requires electricity. Still, these folks aren't unreasonable. Tell them about how first-response services need power. Remind them that paw-paw three blocks over needs power for the oxygen concentrator he needs to breathe. Most people see the logic of powering up businesses first, so people can get back to work.

3. Why does finding out when we'll get power back require electricity?

This isn't just counter-intuitive, it's bloody stupid. Entergy claims they post updates to their website. Last I checked, you need electricity to get on the Internet. You also need Internet service. While that's not Entergy's problem, the need to have both power and cable (or cellular phone service) compounds the probability of not knowing what's going on. In the event of a disaster, how about some old-school communication? Send around flyers explaining the situation. Give realistic estimates of when an area will get power back. Send out some community-relations/PR types into affected areas to answer questions face-to-face. Yes, people will be unhappy/upset/angry, but roll with it.

It should come as no surprise that kids on the autism spectrum are bullied more:

New York (Reuters Health) - Close to half of all teenagers with an autism spectrum disorder are bullied at school, says a survey of their parents.

The results, published Monday in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, suggest that rate is much higher than the estimated 11 percent of bullied kids in the general population.

There's been a bit of focus on the bullying of gay teens, which has increased awareness, particularly the Rolling Stone article on the alarming number of teen suicides in Michele Bachmann's Minnesota district. Even though fundamentalists and their radical clerics decried the RS story, people talked about the situation and forced changes in school policies.

The more disturbing trend now, though, is legislation that would make it legal to bully teens for religious reasons. Both Michigan and Tennessee have considered laws which would permit exceptions in bullying cases where the abuse could be defined as "religious speech." Imagine the fun a defense attorney would have with this, saying his client thought the autistic girl in the third row of class was gay.

Hopefully this will give Christians with autistic children some pause.

It didn't take long for Entergy Corporation to find someone in the local media to play three-card monty with. From WWL-TV:

NEW ORLEANS - It was no holiday for Entergy workers on Monday as crews worked in 90 degree temperatures to bring power back to tens of thousands of residents in Southeast Louisiana.

As of Tuesday morning, less than 10 percent of Entergy customers were without power.

Melanie Hall, the director of customer service, joined us by phone to explain the hold up for those last few people.

THIRTY PERCENT of Entergy Louisiana customers in Jefferson Parish are still without power. The numbers Entergy fed WWL-TV are for Entergy New Orleans, the separate corporation that provides power to Orleans Parish. Thirty percent of Jefferson Parish is far from "those last few people," but WWL-TV just told the regional viewing area how well Entergy's doing.

Heckuvajob!

So, the City Council is going to have hearings on Entergy:

The New Orleans City Council has called a hearing for this morning to hammer Entergy's officials about the recovery. On its eve, as of 6 p.m. Monday, Entergy had restored power to 89.6 percent of the homes and businesses in New Orleans that lost it after the storm, leaving 16,772 still in the dark. In Jefferson Parish, just 69 percent of power has been restored, with 52,566 left to go.

This is the typical political dodge Entergy's employed for a couple of years now, whenever they need to put a face in front of the media. It sort of goes like this:

1. Something happens (hurricane, rate increase, fuel adjustments)
2. Entergy customers get upset
3. The New Orleans City Council holds hearings
4. Someone from Entergy New Orleans becomes a sacrificial lamb
5. White folks in #themetrys tune this process out

...and Entergy gets a pass until the next disaster.

How are they able to get away with this? Because people don't realize there are TWO Entergy companies: Entergy of New Orleans, Inc., and Entergy Louisiana. Entergy of New Orleans is regulated by the New Orleans City Council, whereas Entergy Louisiana is regulated by the Louisiana Public Service Commission.

So, when the New Orleans City Council goes after Entergy NOLA CEO Charles Rice, it's going to be a very limited subset of the disaster. He'll be touting that 89.6% number, along with anything else good he can say about Entergy New Orleans. Since Entergy Louisiana is not within the purview of the New Orleans City Council, all Rice will get beat up for is Algiers.

What of Entergy Louisiana? They go back into the arcane world of the LPSC, where there's little media coverage.

Hopefully the media won't be fooled by the shell game.

Again.

I got a fund raising appeal e-mail from McJoan this morning. This isn't an uncommon event; I opted-in to receive such appeals from DailyKos. This one caught my eye a bit more than most, because it pointed me to a story by Joan from last Thursday:

This is what winning in November looks like two months out. Not only is the National Republican Senatorial Committee pulling its resources out of New Mexico, it's having to shift the $3 million it had in reserved ad time in there to a state Republicans were confident they'd get: North Dakota.

That's huge, because ND was supposed to be a lock for Republicans. Now they need the cash to shore up that race, so New Mexico bites the dust.

Then I read this Buzzfeed story this afternoon:

Rick Berg, North Dakota's at-large congressman and a candidate for Senate, voted to criminalize abortion in the state as a Class AA felony, including in the case of rape or abortion.

Berg, who is running against former Democratic Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp, voted with a minority of the state house in 2007 to make terminating a pregnancy illegal, in a bill that only made exception for when the life of the mother is endangered.

Now, no doubt Akin was a disappointment to Turd Blossom and the "machine" Republicans, but Akin is a rube and was immediately adopted by Tony Perkins and the rest of the Christian Crazies. Now  you've got a guy who's been sold as a relatively rational guy going further into the weeds than Akin.

Incredible. The forced-birth issue is going to totally destroy the Republican Party. This isn't shoot-yourself-in-the-foot territory, this is Plaxico territory.

Whenever I see Newt the Gingrich attempt to be one of the "deans" or "senior leaders" of the conservative movement, I remember when he was just a #douchebag. Like he was in 1996.

For those of you worried about this storm, fearing we're about to get hit by another "100-year storm," some pictures:

Satellite image of Isaac earlier this evening. Contrast this with:

Look at the definition, and the SIZE of Katrina (second image) in 2005. That sucker was just plain scary.

Not that we shouldn't prepare, mind you, but this just isn't the same level of threat to the city.

Thankfully.