Posts from — April 2009

The BBC tells us that the World ‘well prepared’ for virus

The international community is better prepared than ever to deal with the threatened spread of a new swine flu virus, a top UN health chief has said.

As the UN warned the outbreak might become a pandemic, Dr Keiji Fukuda said years of preparing for bird flu had boosted world stocks of anti-virals.

Canada is the latest country to confirm cases after as many as 81 deaths in Mexico and 20 cases in the US.

Washington has warned the flu may yet claim American lives.

“I do fear that we will have deaths,” Dr Anne Schuchat of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters.

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It is appropriate that this comes from the St. Petersburg Times: Florida Senate approves religious license plates

TALLAHASSEE — If you want Jesus on your license plate, the Florida Senate is looking out for you.

Because why worry about a budget impasse or property insurance when you can spend more than an hour talking about Jesus, the devil and license plates?

Religious specialty plates offered by Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, and Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, made it onto a bill Friday even though many members had not seen images of those plates and none was produced for the debate.

Senator Ronda Storms is on a crusade to replace Michele Bachman as the Craziest Christianist Conservative in Congress. I will include the graphics below the fold so no one will be offended or outraged. If you think I’m protecting atheist sensibilities, it is only because you haven’t seen the plate – something to offend everyone.

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The latest from the Myrtle Beach Sun News: Roads reopen, crews still busy as wildfire still burns

Crews are keeping an eye on a water treatment plant near Long Bay Road that could be threatened by the fire as Red Cross volunteers hand out supplies in damaged neighborhoods.
…

The fire, which has raged since Wednesday, has charred 20,500 acres, destroying 76 houses in North Myrtle Beach and in rural Horry County. No one has been injured.

The fire is about 80 percent contained, according to Horry County, but crews also are busy responding to hotspots.

If the winds kick up again, all bets are off. Rain is the only way to really extinguish wildfires, so you have people this year hoping for a visit from a tropical storm to refill reservoirs and ensure that the peat bogs get soaked.

The Northwest Florida Daily News reports: Two Okaloosa deputies slain, gunman dead:

CRESTVIEW – A gunman shot and killed two Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputies Saturday afternoon as they were attempting to arrest him for an earlier domestic violence incident.

The gunman then fled in a pickup truck to DeFuniak Springs, where he was killed in a shootout after lawmen rammed his truck.

Joshua Cartwright, 28, shot deputies Warren “Skip” York and Burt Lopez just before 1 p.m. at the Shoal River Gun Club, according to the Sheriff’s Office. The deputies were pronounced dead at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola a short time later.

The deputies were at the gun club responding after a domestic violence call from Cartwright’s apartment in Fort Walton Beach – the Consul Apartments on Monahan Drive.
…

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If you drive West out of Baghdad passed the airport you get to Abu Ghraib. If you stay on that road the next town is Fallujah. They aren’t that far apart.

In January of 2004 the Defense Department announced, with little notice taken by the US media, that they were investigating charges of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. We have seen the pictures, so this had been going on for quite some time.

At the end of March, 2004, four Blackwater convoy escorts were ambushed in Fallujah. They were killed, burned, dragged through the streets, and finally displayed on a bridge.

Americans couldn’t understand why that happened. They didn’t have a clue as to why people would be so enraged as to do something like that. The Americans screamed for revenge.

The Iraqis in Fallujah screamed for revenge first, and they made sure the world saw their revenge.

This is what torture does. This is how torture threatens military personnel. It turns people into a mob.

It is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand, which is similar to the American Veterans Day, in that it began as a remembrance of World War I, and has become more generalized over the years.

“Anzac Day commemorates the involvement of Australian and New Zealand troops in a World War I campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey.”

The Gallipoli Campaign began as a Winston Churchill [then First Lord of the Admiralty] plan that spun out of control and got a lot of people killed on both sides with nothing much changing, but then, that was quite common in World War I.

Peter Weir’s made a movie, Gallipoli, which, if nothing else, proves that Sergeant Alvin York, and T.E. Lawrence weren’t the only people who fought in World War I.

There’s an old comedy routine that I seem to remember was about one of the earlier Republican screw-ups, either Watergate or Iran-Contra. The comedian said he was “accepting the responsibility for what went wrong … but not the blame. The difference is that those that accept responsibility get to keep their jobs, but those who get blamed don’t.'” That’s what this whole controversy is about: avoiding the blame.

Sean-Paul at the Agonist is right about the discussion concerning the effectiveness of torture: It’s the wrong question, and it never should have been asked. It doesn’t make any difference if someone could show that some of the information acquired was useful, because the method is illegal and un-American. It’s a war crime. People have been executed for engaging in it.

Even if there is a report somewhere that shows that some information was acquired from someone who was tortured, those claiming that torture works are going to have to prove that the information wouldn’t have been acquired without torture. They can’t do it because all of the real professionals refused to be involved in the torture and the process was taken over by a bunch of untrained, amateur Torquemadas who didn’t have any idea how to conduct a real interrogation.

CNN is reporting that a Yard debris burn likely behind South Carolina fire, official says

(CNN) — The cause of a South Carolina wildfire that has charred about 19,600 acres appears to be a yard debris fire, the head of the state’s Forestry Commission said Friday.

The blaze seems to have been caused by a yard debris fire in the Woodlawn subdivision, an unincorporated part of Horry County, halfway between Conway and North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Forestry Commission Forest Protection Chief Darryl Jones said.

The fire began Saturday and rekindled itself Wednesday evening, according to the Forestry Commission.

Apparently the debris fire appeared to be out, but the winds blew it back to life. Another problem is that there are peat bogs along the South Carolina coast, and when they are drained and built upon, it is the same as building on a coal seam. If the peat starts burning, it can continue underground until there is enough rain to thoroughly saturate the ground.

The Myrtle Beach Sun News notes that Gusty winds expected to challenge firefighters today, as the fire is approximately 50% contained. To date there are no injuries reported from the fires.

The paper also has a Google Map showing the fire areas, road closures, and shelters.

Bad News

Scram!

[Editor: Some people thought Spot looked tough, but Blaze is a nasty piece of work. He has survived kitten testing to become an equal of Grey Nose, an alpha tom. When the screeching starts outside, I know he’s involved.]

Friday Ark

I don’t want to write about torture. Like most Americans I assumed the whole thing was settled by General George Washington’s orders regarding prisoners during the Revolutionary War, and the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” These principles are part and parcel of the Geneva Conventions that the US signed. There is no “gray area”, there is no uncertainty. Torture is illegal, un-Constitutional, and un-American.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed supposedly written by CIA Director General Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey you will find this piece of ignorance: “Interrogation is conducted by using such obvious approaches as asking questions whose correct answers are already known and only when truthful information is provided proceeding to what may not be known.” That isn’t how an interrogation is conducted, that’s how a lawyer questions witnesses at a trial.

If you want to know what military and law enforcement interrogators/interviewers are striving for, watch a Bill Moyers interview. Bill Moyers is the best interrogator I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen quite a few.

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The Myrtle Beach Sun News reports that More homes threatened as blaze moves northeast

Firefighters today are continuing to battle a blaze that has destroyed at least 40 homes, damaged 100 more, consumed more than 15,000 acres of land and has left a thick, gray smoke hanging over the area.

Gov. Mark Sanford declared a state of emergency for Horry County this morning.

“This has already proved to be a devastating event for Horry County, and it isn’t over,” Sanford said.

Homes along S.C. 90 and S.C. 22 and areas around Long Branch Road are threatened this afternoon, according to Scott Hawkins of the S.C. Forestry Commission. The south side of S.C. 31 also is threatened.

Most of the homes that were destroyed were in Barefoot Resort. Residents in that area and the Pelican Bay subdivision are among the 2,500 people who have been evacuated from their homes.

This is on the inland side of the Intercoastal Waterway in Myrtle Beach, and affects a lot of the resort areas and their golf courses as well as the wooded areas. Low humidity, lack of rain, and high winds – the conditions associated with most of the recent wildfire incidents.

Saint George is the patron saint of England, Georgia [the country], Bulgaria, Portugal, Catalonia, and the city of Moscow. Orthodox countries tend to celebrate George on November 23^rd.

PETA condemns George for his senseless slaughter of dragons. The YWCA condemns the condemnation and wants to know when PETA is going to volunteer to be DragonChow™

It is also the birth and death day of Billy the Bard, who was a great writer in desperate need of a spell checker.

Master Shakespeare gave all of the best lines to villains supplying low humor to those who have read the Folio, e.g. Arlen Specter quoting Iago, reputedly in support of Clarence Thomas.

We have too many issues decided by initiatives in this state, but that is the only way we can stop the criminal conspiracy that the legislature has become from pulling stunts like this.

The Miami Herald reports that a Florida House panel OK’s oil drilling bill

TALLAHASSEE — In a full-barreled appeal to the House Policy Council, the oil and gas industry persuaded lawmakers to vote, 17-6, along party lines Tuesday for a bill that opens state waters to exploration and taps into new revenues for the state’s ailing budget.

The council approved an amendment by Rep. Dean Cannon, R-Orlando, that would lift Florida’s ban on oil drilling in state waters and replace it with a plan to allow the governor and Florida Cabinet to seek bidders for exploration and drilling in the Gulf of Mexico between three and 10 miles offshore.

There are no revenues for years, if ever, and the construction off the coast will destroy the value of beach homeowners and the tourism industry. The Republicans don’t want to put the state on a real, sustainable tax system, but keep looking for “silver bullets” and other ways of funding the programs they approve of without having to give up on all of their give-aways to business interests.

Drilling for oil is a source of pollution. There is no environmentally sensitive way of doing it, and we are moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. This is another get-rich-quick scheme from a group of people too lazy to do their jobs.

The Supreme Court made an uncharacteristic decision: Justices limit car searches without warrant

Justice John Paul Stevens said in the majority opinion that warrantless searches still may be conducted if a car’s passenger compartment is within reach of a suspect who has been removed from the vehicle or there is reason to believe evidence will be found of the crime that led to the arrest.
…

The justices divided in an unusual fashion. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, David Souter and Clarence Thomas joined the majority opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy were in dissent along with Alito.

What they have done is gone back to the rule that was applied back in the 1970s for a “search incidental to arrest”, rather than the much more expansive searches allowed under the Rehnquist Court. Having Scalia and Thomas join the majority would seem to indicate that they are nervous about expanding police powers when Democrats are in power.

The rule I followed was always get a warrant if possible, because that eliminated any problems at trial. In the particular case that was decided, it was a loser from the beginning, because the actual arrest was for a traffic offense, and the search took place after the suspect was already in custody in the back of the patrol car. There was zero justification for a search of the vehicle.