See ya next time. Y'hear?

Post lucky #7 of the day:

May God Bless Us All

Don't forget to go to church this weekend, y'all. If you don't have a homechurch, it is not too late to pick one. Wink -SD

I hope you all have a terrific weekend! -SDRoads

************************************************************************Post #6 of the day:

Photo source:
http://patfish.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html

Visit Kaitlyn and Grandma at www.patfish.com

It's Not Getting Any Easier

Post #5 of the day:

Small Mo. towns fight to contain Mississippi River By CHRISTOPHER LEONARD, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 44 minutes ago



FOLEY, Mo. - For the second time in 15 years, Keith Aubuchon found himself packing his belongings and evacuating his home to escape a "100-year" flood of the Mississippi River. He returned and remodeled his house after the flood of 1993. This time, he doesn't know if it will be worth coming back.

"This is my second flood. I don't think there will be a third," Aubuchon said as he drove a pickup truck loaded with a washing machine and other belongings out of his subdivision. Floodwaters rapidly filled the roads, yards and gullies behind him just hours after a levee breached north of Foley. Authorities estimate much of the small town will be flooded by the weekend.

The weather might not help, with forecasters predicting showers and scattered thunderstorms in Missouri and Iowa both Friday and Saturday before the precipitation moves out Sunday.

Three Mississippi River levees broke Thursday in Lincoln County, sending a creeping wave of water toward Foley and causing more concern in nearby Winfield.

The river was overflowing 90 percent of the levees in eastern Lincoln County, and at least four more breaches were expected to aggravate the flooding overnight, said Lincoln County Emergency Management spokesman Andy Binder.

While the situation worsened in Lincoln County, it improved slightly elsewhere along the river after the National Weather Service significantly lowered crest predictions. The revisions came after several levee breaks in Illinois, including one on Wednesday near Meyer that potentially could inundate 17,000 acres of farmland with water that otherwise would have been flowing south.

That means many towns along the river won't see the record-level flood crests they expected. The new prediction shows St. Louis cresting at 37.3 feet on Friday, well short of the 49.58-foot mark in 1993.

But National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Kramper said river towns aren't safe yet.

"There will still be a lot of places with major flooding," Kramper said. "Even at the levels we're expecting now, a lot of places are threatened."

The relief for some river towns came at a cost for communities where levees failed. The first levee breached in Lincoln County on Wednesday near Winfield, about 50 miles north of St. Louis, followed Thursday by the series of breaks that spilled water into sparsely populated areas, Binder said.

The southward flows were expected to put increasing pressure on a series of inland levees protecting the towns of Winfield and Elsberry. To help raise the levees an additional 2 feet, dozens of volunteers filled tens of thousands of sandbags in Winfield. The bags were piled onto pallets and shipped to the levees where roughly 150 National Guard members stacked them on top of the existing walls.

"It's about the most rewarding thing I've done in a long time," said David Hays, a computer programmer from Chesterfield, Mo., who took time off work to help fill sandbags. "I was filling sandbags until I couldn't move my arms. Then I held bags until my shoulders hurt. Then I became a supervisor."

In Iowa, where residents are mopping up after the deluge in Des Moines and Iowa City, President Bush surveyed the flood's aftermath on Thursday and assured residents and rescuers alike that he is listening to their concerns.

"Obviously, to the extent we can help immediately, we will help," said Bush, still mindful of criticism that the government reacted slowly to Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

"You'll come back better," the president said. "Sometimes it's hard to see it."

Bush was in Europe when tornadoes hit and heavy rains sent rivers surging over their banks, killing at least 24 people, the majority in Iowa. He made a point to try to show his concern while overseas and traveled to Iowa just two days after returning.

"I really don't have much of an opinion of his coming," said Lashawn Baker, 33, whose family was just starting to clean her flooded home in a southwest Cedar Rapids neighborhood. "It took him a long time to get to New Orleans and he didn't help any of those people, so I don't think he's going to do anything to help Cedar Rapids now that he's here."

At the briefing in Cedar Rapids, Bush, his shirt sleeves rolled up, told local officials that he came "just to listen to what you've got on your mind."

Noting that several hundred federal emergency workers were fanning across Iowa, he added: "That ought to help the people in the smaller communities know that somebody is there to listen to them."

The sluggish federal response when Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005 was judged woefully inadequate and brought heavy criticism of Bush and FEMA. It also brought sensitivity on the part of federal officials each time disaster has struck since to show that things were working better.

FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison accompanied Bush to Iowa on Air Force One and praised the "great coordination" between federal, state and local leaders.

Paulison said one thing FEMA was doing differently was working better with other partners — the Army Corps of Engineers and even Wal-Mart — to distribute supplies. The agency also was placing stocks of sandbags and other supplies in states or towns where flooding hadn't hit yet or material had not been requested, just to be ready, he said.

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Associated Press writers Cheryl Wittenauer, Betsy Taylor and Jim Salter in St. Louis, Henry C. Jackson in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Natasha Metzler in Washington contributed to this report.

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Story/photos source: YahooMail HomePage
Title by SDRoads

HAPPY FIRST DAY OF SUMMER EVERYONE!

Post #4 of the day:

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Scheduled outage at 3:00PM PDT.

Post #3 of the day:

Blogger Status
Thursday, June 19, 2008

Blogger will be unavailable Friday (6/20) at 3:00PM PDT for about 10 minutes for maintenance.

Posted by Jessica at 17:44 PDT

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Photo source: flickr

Post #2 of the day:
Trainer to Congress: Racing is ‘chemical warfare’
By JOSEPH WHITE, AP Sports Writer
10 hours, 0 minutes ago


AP - Jun 18, 3:04 pm EDT 1 of 9 Horse Racing Gallery WASHINGTON (AP)—Testifying before Congress, Hall of Fame trainer Jack Van Berg summed up thoroughbred racing’s woes in two words: “chemical warfare.”

“The present rules permitting the use of steroids and other drugs have comprised the integrity of horse racing and has been a major factor in attendance and for interest falling to an all-time low,” Van Berg told the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection. “Crowds at most of these tracks, you could shoot a cannon through and not hit anybody.”

The use of performance-enhancing drugs took a big hit at Thursday’s hearing, which was called after Eight Belles broke down and was euthanized at the Kentucky Derby last month. All of the witnesses spoke in favor of banning such substances, although the consensus was far from clear on how best to achieve that goal as well as other reforms in a sport lacking an authoritative, central governing body.

“We need a league and a commissioner. We need action, please. Congress, help,” said Jess Jackson, owner of 2007 Horse of the Year Curlin.


“The last thing this industry needs is another layer of bureaucracy. A ‘Department of Horse-land Security’ funded by yet another tax on our long-suffering customers is not what we need,” said Alex Waldrop, president of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.

In between those opposing points of view was Jockey Club president Alan Marzelli, who favored the establishment of a national governing body without government intervention.

The congressman most proactive in his interest in the sport—Rep. Ed Whitfield of Kentucky, the subcommittee’s ranking Republican—suggested that Congress was ready to act. Whitfield said lawmakers can use leverage under the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978, which grants simulcasting rights that now account for much of the industry’s profits. A law could be passed, for example, that withholds simulcast money from states that don’t adhere to federally mandated guidelines.

“Mr. Waldrop has the very best intentions, but he does not have the authority to do anything,” Whitfield said. “We are going to be looking at some legislation to deal with this.”

Deteriorating bloodlines, due to inbreeding, were also discussed as a cause for concern. Witnesses noted that horses wear out much more quickly than the thoroughbreds of past decades.

Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, the subcommittee’s vice chairwoman, said Eight Belles was a “genetic disaster waiting to happen,” a point she made by displaying a chart of what she called the horse’s “fragile bloodline.”

Others pointed to new surveys, including one by The Associated Press, that have discovered thousands of racing-related horse deaths in recent years.

“We are a rudderless ship,” said longtime breeder Arthur Hancock. “The way we’re going, we will all end up on the rocks.”

The lack of conformity in the sport is a result of its lack of structure. Racing is essentially run by 38 sets of rules—one for each state in which racing takes place.

“Imagine if the NFL were set up to permit each state to field as many pro teams as it wanted, play as many games as it wanted all year long, and set its own individual football rules. … Horse racing has been set up in this fashion,” ESPN analyst Randy Moss said.

Jockey Club president Marzelli offered hope by pointing out that its safety panel two days ago called for a sweeping ban on anabolic steroids. He expects all horse racing states to adopt the ban.


Witnesses for House Commerce, …

AP - Jun 19, 1:30 pm EDT
“We are confident that 2008 will be the last year in which anabolic steroids will be permitted in our sport during training and racing,” Marzelli said.

That would have an effect on the methods used by the trainer of Big Brown, the Triple Crown favorite that finished a stunning last in the Belmont Stakes on June 7. Rick Dutrow, who gave a legal steroid to Big Brown through April, was expected tell Congress his side of the story in person, but was a no-show.

Dutrow on Wednesday told the AP that he was too ill to attend, but he remained on the witness list—there was even a symbolic name card for him at the table—because he apparently failed to tell those in charge.

“I’m disappointed by his absence,” Schakowsky said. “I’m disappointed that he did not feel the need to notify the subcommittee of his decision.”

Dutrow did provide a statement in which he discussed his checkered record, including his use of anabolic steroids on horses.

“My observation is that it helps the horses eat better,” the statement said. “Their coats brighten. They’re more alert. It helps them train.”

Dutrow added that “if steroids are banned in the United States, we’ll stop using them.”

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Story/photos source: Yahoo
Quick Editing by SDRoads

Mystery Solved After Nearly Eight Decades

Post #1 of the day:
Horse mystery, 75 years later
A famous racehorse suddenly died in 1932, and now forensic scientists know how.

Here's the answer:

Phar Lap died of arsenic poisoning
Jun 19, 12:20 am EDT

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP)—Forensic scientists say champion Australian gelding Phar Lap died of arsenic poisoning, solving a mystery that has intrigued the horse racing world for more than 75 years.

Phar Lap won 37 of his 51 starts before his death in mysterious circumstances at Menlo Park in California in April 1932. Days before his death, he won Mexico’s Agua Caliente Handicap, which was then the richest horse race in North America.

Arsenic poisoning has long been suspected as the cause of Phar Lap’s death, but confirmation had been lacking until Thursday when researchers Dr. Ivan Kempson of the University of South Australia and Dermot Henry, manager of Natural Science Collections at Museum Victoria, released the findings of their forensic investigation.

Kempson took six hairs from Phar Lap’s mane and analyzed them at the Advanced Photon Source Synchrotron in Chicago, finding that in the 40 hours before Phar Lap’s death the horse had ingested a massive dose of arsenic.

Phar Lap’s mounted hide is on display at the Melbourne Museum, while his heart is kept at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.

“We can’t speculate where the arsenic came from, but it was easily accessible at the time,” Henry said.

Notebooks kept by Phar Lap’s handler Tommy Woodcock, obtained by Museum Victoria, show the horse was administered tonics and ointments containing both arsenic and strychnine. An accidental overdose has long been considered the likely cause of death.

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Story/photo source: Yahoo