Saturday evening power update

Here's the latest outage numbers from the C-J:

As of 3 p.m., 122,000 LG&E customers were without power, according to E.On U.S., the parent company of LG&E. KU also had 122,000 customers without power throughout the state.

Here's a little known secret: The sidewalk clearing ordinance is not being enforced.

In neighborhoods across Louisville, most sidewalks are still covered with snow and ice four days after the storm hit, making it difficult for pedestrians to get around.

And many businesses and homeowners don't know that a city ordinance requires them to clear the sidewalk in front of their properties within 24 hours of a snowstorm. City officials haven't discussed sidewalks at their daily news briefings on the storm.

"We've got bigger issues to deal with than sidewalks," like restoring power, clearing roads and setting up shelters, said Chris Poynter, a spokesman for Mayor Jerry Abramson.

The sidewalk law carries a fine of $25 to $100. But it would be impractical for the city to enforce it, Poynter said.

That's the least of matters, though there are some apartment building owners that don't clear their sidewalks either in Chicago.

Anyway, the numbers of schools without power are going down but here's the latest on both that and JCPS asking Gov. Beshear to waive the make-up days.

"We are dealing with an extraordinary situation," Berman said yesterday. "We've been hit with two of the largest disasters this state has ever had, and they both have happened in the same (school) year."

But Beshear's office said yesterday the governor doesn't have the power to waive make-up days until at least 20 are missed.

This week's ice and snow storm left as many as 69 public schools in Jefferson County without power and forced the cancellation of classes for four days.

As of yesterday afternoon, 25 public schools in Jefferson County still lacked power, and the district isn't certain classes will resume Monday. Berman said officials are doing "everything in their power" to get schools open.

Any decision to cancel classes likely won't come until early Monday morning, and hinge, in part, on "any more major snow or ice events," he said.

Getting the schools ready in time won't be easy, acknowledged Mike Mulheirn, director of transportation and facilities for JCPS.

"Restoring the power is the easy part, getting the schools ready to open again is going to be the hard part," he said.

The missed days come just four months after the remnants of Hurricane Ike left 110 of the district's 153 buildings without power and canceled classes for a week. So far, the district has made up just one of those days.

Unless the district is granted a waiver, the last day of school for JCPS students could well be June 2 rather than May 21. District officials say extending the school year that long would cause major conflicts for parents who have scheduled vacations, camps and other summer activities for their families.

Under state policy, districts that miss fewer than 20 days must make up the missed days or add minutes to each school day, said Lisa Gross of the Kentucky Department of Education.

State law requires students to attend 177 six-hour days of class each academic year. Gross said that while the state Board of Education deals with regulations, Beshear could direct the board to look into the matter.

Howeer, we all know that teachers don't teach for the last two weeks of the year, so what's the fricking point of making the days up anyway?

JCPS: Berman asks Governor Beshear to waive makeup days

Why wasn't it like this with the winter storm of 1994?

JCPS:

Superintendent Sheldon Berman said as of early this morning, there will still 38 schools without power. He added that some schools got power back and then lost it again.

He said they are doing "everything in their power" to get the schools back open on Monday. He said they can't forecast the weather four days in advance and that if a decision is made to cancel school on Monday, that decision won't likely come until early Monday morning.

The district is going to ask Gov. Beshear to waive some of these make-up days (as well as the make-up days caused by Hurricane Ike) so that students won't have to make them up, Berman said.

"These are the two largest diasaters this state has had in many year and they both have happened in the same year. Both storms have been costly to the city and the school district," he said.

Berman added that these power outages are more challenging than the ones caused by Ike because of the cold.

Ultimately, as far as school next week goes, JCPS will make the logical decision of what to do. It's not just power outages in the school that has to be factored but across the district. It's all the power lines that are down on the ground due to the ice, and the trees. I was told that some roads that access KY 22 are blocked due to trees, and these are routes in which buses take.

Friday morning power outage update

Here's the numbers as of Friday morning:

Power outage numbers are slowly declining around the state, according to Andrew Melnykovych, a spokesman for the Kentucky Public Service Commission.

He said the total number of outages across the commonwealth as of 9 a.m. was 547,000, down from 607,000 yesterday. The outages include 172,000 in the area served by LG&E, including Jefferson County.

“There are signs of progress out there,” he said.

Local and state officials are predicting that total restoration could take up to 10 days.

Other metro area county outage totals include: Oldham, 9,500; Bullitt, 9,700; Nelson, 4,839; and Spencer, 1,355.

Shelby Energy which serves Shelby, Henry and Trimble counties reported about 2,300 customers without power, he said. The Meade County Co-op had about 8,500 still out.

Kentucky Power which serves counties in Eastern Kentucky said it is working to restore power to about 22,000 customers yesterday, the company said in a press release. They are estimating power will be fully restored by Wednesday.

2009 sleeper hit: Sunshine Cleaning

Amy Adams and Emily Blunt star in the off-beat dramatic comedy Sunshine Cleaning. This uplifting film about an average family that finds the path to its dreams in an unlikely setting screened in competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

Alan Arkin is also in the movie.

Roundup...

Albert Pujols would like to see Manny Ramirez as a member of the club.

"I speak with Manny every three days and he tells me, `Man, no one wants to sign me,' Pujols said Thursday during a news conference. "I'm not an agent or general manager, but I can't understand how Manny has not signed."

Speaking of Pujols, he's likely to clinch the decade-long Triple Crown, seeing as how he's led in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in overall since he came into the league in 2001.

Since that day in Coors Field, Pujols has become the first player in history to start his career with eight consecutive seasons of at least a .300 average, at least 30 home runs and at least 100 RBIs. A scan of his finishes in the National League reveals that he’s only finished first once in one category — that batting title in 2003 — but he’s also only finished out of the top 10 in two of the 24 categories (eight years, three triple-crown stats … 24). Each time he ranked 11th. In 17 of those 24 categories, he finished in the top five.

Listen, I'm a huge Judd Apatow fan but a horror movie? Are you kidding? That will be the only Apatow film I don't see but it's only because of the genre.

An early review of Adventureland.

Rod Blagojevich is now Agoneavich

The Illinois State Senate has voted to remove Rod Blagojevich from the Office of the Governor and has banned him from seeking public office.

4:50 p.m. Senate now voting

The Illinois Senate is now voting on whether to remove impeached Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office.

As each senator's name was called, they and spoke their vote, either "yes" or "no."

The question posed to them was: "Shall the Senate sustain the article of impeachment against Rod R. Blagojevich and remove him from the office of governor?"

The vote right now is 58-0 with one vote not yet counted due to some sort of technical issue. Senate President John Cullerton, who is to cast the final vote, could not get his vote recorded.

They're now going to redo the roll call by allowing senators to press a button.

They did, and it's 59-0 to remove Blagojevich from office.

4:53 p.m. Senate vote now official

The Illinois Senate has voted 59-0 to remove Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office.

4:58 p.m. Senate votes to ban Blagojevich from ever holding office again

The state Senate voted 59-0 to ban former Gov. Rod Blagojevich from again holding elected office in Illinois.

The vote is the equivalent of the political death penalty.

Georgia Fires Dennis Felton

ESPN:

Dennis Felton, who last season led Georgia's basketball program to an improbable SEC tournament championship, was fired on Thursday morning, the school announced.

Associate coach Pete Herrmann will serve as interim coach for the remainder of the season, the school said at a news conference announcing the move.

Evans' decision came after the Bulldogs lost to Florida 83-57 on Wednesday night, their seventh consecutive defeat. Georgia is 9-11 overall and 0-5 in SEC play.

"I'm disappointed that things have not worked out better, " athletic director Damon Evans said in a statement released by the school. "I do think it is in the best interest of our men's basketball program that we move in a new direction.

"While this may be unusual timing, I'm convinced it is the right time," Evans added.[...]

Felton had an 84-91 record in six seasons at Georgia, including a 26-59 mark against SEC opponents.

Evans seemed poised to fire Felton a year ago, but the Bulldogs won three games in two days to win the SEC tournament. Georgia was forced to play a condensed schedule after Atlanta's Georgia Dome was damaged by a tornado.

Felton's firing comes days after Alabama head coach Mark Gottfried was forced to resign.

Do my eyes decieve me?

It's not every day that you see Will Leitch published in The New Republic. The article deals with how he hopes George Mitchell handles the cindlict better than the Mitchell Report on steroids in baseball.

Power Outage Update

Here's an update of what's happening in Jefferson County:

Power was restored to more than 20,000 homes and business overnight, but 183,000 LG&E customers are still without electricity and 8,900 power lines remain down, Mayor Jerry Abramson said today.

And at least five cases of carbon-monoxide poisoning were reported overnight from people who were improperly heating their homes. No deaths were reported.

Additional utility crews are arriving in Louisville today. By tonight, 1,800 people will be working to restore power, said LG&E senior vice president Chris Hermann.

“We’re making steady progress, but this storm was so broad and so destructive that it will take time to thaw out and to rebuild the power network,” Abramson said in a release. “With another cold night expected today, I strongly urge citizens to use the shelters as needed and to check on friends and neighbors.”

Winter Storm 2009 Update

Louisville's basketball game will go on as scheduled this evening, although the crowd won't be as high as it would usually be.

The University of Louisville's men's basketball game against the University of South Florida will be played as scheduled tonight at 7 p.m. in Freedom Hall, the school announced.

Despite the severe weather conditions and widespread power outages, Freedom Hall does have power and the South Florida players and the game officials are in town.

Big East Conference policy states that, "if both teams and at least two of the three game officials are present and there is severe inclement weather, the game shall be played."

The ice storm has led to 67 Jefferson County schools without power.

Jefferson County Public Schools officials said the ice storm had left 67 schools without power, and many had driveways blocked by fallen trees.

In Oldham County, Oldham County High, Oldham County Middle, Buckner Elementary and Oldham County Preschool were without power yesterday. More were without power in Bullitt County.

JCPS will be off the rest of the week.

The power outages across the commonwealth are second to last fall's wind storm.

Power outages from the severe ice storm are continuing to rise across Kentucky as utility crews struggle with the second-worst disruption of power in state history.

By midday Wednesday, at least 473,000 customers were without power.

Kentucky Public Service Commission spokesman Andrew Melnykovych says that figure doesn't include municipal utilities or rural electric cooperatives within the Tennessee Valley Authority system.

The only larger outage in Kentucky occurred last September, when fierce winds from the remnants of Hurricane Ike knocked out power to about 600,000 customers.

Postmaster General asks Congress to waive requirement for delivery

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Massive deficits could force the post office to cut out one day of mail delivery per week, the postmaster general told Congress on Wednesday.

Postmaster General John E. Potter asked lawmakers to lift the requirement that the agency deliver mail six days a week.

Faced with dwindling mail volume and rising costs, the post office was $2.8 billion in the red last year and, "if current trends continue, we could experience a net loss of $6 billion or more this fiscal year," Potter said in testimony for a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee.

Total mail volume was 202 billion items last year, more than 9 billion less than the year before, the largest single volume drop in history.

And, despite annual rate increases, Potter said 2009 could be the first year since 1946 that the actual amount of money collected by the post office declines.

"It is possible that the cost of six-day delivery may simply prove to be unaffordable," Potter said. "I reluctantly request that Congress remove the annual appropriation bill rider, first added in 1983, that requires the Postal Service to deliver mail six days each week."

If the change is made, that doesn't necessarily mean an end to Saturday mail delivery. Previous studies have looked at the possibility of skipping some other day, such as Tuesday.

75,000 without power in Louisville

The ice storm that hit Louisville has knocked out power to 75,000 homes.

Louisville Gas & Electric crews were out this morning assessing damage from the ice storm that struck Kentucky and Southern Indiana overnight.

So far, they reported just over 900 power lines down throughout the metro area, leaving more than 75,000 people without power.

Chris Hermann, spokesman for E.On U.S., the parent company of LG&E and Kentucky Utilities, said 200,000 of its customers across the state were without power.

But Hermann said he expects that number to grow as the morning goes on and the storm continues to track across Central Kentucky.

Metro Parks are asking that you not go sledding because the ice on the trees pose a risk.

Metro Parks is asking people not to go to parks to sled today because trees and limbs laden with ice are continuing to fall and making conditions dangerous.

Several of the area parks are typically used as sanctioned sledding areas, including Cherokee and Seneca, but officials said today’s conditions make it too treacherous.

Please be safe out there.

JCPS closed on Wednesday

Better that they be closed than risk lawsuits for vehicles running out of control. It's not as much the snow that closes the schools as it is the mixture of freezing rain, ice, sleet, and snow. If it has ice, they will close. Anything else is a delay.

With new Jimmy Carter book comes more Carter lies

I'm not surprised that there are more falsehoods in the book by former President Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter's new book about the Middle East, We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work, is now available, and so the former president has again hit the media circuit for promotional interviews, introducing new falsehoods. An interview on NBC's Today Show with Meredith Vieira yesterday, for instance, typifies Carter's self-aggrandizing, his position that Hamas is not a terrorist group, and his carelessness when it comes to the facts. Thus, when Vieira notes that "you've been criticized for [meeting with Hamas], sir, because Hamas is considered a terrorist group," Carter gives a little grin and responds:

By some they are, and they've done some bad things, but for instance a year before we had the cease-fire that I helped to orchestrate last June the 19th, there was one Israeli killed by rockets. And on an average, 49 Palestinians were killed every month during that previous year. And as soon as the cease-fire went into effect, Hamas obeyed it completely. There was no serious rocket fire during the next four or five months. Whereas, Israel did not restore providing provisions for the -- for the Palestinians and Gaza.

Carter did not fact-check because there were four Israelis that were killed in the year prior to the cease-fire.

CAMERA is only one of the organizations that will likely be fact-checking Carter's book for falsehoods. The page shows a few as of now.

Bunning insists he's not Blagojevich

Hall of Fame pitcher and Senator Jim Bunning insists that he's running for re-election to the Senate.

A defiant Sen. Jim Bunning insisted today that he is running for a third term in 2010.

The Republican said he is hiring campaign staffers, scheduling fundraisers and planning a February poll in which he expects to do well.

But it also is clear that the relationship between Bunning and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is strained.

McConnell last Friday told the National Press Club that he did not want to speculate about the 2010 Senate race in Kentucky until Bunning made his intentions known.

"I'd like to correct a misunderstanding on this," Bunning told reporters in a conference call today. "I had an hour-long meeting with Sen. McConnell in the first week of December in 2008, and we thoroughly discussed my candidacy for the Senate in that hour meeting in my office in Northern Kentucky -- and gave him every indication that I was going to run again."

"So he either had a lapse of memory or something when speaking to the Press Club last week when he said that he didn't know what my intentions were. He knew very well what my intentions were," Bunning said.

Asked if he felt he was getting the "Fletcher treatment" from McConnell, a reference to the Senate GOP leader's silence on Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher's candidacy for re-election in 2007, Bunning answered: "If that's what you consider the Fletcher treatment, I guess that's what I'm getting."

Okay, so Blago has nothing to do with this post whatsoever but I'll tell you this: Blago is WORSE than Fletcher, Bunning, and McConnell combined!

Scumdog Million-hairs

Jon Stewart said it. Ghandi thought about Blagojevich when he found out he was going bald. Actually, Jon Stewart and his writers said that.

Kashrut alert: Thin Mints are kosher, despite label not being placed on box

Thin Mints are kosher but the OU label was mistakenly left off 14 million boxes of Thin Mints.

The kosher symbol, intended to show consumers that the contents adhere to Jewish dietary laws, was mistakenly left off 14 million boxes of Thin Mints, the variety that accounts for roughly 25 percent of Girl Scout cookie sales, said Raymond Baxter, president and chief executive of Interbake Foods, the parent company of ABC Bakers of Richmond, Va., one of two approved manufacturers of the cookies.

Proofreaders missed the mistake. But a customer noticed in November that the symbol — a circled U accompanied by a D for dairy — was missing, said Brian Crawford, an executive at the Scouts’ New York headquarters. (Some troops sell cookies in the fall, though most sales are held January through March.)

Middle-East related news...

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had an op-ed published in the New York Times last week, making the case for--not two--a one-state solution when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here's some excerpts, while I encourage you to read the full op-ed.

But everywhere one looks, among the speeches and the desperate diplomacy, there is no real way forward. A just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, but it lies in the history of the people of this conflicted land, and not in the tired rhetoric of partition and two-state solutions.

Although it’s hard to realize after the horrors we’ve just witnessed, the state of war between the Jews and Palestinians has not always existed. In fact, many of the divisions between Jews and Palestinians are recent ones. The very name “Palestine” was commonly used to describe the whole area, even by the Jews who lived there, until 1948, when the name “Israel” came into use.

Jews and Muslims are cousins descended from Abraham. Throughout the centuries both faced cruel persecution and often found refuge with one another. Arabs sheltered Jews and protected them after maltreatment at the hands of the Romans and their expulsion from Spain in the Middle Ages.[...]

The basis for the modern State of Israel is the persecution of the Jewish people, which is undeniable. The Jews have been held captive, massacred, disadvantaged in every possible fashion by the Egyptians, the Romans, the English, the Russians, the Babylonians, the Canaanites and, most recently, the Germans under Hitler. The Jewish people want and deserve their homeland.[...]

A two-state solution will create an unacceptable security threat to Israel. An armed Arab state, presumably in the West Bank, would give Israel less than 10 miles of strategic depth at its narrowest point. Further, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would do little to resolve the problem of refugees. Any situation that keeps the majority of Palestinians in refugee camps and does not offer a solution within the historical borders of Israel/Palestine is not a solution at all.[...]

It is a fact that Palestinians inhabited the land and owned farms and homes there until recently, fleeing in fear of violence at the hands of Jews after 1948 — violence that did not occur, but rumors of which led to a mass exodus. It is important to note that the Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians. They were never “un-welcomed.” Yet only the full territories of Isratine can accommodate all the refugees and bring about the justice that is key to peace.

Assimilation is already a fact of life in Israel. There are more than one million Muslim Arabs in Israel; they possess Israeli nationality and take part in political life with the Jews, forming political parties. On the other side, there are Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israeli factories depend on Palestinian labor, and goods and services are exchanged. This successful assimilation can be a model for Isratine.

Israel is allowing Egypt to triple it's presence along the Gaza border.

Ha'aretz on Friday quoted Israeli officials and sources in southern Gaza as saying that the 750-man force appears to be ready to double or triple in a bid to prevent weapons smuggling.

Israel destroyed a majority of an estimated 400 tunnels on the border during the recent Gaza Strip war with Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza.

Israel had in the past resisted allowing the expansion of the Egyptian force out of a reluctance to reopen the terms of its 1978 peace agreement with Egypt.

As far as the United States and Iran goes, the rhetoric of President Obama's nominees appear to show consistency with that of the Bush administration.

Adm. Dennis Blair, Obama's pick for director of intelligence, said in remarks prepared for his Senate confirmation hearings that the United States should reach out to sympathetic actors in Iran, consistent with the Bush administration's policies of cultivating Iranians who oppose the theocracy.

"While policymakers need to understand anti-American leaders, policies and actions in Iran, the intelligence community can also help policymakers identify and understand other leaders and political forces, so that it is possible to work toward a future in both our interests," Blair said, according to Reuters in a report Thursday.

Obama's Treasury pick, Timothy Geithner, praised his Bush administration predecessors for their efforts to isolate Iran's financial system in a bid to end the Islamic Republic's suspected nuclear weapons program.

This does not bode well for the peace process:

Also Sunday, Hamas official Osama Hamdan told a rally in Beirut that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah movement must end peace negotiations and security cooperation with Israel before any reconciliation talks between the two groups can start.

Finally, a report came out that expects a rise in anti-Semitism.

new wave of anti-Semitism is expected due to Israel's operation in Gaza and the global financial crisis, according to a new Israeli report.

The expected surge in anti-Semitism for 2009 was predicted in a report released Sunday by the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism, the official Israeli forum against anti-Semitism. The forum is sponsored by the Jewish Agency, the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs.

The 250 anti-Semitic attacks reported throughout the world during the three weeks of Israel's military operation in Gaza represented a more than 300 percent increase compared to the same period last year.

Kentucky Blizzard Watch

White Death Watch:

strong low-pressure system will produce significant snow and sleet accumulations beginning this evening through Tuesday night, according to the National Weather Service. Click here for the latest watches, warnings and forecast from the National Weather Service.

Across Southern Indiana the best chance for significant snow accumulations will be from late tonight through Tuesday afternoon. Accumulations of 3 to 5 inches are expected overnight tonight with an additional 4 inches of snow falling by Tuesday evening.

Across north central Kentucky and the Bluegrass region, 3 to 4 inches of snow is expected by Tuesday morning with another 1 to 2 inches of snow and sleet possible by Tuesday evening.

Further south across Central Kentucky, mainly a snow and sleet mixture is anticipated. Snow and sleet accumulations of 1 to 3 inches are expected overnight tonight with an additional 1 to 2 inches accumulation by Tuesday evening.

Just remember to drive carefully and if you must go to Krogers or another store, call first to see if they have what you need so you don't waste a trip!

Dr. Daniel Mongiardo to run for Senate race

Per the AP, Lt. Governor Daniel Mongiardo, MD, has announced his intentions to run for the United States Senate seat currently held by National Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning.

"The people of Kentucky deserve a senator that has the vision, energy and record to help improve our state and country," Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo said Monday in a written statement announcing his candidacy for the November 2010 election.

A longtime physician in the Kentucky coalfields, Mongiardo is the first to formally announce his intentions to challenge Bunning, although at least two others have said they are considering the race. Mongiardo said he will file the necessary paperwork later this week, setting up a possible rematch.[...]

"We have a senator who is simply not getting the job done," Mongiardo said. "He offers no ideas, no actions and no solutions. I believe today, as I did in 2004, that Jim Bunning continues to fail the people of our Commonwealth. Kentucky's families deserve better."

Attorney General Jack Conway and state Auditor Crit Luallen, both Democrats, have said they also are considering entering the race and that they will announce their decisions by spring.[...]

Mongiardo, elected lieutenant governor just over a year ago, said he made the decision to run for Bunning's seat based on a desire to improve health care.

"I have made fixing our broken health care system my life's mission," Mongiardo said. "I understand and see every day how the cost of health care is burdening families and damaging the ability of businesses to compete, to grow, and to create jobs."

His decision to challenge Bunning means Gov. Steve Beshear will likely have to choose a new running mate for his expected 2011 re-election bid. Before he can begin fundraising, Beshear has to name his running mate.

Beshear spokesman Jay Blanton said Monday the governor is not ready to discuss who his running mate will be.

"Right now, his focus in on the state budget crisis and the legislative session, she's not going to speculate on who that running mate might be," Blanton said.

Beshear said in a statement that Mongiardo would be an outstanding senator, calling him an "important voice for Kentucky's future."

Things will start heating up soon.