The Washington, DC area got hit with the largest snowstorm in years last December, and then in late January a few more inches fell. Despite the fact that cross country skiing was just sublime in both cases, these events caused all kinds of problems, partly because the people responsible for clearing the roads were relying – as usual on chemicals, rather than snowplows and sand.

The pre-treating of the roads with salt has actually created ice under the beautiful, dry and powdery snow. There was no reason for spreading chemicals, particularly in view of the fact that the temperatures were much too low for salt to do any good. What it indeed caused were numerous accidents, and often the inability to slow down, stop, or climb inclines – all courtesy of the Virginia, Maryland and District of Columbia departments of transportation.

Where a plowed (or even unplowed) roadway would have been fairly easily to negotiate without salt, the authorities – that are apparently already running out of money because of their extravagant use of chemicals and hiring of often unnecessary private trucks – the salt-melted and then re-frozen snow created expensive and often very dangerous skating rinks for cars, usually in all the worst places.

Seems like still another example of our tax dollars at work.

As we write this on Friday morning, another snowstorm, which is supposed to last more than 24 hours and dump around two feet of snow in the area, is fast approaching.

The snow blowers, snow shovels and bags of salt have long been unavailable. The authorities – such as they might be – have strongly recommended that everyone stay indoors for the duration and basically get ready to watch the Super Bowl. Consequently, the grocery stores got totally overwhelmed by mobs of often glassy-eyed shoppers, filling their carts to overflowing with milk, beer, Wonder “bread”, pretzels, bottled water and the inevitable soup cans, “flavored” with among other things high fructose corn syrup.

Even late in the evening on Wednesday and Thursday it was almost impossible to find a parking spot at any of the local supermarkets. Inside, practically every person pushing a shopping cart was breaking the indoor speed limits, the shelves were often bare and the lines at the registers snaked around into almost every aisle. It appeared that it would take at least an hour just to get to a cashier, or a self-checkout gizmo.

If six, or even 24 inches of snow can cause such mayhem, we wonder how things would look, if we actually faced a real, serious emergency…

Technorati Tags: Nation’s Capital, Panic, Snow salt, Snowmageddon, stores, washington

The headline is not strictly true any longer, as the “star” anchors of all three U.S. TV networks have returned to New York by now.

But was there ever any real need to have Catie Couric, Diane Sawyer, or Brian Williams anchor the evening newscasts from the Port-au-Prince airport?

Of course, large contingents of reporters, technical crews and equipment are still there. Just imagine how much actual help could have been delivered to the people of Haiti, instead of the tons of TV people and their equipment.

Reporting on the Haitian tragedy is obviously needed, but the taste and the usual modus operandi of television leaves a lot to be desired.

Remember the historic trip to Cuba by Pope John Paul II? All of the anchors were of course in Havana for the event, but as soon as the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal has surfaced, all of the anchors very quickly high-tailed it back to the U.S.

That should pretty much sum it up, we suppose…

Technorati Tags: Anchors, Brian Williams, Catie Couric, Crews Crowd Into Haiti, Diane Sawyer, earhquake, Reporters

Having heard that Accenture – formerly hugely disgraced Anderson Consulting – has decided to terminate the sponsorship of Tiger Woods, due to his peccadilloes, we have decided to re-post this piece, originally published on February 27, 2009.

We also wonder if Accenture being directly linked to Arthur Andersen and its connections with Enron could possibly be considered any better that Tiger’s infidelity, screwing around and so forth. That in fact seems like a no-brainer. Enron has hurt not only the economy, but also thousands, upon thousands of people, maybe even millions.

Tiger in turn, has seemed to hurt Elin, but probably mostly himself…

We haven’t checked all of Tiger’s sponsors. We do know for a fact that Nike, has been widely criticized for the use of child slave labor. We also wonder if Blackwater, er… Xe is among his sponsors. How about Altria, formerly Philip Morris, or Exxon, so very famous for not paying up for the damages of the Exxon Valdez disaster?

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There’s been an avalanche of company name changes in the past few years. In some cases this was done in order to make the name more marketable, or maybe easier on the eyes, or hopefully easier to remember. More often rebranding came about in the wake of some unsavory event, practice, or even a conviction.

Many people don’t even realize that so very often the very same and often unchanged company lurks under a completely new name. That of course is often the whole idea behind the change and rebranding has become a big business in its own right.

Andersen Consulting, linked to Arthur Andersen and its conviction for that super shady Enron outfit is now called Accenture. The Tiger Woods ads have been pretty effective and hardly anyone even thinks of Accenture as anything but a successful, modern consulting firm…now registered in Hamilton, Bermuda.

Exxon’s switch from Esso came about because of myriad legal challenges between different spin-offs of the Standard Oil Company and Humble oil. It did take us all a while to figure out how to pronounce this weird combination of letters. Now, of course it is called ExxonMobil and as far as we know, neither the old, nor the new entity has paid for the damages caused by the drunken captain of the Exxon Valdez and the huge oil spill in Alaska.

The infamous mercenary company Blackwater has re branded itself as Xe – supposedly pronounced as “zee”. A Pretty innocuous name it would seem for a company, whose employees have shot a whole bunch of unarmed civilians in Iraq. The problem is that there is already a company named Xe…

Who hasn’t heard about Phillip Morris, the class action suits, the chemicals, including extra nicotine added to their cigarettes and all the other machinations?

As it turns out, Phillip Morris is called Altria now. Almost sounds like one of those drugs, which we keep seeing advertised during the evening network news. Maybe like something to shrink an enlarged prostate, or to help you fall asleep?

How about the Value Jet Airlines? After the infamous crash in the Everglades with the loss of 108 people, it has come to life again under the name of Air Tran.

Technorati Tags: accenture, Adultery, andersen consulting, blackwater, esso, exxon, Rebranding, sponsorship, tiger woods, Value Jet Air Tran, xe

Considering the amount of coverage that the arbitrarily chosen 20^th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall received, one would think that it was purely, or at least mostly a media event.

As it turned out, despite the cold rain falling on November 9, 2009, it was more of a celebration of the human spirit, of the beginning of the end of communism in Europe and a call for action against continuing violations of human rights throughout the world.

There have been many discussions as to who actually contributed the most to the disintegration of communism.

Most knowledgeable experts underscore the huge contribution of Pope John Paul II, who has given the Polish people the encouragement needed to start the strike at the Gdansk shipyard and to found the Solidarity trade union in 1980.

The communist government has cracked down on Solidarnosc on December 13, 1981. Many activists were imprisoned, but the opposition remained very active, finally reaching the point in February of 1989 of forcing the Polish government to initiate talks with the opposition to defuse social unrest.

Here’s the rest of the timeline of events, leading up to the demise of communism in Europe:

1989

April 5: The Roundtable Agreement is signed in Poland, legalizing independent trade unions and calling the first partially democratic elections in June.

May 2: Dismantling of the Iron Curtain – the boundary between Warsaw Pact and NATO countries – begins as Hungary disables the electric alarm system and cuts through barbed wire on its border with Austria.

Aug. 19: The ‘Pan-European Picnic’ – a peace demonstration at the Hungarian town of Sopron on the Austrian border – turns into an exodus when Hungarian border guards hold their fire as 600 East German citizens flee to the West.

Aug. 24: Tadeusz Mazowiecki is appointed Polish prime minister, becoming the first noncommunist head of state in Eastern Europe in more than 40 years.

Sept. 10: Hungary reopens its border with East Germany, allowing 13,000 East Germans passage to escape through Austria.

Oct. 18: East German leader Erich Honecker is forced to resign.

Nov. 4: One million people rally in East Berlin during weeks of mounting demonstrations.

Nov. 9: The Berlin Wall falls.

Nov. 17: The ‘Velvet Revolution’ in Czechoslovakia erupts in reaction to a police crackdown on peaceful student protests in Prague. Days of mass demonstrations ensue.

Nov. 24: Communists in Prague step down.

Dec. 3: Soviet spokesman Gennady Gerasimov, speaking after a press conference between George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, who were concluding a shipboard summit at Malta, declared: “From Yalta to Malta, the cold war ended at 12.45 p.m. today.”

Dec. 22: Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu is overthrown. He and his wife, Elena, are executed three days later after a summary trial.

1990

April 8: Hungary elects a non-communist government.

Oct. 3: Germany unifies.

Dec. 9: Poland elects Lech Walesa president.

July 1: Baltic states gain independence from the Soviet Union.

Dec. 25: The Soviet Union dissolves.

Technorati Tags: Berlin wall, Communism, fall, Germay, media, overkill, poland, Pope John Paul II, Solidarity, Walesa

Although we haven’t seem much of an escalation in the war in Afghanistan as of late, the war on words between the White House and the conservative media blabmeisters appears to be escalating in a serious way.

Although it would be tempting, neither Glenn Beck nor Rush Limbaugh can be ignored. After all, they do have sizable audiences and loyal following and even the president of the United States acknowledges their existence.

That’s where the problem seems to lie.

White House communications director Anita Dunn has recently called Fox News an extension of the Republican Party.

But, each and every time the president or one of his people mentions Beck or Limbaugh, both of them enjoy increased ratings and moollah.

Although it doesn’t happen often, Limbaugh and Beck occasionally get some facts right, but many people watch and listen to their shows mainly for entertainment, not really taking neither of them too seriously.

The totally unnecessary acknowledgments and/or reactions from the White House simply add to their credibility, ratings and popularity.

Just let them be, have their squadrons of loyal apes follow their idols, but don’t waste your time responding, as it would obviously be totally counterproductive.

Technorati Tags: Beck, blabbermouths, blabmeisters, fox news, Limbaugh, low class, relevant, right wing, white house