Harvey’s relentless rain sends water spilling over local levee and two dams protecting downtown Houston

A fifth day of relentless rain sent water spewing over a suburban levee and two dams protecting downtown Houston as Tropical Storm Harvey continued its lethal assault.

Brazoria County authorities tweeted a frantic message Tuesday when the rising water proved too much for a local levee to handle, threatening residents in low-lying areas about 50 miles outside Houston.

“The levee at Columbia Lakes has been breached!!” the tweet read. “GET OUT NOW!!”

 

I hope they got a Cherry Mash at every gift shop. These things are crazy delicious.

80-year-old Indiana couple accomplishes goal of visiting every Cracker Barrel

TUALATIN, Oregon – They finally did it! An Indiana couple has finally accomplished their goal of visiting every Cracker Barrel location.

Ray and Wilma Yoder, 80, of Goshen, Indiana, flew out west over the weekend so the couple could visit their 645th Cracker Barrel on Monday morning at the grand opening of the new Tualatin, Oregon location. The monumental occasion also happened to be Ray’s 81st birthday, and the restaurant even put up a sign to welcome them.

Ray celebrated with blueberry pancakes, and Wilma had eggs and sausage. All expenses were paid by Cracker Barrel, according to KOIN6.

 

Disaster Socialist capitalizes on disaster: HARVEY DIDN’T COME OUT OF THE BLUE. NOW IS THE TIME TO TALK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE. -Naomi Klein (Hysterical ALLCAPS in original.)

NOW IS EXACTLY the time to talk about climate change, and all the other systemic injustices — from racial profiling to economic austerity — that turn disasters like Harvey into human catastrophes.

Turn on the coverage of the Hurricane Harvey and the Houston flooding and you’ll hear lots of talk about how unprecedented this kind of rainfall is. How no one saw it coming, so no one could adequately prepare.

What you will hear very little about is why these kind of unprecedented, record-breaking weather events are happening with such regularity that “record-breaking” has become a meteorological cliche. In other words, you won’t hear much, if any, talk about climate change.

The Federal government spends around $100,000 a second. What economic austerity? It’s really difficult to think of a worse Naomi.

Anyway… Let’s have two songs, the obvious one and the one that just makes me happy.