Posts from — August 2008

Position: 17.8 N 77.3 W. [10 PM CDT]
Movement: West [270°] near 7 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 70 mph.
Wind Gusts: 85 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 45 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 988 mb.

It is ashore on Jamaica and expected to weaken somewhat as it scours the island,

Gustav has been moving more to the South which is bad news for Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, but possibly good news for New Orleans. It is definitely bad news for Gulf oil production, as more platforms and facilities will be on the East side of the storm which is the most destructive. Expect increased gas prices, not due to speculation.

Tomorrow is the third anniversary of Katrina coming ashore at Waveland, Mississippi, which was followed the next day by the catastrophic failure of the levees in New Orleans, and the loss of thousands of lives.

With Gustav trying to get its act together in the Caribbean the Gulf Coast is reacting. This is good because everyone now realizes that the Federal government under the Hedgemony is totally worthless when it comes to disasters.

On this anniversary Scout at First Draft notes: “We don’t need a reminder, we just need to fucking Remember.”

[I realize that’s shrill, but dealing with mildew encrusted sheetrock does that to you.]

I would note that in addition to the anniversary of the flooding in New Orleans, Friday is also McCain’s 72^nd birthday, which is relevant only because the President of the United States decided to eat Senator McCain’s birthday cake in Arizona, rather than doing anything about the hundreds who were drowning in a major city.

I was listening to NPR in the car and they were wandering around asking delegates strange questions. One of the most amazing responses was on people that they thought Obama should use in on his national security team. An individual actually said Colin Powell and…Condoleezza Rice‽

The reasoning was that they were there when the mistakes were made, so they could help unmake them, and reaching out to Republicans was what Obama was really about.

A major mistake was allowing Ms. Rice into government, because she was a rather spectacular failure at two major national security positions. Like her boss, she is unlikely to believe any mistakes were made.

While the individual was identified in the piece I won’t provide that information. The individual sounded young enough to have decades left in which to regret it. Only cruel people will listen to today’s All Things Considered stream to acquire that information.

I will however link to the McCarthy problem. It would have been better to have confused Gene McCarthy with Charlie, rather than Joe.

Position: 18.8 N 75.4 W. [10 PM CDT]
Movement: West-Southwest [250°] near 8 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 45 mph.
Wind Gusts: 60 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 35 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 999 mb.

It is 100 miles South of Guantanamo, Cuba.

[7PM] It’s over open water now but was really disorganized by the Haitian mountains.

[10 PM] Now it’s headed a little South of West which puts it closer to Jamaica when it passes. Not quite as weird as Fay yet, but it is unsettling with two major patches of very warm water ahead.

Cindy McCain’s trip to Georgia has nothing to do with her husband, or American politics. Petulant at Shakesville notes that she is there in support of the UN’s World Food Program relief effort.

Just because she’s a married woman doesn’t mean that everything she does is related to her husband.

EBW at Wampum has an interesting picture, well, interesting if you are a network/hardware person.

What a rat’s nest! You can only hope nothing goes wrong, and wonder why anything goes right.

Danger Room pointed to an article by Michael J. Totten, The Truth About Russia in Georgia, that presents a rather different view of what just happened in Georgia.

While I might look on it as spin, the fact that Thomas Goltz, the man who wrote the most recent authoritative books on the area, and who has been in the trouble zones of the Caucasus since the break up of the Soviet Union, was in the audience for the briefing and signed off on the information, makes it much more reliable than most media events.

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I assume that Floridians remembered that today was the regular Florida primary, and went to the polls.  There’s only about an hour left in the Eastern zone and two hours left in the Central zone if you didn’t.

Position: 18.5 N 73.3 W. [7 PM CDT]
Movement: Northwest [305°] near 7 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 75 mph.
Wind Gusts: 90 mph.
Hurricane Wind Radius: 15 miles.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 70 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 992 mb.

It is 150 miles Southeast of Guantanamo, Cuba.

It lost some power over land.

It isn’t immediately obvious, but Walter Brasch’s article about the media, Downsizing the News And Pretending to Increase the Quality, and Tom Lasseter’s about the oil industry, Russia’s oil boom may be running on empty, are both addressing the worst concept in business today, no matter what area that business is in: sacrificing long term survival for near term profits.

There are very few investors left in the business world, people who are making decisions that will provide profits for generations from research and development of new products or resources to keep the business viable. Today people with capital are gamblers looking for the maximum profit possible in the near term.

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So, what do you do when waiting for a storm and it’s three hours between updates [minor at 1 & 7, major at 4 & 10 CDT]? Well, you could actually get some work done and listen to some mood music:

Rain
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Night on Bald Mountain
Riders on the Storm
Who’ll Stop the Rain
Rainy Night in Georgia

Or, just ignore the whole thing…nah, that won’t work.

Position: 16.6 N 71.4 W. [10 PM CDT]
Movement: Northwest [310°] near 12 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 70 mph.
Wind Gusts: 85 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 50 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 990 mb.

It is 150 miles South-Southeast of Port au Prince, Haiti.

Gustav is obviously in a favorable environment for strengthening, and Haiti and the Dominican Republic are going to get pasted again with what currently appears to be an even stronger storm than Fay.

[10 PM] Gustav has an eyewall and will probably be a hurricane in the 1 AM update, if not before.

Position: 15.5 N 70.1 W. [10 AM CDT]
Movement: Northwest [305°] near 15 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph.
Wind Gusts: 45 mph.
Minimum central pressure: 1006 mb.

It is 260 miles Southeast of Port au Prince, Haiti.

Tropical Storm warnings up for Hispaniola. It will be Tropical Storm Gustav later today and is following a track very similar to TS Fay.

There isn’t a brain to be found anywhere in the world of “Homeland Security”.

Ellroon at Rants from the Rookery excerpts an article about coming through US Customs, which has become a degrading process as you are treated like a criminal. The process is supposed to be to “protect” the US, but no one really knows from what or whom.

Fallenmonk has a piece, Incompetence Cubed, that is concerned with a major problem for the entire system: the IT infrastructure that is supposed to be used to amass all of the data collected and to provide information about possible threats doesn’t work, and is unlikely to be of any use in the near future, if ever. Another failed Federal computer system.

They keep hoovering up all of this data on everyone, and they have no way of putting it in a retrievable format, they are just piling it up.

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