Day: January 10, 2006

So says Michael J. Totten.

It’s time for me to go to Iraq.

I am not going to embed with the military. While it sounds exciting (as well as terrifying), I’m only going to be there a few weeks. War correspondence isn’t something a person does for two weeks.

Instead I’m going to the part of Iraq most journalists ignore: the North. Erbil, Sulemaniya, Dohok, and Halabja – the city near the Iranian border where Saddam Hussein massacred thousands of people with chemical weapons.

Michael does a great job reporting from far away lands. A visit to his blog will give you a taste of some of the reports he’s filed over time. His mix of words and images bring places to life.

Seattle has had 23 consecutive days of rain, and I should know. The windshield wipers on my truck have been in the ‘on’ position for, yes, 23 days. But, we haven’t broken the record yet.

With more rain forecast over the next several days, Seattle could break a record set in 1953. The city saw 33 days in a row of measurable precipitation then _ the most since the National Weather Service office started tracking rainfall here in 1931.

“Usually we have a few days of rain and one or two days of cloudy and dreary days and then it rains again, and that’s the way it goes,” weather service meteorologist Johnny Burg said Monday. “We’re not getting our dry days in between – just having one system follow another.”

As New Orleans officials strategize over just what the Big Easy will be in a post Katrina world, one wonders if they’re simply rearranging chairs on a Titanic.

This city is dreaming big as it puts together a blueprint for its rebirth in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, considering such audacious ideas as re-creating a long-gone jazz district, building a network of bike paths and commuter rail lines, and establishing a top-flight school system.

In the coming days, beginning Wednesday, a commission appointed by Mayor Ray Nagin will unveil a grab bag of ideas that could become part of the master plan for rebuilding this devastated city, a task unparalleled in American history.

Committees and subcommittees of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission were invited to think big, with little regard for the price tag. That will be dealt with later, when New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast divvy up the $29 billion in federal aid designated for hurricane recovery and reconstruction.

And what a party that will be! State, city and national organizations and grass-roots groups have their own ideas for how to rebuild the city. Watch the personalities and personal agendas collide. Tickets are on sale now!

This is all well and good – dreaming dreams, throwing costs to the wind, communicating hopes and desires. One problem still exists though – the faulty levee system. Until this safety mechanism is completely rethought, redesigned and rebuilt, plans to install bike paths and a jazz district will be a complete waste of time and money. 

The rebuilding of New Orleans has to be taken seriously, but given the history of the state of Louisiana, it’s too easy to believe that the transformation of the Big Easy will end up being the big land grab of the century. 

UPDATE: The fight has begun.

If you’re in the market for a new car, GM’s woes might be your gain.

General Motors Corp., whose U.S. sales fell 4.3 percent last year, said it will cut the prices on about 80 percent of its cars and trucks.

Prices will reduced on all Buick, Chevrolet and GMC models and most Pontiac vehicles, said Mark LaNeve, GM’s head of North American marketing, in a statement today. The price cuts take effect tomorrow. Combined with reductions made on some models in August, the changes cover 90 percent of GM’s volume, LaNeve said.

The firesale isn’t just a ploy to gain sales in what is normally a lackluster season for car buying. GM’s CFO says he’s in crisis mode.

“You can’t panic. That is not crisis mode. Crisis mode means taking serious action, decisively, quickly and addressing your problems as urgently as you possibly can. So I think I understand crisis mode and I am in it and have been for a while,” Henderson said.

He’s right, and hopefully, for GM’s sake, their strategy will work.