Posts from — August 2006

The first hurricane of the season is doing a number on Haiti this morning and then will mug Cuba. The passage over Cuba will weaken the storm, but it will have plenty of warm water to help it recover strength once it enters the Gulf.

The current track has it going over the lower Keys and then cruising up the western Gulf coast of the Florida peninsula before turning inland to pass into the Atlantic around Jacksonville.

It looks like the people still in FEMA trailers from Charley in 2004 are going to get hit again.

As I wrote last year: the response was screwed from the beginning.

In the map below, the area in yellow are those parishes included in the 08/27/2005 FEMA emergency declaration:

The area in red are the parishes actually at risk from hurricanes – they got it exactly reversed, which prevented aid from being pre-positioned in northern Louisiana.

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Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

With Tropical Strom Ernesto’s strength and path still up in the air, according to this CBS/AP article New Orleans Told Levees May Not Hold.

If Ernesto becomes a hurricane and strikes near New Orleans all bets are off regarding possible flooding in the city. Until you are sure the levees will hold, you are really taking a chance rebuilding.

I forgot to mention the problem even a tropical storm will cause for those living in FEMA trailers. They should pack all of their personal stuff in heavy duty garbage bags and look for some place else to wait out a storm.

From AP reports on CNN:

Sudan charges Tribune ace with writing ‘false news’ – “A Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune was charged in a Sudanese court Saturday with espionage and other crimes.” “[Paul] Salopek was working on a freelance assignment for National Geographic magazine during his arrest.”

Witnesses: 2 Israeli missiles hit Reuters car.

Someone needs to tell the Sudanese government and Israeli military that this is not the path to good “ink”.

Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on August 26, 1920, guaranteeing the right of the majority of American adults to vote.

Via WTF is it now? a Canadian university uses the Shrubbery in its advertising campaign for new students.

Go and click through, although I don’t think you can register for the prizes.

Update 1: I forgot about Badtux’s post, That Iranian nuclear program… that was supposed to be part of this.

Update 2: The Christian Science Monitor: Study calls Iran ‘biggest beneficiary’ of US war on terror.

Professor Cole vents some spleen about the House Republican report on the lack of intelligence concerning Iran.

The House ?Intelligence? Committee missed a few realities. Dr. Cole directs them to Larry Johnson’s piece, Republican Chutzpah on Iran, which points out that the Republican White House blew the cover on the CIA asset most involved with Iran’s WMD program – Valerie Plame’s network.

I would add that we would certainly know more if our “friends” in Pakistan had allowed us to talk to Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man who sold Iran much of their nuclear research equipment.

Of course, the scorched earth policy of Porter Goss, eliminating many of the experienced people in the CIA who didn’t toe the Republican line on Iraq, certainly didn’t help, nor did saddling a HUMINT agency with a SIGINT spook for a boss.

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So the Israel army chief admits failures, while Olmert tries on “support the government or the terrorists win” from Karl Rove’s playbook.

Just to make everything even more complicated, Syria warns over UN peacekeepers. Syria says if they station UN peacekeepers along the Lebanon-Syria border, they will close the border to everyone. Lebanon gets most of its imports from or through Syria.

While France boosts Lebanon peace force by two battalions and Italy has promised 3,000 troops, Chirac wonders where the massive UN peacekeeping force augmented by 15,000 Lebanese troops are going to stay in the relatively small area that has been pounded to dust by recent combat.

There are few passable roads, fewer bridges, a much reduced number of buildings, cluster munitions and land mines all over, little electricity or drinking water, but they are is now going to have 30,000 “visitors”.

As of 4:00PM CDT the Gulf Coast has a concern called Tropical Storm Ernesto.

Currently it is north of Venezuela, but the current track has it passing just south of Cuba and entering the Gulf of Mexico as a hurricane.

In Freedom? Yeah right. Badtux feels that there is a problem in the government position expressed in the BBC article, US charges Hezbollah TV provider

A US businessman has been charged with offering broadcasts of Hezbollah’s al-Manar satellite television station to customers in the New York-area.

Javed Iqbal, originally from Pakistan, is accused by prosecutors of doing business with a terrorist entity.

Glenn Greenwald, as an attorney, might wonder why this screed by Walter E. Williams doesn’t get Townhall classified as a “terrorist entity”. I would think that a call to eliminate the people and nation of Iran with nuclear weapons would fit the definition used for Al-Manar: advocating violence.

You have to wonder about these decisions, especially since Quotations From Chairman Mao Zedong and Mein Kampf are readily available.

CNN reports that Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, is retiring:

Max Mayfield, who oversaw the nation’s tropical-storm forecasting during the Atlantic’s most destructive period on record, said Friday that he will retire.

Mayfield, 57, told his staff he will retire in January but had no single reason for leaving the center, which he has led since May 2000.

“I’ve been here 34 years and as Forrest Gump said in the movie, ‘I’m tired and I want to go home,”‘ The Miami Herald reported on its Web site.

Max is very familiar to those of us who live on the Gulf Coast. You have to wonder if all of the attempts to reduce the capabilities of NOAA played a part in his decision.

A Cat’s Tail

It isn’t too long, I’m just too short for it.

[Editor: Ringo’s tail is absurdly long for her size. It is at least 3 inches longer that Sox’s and she weighs less than half as much as he does.

Friday Ark

Today Professor Cole suggested:

And, wouldn’t it be easier for the Israelis to give back the land they stole in 1967 to Lebanon and Syria and make peace, and let the Palestinians have their little state, and pay reparations for 1948, so then they wouldn’t have to try to police all their neighbors all the time? They are getting worse at the policing over time, anyway.

Obviously, this can’t work because it addresses all of the concerns of all of the parties involved, and undercuts all of the justification for the continuing war.

If Israel did this, Hezbollah would have no justification for its militia; the Ba’athists would lose their main justification for continuing to rule Syria; Hamas would have no justification for their militia; al Qaeda would lose one of its foundation issues. If Israel did this, the War On Terror™ would fade into history; so it will never be allowed to happen.