Posts from — November 2009

The names in bold voted against the Health Care bill, after voting against women.

† – Family guys [Echidne]

Based on the possibility of an unwelcome guess named Ida dropping by on Tuesday morning, I will be occupied with a few last minute details, like tying things down and getting more gas for the generator.

Position: 23.7 N 86.7 W [ 9 PM CST 0300 UTC].
Movement: North-Northwest [345°] near 14 mph [22 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 105 mph [165 kph].
Wind Gusts: 125 mph [200 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 175 miles [280 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 35 miles [55 km].
Minimum central pressure: 979 mb.

It is 400 miles [645 km] South-Southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and 464 miles [747 km] South of me.

A Hurricane Warning has been issued for the northern Gulf Coast from Pascagoula Mississippi eastward to Indian Pass Florida.

A Tropical Storm Warning and a Hurricane Watch are in effect for the northern Gulf Coast from Grand Isle Louisiana eastward to west of Pascagoula Mississippi…including New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain.

A Tropical Storm Warning has been issued for the northern Gulf Coast from east of Indian Pass to Aucilla River Florida.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

To understand some of the references it helps if you have watched the original Star Wars multiple times: Crumbs! Large Hadron Collider suffers snack-related bird mishap and Breaking: Large Hadron Collider shut down by precision bird strike.

I would note that there is no direct evidence of bird involvement. It could have been ninja squirrels.

Position: 19.5 N 84.4 W [ 6 PM CST 0000 UTC].
Movement: North-Northwest [345°] near 10 mph [17 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 70 mph [110 kph].
Wind Gusts: 85 mph [135 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 140 miles [220 km].
Minimum central pressure: 990 mb.

It is 180 miles [290 km] East-Southeast of Cozumel, Mexico.

Tropical Storm Warnings are now in effect for Grand Cayman Island, the Pinar del Rio province of Cuba, and the Yucatan Peninsula from Punta Allen northward to San Felipe.

A Hurricane Watch is in effect for the Yucatan Peninsula from Tulum to Cabo Catoche.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Gold is at record high prices. Five more banks failed. Unemployment is at an official 10.2%, with the real rates probably twice that. Jobs are still being shed in all sectors. The dollar is weak, but the US doesn’t make anything, so there’s not much to export.

Obviously the stock market had to go back up above 10K.

Reducing the rate at which jobs are lost is not good enough – jobs needs to be added so people can start buying, or the economy will never improve. We need a real stimulus package that is actually designed to get people back to work. We need real regulation of the financial industry, so they can’t do this to us again.

Apparently it is perfectly acceptable to put G-d before country, as long as you don’t say Allah.

Money is not supposed to buy happiness, but having it is apparently enough to avoid the wait for scarce resources.

On the standard Friday politics round-up with E.J. Dionne and David Brooks, NPR host Michele Norris was apparently seriously concerned that Obama’s promise of bi-partisanship isn’t working out . Honestly, she sounds like she thinks this will be a problem for Democrats.

The super-patriotic Republican leadership [now, with even bigger flag pins] apparently doesn’t know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the Constitution. They also can’t remember the Pledge of Allegiance. I wonder what the lead level is like in the Capitol’s water supply?

Position: 16.2 N 84.0 W [ 9 PM CST 0300 UTC].
Movement: North [360°] near 7 mph [11 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [70 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1006 mb ↓.

It is inland 110 miles [175 km] East-Northeast of Limon Honduras.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Chilly Nap

I want a sweater!

[Editor: The sun moved while Not-Ringo was sleeping, and his companions left without telling him. In the fading light and shade, he actually blends in to near invisibility.

Friday Ark

It was a tragedy but I won’t be commenting on it for a while because it will take a very long time for the military to release any real information, and most of what the media is reporting is garbage.

The military is slow and methodical when dealing with “incidents”. Many of the steps involved require ritual. The next of kin notifications involve a minimum of an officer and a chaplain, so that will take a while. The military does not want witnesses to speak to anyone before they speak to the military investigators. They want all media comments to be filtered through the public affairs office and cleared first.

When you have one outlet saying there have been 2 suicides at Fort Hood in 2009, and another saying 75, you have to question the reliability of the reporting.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. Groucho Marx

Like good little stenographers, the Pensacola News Journal printed Florida’s Senate Temp’s newsletter. Unfortunately, Temp Lemieux felt compelled to do something so his name would appear on the records of the Senate. He has decided that Medicare fraud is totally out of control according to his unsourced [LeMieux Targets Health Care Fraud estimates?] statistics, so he wants to create a new bureaucrat, “Chief Health Care Fraud Prevention Office – a person within the Department of Health and Human Services whose sole job will be to prevent fraud”.

Real slowly – Fraud is a crime. Crimes are dealt with by the Department of Justice, not the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS is the victim in Medicare fraud. Victims don’t investigate and prosecute crimes as they tend not to be impartial.

If he wants to do something he could push to increase funding for the fraud unit at the US Attorney’s Miami office, as, for some reason, there is an awful lot of Medicare fraud in South Florida. In addition to pursuing existing Medicare fraud cases, the unit is also involved in investigating and prosecuting Charlie Crist’s political donors list, so they are busy and could use the help.

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A number of people are sounding bugles over a “secret treaty” that is going to shut down the Internet.

I want to see an actual law being proposed, not a blog entry.

The Internet is international, and the CBC reports that the EU agrees on new internet user rights

Under the guarantee, national authorities will only be able to cut off such services if they have proof that a user was downloading illegal copies of movies or music files, ensuring users are presumed innocent.

The structure of the Internet was designed to route around obstructions. If the US wants to push all of its ‘Net users over to European companies, the tactics described as being part of this “treaty” would certainly do it. There is no reason Google et al. have to be in the US.

Position: 13.8 N 84.1 W [ 9 PM CST 0600 UTC].
Movement: North-Northwest [330°] near 3 mph [9 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [70 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1004 mb ↑.

It is inland 50 miles [80 km] South-Southwest of Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Today is the sixth blogiversary™ of Andante’s blog, Collective Sigh. She started it to express her views on politics and life, because there was a definite lack of an audience for such views in the area of North Carolina she lived in.

If you look at her avatar at the top of my right sidebar, you will see references to two of her many facets. Her father’s people were from Scandinavia, and she was a classically trained soprano.

We connected for a number of reasons, initially because we were liberals living in wingnut wastelands, but most importantly because we were both “army brats”. Being a “military dependent” is a way of growing up that is unique. Among the group, it is almost the same as going to the same high school, even though the buildings might be thousands of miles apart and you have never met before.

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