September 24, 2005
So far , it is the absolute best resource I've found for covering Hurricane Rita on a local level. This torm will hit land and stall, not leaving untli after the weekend. The widespread flooding seen as a result will be on par with that of Hurricane Floyd in 1999, with more than 20 inches expected in many areas.
Please say a prayer for everyone in the storm area.
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September 23, 2005
This may assist mortuary teams in identifying your body.
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Man I can't wait to vote that lady out of office.
Freedom Center backers say it will help people understand 9/11 sacrifices. Victims� families say controversy surrounding the museum will dishonor the dead. Do you think it belongs at the WTC site?
- Yes, it will be a learning tool.
- No, the site should be used as a memorial only.
- Not sure.
Get up to speed.
Go vote.
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September 22, 2005
The culmination of this month-and-a-half of self-aggrandizing behavior will culminate this weekend as two communist spin-off groups tries to herd what some hopefully boast will be "hundreds of thousands" of Stalinists, Marxists, anarchists, radical feminists, left-over hippies, oppressed didgeridoo players and hermaphrodite dwarves into something of a unified protest. All of these protestors support the troops, and will gladly prove it if they can get within spitting distance of the White House.
Other sources don't seem quite as optimistic of a turnout that high, dropping that number into just tens of thousands.
So how should one estimate just how many souls Saint Cindy might gather on the final leg of the leg of the Magical Misery Tour? A simple, but effective gauge might be to see how many hotel rooms are still available in the greater Washington, DC area. With a major political protest occurring this weekend, hotel rooms in the greater D.C. area should be few and far between.
But they aren't.
A visit to Orbitz or Travelocity, or other travel sites shows that rooms in the D.C. area could be had anywhere from downtown Washington D.C. out to Fairfax, VA 20 miles out, from $80.00+.
Perhaps the D.C. area has so many hotel rooms that an influx of 100,000 people isn't that much of a problem. I find it far more plausible that Cindy Sheehan's terrorist-appeasing, America-hating rhetoric has finally come home to roost.
Update: Added NY Sun's revised crowd estimate.
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September 21, 2005
Mrs Sheehan was joined by about 30 supporters in her march down Pennsylvania Avenue to deliver a letter to Bush urging him to pull the troops out of Iraq.
Source: Reuters via Yahoo!
That's all, folks. I count 29 people. This is her entire protest party. Including Cindy.
After a carefully stage-managed vigil by liberal PR firm Fenton Communications, and a pair of 3-week long national bus tours to drum up support for her cause, "Mother Sheehan" managed to bring with her just this tiny gaggle with her to the gates of the White House.
The organizers backing her show hope to draw "ten of thousands" of fellow protestors this weekend, but if this sad crowd and last night's turnout of just 150 in New York are any indication, the fledging anti-war movement of Cindy Sheehan is all but dead. more...
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Rita is so powerful that it might be more descriptive to describe her for what she also is: A massive F3 (or “severe”) tornado on the Fujita Scale of Tornado Intensity.
The thing is, most tornados aren't generally large enough to be seen from space...
Via NOAA
If you live in South Texas, a trip north would be a good idea right about now.
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September 20, 2005
His column is a rehash of the new liberal mantra that Cindy Sheehan is a modern day Rosa Parks. He says of the comparison, "The analogy is spot on." Utter rubbish. Cindy Sheehan, if anything is the anti-Rosa Parks, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see it.
Rosa Parks... was the figurehead of a cause that fought to free an entire race who were being oppressed in their own country.
Cindy Sheehan... was the figurehead of a cause that fights to defeat one man.
Rosa Parks... fought the system to obtain constitutional rights.
Cindy Sheehan... says our constitution isn't worth fighting for.
Rosa Parks... was "tired of giving in."
Cindy Sheehan... wants for nothing more than for the United States to give in.
Rosa Parks... inspired freedom-loving people around the world.
Cindy Sheehan... inspires freedom-loathing people including neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and Islamic terrorists.
Rosa Parks... to fight against the bigots of the Democratic Party to achieve her agenda.
Cindy Sheehan... firmly supported from bigoted anti-Semitic elements within the Democratic Party.
Rosa Parks... When she was successful, the cause of freedom was advanced.
Cindy Sheehan... If successful tomorrow and U.S. troops were immediately withdrawn, the freedom of 56 million people would be jeopardized.
Rosa Parks... is nearly universally described as having a quiet dignity and grace, was proud to be an American.
Cindy Sheehan... has the mouth of a sailor, and calls America a "cancer."
Cindy Sheehan is a lot of things—a grieving survivor, an estranged wife and mother, wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, and the apologist for both the terrorists who killed her son and a convicted terrorist supporter—but of all the thing she is, Cindy Sheehan clearly isn't anything like Rosa Parks.
Rosa Parks had (and has) class, Mr. Louis.
Cindy Sheehan...
Not so much.
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In a true-blue New York Metropolitan area of 22 million people, the anti-war movement's greatest star, a woman with "absolute" moral authority according to the NY Times own Maureen Dowd and branded the "Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement" by hopeful liberals, Cindy Sheehan managed to draw just 150 supporters, or 0.00068-percent of the tri-state metro area, to her well-advertised speech in Hyde Park. Even then, to this meager multitude, she didn't get to speak.
The NYPD moved in and took away Sheehan's microphone just as she was calling upon her supporters not to lose hope in the anti-war movement. It seems that while speech may be free in the United States, it won't come without a valid sound permit in the Big Apple.
On a day where the police seemed to outnumber the protestors, it may not have made much of a difference.
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September 19, 2005
A suicide bomber captured before he could blow himself up in a Shiite mosque claimed he was kidnapped, beaten and drugged by insurgents who forced him to take on the mission. The U.S. military said its medical tests indicated the man was telling the truth.Mohammed Ali, who claimed to be Saudi-born and appeared to be in his 20s, said he managed to flee after another suicide attacker set off his bomb, killing at least 12 worshippers Friday as they left a mosque in the northern city of Tuz Khormato.
In confession broadcast on state television later that day, Ali told Iraqi interrogators he did not want to bomb the mosque and hoped to go home.
Results from medical tests on Ali were "consistent with his story and characterization of his treatment," Col. Billy J. Buckner, a U.S. military spokesman said Sunday.
So much for al-Zaraqawi being "the greatest" if he has to kidnap and drug people to carry out suicide attacks. It seems that the seemingly inexhaustible supply of willing suicide bombers that we westerners have come to fear is exhaustible after all. Some might even be willing to think that this validates the Bush/Rumsfeld "flypaper" strategy.
Don't let Bill Clinton know.
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From Rasmussen, via Newsbusters via Instapundit:
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of black voters support the federal reconstruction spending while just 17% are opposed. Among white voters, 49% favor the spending and 29% are opposed. This is the first Bush Administration proposal hat [sic] has attracted more support from black Americans than from white Americans.
I'm not a huge fan of polls—the tend to be superficial, and the perceptions that drive them can turn on a dime—but I find it interesting that apparently the same people who shake their fist at Bush with one hand, are more than happy to dip their sticky fingers into the federal honeypot with the other.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
07:31 PM
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Here's some North Carolina pork -- though at least it hasn't been soaked in that vinegary stuff they call barbecue sauce.
Professor Reynolds, while a somewhat successful blogger and middling law professor at a forgotten backwoods university, is hardly fit to taste, much less judge, that sweetest delicacy that is eastern North Carolina pork barbeque. Being a magnanimous person, how ever, I will give him a chance to think over his hastily made statement.
So Professor Reynolds...
University of Tennessee Law School, as viewed from the CAF's "Fifi."
Do you care to "revise and extend" your comments?
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September 18, 2005
Since then, President Bush has given a speech pledging billions of dollars to rebuild a city that should not be, one built in a swamp, largely below sea level, surrounded by an unnaturally choked Mississippi River on one side, and a rapidly encroaching Gulf of Mexico on the other.
Many people have rallied behind the President for his pledge to rebuild the area "in a sensible, well-planned way."
There is nothing at all sensible about rebuilding New Orleans. It will be on, or under, the Gulf of Mexico by 2050, according to this lightly modified image from the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (more here).
Of course, looking at a map is one thing: hearing from legitimate experts is another matter entirely.
Towards that end, I sent an email to some of the top coastal and marine studies scientists in the United States this past Friday, asking them to the following five questions:
- Are estimates that the continued rate of wetland loss in Louisiana will place New Orleans on or in the Gulf of Mexico in the 2050-2090 time frame accurate?
- If these estimates are not accurate in your estimation, what do you think the actual time frame will be (ballpark estimates are perfectly acceptable)?
- The Mississippi Delta is immensely important as a breeding ground for migratory birds and for many species of marine life. Some have suggested that allowing the Mississippi River to "go native" —that is, removing levees and other hardening structures—would allow the Delta to replenish itself with sediments that are currently be lost to the Gulf of Mexico. Is that an accurate theory in your estimation?
- Are other replenishment efforts more viable for the long-term?
- If the area of New Orleans outside the port and French Quarter (above seas level) were cleared and cleaned and returned to nature with artificial flood control structures removed, what would be the impact on the wetlands of the Mississippi Delta?
Even though I sent this out on a Friday, I was able to get a response from one senior scientist. I promised that I would not reveal his identity, but I can reveal that he is a geologist, and the former Dean of a Coastal and Marine Studies program.
Here is how he responded:
1. Are estimates that the continued rate of wetland loss in Louisiana will place New Orleans on or in the Gulf of Mexico in the 2050-2090 time frame accurate?
The estimates are probably accurate. There are three main factors: Global sea level rise, delta subsidence, Mississippi River sedimentation. Sea level is rising, the delta is sinking and the river is depositing much less sediment on the delta now than in the past (for multiple reasons).
2. If these estimates are not accurate in your estimation, what do you think the actual time frame will be (ballpark estimates are perfectly acceptable)?
They "are probably accurate" (See above)
3. The Mississippi Delta is immensely important as a breeding ground for migratory birds and for many species of marine life. Some have suggested that allowing the Mississippi River to "go native" —that is, removing levees and other hardening structures—would allow the Delta to replenish itself with sediments that are currently be lost to the Gulf of Mexico. Is that an accurate theory in your estimation?
Where the Mississippi mouth is located has shifted at least 14 times in the last 7000 years. It has now reached the point where it is over extended. There is great potential for the river to turn Southwest just south of Baton Rouge and take a short cut to the ocean. The Army Corps of Engineers has been fighting this for decades. It is natural for the river channel to significantly shift its channel.
Because the river has so many dams along its course and its banks are heavily diked, sedimentation on the delta surface has been reduced. This has aggravated the problem of completely natural process of delta subsidence because little is added to the top as the bottom goes down.
Note: Here is a map showing where the Mississippi would likely change it's course, taking a sharp turn to the southwest far before it reached New Orleans. Note that if the Mississippi river does change course as suggested, then New Orleans loses much of its value as a port city, along with its only natural supply of sediment. This also means that the large area of the Mississippi Delta to the east (right) of the new course, which is over-extended into the Gulf of Mexico would erode away over time.
Are other replenishment efforts more viable for the long-term?
4. Where would the dirt come from? The natural source is the best and cheapest. [Just to be clear, he means by sedimentation –ed.] All other schemes would require enormous energy output to move the material and probably create a problem somewhere else.
If the area of New Orleans outside the port and French Quarter (above seas level) were cleared and cleaned and returned to nature with artificial flood control structures removed, what would be the impact on the wetlands of the Mississippi Delta?
There would be an immediate increase in shallow fresh to brackish water wetlands. The quality of that increase would depend on elevation (depth) and what could become established on it. If it is an increase in area of low quality wetland or a series of lakes, it may not be worth it for the gain in wetlands alone.
After answering these questions, he also volunteered the following:
If a city planner were choosing a location for a big city, it would not be where New Orleans is today. It is a location that should be largely abandoned as a city.
New Orleans is a doomed city, and even the Mississippi River it depends upon seems to want to abandon it. I'd rather we faced up to that fact now, rather than $200 billion or a trillion dollars down the road.
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September 17, 2005
Dan Riehl has more, if you can stomach it.
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One thing that truly troubled me about my visit to Louisiana was the level of the military presence there. I imagined before that if the military had to be used in a CONUS (Continental US) operations that they would be there to help the citizens: Clothe them, feed them, shelter them, and protect them. But what I saw was a city that is occupied. I saw soldiers walking around in patrols of 7 with their weapons slung on their backs. I wanted to ask one of them what it would take for one of them to shoot me. Sand bags were removed from private property to make machine gun nests. [emphasis added]
This is Algiers, Louisiana:
This is a machine gun nest made as an example for an Australian Army fficial%26sa%3DG">open house.
A machine gun nest is a kind of gun emplacement, a prepared position for siting a weapon. Pillboxes and bunkers are other, more permanent examples.
Machine gun nests are, curiously enough, built for machine guns, big honkin' tripod-mounted, belt-fed stationary weapons used to hold a fixed position against massive onslaughts of troops. Think trench warfare, or the human wave charges of the Japanese in World War Two or the Vietnamese firebase assault from John Wayne's 1968 film, The Green Berets.
When most Americans think of machine gun nest, they get an image in their heads of something like this example from World War II:
While Arthur Lawson's Gretna PD might have fired shots into the air to scare New Orleans evacuees back across the bridge called the Crescent City Connection, no sane person, at any point, would suggest that gun emplacements such as machine gun nests or bunkers were being developed to fortify the west bank of the Mississippi against the citizens of New Orleans.
Could I be wrong? Perhaps. Here is a menacing photo of the 82nd Airborne assault on Bourbon Street yesterday morning.
Notice the aggressive posturing of the disposable cameras at the feet of the soldier on the left.
They just scream genocide, don't they?
Clearly, something doesn't add up between the reality Cindy Sheehan sees in the actions and intentions of the United States military in Louisiana, and what everyone else sees. That wide deviation in perceptions is because of the wolves Cindy Sheehan has decided to feed.
Huh?
A Cherokee elder sitting with his grandchildren told them, “In every life there is a terrible fight – a fight between two wolves. One is evil: he is fear, anger, envy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, and deceit. The other is good: joy, serenity, humility, confidence, generosity, truth, gentleness, and compassion.” A child asked, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?” The elder looked him in the eye. “The one you feed.”
Cindy Sheehan chose her favorite "wolf" long ago, and her association with certain groups just encourages her to feed one wolf at the exclusion of all others. Each passing minute he grows more angry, arrogant, and deceitful. Each passing minute, Cindy Sheehan drifts closer to what most of us would consider insane.
More from her latest post:
It is a Christ-like principal to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless. That's what is happening in Algiers and other places in Louisiana...but by the people of America, not the so-called "Christians" in charge. If George Bush truly listened to God and read the words of the Christ, Iraq and the devastation in New Orleans would have never happened.I don't care if a human being is black, brown, white, yellow or pink. I don't care if a human being is Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, or pagan. I don't care what flag a person salutes: if a human being is hungry, then it is up to another human being to feed him/her. George Bush needs to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq, and excuse his self from power. The only way America will become more secure is if we have a new administration that cares about Americans even if they don't fall into the top two percent of the wealthiest. [emphasis added]
Cindy Sheehan is a sad shell of a human being, twisted by hatred, loss, arrogance, and greed. I would pity her except for the fact that she chose the manner in which to handle her grief. She chose the wolf, and it has consumed her.
Update:Dan at Riehl World View and Jay Tea at Wizbang has similar thoughts, as does 70s Kung-fu expert and counterculture icon Billy Jack, Ace of Spades, Lawhawk, and a bunch of other folks on Google's new blog search engine.
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September 15, 2005
Perfect pitch returned tonight, and the president's looks backward and forward were on target. As Chris Matthews observed, it sounded a little LBJ/FDR-like in its vows about the underclass of the recovery region, but that is exactly why it worked so well: That is what needs to happen, and he identified the best approaches in the empowerment of entrepeneurs and the retraining of the evacuees. The enterprise zone could prove a turbo charged motor to the effort, and the promise of innovation was well delivered.
For all the heartfelt sentiment however, Bush, his speechwriters, and prognosticators both Democrat and Republican missed one key point: New Orleans is not destined to be around to celebrate it's rebirth, at least not for long.
The picture above is pulled from Louisiana State University, a school that knows quite a bit about coastal erosion. The original picture comes from an online lab, where this image portrays the future Louisiana coastline as envisioned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in just 50 years.
More conservative estimates place New Orleans on (or under) the Gulf of Mexico by 2090, and these were both pre-Katrina estimates. Once the environmental toll of Hurrican Katrina is finally measured, years are sure to be shaved from previous estimates.
It was foolish to build a city in a swamp 300 years ago. It is even more foolish now that we could rebuild a far better city, with far fewer problems, and far more potential, with far less money on a more viable location somewhere nearby.
Pouring trillions of dollars into rebuilding a temporary metropolis destined to fail is a fool's game that I would rather not play.
Note I would like to make it clear that I'm not against rebuilding as a concept, I'd just like it to occur at a more viable location than in an eternally sinking hole surrounded by massive bodies of water. Fair enough?
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11:22 PM
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In what seems destined to become one of the most joked about photos of the month, a well-known Reuters photographer on Wednesday captured President George W. Bush scribbling a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a session at the United Nations. On the note is a message revolving around the need to take a "bathroom break."
It isn't until the end of the fourth paragraph that we see the note:
It is unclear if Bush is in the process of responding to that message or wrote it himself.
Focus on that line.
I downloaded the photo and resized it to 800 pixels wide by 458 pixels tall. It is very clear that the comment "I think I may need a bathroom break?" was written in block letters by a person other than the one responding to it in this photo. The hand in the photo, if it is President Bush's, is clearly writing not only in script, but at a slightly different size, with a different amount of force than the person who wrote the block comment. I imagine at trained handwriting analyst could note far more inconsistencies between the two areas of text.
Editor and Publisher clearly has the technical expertise to enlarge a photo, and they almost certainly did. So why on earth would they bury the line that brings the ownership of the comment into doubt into the fourth paragraph? While there, why did they leave the possibility that Bush may have written the "I gotta go" note, when if their photographer can be trusted, his hand is clearly shown writing a separate comment?
The answer to that question is in the very first paragraph of the E&P story when they say:
In what seems destined to become one of the most joked about photos of the month..
Bingo. There's your answer. E&P is not only wrong, they are probably lying... about a potty break note. How childish can these so-called "media professionals" be?
Update: Gary Hershorn, a picture editor for Reuters, explains why he made the call to transmit the story and how Reuters had the picture Photoshopped ("a standard practice").
"There was no malicious intent," he says. "That's not what we do."
Um, yeah..... And Reuter's doesn't stage photos.
I'd just like to ask Mr. Hershorn one simple question: unless your sole intent is to try to embarrass the President, what possibly could have made this story newsworthy?
Update: According to some sources, this note was in Bush's handwriting. My analysis was incorrect. The fact that this story was only publicized to try to embarress the President still remains true.
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When you're done, tell me something: Is Tom "The Hammer" Delay a comedian so refined that only Rushophiles can handles his humor, or is DeLay a delusional loon?
Enquiring minds want to know.
(Inspired by the comments here)
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06:47 AM
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Because of your bravery in the face of certain death, we have both of these monuments:
Without you, one of these symbols of America would not now be standing, and dozens, if not hundreds more families would spend anguished holidays with empty chairs where loved ones should be. You gave the greatest and most personal of sacrifices, dying like lions, or sheepdogs defending the flock.
If I were asked what a fitting monument to your sacrifice might be, I would not have selected a mixed message in the field where you died, but two simple, solid tributes, one the grounds at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, and the other at the Capital Building.
They might read:
"LET'S ROLL"
"Because of Their Bravery, This Building Still Stands.
Because of Americans Like Them, This Nation Stands."
It would then list the names of the heroes of Flight 93.
* * *
These heroes died defending Americans from Islamic terrorism. There was no embrace, there was no bonding, and no contemplation. The was a valiant, violent struggle to determine the fate of those on the plane and the fate of those on the ground, and in that struggle, the boys and girls next door faced the very best operatives Islamic terrorism had throw at them, and they triumphed.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton said it well when she said:
"As I look around this field, there is little that we can do or say or build that can be equal to the courage and sacrifice of the heroes who died on Flight 93, two years ago today," Norton said. "Our hearts tell of a need to honor and memorialize their heroism and to distinguish and identify the importance of this site and what happened here for future generations."
update: Norton apparently remembered her words.
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September 14, 2005
"My hope is that he catches the syphilis during a blood transfusion necessary because he was gang raped by a pack of rabid herpes infected squirrels on his way home from group therapy required before he completes his sex change operation."
So, phin, ... you're saying you don't like Ted Rall?
I can't imagine why, with his caring ideology, and all...
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11:48 PM
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