Every year the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) comes out with a report card on the condition of America’s infrastructure. We got a D+ this year. According to them, “Deteriorating infrastructure is impeding our ability to compete in the thriving global economy, and improvements are necessary to ensure our country is built for the future.”
The Wall Street Journal won the award for the greatest "Shock And Awe" financial headline of the day when it published a story earlier entitled "Warren Buffett Says the Dow Is Going Over One Million." The 'Oracle of Omaha' apparently made the 'bold' prediction at the 100-year anniversary celebration of Forbes magazine in which he also said that "being short America will continue to be a loser’s game." Here are the highlights from WSJ:
“Community is not something you have, like pizza. Nor is it something you can buy. It's a living organism based on a web of interdependencies- which is to say, a local economy. It expresses itself physically as connectedness, as buildings actively relating to each other, and to whatever public space exists, be it the street, or the courthouse or the village green.”
-James Howard KunstlerThe Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
Imagine this movie-script: a former KGB spy, angry at the collapse of his motherland, plots a course for revenge... narrates the ominous sounding voice of Morgan Freeman.
Hurricane Maria made landfall near the city of Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, at around 6:15 am Wednesday, according to the National Hurricane Center, battering the densely populated eastern side of the island with torrential rains and 155 mph gusts as hundreds of thousands of people hunkered down in one of the island's 500 storm shelters in hopes of riding out the second major hurricane to impact the island within two weeks.
Category 4 Maria slammed the island with winds of 155 mph, just 2 mph short of category 5 status.