Posts from — August 2007

Imagine the Shrubbery justifying not inspecting Chinese food products and using Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, to explain why it wasn’t necessary.

How about explaining how Tom Joad from John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, would approve of all of the tax cuts and no increase in the minimum wage?

Pretty mind boggling concepts, right?

Well, how about using Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American, to justify staying in Iraq?

Yes, people, the White House speech writers have included in the text of the VFW speech an extended quote from a novel that portrays how the US stumbled mindlessly into the Vietnam quagmire.

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The Judas goat is not an example of the sort of leadership people are looking for from Democrats. You might want to consider that before you cave in again to the Shrubbery.

Just trying to be helpful as you seem a little confused.

The Associated Press has a report, Spy chief reveals classified surveillance details, based on a El Paso Times interview:

WASHINGTON – National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell pulled the curtain back on previously classified details of government surveillance and of a secretive court whose recent rulings created new hurdles for the Bush administration as it tries to prevent terrorism.

McConnell’s comments were made in an interview with the El Paso Times last week and posted as a transcript on the newspaper’s web site Wednesday.

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Who is the White House speech writer – Theo Nion?

The Beeb reports: Bush in Vietnam warning over Iraq

President George W Bush has warned a US withdrawal from Iraq could trigger the kind of upheaval seen in South East Asia after US forces quit Vietnam.

“The price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens,” he told war veterans in Missouri.

Mr Bush said the Vietnam War had taught the need for US patience over Iraq.

His speech comes amid an apparent rift with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, but Mr Bush said Mr Maliki was a “good man with a difficult job”.
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Dean has spun back up to Cat 2 status with 100 mph winds and is about to come ashore around Tuxpan in the state of Veracruz. It’s continuing 20 mph movement to the West and current interaction of the tropical storm force winds, precludes further development.

It should tear itself apart in the mountains, but will dump a lot of rain along the way. The name, Dean, will be retired because of the loss of life and costs associated with it. Mexico’s second busiest cruise ship port, Majahual, is gone, including most of the concrete piers built for it.

Because it spent most of its time in the Bay of Campeche as a Cat 1, there should be minimal damage to the oil rigs.

I worry about hurricanes because I have to make decisions for a number of people based on what these storms do, and I want to get things done ahead of time. I’ve been dealing with these suckers for decades, so I don’t relax until they are truly dissipated, not just headed in a different direction.

While I’ve been watching the Caribbean, almost two dozen Americans had died as a result of the flooding in the Midwest. Michael at Musing’s musings is on the verge of cabin fever, and Mustang Bobby of Bark Bark Woof Woof got to his parents’ house in Ohio in time to watch their sump pump prove to be inadequate to the job of keeping the basement dry.

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There is a reason that the First Amendment to the US Constitution deals with freedom of religion, and religious tests are specifically outlawed for any office. Religion was the first form the hatred of “other” took in the United States.

Kevin Hayden at American Street notes that things have gotten ugly in the immigration debate, but this is a very old problem

What became the American Party started in 1843 in New York. It was better known as the “know nothing movement,” because the people involved often said: “I know nothing about it.” It was a virulent reaction to new immigrants and they wanted the laws changed to give preference to those born in the US.

A much of the anger/fear/resentment was directed towards the new immigrants because a lot of them were Catholic.

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The 10AM CDT position is 19.0 N 89.6 W.
Movement: West [280°] near 20 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 105 mph [Cat 2].
Minimum central pressure: 950 millibars.

It is on track to enter the waters of the Bay of Campeche near the city of Campeche.

Update: at 1PM the sustained winds have dropped to 85 mph [Cat 1] and it is 45 miles south of Campeche about to enter the water.

Dr. Jeff Masters:

Hurricane Dean powered ashore in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula this morning as a Category 5 hurricane with 165 mph winds. The pressure of 906 mb measured by the Hurricane Hunters shortly before landfall at 4:30am EDT is the ninth lowest on record for an Atlantic Basin hurricane, and the third lowest at landfall behind the 1935 Labor Day hurricane in the Florida Keys and Hurricane Gilbert of 1988 in Cancun Mexico. Dean is also the first Category 5 hurricane to make landfall in the Atlantic Basin since Andrew of 1992.

It is a circle 350 miles across of at least tropical storm force winds. Inside is another circle 120 miles across of hurricane force winds. The winds around the eye are a sustained 160 mph.

The central pressure is 914 millibars and it is moving west [275°] at 20 mph.

The 10PM CDT position is 18.4N 86.0W or about 150 miles east of Chetumal Mexico and about 310 miles east-southeast of Campeche Mexico.

The tropical storm force winds are already hitting the coast of the Yucatan.

Update: the National Weather Service now says that a Hurricane Hunter aircraft is reporting sustained winds of 160 mph, making Dean a Category 5 storm [Hauptsturmfury in my terminology].

The National Weather Service isn’t going to give an inch or a measly 1 mph.

At 800 PM EDT the center of Hurricane Dean was located near latitude 18.2 north, longitude 85.1 west or about 210 miles east of Chetumal, Mexico. [Chetumal in on the border with Belize. It is the capital of Quintana Roo state, and has a population of 137,000.]

Hurricane force winds extend outward up to 60 miles from the center and tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 175 miles.

Maximum sustained winds: 155 mph. [Category 5 starts at 156.]

Minimum central pressure: 915 mb. [Without wind data, anything less than 920 would be considered Category 5.]

Movement: West at 19 mph.

Once it was clear that Dean was coming into the Gulf, and for a while Texas looked like a target things started to happen:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry mobilized the National Guard and search-and-rescue teams, shipped 60,000 to 80,000 barrels of gasoline to gas stations in the Rio Grande Valley, and got a pre-emptive federal disaster declaration from President Bush. The state also sent six C-130 aircraft to Cameron County in case any critically ill patients needed to be evacuated. Hundreds of buses were on standby for possible evacuations.

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They may be the MNF-I instead of MAC-V, and in a desert country instead of a jungle, but the this is the same agitprop that was being shoveled out to the press when Dick’s last name was Nixon, not Cheney.

McClatchy reports: U.S. says Iranians train Iraqi insurgents

BAGHDAD – For the first time, the U.S. military said on Sunday that Iranian soldiers are in Iraq training insurgents to attack American forces.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a top U.S. commander who is in charge of a large swath of Iraq south of Baghdad, believes there are about 50 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in his battlefield area, military spokeswoman Maj. Alayne Conway said.

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Dean has left Jamaica behind but is still subjecting the Cayman Islands to tropical storm force winds, and is moving across the deep warm waters of the northwestern Caribbean. At 10AM CDT Dean is maintaining 150 mph sustained winds with gusts to 185. It is currently moving West [285°] at 20 mph. That extra 5° brings Bahia de la Ascensión back into Dean’s sights as it is tracking a little more to the north.

It is still on track for strengthening to a Cat 5.

Oh, people on the Atlantic Coast need to start checking as Invest 92L has appeared out to the East. With the weird weather, it may recurve and strike Italy, but something to keep in mind.

4PM Update: it is now moving West [275°] at 19 mph. This brings it ashore further south between Ascensión and the border.

Dr. Jeff Masters explains why it was a very bad day in Jamaica, even though the Cat 4 winds stayed off the south coast.

At 10PM CDT the hurricane force winds had ended for Jamaica and Dean was maintaining 145 mph sustained winds with gusts to 180. It is currently moving West [280°] at 19 mph towards the Yucatan but is now projected to strike further south around the Belize-Mexico border / Bahia de Chetumal area, and it is still projected to become a Category 5 hurricane as it passes over the warmer waters of the northwestern Caribbean.

The more southern track increases the distance between the storm and Grand Cayman Island, which may only experience tropical storm force winds.