Giant tumbleweeds are covering houses in the eastern New Mexico city of Clovis, where bulldozers are scooping up thousands of the prickly pests after a bad storm on Sunday.
They weren't just covering the ground, they were also flying through the air. "It was a whirlwind of tumbleweeds," said resident George Cobb. "It was like masses of tumbleweeds, like ocean waves almost."
I see the sequel to Sharnado!
Reinforcements from neighboring Cannon Air Force Base came to help.
A good thing we have a military to help clean up the global warming-caused mess! I used to think of tumbleweeds as cute little bushes. There are photos of monster weeds at the link.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/31/2014 08:34 ||
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#1
Except in a desert condition, those puppies light up really quick and flames spread rather rapidly. Brush fires have a different context there than on some Midwestern farm. Think of having your house in a tinder thick forest when some idiot or lightning strike happens. Add the wind in that part of the state and they can make even more news as news editors really really like footage of whole developments going up in flames.
#3
P2K,
I don't know if West Kansas counts as midwestern, but a week ago neighbors had to have a controlled burn for tumbleweeds five feet tall and to the horizon, no joke, to clear roads so cattle could be fed. Other stories had 45 degree slope drifts against structures.
It don't take much. Like, say, and electric fence failing. You know, like a horizon full of tumbleweeds in 40mph wind pressing against it like a sail.
Those things rolling on fire is like playing space invaders.
A Utah ape that has correctly picked the Super Bowl winner for six straight years predicted Thursday that the Seattle Seahawks will be the next NFL champion.
Eli the ape ran into an enclosure Thursday morning and swiftly knocked down a papier-mache helmet bearing the Seahawks logo, signaling his pick, said Erica Hansen of Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City.
"He made his pick without any hesitation," Hansen said.
That could mean bad news for Broncos fans. The 13-year-old primate hasn't been wrong since 2006. What's the probability of the ape being right 6 times in a row? I get about 1.5 chance in 100. Maybe the ape knows something. How is he on predicting presidential elections? Can he survive an IRS audit?
#4
Riding the bus back to the scenic Pac NW today there were 2 brave broco-ettes wearing orange Bronco t shirts. said they were coming to a Superbowl party. Watched them @ Sea Tac for an hour, not one well behaved #12 said or did anything other than good natured chatter.
Link is to the story at The People's Cube. Links to talking Points Memo and HuffPo pieces are included.
From TFA:
This was written by an utterly misguided Huff Post apparatchik named Shadee Ashtari, who seems to have learned of it from a post by Talking Point Memo, whose thoroughly confused author, comrade Daniel Strauss, had mistaken our Party-approved, Obama-praising poster for an advertisement manufactured by the Koch Brothers, and for some reason decided that this product of his ignorance deserved to be a "news" story.
Behind barbed wire fencing Peter Tap cuts a forlorn figure, one of 27,000 South Sudanese seeking safety at a United Nations base in an area that has suffered some of the countrys worst violence since mid-December.
These South Sudanese feel it is too dangerous to return to their homes, despite a truce between the warring factions. Their fear highlights the danger of renewed violence as both sides trade blame for sporadic violations of a ceasefire agreement signed last week in neighboring Ethiopia.
South Sudans government says it wants some of the alleged coup plotters including the former deputy president who now commands rebels to face a treason trial, raising the stakes in an ethnically-charged conflict that recently threatened to plunge the worlds newest country into full-blown civil war.
That war appears to have been avoided but South Sudan remains a country on edge with more than 600,000 people internally displaced by fighting and another 123,000 who fled the country, according to the UNs Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. At least 79,000 people have sought shelter at UN compounds across South Sudan. Some of them say they see no hope and want to be relocated to another country, according to Valerie Amos, the UNs top humanitarian official.
Amos, the UNs humanitarian chief, on Tuesday visited Malakal, the capital of the oil-producing Unity state, and described the situation there as unbelievably dire circumstances.
When we spoke to people they said theyd completely lost faith, they actually wanted to leave altogether, or go to other parts of South Sudan or leave the country, she said.
Amos met with President Salva Kiir on Wednesday to urge a peace deal.
Visiting South Sudan on Thursday, the head of the worldwide Anglican Church told reporters in the capital, Juba, that he sensed the trauma and loss that is afflicting the whole country. Archbishop Justin Welby said he was in South Sudan to meet clerics and officials including President Salva Kiir and to promote forgiveness and reconciliation.
The town of Malakal, which is now controlled by government forces, has been intensely fought over, and there are fears the rebels could attempt to retake it if the truce doesnt hold. Brig. Lul Kong Ruai, a military spokesman for the rebels, said they had only retreated outside the town and were surrounding it in all directions. The rebels captured the town on December 26 but then lost it earlier this month.
Both South Sudans government and rebels have been accused of human rights violations and atrocities that have seen once-bustling towns reduced to ghost towns. The Satellite Sentinel Project, a US-based monitoring group, has released satellite images of the destruction in Malakal that it says is independent evidence of war crimes. The images show neighbourhoods reduced to ashes.
The situation in Malakal has been worsened by the looting of warehouses for the International Organization for Migration and the UN World Food Program, which estimates a loss of more than 3,700 tons of food, an amount that would have fed 220,000 people for more than a month, according to the UN, which says at least 3.7 million people are now severely food-insecure.
It is a disaster right now and we are starting from scratch, said Donovan Naidoo of the International Organization for Migration.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/31/2014 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] The U.N. Security Council on Thursday renewed a sanctions regime against Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... in a vote that sparked a furious row between Congo and Rwanda.
The council backed a sanctions committee report which says the M23 rebel group is recruiting in Rwanda despite its military defeat and that its leaders are moving freely in Uganda.
Rwanda, as a temporary member of the 15-nation Security Council, voted for resolution 2136 but then lashed out at the sanctions report and DR Congo.
Kigali's U.N. ambassador Eugene-Richard Gasana called the sanctions committee report "baseless" and said his DR Congo counterpart was a "cry baby" always complaining to the council about Rwanda.
DR Congo's ambassador Ignace Gata Mativa said the sanctions experts had clearly shown "grave violations" by Rwanda and Uganda by aiding "destabilization" in eastern DR Congo.
"Such an attitude constitutes an act of aggression that the Security Council must record and condemn," Gata added.
"Dear friend, it is time to stop acting like a cry baby each time, each time to come here and hit out at Rwanda," Gasana responded.
M23 launched an uprising against the DR Congo government in 2012 and briefly occupied the key city of Goma before it was defeated by government forces late last year. It is one of a host of groups that have brought strife to eastern DR Congo over the past two decades.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2014 00:00 ||
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[Egypt Independent] Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich went on sick leave on Thursday with an acute respiratory ailment, leaving a political vacuum in a country destabilized by anti-government protests.
Yanukovich's prime minister, Mykola Azarov, resigned on Tuesday after a sharp escalation of two months of street unrest prompted by Yanukovich's rejection of a European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... deal in favor of closer ties and a bailout deal with Russia.
The president, increasingly isolated at home and under pressure from Moscow not to tilt policy back towards the West, has yet to appoint a successor. Serhiy Arbuzov, who was Azarov's first deputy and is a close family friend of Yanukovich, has stepped in as interim prime minister.
"The president of Ukraine has been officially registered as sick with an acute respiratory ailment and a high temperature," at statement on the presidential website said.
The bare announcement, which gave no indication of when he might be back at his desk, left open the possibility that he could still work on documents even though he was on sick leave.
"Today is the first day of the illness. He has a high temperature. We are not doctors, but it is clear that a high temperature does not go down in a single day," a presidential front man said by telephone. "The doctors will do all they can so that he can recover quickly."
Some opposition figures said they suspected Yanukovich might be simply giving himself a breathing space after being forced into concessions to try to calm the unrest on the streets.
"This smacks of a 'diplomatic illness'," Rostislav Pavlenko, a member of boxer-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko's Udar (Punch) party, told Rooters. "It allows Yanukovich not to sign laws, not to meet the opposition, absent himself from decisions to solve the political crisis."
A close ally of Yanukovich, who was last seen in parliament on Wednesday night, rejected that interpretation.
The president had hurried to the legislature to herd supporters into voting for a partial amnesty for detained protesters aimed at tempting activists to stop occupying government buildings in Kiev and elsewhere.
Mykhailo Chechetov, from Yanukovich's Party of Regions, said the president had told supporters in parliament that he had come to the session directly from hospital. "He looked ill," Chechetov said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2014 00:00 ||
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The president, increasingly isolated at home and under pressure from Moscow not to tilt policy back towards the West
[CNN] Two Norwegian politicians have jointly nominated National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize, they said Wednesday on their party website.
Snowden has "revealed the nature and technological prowess of modern surveillance," and by doing so has contributed to peace, said a joint statement by Bard Vegar Solhjell and Snorre Valen of the Socialist Left Party.
Nominations for this year's Nobel Peace Prize -- whose previous winners include such figures as the late South African President Nelson Mandela, Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and President Barack Obama My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it... -- close on Saturday, with the winner announced in October.
According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee's rules, Solhjell and Valen are qualified, as national politicians, to make a nomination. The names of each year's nominees are not revealed until 50 years later.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2014 00:00 ||
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Absolutely outrageous! What about the committee's nominating standards? Snowden has never drone zapped or bombed anybody.
#2
Badges Standards? We ain't got no badges standards. We don't need no badges standards. I don't have to show you any stinking badges standards. Treasure of Sierra of the Madre, 1948. Champ and Arafat paved the way.
#1
Well at least the guys can get an abortion of they ever need it. I bet they are thankful for that! And just think - free gender change operations for everyone! What's not to like?
I wonder why nobody asked who these people voted or in the last election.
Your also right, Obumblecare is designed to destroy the insurance and healthcare industries and make way for single payor.
#2
But, but, but if I'm paying these exorbitant premiums and deductibles, how can I possibly set anything aside for myRA ?
Oh, myRA contribution will be automatically deducted from my earnings statement. So with the EBT card for biscuits, free public transit, clinic, tuition, and housing.....I really won't need actual cash ?
#3
"Your also right, Obumblecare is designed to destroy the insurance and healthcare industries and make way for single payer." Yes, and that will fail also. Massive destruction for our economy. Someone should run the numbers. Many connections to other industries. Say bye bye to Hope and Care needs for the rest of the world.
Besoeker, along with the gender reassignment operation, you will become "Julia" the Obama video babe who is taken care of from cradle to grave by the state. At that point we will all become slaves of the state tracked by NSA and have no freedom. Damned socialistic nightmare achieved by a bunch of statist nitwits. Time to revolt while there is time.
#8
Short term the system will milk the young for everything to pay for the old. When that stops workign the death panels will help trim the number of old folks. Hopefully by then the old folks homes will be filled with legal drugs from Pot on up so the old folks won't know or care.
#10
Next time WTAE in Pittsburgh runs that obamacare sticker shock video they should spilt the screen and show Dan Rooney of the non-profit NFL pittsburgh steelers in the tax payer funded Heinz field yucking it up with Obama in 2008.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
