Posts from — August 2008

Position: 19.4 N 76.3 W. [10 PM CDT] Updated.
Movement: West [275°] near 14 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 45 mph.
Wind Gusts: 55 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 105 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 1005 mb.

It is currently passing South of Cuba and is 100 miles North-Northeast of Kingston, Jamaica.

On this map there is all of the territory of one US ally, and a piece of another. These are countries with whom we have mutual defense treaty obligations, and regular joint training exercises. They are allies, not dependents, and they have fought in combat with the US military.

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Position: 18.7 N 70.8 W. [10 PM CDT]
Movement: West [275°] near 14 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 45 mph.
Wind Gusts: 55 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 105 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 1008 mb.

It is currently 100 miles East of Port au Prince, Haiti.

The movement has been less northerly than thought and the storm is currently over the Dominican Republic, and on track to move south of Cuba, before making a turn to the North. The Florida Gulf Coast is now in the storm’s sights.

Blowin’ In the Wind
Where have all the flowers gone
I Ain’t Marching Anymore
Universal Soldier
With God On Our Side
One Tin Soldier
The Times They Are A-Changin’
For What It’s Worth
Fortunate Son
Paint It Black
All Along The Watchtower
We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
What’s Going On
War
I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag [NSFW]
Masters of War
Monster

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Sign on the Dotted Line

I’m late!

[Editor: This is the sibling of last week’s juvenile, and he has very interesting markings. I caught him on his way to the feeding station.]

Friday Ark

I realize that a lot of Americans like and respect Mikhail Gorbachev, but you should know that Vladimir Putin is his protege.

I may have mentioned before, but Medvedev literally means “of the bear”.  A medved is a bear in Russian.  It is a compound word that breaks down into med [honey] and ved [authority, expert].  The Slavs tamed bears to locate honeycombs, the same way the French train pigs to find truffles.

The honey was traded North to the Vikings for the production of mead, the drink, while the beeswax was traded South to Constantinople to be made into candles.  They were very important export commodities.

In My Opinion:

The individual who was mailing the anthrax letters was not trying to kill individuals, the purpose was to increase funding for bioweapons research.  Attempting to fabricate a motive for the individuals to whom the letters were addressed is a waste of effort.  If you look at them based on their jobs, you see the threats were addressed to the media and politicians, two groups who could influence increased funding.  That is the connection I see.

Not all of the evidence collected in any case, especially evidence gathered from public areas, is actually tied to the  case in the final analysis.  A lot of the physical evidence that is gathered in a major investigation has nothing at all to do with the object of the investigation.  It is collected because it might have some meaning, and is some cases may help in establishing a time line.

The anthrax samples were not all of the same granularity, some were fine and others were clumpy.  Under controlled laboratory conditions you would expect them all to be of the same type.

The standard for a criminal conviction is beyond reasonable doubt, not beyond all doubt.

Things are a little clearer today: Search of gunman’s house finds weapons and a will

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The man who fatally shot the chairman of the state Democratic Party had a Post-It note at home with the victim’s last name and phone number along with 14 guns, antidepressants and a last will and testament, according to court documents.

Police Thursday were exploring possible links between the gunman Timothy Dale Johnson and the party chairman, Bill Gwatney, 48. Johnson, 50, shot Gwatney to death Wednesday and after he lost his job at a Target and was killed by officers after a 30-minute chase.

The search of Johnson’s home in Searcy also turned up two sets of keys for vehicles from car lots Gwatney owned. Johnson also had a pistol and 13 long guns.

First off, they keep saying or implying he was fired, which is not accurate, he quit. He went into work and snapped, writing various complaints as graffiti on the walls. As he had been a good, long time employee, his manager tried to find out what was wrong, but Johnson just turned in his employee badge and left.

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Invest 92L had a “bad air” day yesterday and was disrupted by an infiltration of dry air, but it has gotten its act together this morning and is starting to develop.

Currently near Antigua it is projected to track north of the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola into the Bahamas getting organized along the way. The water is warm enough and the wind shear low enough for it to form as a tropical depression. Currently it is a mass of thunderstorms with sustained winds at 30 mph.

Something people in South Florida need to keep an eye on as the weekend approaches.

On Monday early voting began for Florida’s August 26^th primary.

During this period Florida counties are using the new “Ballot on Demand” system to print the required ballot for an individual vote. In Okaloosa County alone there are 137 different ballots required in this primary, so, if it works as advertised, this should eliminate waste and confusion.

Our long-time and much appreciated Supervisor of Elections, Pat Hollran, is overseeing her last election, as she is retiring at the end of the year. Unfortunately she was involved in a serious motor vehicle accident on Tuesday morning during a thunderstorm. She is in stable condition in the hospital and I’m pulling for her full recovery so she can enjoy her retirement.

Sinfonian wrote about More trouble with voting in Palm Beach County, which was apparently tied to the state’s voters data base. The state claims the problem was caused by Walton County and a glitch in their system. I don’t know, but Walton County, just East of me, only has about 35K voters who are two-thirds Republicans, so I would think that the state could just give them a call and make them correct the problem that is inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of other people through out the state.

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It has been widely reported that two-thirds of corporations have paid no corporation income taxes since 1998.  This is based on a GAO study requested by Senate Dorgan.

Given that, what was the point of cutting the coporate tax rate in 2001?  What difference could any rate change make if two-third of corporations were paying no taxes?

I enjoy reading Paul Krugman and almost always agree with him. And while I agree with what he is trying to say in his latest column, Can It Happen Here?, on single payer health insurance, he really has to watch his word choices to avoid giving people unnecessary avenues of attack.

Let me try to clarify my point. Health care is provided by medical professionals. No one, to my knowledge, is seriously advocating making those professionals government employees, or in nationalizing health care facilities. The debate is about paying for health care, not about providing it.

People should be aware that there are a great many places in the United States where there is no health care of any kind. If you get sick, you have to be taken somewhere else. In a lot of rural America there are no doctors, clinics, or pharmacies available. This is not a debate about universal health care, because even if “Medicare For All” were enacted tomorrow, the people who live in those areas still wouldn’t have access to health care.

For those who don’t know, if you have Medicare, you can go to any doctor who accepts Medicare insurance, and that is probably the majority of doctors in the country. Medical decisions are made by the doctor, not Medicare.

and McClatchy’s as they have a number of good pieces on the the situation:

[Uodate: here’s the CIA’s Map of Caucasus Ethnic groups so you can see what a mess the area is.]

A background piece on the run up to this mess, U.S. knew Georgia trouble was coming, but couldn’t stop it. The Kremlin has been trying to pick a fight for a long time to punish Georgia for it’s preference for the West, and Saakashvili just wouldn’t or couldn’t understand it was a trap.

A report on the latest bombing of the city of Gori, Civilians were only targets left as Russia kept bombing

GORI, Georgia — On the day that Russia declared an end to its war in Georgia, Jumberi, a taxi driver who gave only his first name, took a long drag on a Marlboro Red cigarette and said that after the first bomb hit, all he saw was body parts.

He motioned to the shattered windshield of his Toyota Corolla and the bloody handprints on the side of the car — left there when the wounded and dying collapsed as they begged him to take them to the hospital.

“I heard the sound of the jets, but I did not see them,” he said. “They were just bombing and bombing the city. Everything was out of control.”

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There are two areas of interest in the Atlantic at the moment, Invests 92 and 93.

People in South Florida might want to check in on them before they become really interesting.  Invest 92 is closer, and the computer models have it headed towards the tip of the peninsula.  It’s early in their development and they could fade away, but conditions are favorable for them to become problems.