Posts from — September 2007

Position: 14.7 N 48.7 W. [10PM CDT]
Movement: West-Northwest [300°] near 6 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph.
Wind Gusts: 50 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 50 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 1002 mb.

Currently 840 miles East of the Lesser Antilles.  They aren’t expecting much strengthening, but who knows this year.

CNN reporting for the White House office of Agitprop: Bush to tout Iraq progress, official says

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush is expected to emphasize what his administration calls “bottom-up” political progress in Iraq in a major address to the nation Thursday night, a senior administration official said.

Amid Democratic criticism and Republican concerns that the so-called troop surge has failed to produce national reconciliation at the top levels in Baghdad, the official said the president is expected to argue that grass-roots efforts by Iraqis are “laying the groundwork for national reconciliation” but there is a “long haul and tough work ahead.”

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Position: 29.4 N 94.4 W. [12:15AM CDT]
Movement: North-Northeast [010°] near 8 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 85 mph.
Wind Gusts: 95 mph.
TS Wind Radius: 60 miles.
Hurricane Wind Radius: 15 Miles
Minimum central pressure: 992 mb.

It is 20 miles East of Galveston.

Update: at 10AM CDT Tropical Storm Humberto Discussion Number 6:

Based on operational estimates…Humberto strengthened from a 30 kt [35 mph] depression at 15z [10AM CDT] yesterday to a 75 kt [86 mph] hurricane at 09z [4AM CDT] this morning…an increase of 45 kt [51 mph] in 18 hours. To put this development in perspective…no tropical cyclone in the historical record has ever reached this intensity at a faster rate near landfall. It would be nice to know…someday…why this happened.

Currently,

Position: 30.6 N 93.2 W. [10AM CDT]
Movement: Northeast [040°] near 12 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 65 mph.
Wind Gusts: 80 mph.
TS Wind Radius: 35 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 990 mb.

If you live on the coast, after the record breaking development of Felix, this surprise leap in intensity near landfall is a bit unnerving. Storms normally lose intensity near landfall as the storm interacts with the land.

Warren P. Strobel of McClatchy Newspapers notes After two days, no answer to ‘how this ends’

WASHINGTON — They sat behind burgundy-covered witness tables for more than 16 hours of testimony and answered hundreds of questions about the Iraq war, some of them pointed, some of them softballs.

But there was one question that Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer.

It was the question that Petraeus himself posed rhetorically back in 2003 when he led the Army’s 101st Airborne Division into Iraq: “Tell me how this ends.”

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Position: 29.0 N 94.6 W. [10PM CDT]
Movement: North-Northeast [010°] near 6 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 65 mph.
Wind Gusts: 75 mph.
TS Wind Radius: 60 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 995 mb.

It is 25 miles South-Southeast of Galveston.

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According to authorities, today [technically, it is the 13^th for Jews and Muslims since sundown] is the first day of the ninth month, Ramadan, in the Islamic calendar.

This is a brief description of the month of fasting and the reasons for it, with more details and links at Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, in recent years, Ramadan has signified an increase in violence in the Middle East.

Happy 5768!

At sunset Rosh Hashanah begins, so get your honey, challah, and apples ready.

Things were a bit more tied to reality in the Senate performance of the Petraeus & Crocker show, and we discover there are some things even they can’t stomach.

John McKay noted the the Warner-Petraeus exchange when General Petraeus won’t say if the war in Iraq makes the US safer. In milspeak that means the general doesn’t believe it makes us safer. If there were any way the general could have convinced himself of the truth of the party line, he would have toed the line.

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Invest 90L has become Tropical Depression Nine and is located 85 miles South-Southwest of Galveston. It looks like it will become a tropical storm before coming ashore around Houston.

Invest 91L has become Tropical Depression Eight and is located 1130 miles East of the Lesser Antilles. This is a prime candidate to become a hurricane, the third of the season, and running generally on the same track as Dean and Felix.

It looks like there is a La Niña [a large area of cooler than normal water] building in the Pacific which generally extends the Atlantic hurricane season.

Michael at Musing’s musings called his post, Six years on, while Eric Alterman at Altercation added a flourish with his post, Six years on …

Michael’s is a prose exposition, while Dr. A’s is a list, but the questions and contradictions are there and worth reading.

And while you are contemplating what you find, remember the anthrax mailings. They were after 9/11; they were never solved; they cost billions to guard against; and they are the reason it takes forever for mail to reach Congress. What did they do, enact a trademark restriction in the USA PATRIOT act that says Acts of Terrorism™ can only be made by al Qaeda^®?

The server change wasn’t the only distraction I have been dealing with for the last week, just the most visible on the ‘Net.

I’d like to spread around some congratulations for various milestone events that I noted, occasionally after the fact, but haven’t acknowledged:

Jack Cluth has been at it for 6 years over at People’s Republic of Seabrook and Elayne Riggs is just past her fifth blogiversary™ at Pen-Elayne.

The proprietors of Fallenmonk and Mad Kane as well as Jillian of skippy the bush kangaroo have managed to get a year older while I wasn’t looking.

Time varies. Cute kittens become annoying cats overnight, but the Hedgemony is creeping towards its metamorphosis to dust. It seems like they have been here for a century and they were the real Y2K problem that we should have been paying attention to.

First, every one of these “support the troops,” “you can’t say anything bad about people in uniforms,” clowns needs to read Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling’s Armed Forces Times article, A failure in generalship and take a hint – flag officers aren’t the troops.

Review what happened to Lieutenant General John Riggs and General Eric Shinseki when they gave their honest opinions about what was going on while they were still serving officers, and you come to the obvious conclusion that there isn’t a single honest flag officer [general or admiral] on active duty. You toe the political line or you are out. That is the Rumsfeld Department of Defense – honesty will be punished, integrity will not be tolerated.

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Things seem to be back to normal after about 22 hours of downtime.  The course of true love and server moves never goes smoothly, but it seems to be done.

As Kevin Drum noted in Double, Double, Toil And Trouble, the escalation surge was all about Baghdad. The number of troops was doubled in Baghdad to bring the city under control so that the political process could go forward.

With twice as many troops and 800,000 fewer residents, the effects on Baghdad were minimal, and there has been no political progress.

The only “bright spot” during the reporting period is Anbar province. But what happened there has nothing to do with the surge or American strategy. In point of fact, arming the Sunni tribes has probably extended and made more violent the civil war and made a political resolution less likely.

Troops will be pulling out in the Spring no matter what because there are no replacements for them. The cupboard is bare, and there are no reserves if the Horn of Africa should explode or there is a major problem in Afghanistan.

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